thief support-
stealth to save allies on low health and stealth res
with trait, stealth grants regen.
with traits, stealing can give 10s fury/swiftness/might in aoe and gives vigor and strips/shares two boons on steal (min 21 second cd)
blast finishers from shortbow are spammable, thief can’t put out the fields, but they are the best at blasting them. Thief + staff ele = might stacking/swift stacking / aoe heals.
venom share – thief venoms are shared with 5 ppl in small aoe with traits they can give might, chill/immobilize/poison/torment/stone on attack, steal health on attack (this is fairly strong).
I think thats about it…note they are all not easy to achieve in one build.
even with carrion gear, if you put points in shadow arts and have undead runes, you’ll have decent toughness to go with your vitality.
the 2/2/2 combo gives more damage with high power, and longer duration bleeds…but those bleeds tick for less so condi clears hurt more. Most importantly these runes are expensive, so it may not be an easy option outside of pvp.
the undead runes on carrion gear give solid defensive boosts and improve your bleed ticks. But if your bleeds last the full duration, you’re losing probably 1.5k damage per stealth. they are soooo much cheaper than those other runes, so I’d start with them if you dont have money for those runes on hand.
with regards to vit/toughness, this doesnt have to be an either or question. toughness improves the effectiveness of vitality and heals, so even a minor increase on a high vitality build is a big defensive boost.
(edited by bobross.5034)
it’s funny, I just read a new thread on here, of a thief complaining about not being able to fight warriors in wvw. I’ll recommend the same thing to you as I did to him. Make friends with a thief, get some duels in and get used to fighting them. Maybe you could even befriend that thief. good luck!
haven’t played S/D a lot, but its strength is evasion – the trick is timing and knowing your enemy’s moves. I’d recommend partying with an opposing warrior in wvw and asking them to duel. Then they might teach you how to counter them a bit.
^Yup, I agree…buff retaliation!
but the issue with aoe and zergs isn’t that retal is overpowered – it’s that the aoe is overpowered – ANet has acknowledged problems with balancing aoe on numerous occasions…having one soft counter to aoe is not breaking this game.
But let’s be honest here, Unload deserves such a harsh counter? Pistol Whip? There is a big problem here with Retaliation as a counter for those attacks. The problem is that those attacks are all rather weak in the first place!
Unload is great, and plenty strong in the right situations, as are the other rapid attacks…pistol whip is kind of weird…maybe if it didn’t root you, it would be great. The only issue with unload is that the rest of the P/P set is fairly weak.
So again, if the issue with retaliation is that it makes P/P thieves which are already kind of weak, a bit weaker – and few others have any issue with it…why are you arguing to nerf retaliation, rather than buff P/P thieves? Nerfing retaliation changes a bunch of balance that is already in play…it nerfs guardians and mesmers, and I’m sure a handful of other professions and builds. It also destroys the balance that already exists between those professions and others.
People don’t avoid playing P/P because of retaliation – although that may be annoying. People avoid it because it has one form of defense – blinds. It offers no mobility, and very limited access to stealth (with weapon swaps). On a thief – that is just asking to die. On top of that, gameplay with P/P is fairly boring (spam unload, or maybe black powder/headshot on occasion). That’s why people don’t run P/P. nerfing retaliation wouldn’t change that at all. So this proposed change messes up the whole game balance between other classes, and doesn’t even fix what it’s intended to fix.
I also think rifles would be cool and I like the camo idea – I was thinking of something similar a few weeks ago. I think the tough thing is really differentiating this from longbow rangers and rifle warriors, where there is some real overlap.
I also think there should be a mobility skill, but I think it needs to be more limited. Having the most range of any thief weapon + limited stealth, I think the rifle would have to give up something…and that should be easy mobility.
I think lower cooldowns would do it. Accordingly – reduce the number of hits per application. So you could just apply one dose of spider venom, then get another in 10 seconds or so, rather than getting 5 at once then lots of time without any, or make it 2 every 20 seconds…something like that. Skale venom is awful, so put the doses/cds on par with spider venom. This would mean many more applications of venoms, so venom mightstacking may be affected as well…but people don’t really use that trait much now, so I don’t think rebalancing it would nerf any popular builds. This would also make venom healing a bit better, and would let thieves put venom on throughout a fight, rather than just frontloading it, and then having little utility.
Another suggestion I saw in a thread a while ago was to treat them like mantras, which I think would be good as well.
Not sure about this signet idea…seems like too much of the same thing.
(edited by bobross.5034)
umm heartseeker > ranger, but what is > mesmer? Gotta really master this profession!
glad to help – and yeah, not really something to be feared – the blinds hurt, but that black powder doesn’t last long, and it eats up a lot of initiative. Basically, if they’re doing that, they’re not unloading….or they’re not doing it for long.
It’s getting a bit dull and going in circles now though.
Agreed…if only somebody would admit to being totally wrong. :p
Why are you tossing that around as an insult to a guy who is a guild leader on the 3rd ranked server. They are not just “zergy” they are also coordinated and generally good sports (having recently lost to them on TC – which I guess is also a “zergy” server). The guy came on here with a silly little joke, which I thought was well placed and funny, to try to lighten the mood.
Rather than just laugh it off, you go on the attack again. See the difference? Guild leader vs kicked off a pvp team…it’s becoming obvious that it probably has to do with the fact that you can’t take a bit of constructive criticism or even a joke.
Really guy, relax…it’s a game. It should make you happy. People might disagree, and they might tease, but it’s just a game!
^ The aoe retal isn’t an issue either. The zerg makes sacrifices to pull it off. They need light fields + blast finishers to get very short duration aoe retal. So the group has to stack, and they have to spam blast finishers on themselves as opposed to opponents (wasting offensive strength, while making themselves sitting ducks). They also are giving themselves retal with those blast finishers as opposed to something more useful, like might. So the aoe retal strategy requires the zerg to coordinate, make themselves vulnerable, and kitten their offense, all in order to gamble that the opponent will mindlessly smash into them. If that’s what happens, then great. If the opponent is coordinated, then the gamble doesn’t pay off and gets the zerg killed. People running with mediocre commanders, or as parts of loosely formed zergs may find this tactic unbeatable, but coordinated or well led groups do not have an issue with it. So the retal serves as a form of counterplay to one strategy (or lack thereof), it costs something and there is effective counterplay to deal with it.
Again, this is a tactic that makes the game more interesting, and rewards things like skilled play over mindless numbers. There really is no good reason to further nerf retaliation either in 1v1 situations, or zerg v zerg. It also happens to be a tactic that benefits from having thieves in a zerg – as they can spam blast finishers…
Also – why is this thread in the thief forums – it seems like you came here, thinking you’d be preaching to the choir. It really belongs somewhere else – maybe guardian forums, maybe suggestions…not sure, but thief forums seems like the wrong place.
There are a few potential builds and causes for this:
1) Pistol off-hand gives Black Powder on the 5 skill (that’s the little aoe circle centered on the thief). It pulses with blind every second for a few seconds.
2) Dagger/Pistol thieves use Black Powder to stealth (since it’s a dark field, they heartseeker through it for stealth). Sometimes when fighting melee classes, they will sit in the black powder and wait for the meleers to come to them (and get blinded). Dagger/Pistol’s 3 attack makes them shoot you – blinding you, then teleport to you. D/P thieves often use this as a gap closer (or heartseeker, depending on enemy distance / health)
3)Pistol/Pistol thieves can drop black powder and then their auto-attacks / unloads, which are projectile combo-finishers, cause blind as well.
4)Thieves with dagger offhand (including pistol/dagger thieves – you’d know if it was this, because you’d have died from bleeding), often take a trait that causes aoe blind when the thief enters stealth.
Depending on which one it was there are different counters. But basically – if you don’t want to be blinded stay out of the aoe circle, or (if dagger off-hand) don’t get hit by cloak and dagger – slow animation of the dagger going across the chest (avoiding this attack will help a lot vs stealth builds with dagger off-hand).
If you are fighting against Pistol/Pistol, then blind is really their only defense – since they don’t have much mobility or access to stealth (aside from utilities and alternate weapon-sets). This weapon-set is good at a few things, but generally underperforms other thief weapons, so try to avoid the blinds, and put on the pressure and you should be good.
yup shortbow is good for groups in general and for mobility, but the init regen you have is really just a refund for cloak and dagger – so it won’t let you spam cluster bomb like you could with 20 in acrobatics (2 init every 10 seconds). You can still get off a few cluster bombs – and trick shot is solid as well…that’s why I said it’d be mediocre – not bad vs larger groups.
i’m not sure how death blossom spam works out in power builds – as far as I know, people only really use it in condition builds.
Way more initiative than you need in a build like this – basically you’re CnD / backstabbing. You don’t really need 15 in trickery. You could do 10 instead, take 5 out of shadow, and put it in acrobatics (for speed while stealthed – to land those backstabs) or deadly arts (for mug heals). You can also swap out the init regen while stealthed for regen on stealth.
As far as survivability in PvE content – it’s fine…It’s really not hard to survive high end- pve stuff. You just need to know what you’re up again and dodge at the right times. 15 in acrobatics helps for this, but it’s your choice, really. The problem thieves have in high lvl PvE is getting one-shotted. So learn what will one-shot you and avoid it, and you’ll be fine. Also shortbow is fine as an alternate weapon.
This build will put out good single target dps, but be mediocre vs larger groups…Consider S/P if you want to be able to do both.
(edited by bobross.5034)
Make sure to use a +stun duration sigil – but not really sure how viable S/P is in PvP. I’m also not a fan of all-offense builds, but I guess that’s personal preference. If you have issues with survivability, you may want to try other builds. S/D is a solid choice for PvP.
dueled 3 guardians in wvw today with my P/D thief. I think I took some retal damage, but it wasn’t really an issue – they all spent most of the fight running. Really not seeing why a nerf is necessary.
I can’t believe I had to clarify something like that.
citation? Kidding – guys, we are all just spouting opinions based on publicly available rules…no need to get all technical.
Yes he made an assumption as to the intent of the devs, and we all know that the devs are inscrutable and all-knowing. But c’mon, it was a reasonable assumption, and more importantly, he described the role that retal actually plays in the game, in terms of creating balance.
I assume you’re having issues with internal cooldowns – as vincent alluded to.
Sigils also have internal cooldowns – which are global to all sigils. So, for example if you have a sigil of earth and a sigil of fire – when one procs, it will make you wait before the other can proc. If you have an on-swap sigil, you have to wait for that cooldown before any on-crit sigils can proc.
That’s probably why you’re thinking that unload isn’t working – because you see all those crits, but where are the bleeds? Well it’s because that sigil of earth will only cause a bleed every 5 seconds (I believe – check the wiki to be sure). With any on-crit gear or traits – you always want to check the internal cooldown.
Then consider that this reflects the minimal amount of time between procs. So if it has a 30% chance on a critical hit, and you have a 50% chance of crit-hitting, and you hit 2x/second and it has a 5 second cooldown. Then you can count on a proc on 15% of hits which means you’ll probably get a proc within 1-6 attacks or 1-3 seconds. So you should be seeeing procs every 6-8 seconds or so…if you’re attacking constantly and hitting constantly. In reality, it’ll probably be between 6-10 seconds per proc.
I play a mesmer and a thief, and I enjoy playing both in WvW, I use both to run with a zerg, solo roam, and run havoc with my guildies. I also find myself winning similar amounts of duels / 1vXs on both. I also know that I never really fear warriors…though I find their ability to run away slightly annoying…good thing I have access to perma-cripple.
A warrior trading blows with a thief will win – but a well played thief has so many advantages over a warrior in a 1v1 situation. Warriors are decent in zergs – and in that context are about in the middle of the pack….in PvP, I’m told that warriors are one of the worst classes.
^not true – I’m generally anti-qq and anti-nerf. Like I said before, I play thief and mesmer (and yes there are a few mesmer builds that use retal – but I don’t run them). I’ve seen plenty of nerfs, and I really don’t have issues with guardians…
So I see the people crying for nerfs to retaliation here as being very similar to those people you mention – rather than learn to deal with the class, and abilities out there, they complain.
Nerf Pyros! Nom Nom Nom….
^yeah – undead are a solid and cheap choice. The other good choice in a condi build is 2x Lyssa, 2x Mad king and 2x whatever (major lyssa works). That gives an extra 27% condi-duration, which goes well with giver’s weapons. Those are more expensive tho.
mediocre? try amazing. imagine doing your 6500 backstabs. but not everytime you get hit ur doing anotehr 400 damage. yeah no big deal :P you still get hit for 6 -7 hits before you kill somebody. so why not make another 2800 dmg for free?
Since when is Anet handing out free retaliation? If they ever added it to thieves, it would be through a utility skill, or traits. So which traits would you give up? What if you had to take a grandmaster trait in shadow-arts (so you have to invest all those points, and you don’t even get shadow’s rejuvination)…would that be worth it for 2.8k extra damage? And they wouldn’t give you perma-retal for that anyway…it’d be like 50% up-time at most…for 100% uptime, you’d probably have to do some really odd spec with like 30 Shadow and 30 Trickery or replace a utility…and so now what have you lost in offence/utility for those 2.8k damage over the course of a fight? So that’s why I said it was mediocre on thieves. Even if it is free (being buffed by someone else)…almost any other boon would serve a thief better; fury, vigor, aegis, protection, regeneration, stability, 5 stacks of might I’d trade retal for any of those on my thief. In fact I’d even take a trait that made it so every time I was buffed with retaliation, it was replaced with poison (on me) + stability.
But while on the topic of what you give up for retaliation…I don’t know the details, but I’m pretty sure, guardians give up a lot for perma-retaliation builds (maybe someone who plays guardian can weigh in on this). You see the issue? They lose damage in one place to get it in a less reliable place (since the attacker gets to decide whether to take retal damage), and they do this in exchange for better defense.
Buddy, thief are the most mobile proffesion in the game, even without swiftness. if you cant catch a warrior you are a bad thief.
Yes and no…it’s easy to show the numbers when theory crafting, but when in combat, you just blew half your initiative getting that warrior down to 10% health, and then he decides to run, it actually makes it tricky. He gets a head start-of course, and as others point out, he can create a 3k gap in a few seconds. So you need reaction time to catch him quick, or a solid mobility / initiative regen build to catch him slowly.
^Yeah, I’ve never built glassy enough to do a 20k burst myself – but I’ve seen those absurd builds that are all about signet – might stacking, with like no utility/defense and all damage. There is a “how much can you backstab?” thread somewhere in these forums – as well as numerous “QQ – I just got pwnd” threads.
They can get off an amazing burst – but they have like no survivability – hence not really a viable build.
I use carrion gear (mostly) as well with undead runes.
30 SA – heal on stealth, regen on stealth, lose conditions on stealth
20 acro – might on dodge, 2 init every 10 seconds
20 trickery – frenzy+swiftness on steal, caltrops on dodge
I use signet of malice for my heal as well as blinding powder, signet of infiltration, and caltrops or shadow refuge with daggerstorm as my elite.
shortbow is my other weapon – which makes it easy to join zergs.
The difference with my version vs others is lots of passive healing while in stealth and while attacking – I almost never use signet of malice for the active. Instead, when I need to heal, I cloak and dagger off of something…there are plenty of targets in wvw.
It also has good initiative regen. So you can do this combo: 5-dodge(caltrops)-1-3-steal (gain initiative)-3-infiltrator signet-3. You wind up with 7-9 bleeds, 6 torments, cripple and enough initiative for a cloak and dagger.
What this build is weak at vs other P/D builds is cover conditions, instead it rellies on wearing the opponent down – assuming their condi-clears can’t keep up with your condition application.
I think it can sometimes be hard to read intent and emotion in text. There is a lot of wiggle room for uncareful remarks to be taken as insults. Anyway, I apologize if any of mine have come out that way.
nope, I don’t think stealth is overpowered at all – just using it as an example. I think it is exactly as overpowered as retaliation.
How much damage does retaliation do? As much damage as the attacker wants it to do. That is why it is balanced – vs a smart attacker, the best outcome is a stalemate: just like stealth. Retal’s value in skilled play is as a defense or as a minor addition to dps – because it forces attackers to slow down / change tactics – or they choose to dps through it, and take a bit more damage. It’s effectiveness depends very much on the build that it faces – so it probably is only highly effective in maybe 1/3 of battles. I personally haven’t ever felt like I was being ruined by it – except in PvE – Honor of the waves – signet of malice takes care of that.
How much damage does stealth do? It is a defense that is effective 90+% of the time. So it does as much damage as your next set of attacks (since it saved your life).
should 1 boon which can be easily kept up 100% of the time be able to passively shut down multiple builds/classes
You mean stealth?
Stealth is not a boon.
The only instantly applicable stealth is a utility (or on fall damage). The rest can be countered.
So no.
Yup, but once that stealth is up, it can be maintained with trivial effort (and not much skill). And while stealthed, you are untargetable, which completely eliminates counterplay for many builds. For example; how does a P/P thief kill someone who is perma-stealthing? I’m not talking about catching that person when they come out of stealth – I mean, while they are perma-stealthing: It completely shuts down a P/P build, just the same as retal.
Bulls Charge+Rush+Whirlwind is easily 3000 range. If they happen to have sword on their other weapon set that’s another 900ish range.
As long as a warrior doesn’t get CC’d before they take off, it’s almost impossible to catch them.
Infiltrator signet is 900 range, and steal can be buffed to 15k, shadow-step (sword mainhand) can get you another quick 900 + a CC. These are teleports – so they can actually be quicker than the warrior skills…but yeah, that’s an ideal situation.
Spamming heartseeker while swift is a more likely scenario, which will keep you about 1k behind the warrior for a long time (just a hair out of steal range).
Really if the warrior wants to get away, they have a really good chance of doing it, or at the very least it’ll be a looong-distance race.
I’m guessing he doesn’t have a degree in science or any other such field, because the point of scientific fields is to change one variable, keeping everything else the same, and measure the effects.
Woah – what’s with the personal attacks, guy? I’m not angry at all – in fact I’m excited to try your build – I’ve been collecting PvT gear all day, and I just had an issue with your logic, and was trying to debate it. I don’t have a beef with you or anyone else on here.
Also – I’m about 6 months away from a PhD in clinical psychology – my dissertation even uses scientific methods as well as advanced statistical modeling…But let’s get out of the personal realm.
You said it yourself – science is about changing one variable and then measuring the effects. In the arbitrary thought experiment example I just gave, I showed how changing the single variable that you described would impact an otherwise equivalent matchup. Now in a scientific model – that would have been better researched (using exact numbers, rather than made-up ones) and it would have served as a hypothesis, that then would have been tested (having various people play the game with both sets of armor on otherwise equivalent builds vs various opponents, etc.).
My entire point was that a simplistic model of a complex system only gets you so far…and eventually you wind up having to test it. That is what science is all about. You are the one who tried to boil the whole game down into two statistics and then waved them around like they were absolute facts – rather than well-reasoned conjecture. And conjecture is fine – but a scientist should know the difference between a fact and a hunch, and they make it clear in their language (lots of maybes). Because despite all the work that you put into deriving a formula – you probably haven’t done the testing required to establish that your formula actually maps on to the game – and I only assume this, because the amount of testing required would be ridiculous.
Ok – now I am sorry for this, because this really was just a “check out my build” post, and I did not want it to turn into some sort of heated debate. And personally – I’m not really heated about anything, so I hope I haven’t deeply offended anyone here. And I hope we can just get back to trying the build out and saying how we like it.
should 1 boon which can be easily kept up 100% of the time be able to passively shut down multiple builds/classes
You mean stealth?
Oh and don’t get me started on confusion – they nerfed that to complete uselessness (not because of OP’d 1v1s, but because groups running those mesmer glamour builds were putting 25 stacks of confusion on entire zergs). In one move they made confusion half as powerful, and nerfed the glam build into oblivion. The build was overpowered – but the appropriate nerf would have been to limit the number of people that could be affected by a glamour (like other aoe). Instead they nerfed confusion damage and made glamours really awful at applying confusion.
More importantly – they didn’t just nerf one overpowered build – they also nerfed every build that used confusion. And so for a long time, condition mesmers were just awful (until recent buffs), likewise, that weird confusion engineer build completely disappeared. Neither of these builds were overpowered before, the nerf was just so broad that it hit them all.
So the end result is that confusion is now barely stronger than a stack of bleed, but only ticks on skill use – so it winds up being weaker and shorter duration than bleeds. And now on my thief, when I have confusion, I can continue to mindlessly spam my skills with no worry whatsoever (except in PvE, where it wasn’t nefed – there I still manage to deal with it, because I’m not an idiot).
retal on a thief is mediocre – we’re too glassy for it to matter much and our primary defense is avoiding getting hit. I’ve fantasized about using those on-hit runes on my thief at time, but it comes down to the fact that I’d rather not be getting hit…Protection on a thief is amazing.
Let me put it in perspective – just like perma-stealth, the outcome of perma-retal vs a knowledgeable player (running a build that can’t effectively counter it) is a stalemate.
The outcome of perma-retal / perma-stealth vs a knowledgeable player with a build that has a few counters (heavy hits / condition damage / boon strips for retals ; aoe / cc for stealth) is probably a win for that knowledgeable player (except with perma-stealth it may still be a stalemate).
Retal can do 30k damage during a fight, just like thieves can do 20k bursts. But these tactics only consistently win fights vs people who aren’t paying attention. Otherwise the tactics are just a small piece of a build that uses combinations of active offense / defense and passive offense / defense. Furthermore – in their extreme forms, these are mediocre – weak builds.
I use it on my P/D build in WvW. I have lots of healing while stealthed, and I use CnD a lot. Signet of Malice just keeps me topped off with 150 heals x 8 or so between stealths, and 700 or so health per second while stealthed.
When running with a zerg, I switch to shortbow and clusterbomb spam…that hits a max of 15 targets per cluster (3 bombs x 5 targets), this keeps my health up as I spam. I also drop caltrops and get heals every tick of damage. And then there’s daggerstorm…
Basically SoM is a good heal for weapons that hit a lot (s/p, p/p, p/d, shortbow, d/d-death blossom) and for aoe. You sacrifice some utility and burst healing in those sets for a superior amount of healing over time. In other sets it’s probably not worth it, since you can probably get equivalent or better healing with the other two heals. The biggest downside is that the bulk of the healing requires attacking, so you need to have a build that can handle staying on the attack – or gets healing from diverse sources – like stealth. You also run into trouble if you get burst down, since you can’t easily get back up (except after some careful attacking / stealthing).
don’t forget, acrobatics also buffs boon duration. 20 in acrobatics + 30 trickery =
12 seconds / 21 seconds and 3.5 seconds on dodge. that’s more than perma-swiftness.
Retaliation completely nullifies the p/p build. If all your damage comes from unload, and you can’t use unload against the guard, how is that fair?
I agree with this more or less, except for a few things:
1) it doesn’t mean that retal is OP – I think it actually means that P/P still has some major flaws / holes that need to be addressed by ANet- so for the sake of balancing, why not urge for a buff to P/P, in the form of more utility – maybe some sort of buff to body shot’s utility
2) Everyone has two weapons – so if your P/P isn’t capable of handling that guardian, you should swap weapons – D/D, D/P and S/D can all do well, even P/D can handle it fine because of frequent stealth heals.
3) There are more counters than just boon stripping – I mentioned signet of malice, which makes retal damage negligible.
4) P/P has access to headshot – not sure about guardian skills, but if those retal skills have a cast time, you should be able to interrupt.
5) As a thief, you are able to withdraw from combat enough to swap weapons/skills/traits if needed, this is an advantage that other classes don’t have.
Someone else argued against aoe retal. I still think that’s balanced, since it takes some coordination to pull off (good stacking, blast finishers, etc.). More importantly, there are solid counters to it (not on thieves – so maybe we shouldn’t be running all thief zergs…).
Last Thursday, I watched a guild v guild with an FA guild and a TC guild. The FA guild bunched together to use retal and stack. I was told that vs an uncoordinated group, they would have won – the group would have killed themselves on the retal. In the actual battle that I watched, I saw the TC commander pull back, dropp wells and nullfields, and kill the FA guild with more aoe than they could handle. Their retal strategy required them to stay still, which made them sitting ducks, and since the TC guild was prepared, they turned it to their advantage and won.
That whole play and counterplay is fascinating…and while the stand still with retal strategy seems passive and boring (just like a defensive move in chess), it requires timing and skill to pull off and sets up interesting counterplay, which makes the game more fun for everyone.
No, it doesn’t. It assumes the exact same conditions as beforehand, just that the stats have changed. That’s what ceteris paribus means.
Even if the ration if 5:1, Thief A is still going to be dealing 1.33 times more damage with these new stats relative to base (and relative to his previous ceteris paribus 5:1 ratio), and Thief B is still going to be dealing 1.5 times more damage relative to base. The only difference is that we could convert this to a 1:1 ratio, but since it’s 5:1, relative to that previous 1:1 ratio, Thief A is actually going to be deal 6.67 times more damage. But, as always, we’re assuming ceteris paribus.
Ok, so then in a realistic scenario – Let’s say we have a thief vs a warrior. And lets say the base thief needs 12 hits to kill the warrior, and the warrior needs 4 hits to kill the thief, and the thief gets hit 1 out of every 4 attacks and the warrior gets hit 1 out of every 2 attacks. Now lets also say that they each attack 1x/second, and that they each heal 1x/15 seconds for half their health. Now we’re choosing between 2x offense / 1x defense vs 1.5/1.5.
So thief A now needs 6 hits to win, the warrior still needs 4, the warrior will take 16 seconds to kill thief A if he doesn’t heal, but since he can heal, the warrior takes 24 seconds to kill the thief. The thief meanwhile hits 6 times in 12 seconds, and wins the battle (or after 10 seconds, the warrior heals, so the thief wins in 18 seconds).
Thief B now needs 8 hits to win, and can eat 6 hits. The thief still only heals 2 hits worth of damage (I know, technically toughness adds a small buff to effective healing – lets up this to 2.5). So the warrior will take 24 seconds to kill the thief if he doesn’t heal, since the thief does heal, it will take 42 seconds. Meanwhile the thief will kill the warrior in 16 seconds with no heal, but the warrior gets to heal so it really takes 24 seconds.
In this case, the math worked out such that you could interpret it two ways -
1) Thief A and Thief B both win, but Thief A wins quicker
2) Thief B would take a lot longer to lose.
Now these numbers are arbitrary – but just used as an example for how complex this stuff can be. And they’re still oversimplified – because they don’t take into account the way that playstyle and skill will differentially affect each build. Being able to eat more hits may make you more offensively aggressive, which may increase your hit rate, but also the number of hits taken. Alternatively, spiking the opponent harder and earlier, may put them on the defensive, allowing the player to continue to push harder, thereby increasing hit rate and defense. A 6 second difference in this fudged numbers hypothetical scenario may seem worth it for a larger defensive cushion – and that may be true, but if the actual numbers work out differently, the opponent’s heals may outpace the dps of thief B, and not thief A, which means that rather than just a time difference, thief B may be unable to make a dent in the opponent. That short time difference, in a real scenario may also be the difference between ending a fight just in time to start another duel, or having to deal with a 2v1. It also may be the difference between capping a point and not capping a point. Or killing an opponent and not killing them. The defensive advantages may also be the difference between a thief dying and not dying.
My point is just that this game is very complex, and an overly simplified offensive power/defensive power mathematical model is not enough to effectively compare builds. That takes testing – and even testing won’t account for differences in playstyle. The build is out there, so if people give it a shot and like it, we’ll see how it does in teams soon enough:).
Since some people don’t seem to understand this concept…
Let’s say player A has an offensive amplification of 2, and a defensive amplification of 1. Let’s say player B has an offensive amplification of 1.5, and a defensive amplification of 1.5.
Therefore, Player A is going to be able to kill Player B 2/1.5 = 1.33 times faster than he would have otherwise been able to do if he was at base levels of stats. However, Player B will be able to kill Player A 1.5/1 = 1.5 times faster than he would have been able to do from base. The result? Since one player can kill the other faster, Player B wins, assuming equal skill level and ceteris paribus.
right, but this assumes that both are trading blows on a 1:1 basis – this may be true if we’re talking about 2 s/d builds – which may make PVT a counter to an equivalent zerker build. If they are different builds where one is better at avoiding blows, absorbing them, amplifying own dps, bursting, preventing healing, whatever…then the equation becomes much more complex.
So taking all that into consideration – lets put S/D into context against other builds – whether it’s your version or jumpers – S/D thief is –
1) better at avoiding damage than most other builds
2) more mobile and more reliant on mobility than most other builds
3) better at boon stripping than most other builds
4) Less able to take a hit than most other builds (yours may be able to tank better than jumper’s, but you’re still probably just tankier than a glassy necro).
5) ok dps (this is probably true for both builds) both spend a lot of time avoiding damage, so dps is probably mediocre in both, when taken over a long period of time
6) ok burst (probably true for both builds)
The difference between your builds is not how long you can survive – both can survive a long time. It is:
1) how long you can survive while making mistakes / cc’d
2) how quickly you can end a fight.
I think I follow both arguments, but Arganthium – I think you need to recognize that if a thief has the skill to consistently maintain offensive pressure and avoid damage entirely, then defensive stats mean less and less. As jumper mentioned, he dies maybe once in a fight.
If that is the case, and as long as he can maintain that as the case for himself – he should be maximizing his team utility and damage potential. Ending fights quicker so he can move on and be useful to his team.
I think the traditional wisdom for thieves is to start with a mix of dps and survivability and then trim down the survivability+buff dps to suit your playstyle/ability.
The paradoxical thing for thieves is that if you find yourself dying – you can often boost your survivability by boosting your dps. This works in two ways – 1) it puts opponents on the defensive quicker, so they are spending less time/effort landing solid hits against you, and more time/effort dodging and healing. And 2) it ends fights quicker. If a fight ends after kittens, it doesn’t matter how long you could have survived…
I personally am horrible using jumper’s build, so I don’t run it, and I attribute it mostly to my lack of skill, and my playstyle. So for a player like me, your build may be an option, and may work well. I also think it may serve as ok training wheels while moving toward a glassier build. And I think that it can do well in specific roles, and have some long-term viability even for pros. But I don’t think it has any advantages that outweight jumper’s and I don’t think that your stats prove any advantage over his build…those sorts of things can only really be demonstrated through play.
Regarding the stats: your statistics assume that we are simply trading blows with our enemies. However as thieves this is often a recipe for disaster. Our goal should always be to avoid damage, because if we trade blows, we lose. Therefore, as we get better at avoiding damage, we can push toward more damage / less defensive stats. If we’re still not dying a lot, then it makes sense to continue to push in that direction (or find a way to take on more opponents in 1vX, depending on the build’s objective). This is why, it is so important to note that Jumper only dies once in a battle…so your stats don’t apply to him, especially the defense that he sacrifices to marginally increase his offense. That is actually a worthwhile trade for him. It may not be for others, and I think it’s worth noting – for their benefit, but if someone can play jumper’s build and rarely die, then it will be marginally more effective than yours, since they wind up with de-facto similar survivability, but different DPS.
Lol. Your post is so full of baseless assumptions.
I do not have trouble with bunker guards. Your 3k armor and 15k health will not save you when my backstabs still hit for 7k. I will always kill a bunker guard in a 1v1 but retal extends the fight since i have to back off sometimes and heal. Bunker guard damage is just pitiful. It’s so bad that I take more damage from retal than their actual attacks.
Do you see the problem there? I take more damage from something in which he has to put 0 extra effort in order to accomplish? You should not be able to do damage with something that requires no extra effort or skill on your part. Clones/illusions, retal, confusion, etc are all poorly designed mechanics that reward the player who uses them and requires 0 effort or input from the player besides activating the skill. It’s the definition of “fire and forget”.
There is no build in the game that I cant kill except for staff + scepter/torch mesmers but even then it’s a stalemate. I can stand the fact of there being builds that I can’t kill, but I can’t stand people like you trying to justify your 0 skill and effort damage you deal from retaliation. You should not be punished simply for attacking your opponent.
Please do not say that perma stealth thieves cannot kill a bunker guard, that is not true. I’ve killed many bunker guards. They can’t put any pressure on me whatsoever except from retal. My damage is just vastly superior and I do not have to reset combat since i run a sustain build. Glass is overrated do not assume every thief runs one.
I assumed you play D/P thief because it’s in your signature. Also you assumed that I play guardian – which is not true at all (I believe I have a lvl 4 guardian, that I have never used in PvP). In fact I very rarely get any benefit from retal in any of my builds (maybe occasionally on my mesmer). I just don’t see why every build should get nerfed because a few people are too inflexible to deal with it.
And no, I don’t see the problem. If a stupid thief spams unload on a retal guardian – that’s a L2P issue, not a balance one. As I mentioned, thieves have several tools to handle retaliation, whether through boon-stripping, outhealing or single powerful attacks.
Arguing that retal is OP’d because the guardian can win a fight by just standing there is also silly. Thieves can win fights by spamming 2. That doesn’t mean heartseeker is OP, it just means people need to learn to deal with it. Same goes for retaliation. If you deal with it appropriately, the guardian will have to work for a victory.
Also you point out that your build can kill all builds except for one mesmer build, and that the worst outcome you get is a stalemate, so why are you complaining? It seems like the most evidence that you’ve presented is that your own build is overpowered – not the guardian’s.
That lifetime damage potential is an interesting stat…but I’m not sure it always maps on well to battles, especially for a class like thief. For example, Jumper’s build, (when played by Jumper) takes damage so infrequently that defensive stats really don’t factor largely into the builds survivability. Meanwhile, offense does – since it potentially shortens the battle and reduces the likelihood of an opponent joining in.
On the other hand being able to take a few hits may mean that you get to stay put and hit more often than another build that needs to spend more time dodging / stealthing. The result may be more overall dps but less burst. The lack of burst may be the difference between finishing a fight in 20seconds or 20 minutes. Then again, if you screw up often (like I do), it may end in 20seconds with a glass build – as a loss.
(edited by bobross.5034)
I think Arganthium is trying to start a friendly rivalry with jumper – which makes sense because he’s proposing a radically different take on S/D.
I read through your stuff – seems interesting, and I might give it a shot in WvW (where I have played around with similar stat spreads in condition builds – obviously not S/D). I tend to agree with you that the best traits are in acrobatics and trickery…it’s a shame that the stats they buff can be sort of mediocre in many builds.
I’m not sure I completely followed your arguments about offensive power and your comparison to jumper’s dps. Maybe you could walk us through it a bit slower?
I also think it’s complex as your build is going to clearly have advantages when it comes to things like boon ripping (which S/D already does so well anyway).
Along those lines, I wonder about taking both Bountiful Theft and Vigorous Recovery together. Aren’t you sort of over-killing the vigor? With either of those you’d have like 90% up-time on vigor – with both, you only lose vigor if someone kills your boons. Instead you could be taking power of inertia, initial strike (since you seem to be fond of auto-attacks), flanking strikes (for another flat damage boost – on top of your 15%) or even uncatchable. Although Bountiful theft does combo well to rip a lot of boons at once with larcenous strike – how often do you actually pull that off? How often do you need to rip 4 boons, and couldn’t do it with larcenous strike alone? Is it enough to justify the trait? Meanwhile, there are some other great traits that you could be taking that would synergize great with this build.
Anyway, interesting ideas, and I’m excited to give it a try.
Edit: I realized that part of the goal of your build is team battles – so perhaps bountiful theft is worth it for the team benefits? So that leaves you with maybe 60-70% vigor up-time (not including random boons from those lyssa runes). I think power of inertia may then be worth it over vigorous recovery. That’s an extra 4-5 might stacks most of the time in a build like this.
(edited by bobross.5034)
You should not be allowed to spec full bunker and still be able to kill people. Retaliation allows people who spec completely defensively to kill things when they obviously shouldn’t be able to.
You play D/P thief. In WvW this is the exact complaint that people have against D/P thief. They say it’s not fair for a build to have both excellent damage output and excellent survivability. I personally don’t see an issue here. I’m happy to let thieves run away when they’re losing and move on. I personally play thief builds that rely more on mobility and less on stealth – but I’m not complaining…The problem as I see it is that you can’t tolerate the idea of a build that you can’t kill. Seems kind of hypocritical.
It’s not overpowered, because it’s not unkillable. In fact many thief builds can deal with a bunker/retal guardian just fine. But the standard, cookie cutter dps or permastealth builds have trouble. And you’re upset because your build can’t kill a bunker guardian unless they let you. That’s fine, each build has their weaknesses. Appreciate and revel in all your strengths; Like the fact that that same guardian can’t kill you, unless you let him.
-And I am not trying to justify this as some sort of rock-paper-scissors style balancing. It’s not. ANet gave thieves the tools to deal with this build. It’s your choice whether to use any of them. If you choose to min-max in such a way that you have none of those tools available in your build, then your build will have a hard counter. And again, that is totally fine…just hope that the counter doesn’t become the meta, or your build will need to change.
(edited by bobross.5034)
Why? whenever I start playing a class, that class becomes underpowered! When I played eles because I heard eles was amazing, then eles got nerfed and eles forumers were crying. Then, I played rangers, but rangers got nerfed and rangers forumers were crying. Now, I started to play Mesmer because I heard Mesmer was one of the best, but now it seems Mesmer loses its former glory.
That being said, since I am not playing very well, there are lots of things I can learn. I still have fun playing all these classes.
Uh…maybe don’t start playing a class just as everyone starts agreeing that it’s overpowered? That’s when the nerf is coming… If you like the playstyle, you work around limitations, find strengths and learn to enjoy it.
Mesmers are not weak by any means, nor are elementalists for that matter. Both classes continue to be strong in most settings, despite a few nerfs that were probably appropriate. ANet is trying to balance the classes as best they can, which sometimes means nerfs. It also sometimes means buffs. The nerfs that mesmers have gotten lately, IMO have come along with some substantial buffs tht have opened up new playstyles and builds. If you are flexible, you’ll find them.
You may also find yourself losing more battles – but maybe if you were winning 75% of your duels and now it’s gone down to 50%, it’s not because you were some amazing player, but now the class is nerfed…maybe it just means you’re an average player, and now the class is balanced. It’s the sort of thing that you can only really tell when watching very high level play, or looking through tons of data.
Not a fan of nerfing stuff that can be handled fine within game. Retal doesn’t do a lot of damage with any one hit, and it only hurts you when you mindlessly spam attacks at a single target. You can still do this as a thief if you use signet of malice. Thieves also have access to boon stripping, so vs a single target there are no issues.
Vs. multiple targets anyone can kill themselves on a zerg with retal. But this is a difficult coordinated tactic that takes a bit of skill to pull off well. On top of that, there is already group counterplay, like nullfield, wells, etc. that can counter this tactic very effectively.
Nerfing retaliation would just be taking the skilled and thoughtful gameplay that is already there around it and replacing it with mindless button mashing. I think the same can be said for confusion. Confusion should have been the bane of thieves, as it stands, you barely notice when you have it (unless you’re in PvE where it didn’t get nerfed).