Guild Wars 2

Posting this here since they censored my reddit thread. It would be nice if you added a feature to disable legendary transformation on certain pieces.

For example, Perfected Envoy Jerkin (Leg Med) is a really great looking top, however when you unstow it looks completely obnoxious.

http://i.imgur.com/RONKKCn.jpg?1 (stowed)
http://i.imgur.com/nF4KiQz.jpg (unstowed)

For almost 5 years now, a mass majority of medium players (at least the ones I tend to meet) have been asking/hoping Anet would make armor skins that aren’t trenchcoats. For them, this legendary armor is the biggest slap in the face imaginable. I’m not saying the armor is all bad, the red dragon unstow for example, was the main motivating factor for me wanting it in the first place. I suspected it would be tied to one certain piece, and I assumed shoulders as they had a dragon on them and it just made sense. For this reason, I was willing to look past the obnoxious trenchcoat look. This was until I learned the unstow was bound to the coat, which is tragic imo. I haven’t met a single person yet in game who likes the medium top, however everyone I’ve talked to has agreed that the top is really nice pre-transformation. If I could use the stowed version of the medium top with disabled transformation, while keeping the dragon unstow this would be perfect (PERFECT!!) and I’m sure a majority of the medium players in this game would agree with me or at least appreciate the extra variety/customization.

This is just in terms of my tastes, I’m sure a lot of players wish this for other pieces of the armor. I just find the legendary medium top to be the most obnoxious example of what I’m talking about, it completely kills the detail of the rest of the armor.

OriOri.8724:

Anonymouse.4760:

Most importantly, there needs to be sigils that work well for other classes.

For example

sigil of sleight “increases damage dealt from the side or behind by 8%”
which would work nicely for a thief.

sigil of judgement “increase your damage dealt by 3% +1% for every boon you have” ( maximum of 8% )
this would work nicely for revenants

In this way you have control over the damage modifiers you receive, and aren’t at the mercy of whether or not your necro condi bombs a target or if your target is a boon heavy class or not. This promotes more reliable and less RNG gameplay.

Why is it that these sigils should be allowed up to 8%, when the other ones are capped at 5%? That’s the opposite of balance. This is creating sigils that are unquestionably better than alternatives, which is something that the balance team should strive to avoid

OriOri is it your life purpose to come up with extraordinarily simple-minded responses to every post? Anet should hire you.

OriOri.8724:

oEnvy.3064:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Brockolosso.8316:

Sigil of Lethargy
Your next attack after swapping to this weapon while in combat slows your target (2 Seconds).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)
Sigil of Revelation
Reveal nearby foes when swapping to this weapon while in combat (240 Radius).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)

Are you for real? You were supposed to stop the power creep, not join them…

Are you saying you would always take those two sigils for every build?

This is simply awful. Two big points here, the removal of air fire is a huge nerf to thief in particular (and on top of that you’ll have every player on every class running reveal on swap due to every other sigil being useless anyway.) The other suggestions to air fire were fine (giving them a buff on the bar when they’re off cd and the hit for it can be dodgable.) And I can’t stress hard enough that all of these sigils are kittening USELESS. So you might as well run reveal and slow on every build, yes. If you want to add 0 viable options, don’t add reveal on swap.

LMFAO go figure its a thief complaining about a reveal sigil.

@Evan Lesh – Changes look pretty good. I still hate on swap sigils, I think its brainless play to be able to apply 2 cover conditions instantly. It makes condi bombs way more potent than they otherwise would be, and only further points out the need for a cleansing hierarchy in GW2 that prioritises the most dangerous conditions first.

Let me clarify I have 0 problem with that sigil being added to the game as long as the reveal is a reasonable duration and it has a buff on the bar so it isn’t just a random niche. However, when you completely remove all the viable options and leave that as the best sigil in the game it’s pretty unbalanced. I can’t believe that you’re so shortsighted to not even see that much.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Sigil of Compounding
Deal 1% extra damage per condition on your foe. Maximum 5%.

Sigil of Punishment
Deal 1% extra damage per boon on your foe. Maximum 5%.

Did it ever occur to you that no one ever took force in the first place. Adding an extra mechanic to reaching the same damage as force did by default doesn’t make it viable. LOL. Even with the removal of air/fire and hydro/leech this is still a horrible dps option, literally no justification for running this or any of the other dmg sigils as opposed to Lethargy/Revelation.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Brockolosso.8316:

Sigil of Lethargy
Your next attack after swapping to this weapon while in combat slows your target (2 Seconds).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)
Sigil of Revelation
Reveal nearby foes when swapping to this weapon while in combat (240 Radius).
(Cooldown: 9 Seconds)

Are you for real? You were supposed to stop the power creep, not join them…

Are you saying you would always take those two sigils for every build?

This is simply awful. Two big points here, the removal of air fire is a huge nerf to thief in particular (and on top of that you’ll have every player on every class running reveal on swap due to every other sigil being useless anyway.) The other suggestions to air fire were fine (giving them a buff on the bar when they’re off cd and the hit for it can be dodgable.) And I can’t stress hard enough that all of these sigils are kittening USELESS. So you might as well run reveal and slow on every build, yes. If you want to add 0 viable options, don’t add reveal on swap.

crunchyraisin.6054:

I understand the intent clearly, but if this passes, some teams will lose matches based on their comp before the match even begins, and not be able to do a thing about it.

Nothing kills competitive spirit like not being able to influence the outcome of the match.

The ideal would be allowing swapping up till match start, disallowing after start, and hiding the enemy comp until match start.

Why are so many morons voting yes?

Gaile Gray.6029:

Revenant is in an interesting place in PvP. It’s undoubtedly one of the more difficult professions to play, but when mastered it is devastating on the battlefield. We’re going to bring some elements of the main power build down slightly,

• Surge of the Mists: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 50% in PvP only.
• Precision Strike: The damage of this ability has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

SLIGHTLY.

this got a lot of replies

Really? Let’s get rid of pve legendary weapons too.
Thanks a lot anet.

DnTinsider.2068:

oEnvy.3064:

HeyGuys

welcom 2 gun show

Remember when you tried to take dods to the gun show.

Pepperidge farm remembers.

hi

HeyGuys

welcom 2 gun show

Elia.7193:

Is very simple to excuse everything by saying that the player is not good enough to get out of sapphire or whatever division. Fair enough if that’s the case , is just a game at the end of the day. What I haven’t understand is this : lets assume that player A and player B both have win/loss rate around 50%. But for player A it works as win streak and loss streak so he progress in tier but for player B was something like win/loss/loss/win so he didn’t progress. What exactly makes player A better than player B? Why A “deserves” to progress and consider better than player B?

because player a won and player b didn’t lol

morrolan.9608:

Dahkeus.8243:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

No

And every other post from every other user in this forum disagrees with you as well, Including pro players points of views on how the league/division system works.

Sorry, gonna prove you wrong with the “every other post from every other user” part, lol.

You’ve proved nothing except that you’re a high mmr player who got gifted a ride to legendary.

Is that really your excuse? omg high mmr u got carried that’s why i can’t get to legend.
So, I got legend on my main which has high mmr, I guess I got carried. I then got legend on two of my alts in 1-2 nights for each, both accounts are new or haven’t stepped foot in pvp. Guess that was just my mmr.

you made it through amber and emerald without losing? cool so did everybody else. If you lose 60+ games or whatever in sapphire then it’s your own fault.

If you get stuck at a division where you can’t even lose tiers, maybe you should think about what you’re doing rather than crying about the game. You know every single “bad teammate” you’ve had? They all think they’re awesome, just like you do. Maybe it’s time you stop overestimating your abilities and started working to improve.

if you get stuck at emerald it’s your own fault.
you can’t even lose tiers lol

news flash
winning is more rewarding than losing
you’re lucky you’re getting any pity pips at all

Aviator sunglasses, Wide Rim Glasses, Bunny Ears, School outfit, Chaos weapons

ok now do it in pro leagues

Thank you.

Rev #2? Yes. Rev’s pretty much make staff ele obsolete. More effective, more damage, more burst, more survivability by far and on top of that it’s probably one of the easiest classes in the game. Pretty much any terrible player can hit 2 on their keyboard and one shot me no matter how bad they are or how well I play. It’s pretty discouraging/frustrating since I can’t 1v1 them no matter what and they pretty much take ele’s spot in zerg fights in terms of DPS.

At this point all we can do is pray for nerfs imo, although I doubt that will happen any time soon or at all since anet doesn’t want to cause too much qq from players being carried by the class. Sorry for revenant salt but anyone can press 2 or 3.

A while back I posted my first staff ele video on here after first picking up the class. I believe I’ve gotten significantly better. Though the clips may have suffered slightly in terms of quality due to lack of playing, I do believe this still shows my improvement mechanically.

This is the follow up of my first staff ele video. Let me know what you think and what I can improve on.

I think the best runeset would be either Strength or Exuberance. Strength runes combined with Strength Sigil probably has the highest overall dps and Exuberance has the most overall stats with precision comparable to pack runes with a decent amount of vitality investment along with not relying on Strength Sigil.

But I’m new to staff ele, just my opinion.

Serious Thought.5394:

Your list, is simply put, the greatest. But how to beat each? Play condition thief. For whatever reason, no one runs condi clear. Most run damage mitigation, yes, but condi clear itself? Not really.

If you valued mechanical skill at all you would never lower yourself to play condition thief as it’s one of the easiest if not the easiest build in the game.

Nice, not really a fan of the quick one shot ganks as they don’t display as much sustained skill as a real fight. However, there were some nice fights in this. I like how you focused more on your own mechanical skill rather than just facerolling bad players for flashy 1v3s or something.

Recently I’ve been learning staff ele and “trying” to roam with it occasionally using a straight up zerg build. Been in T2 for a few days now and I decided to make a video of some cool things that have happened so far. Let me know what you think.

laquito.5269:

Just gonna mention that there was a time, during S/D, when Thief was a farpoint assaulter to 1v1 Hambow (mostly) and to chase off the other thief. Both aspects are gone, thieves aren’t even 1v1ing anymore, so I don’t think “hurr durr +1ing and mobility” is a valid argument for not buffing the 1v1 potential.

Thanks for making an intelligent post. Imo thief still has a good amount of 1v1 potential with dp , while not as much as S/D used to it’s still good. It’s just not efficient to do so, as you could be +1ing and decaping. I don’t think the answer is to buff thief if thief truly is too weak to 1v1 in this meta, as I don’t believe in anet’s ability to intelligently buff someone because it could and usually does make the class way too strong. The meta changed (shoutbow is out) and while it’s no longer optimal for a thief to push far and 1v1 an easy matchup (shoutbow was easy for s/d as I remember, it wasn’t to do with how good thief was though, it was just a unique matchup that went in thief’s favor due to how the two specs interacted.) 1v1 servers do still exist where thief is still completely viable if you really want to 1v1.

Arctarius.2649:

oEnvy.3064:

Arctarius.2649:

oEnvy.3064:

Thief is the fastest and most mobile class not to mention it has near perma stealth making it the very best +1er and decaper in the game. With proper rotations a good thief can easily carry a pvp game EVEN at a top level, I’ve seen Toker single handedly save games for the abjured. If a thief has potential to carry against the best players in the game, then it can definitely carry in random solo q’s it’s just a matter of rotations.

It makes sense that thief isn’t great in 1v1s, it’s not the thief’s job to 1v1. If thief was the best 1v1er in the game on top of having the most mobility/disengage/stealth it’d be straight up OP because not only would they be able to win most 1v1s they’d be able to leave whenever they wanted making them virtually unkillable.

Why do you guys say thief has no survivability when it has more than it’s ever had in pvp with SA and vamp runes? If you’re constantly dying on that than I can definitely see why you’re retiring your thief. I would too.

Anyway thief isn’t terrible at 1v1 the cele classes are obviously better but that’s a given. A thief can take down mesmers, other thieves, non bunker guards, warriors and it’s easily possible for a thief to take down a bad cele necro or ele (though not reasonable to expect to do consistently I’ve done it a fair share even taking out Phantaram’s d/d 1v1 on point once in ESL) you just have to know when you’ve lost and get out.

Anyway so in short this isn’t a 1v1 playstyle but it doesn’t mean that you can’t fight. Thieves can still carry a team fight, just have to play patiently and intelligently. On top of being able to outrotate teams with their mobility, get countless decaps using stealth and mobility, +1 to your heart’s content, as well as having the strongest revive utility in the game through SA minor trait + vamp runes thief can rez through almost anything which is amazing for getting your team back in the game.

With all this in mind I can understand why this playstyle may not seem fun to everyone. If that’s the case I’m sorry, I find it be great fun and I, along with many thieves better than I think thief is in a good place right now. Seriously go to any top thief’s stream (Magic Toker, Caed, Sindrener, etc.) and they will all tell you thief is fine right now, maybe a bit boring sometimes but definitely not underpowered like this forum likes to cry about.

I get that what it offers for this Conquest game mode is good..but that’s no excuse to play a class that cannot kill any other classes in 1v1 pvp. I main thief and I agree with you, it can win in 1v1 in its current state but it takes way too much effort opposed to the warrior one axe auto and were down..like comon. Lets be honest..why the kitten is the thief class the one that is put in this position, the most support like role in the game. it is insanely boring and utterly rediculas that the Assassin archetype class is a kitten support. like are you kidding me? yes i know you will comment with more “play intelligently then” speal….but quite frankly there are allot of us that are not pros and do not ever plan to be that would like to feel like real assassin classes without catering to a freaking game type to feel useful….thanks but no thanks, il take fighting fun 1v1s over mindlessly slapping keys back and forth from point to point acting like im carrying a team because im good at looking at colorful circles change under me and running in circles. PvP should be about combat and player reaction time, not walking fast really well. you and the other 2% thief players that think +1 & decap is fun can go do that then. if things don’t change for thief im out.

“PvP should be about combat and player reaction time” this is exactly what thief is about though. As far as straight up combat and 1v1s go thief has one of the highest skillcaps in the game. Yes, you have to play nearly perfectly or you could die. Doesn’t that make it all the more fulfilling when you get to the level where you don’t die. You seem to think I was saying all pvp thieves or all I do in games is decap while that is completely untrue. That was me justifying thieves not being able to 1v1 as well as other less mobile classes.

Also if you aren’t a true pvp player which, with how you talk about colorful circles and such, then I don’t think you have a reason to complain about thief’s 1v1 ability. Yes, you’re a squishy class you have to play well you can’t just facetank everything and win, but thief has more than enough tools to stay alive. Yes, sometimes you will lose to less skilled players because you didn’t play perfectly. That’s the trade off for an extremely high level skillcap class, if you aren’t capable of consistently playing thief at a high level then please don’t just cry to anet to make the class easier, get better.

No i am not new to pvp.. I am a skilled thief player and have played since lauch , thanks for trying your hand at insult though. I simply do not agree with your outlook on the fact that thiefs duty is to decap. As i said, the assassin archtype in most games is just as versitile as it is in this game, only we are not punished for picking the class for no reason. What sense does it make to you that we are the squishiest class in the game, supposed to do burst but cannot bypass any other classes defenses without flawless gameplay at all times as to where they can easily 1 hit us with absolutely no effort? I love high skill ceilings..what I dont love is me busting my kitten to pull off a single attack on an opponent ( that usually wont finish them) and them simply pressing one button for some insane invulnerably duration, or having some other form of inane active defense with ease of access and low cool down. It is mindless and unfair. Im sorry it should take a class at least some effort and skill to kill something. As i said, I am very skilled at the class, High skill ceilings are what i look for in games. But i draw the line when other classes can kill me by accident because they dropped 20 conditions on me with the click of 2 buttons and i am over here struggling to remove 3 of them so not to die. Its just gotten out of hand and has nothing to do with skill. I jumped on necro after playing thief almost a year straight and it feels so much more rewarding and literally takes a quarter of the skill (no offense to necros, thief is just beyond kittened up balance wise) I was face rolling everything and it felt so easy compared to the effort of even attempting to kill one other skilled player as a thief. I am not asking for thief to be buffed to the point it is not skillful and fun to play anymore, I am asking that I can stand a kitten chance to at least 4 of the freaking 9 professions in the game without having to play at flawless perfection to land a couple hits on a guy and escape before he can one shot me… its just stupid right now.. I love my 1v1’s as do probably most if not almost every thief player ot there. Its why assassins exist, to find the odd men out and try to finish them. Thief doesn’t feel like that anymore, it used to..now its just sad..

Me trying at my hand at an insult would be me saying you are a terrible thief. Which from how you cluelessly describe a lot of matchups it definitely sounds like you are. Ignorantly crying about your profession because you simply can’t play it to it’s full potential. “what I dont love is me busting my kitten to pull off a single attack on an opponent ( that usually wont finish them)” What do you want your autos to one shot enemies or something?

“and them simply pressing one button for some insane invulnerably duration, or having some other form of inane active defense with ease of access and low cool down.” Yes, other classes use their defensive mechanics to survive, learn those defensive mechanics and play around them. Endure pain lasts a few seconds, kite them with your high mobility, high stealth until then. Engi’s shield block and shrink last a few seconds and they can’t attack you in it, again kite, line up your next attack for when they pop out. Guardian’s heal skill as well as their elite skill are invulns, they can’t attack you in them same goes for them, their Shield of wrath blocks 3 attacks and explodes after a few seconds if it doesn’t take 3 attacks. Stealth up and wait for it to pop. Ranger has 2/3 invulns Signet of Stone which is on a 90 second cd, is a skill just like endure pain, lasts a few seconds kite them or stealth up until it’s over, Protect Me is a skill that transfers all damage to it’s pet just AGAIN kite or stealth until it’s over. GS4 on ranger blocks for a few seconds and if you hit them it will knock you back, same goes for it, or use your unblockable shadowshot to blind them and force them into the knockback animation which will fail while they are blinded. Mesmer has Distortion on a 40ish second cd they will most likely pop this after you initially engage on them, chances are if you engage on them with steal + shadowshot they will still be blinded when they pop it, either stealth, use the glob from mesmer, or kite them with mobility until it’s over then re-engage, they have a short cd invuln on sword which locks them into an obvious animation which won’t allow them to move, just wait for it to be over. I won’t go on. What I’m saying is learn specific game mechanics, play the other classses that are giving you trouble, learn what they do in certain scenarios, adapt to those. Don’t play matchups blindly without knowing exactly what your enemy is doing at all times and what that implicates.

If all else fails, maybe you aren’t cut out for thief like you think you are. Just know there other thieves who are successful in all facets of the game Pvp, Dueling, WvW Roaming, GvG, etc. so don’t cry and blame the game for being too hard when you do re-roll.

I’m done replying now as this conversation is going nowhere, you won’t learn anything from what I’m saying. I have never once said I was the best thief nor have I said I was at the skillcap, there are many thieves that are better than me. Swallow your pride, accept your limitations and strive to learn and improve. Accept it and get better, or be ignorant and stay bad.

Honestly I think the 20% damage buff on unload was stupid, yes it’s nice but does it make a difference does it change the set at all? No. It just makes thief like longbow ranger which is something no class should strive for imo. I don’t like the idea of spamming 3 and doing massive damage at all, it’s not skillful in the slightest.

However, I think one thing that could happen that would make p/p decently viable (at least twice as viable as it was before) is the blast finisher dodge on Daredevil needs to go back to being a leap finisher. This along with Pulmonary Impact to use in combination with skillfully timed headshots would make P/P stronger than it ever was before. As you’re gaining stealth on demand that can’t be interrupted, as well as an amazing damage proc that can easily hit for 3k+ which takes skill to use. Both of which making Headshot as well as Black Powder on P/P very strong skills.

My cele hair thief with white background.

Kageseigi.2150:

oEnvy.3064:

It makes sense that thief isn’t great in 1v1s, it’s not the thief’s job to 1v1.

I think this is one of my main issues. Who said it’s not the Thief’s job to 1v1? Did I miss the official ANet memo or something?

Honestly… a Glass Cannon that can’t break through defenses. That is self-defeating and completely ironic. It’s the equivalent of a freezer that catches things on fire.

Guild Wars 2 is a combat-based game. ANet set out to NOT bring in the “Holy Trinity,” therefore, it can be assumed that every profession is meant to capable of every “role” based on their builds. Not that they should all be equal in their methods, but capability is a different matter altogether. The Thief is simply not currently in condition to perform certain roles as it should be able to. All that is needed is for it to get fixed.

If you wish to run around decapping and avoiding 1vX engagements, that’s fine. But why should everyone else who enjoys the Thief playstyle be limited to that?

I was saying that from a pvp perspective, a thief playing optimally will know when to decap, when to teamfight, when to peel for teamfights.

From a non pvp perspective, there are no set jobs or whatever. and like I said I don’t think there’s any reason to complain about thieves there. Like I said earlier, high skillcap, high risk high reward. Think about it, you technically do have enough damage to kill anything in the game with the exception of like full nomads or whatever. And you have enough mobility and stealth to never die if you don’t want to. Combine those elements into your play, learn when to do both and you will be unbeatable. Some matchups will be harder than others, even against less skilled players but thief has the least limits as to how well one can play. There’s always something you can do better, how you engage, what skills you use, when you engage, when you disengage, how well you dodge and adapt to what skills your enemy is using, are you keeping track of their cds. Yes thief is harder to play than ranger, warrior, guardian, ele, engi in 1v1s but it has a higher skillcap than them and when you’ve practiced any matchup enough rather than going in blindly, and when you play it properly you can and will win.

Arctarius.2649:

oEnvy.3064:

Thief is the fastest and most mobile class not to mention it has near perma stealth making it the very best +1er and decaper in the game. With proper rotations a good thief can easily carry a pvp game EVEN at a top level, I’ve seen Toker single handedly save games for the abjured. If a thief has potential to carry against the best players in the game, then it can definitely carry in random solo q’s it’s just a matter of rotations.

It makes sense that thief isn’t great in 1v1s, it’s not the thief’s job to 1v1. If thief was the best 1v1er in the game on top of having the most mobility/disengage/stealth it’d be straight up OP because not only would they be able to win most 1v1s they’d be able to leave whenever they wanted making them virtually unkillable.

Why do you guys say thief has no survivability when it has more than it’s ever had in pvp with SA and vamp runes? If you’re constantly dying on that than I can definitely see why you’re retiring your thief. I would too.

Anyway thief isn’t terrible at 1v1 the cele classes are obviously better but that’s a given. A thief can take down mesmers, other thieves, non bunker guards, warriors and it’s easily possible for a thief to take down a bad cele necro or ele (though not reasonable to expect to do consistently I’ve done it a fair share even taking out Phantaram’s d/d 1v1 on point once in ESL) you just have to know when you’ve lost and get out.

Anyway so in short this isn’t a 1v1 playstyle but it doesn’t mean that you can’t fight. Thieves can still carry a team fight, just have to play patiently and intelligently. On top of being able to outrotate teams with their mobility, get countless decaps using stealth and mobility, +1 to your heart’s content, as well as having the strongest revive utility in the game through SA minor trait + vamp runes thief can rez through almost anything which is amazing for getting your team back in the game.

With all this in mind I can understand why this playstyle may not seem fun to everyone. If that’s the case I’m sorry, I find it be great fun and I, along with many thieves better than I think thief is in a good place right now. Seriously go to any top thief’s stream (Magic Toker, Caed, Sindrener, etc.) and they will all tell you thief is fine right now, maybe a bit boring sometimes but definitely not underpowered like this forum likes to cry about.

I get that what it offers for this Conquest game mode is good..but that’s no excuse to play a class that cannot kill any other classes in 1v1 pvp. I main thief and I agree with you, it can win in 1v1 in its current state but it takes way too much effort opposed to the warrior one axe auto and were down..like comon. Lets be honest..why the kitten is the thief class the one that is put in this position, the most support like role in the game. it is insanely boring and utterly rediculas that the Assassin archetype class is a kitten support. like are you kidding me? yes i know you will comment with more “play intelligently then” speal….but quite frankly there are allot of us that are not pros and do not ever plan to be that would like to feel like real assassin classes without catering to a freaking game type to feel useful….thanks but no thanks, il take fighting fun 1v1s over mindlessly slapping keys back and forth from point to point acting like im carrying a team because im good at looking at colorful circles change under me and running in circles. PvP should be about combat and player reaction time, not walking fast really well. you and the other 2% thief players that think +1 & decap is fun can go do that then. if things don’t change for thief im out.

“PvP should be about combat and player reaction time” this is exactly what thief is about though. As far as straight up combat and 1v1s go thief has one of the highest skillcaps in the game. Yes, you have to play nearly perfectly or you could die. Doesn’t that make it all the more fulfilling when you get to the level where you don’t die. You seem to think I was saying all pvp thieves or all I do in games is decap while that is completely untrue. That was me justifying thieves not being able to 1v1 as well as other less mobile classes.

Also if you aren’t a true pvp player which, with how you talk about colorful circles and such, then I don’t think you have a reason to complain about thief’s 1v1 ability. Yes, you’re a squishy class you have to play well you can’t just facetank everything and win, but thief has more than enough tools to stay alive. Yes, sometimes you will lose to less skilled players because you didn’t play perfectly. That’s the trade off for an extremely high level skillcap class, if you aren’t capable of consistently playing thief at a high level then please don’t just cry to anet to make the class easier, get better.

Thief is the fastest and most mobile class not to mention it has near perma stealth making it the very best +1er and decaper in the game. With proper rotations a good thief can easily carry a pvp game EVEN at a top level, I’ve seen Toker single handedly save games for the abjured. If a thief has potential to carry against the best players in the game, then it can definitely carry in random solo q’s it’s just a matter of rotations.

It makes sense that thief isn’t great in 1v1s, it’s not the thief’s job to 1v1. If thief was the best 1v1er in the game on top of having the most mobility/disengage/stealth it’d be straight up OP because not only would they be able to win most 1v1s they’d be able to leave whenever they wanted making them virtually unkillable.

Why do you guys say thief has no survivability when it has more than it’s ever had in pvp with SA and vamp runes? If you’re constantly dying on that than I can definitely see why you’re retiring your thief. I would too.

Anyway thief isn’t terrible at 1v1 the cele classes are obviously better but that’s a given. A thief can take down mesmers, other thieves, non bunker guards, warriors and it’s easily possible for a thief to take down a bad cele necro or ele (though not reasonable to expect to do consistently I’ve done it a fair share even taking out Phantaram’s d/d 1v1 on point once in ESL) you just have to know when you’ve lost and get out.

Anyway so in short this isn’t a 1v1 playstyle but it doesn’t mean that you can’t fight. Thieves can still carry a team fight, just have to play patiently and intelligently. On top of being able to outrotate teams with their mobility, get countless decaps using stealth and mobility, +1 to your heart’s content, as well as having the strongest revive utility in the game through SA minor trait + vamp runes thief can rez through almost anything which is amazing for getting your team back in the game.

With all this in mind I can understand why this playstyle may not seem fun to everyone. If that’s the case I’m sorry, I find it to be great fun and I, along with many thieves better than I think thief is in a good place right now. Seriously go to any top thief’s stream (Magic Toker, Caed, Sindrener, etc.) and they will all tell you thief is fine right now, maybe a bit boring sometimes but definitely not underpowered like this forum likes to cry about.

PLSPLSPLS ANET AND BUNNY EARS AND AVIATORS
I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

okay srs edit.

So for the three year anniversary many players including myself are hoping for something truly special. This is something that a huge amount of players have been wanting for years. So please give it to us, make our lives perfect pls anet pls.

i’m bad at typing so i end it there. pls take my thread srsly pls anet.

condi thief deserved to be nerfed. now people who mained it will actually have to learn to play. lol

Warhawk.7095:

I’ve been playing thief for a long time, and it’s had its ups and downs, but this last change has destroyed any possibility of the thief remaining a relevant class in the new meta. Seriously Anet, if you want to remove thief from the game just DO IT, and give us the option to change all of our ascended armor and weapons to heavy so we can all play warriors like you want.

M biggest gripe right now has to do with the ridiculous new condi meta. While most classes are getting buffs to condi removal in response, thief just gets nuked. Sure, you can now trait to remove ONE condition each time you use a trick. So if you set all of your utilities, including your elite to tricks, you’ll be running an ineffective build with the ability to remove a whopping FIVE conditions, AKA, 2 seconds of fighting an engie. Seriously nobody is going to blow an entire utility to remove just one condition, especially since so many are applied so quickly.
That only leaves us with our one tried and true condi removal, “Shadows Embrace”. HOWEVER, this was nuked as well. Not only does it now ONLY remove damage conditions, but it has been placed to where you have to choose between it and 20% deception cooldown. This means that you can choose “Shadows Embrace”, and deal with longer cooldowns, and less condi removal than before the patch, or you can choose quicker stealth cooldowns and get zero condi removal from them and get melted.

Just my gripes, but I know these forums, I await the responses of “nuh uh! thief was buffed!, and i can clear 15 condition a second with mah now useless sword!”

Anyways, if anyone from Anet reads this (lol, like they visit the thief forum), could you please change all of my medium asc armor sets to heavy now that I can no longer play my class?

uh so I was kind of getting what you were saying until you mentioned being forced to choose between shadow’s embrace and master of deception, meaning you were running at least 4 in SA before patch. Meaning you really have no place telling us what is meta and what isn’t, I half assume you’re talking about “wvw meta” whatever that is.

Dagins.5163:

@Anonymouse.4760
You are making yourself look silly if you say evading isn’t mainly about luck or spam in this game. I’ve encountered many good acro thieves since headstart, and I have yet to see one who doesn’t spam flanking strike and evades empowered with vigor.

It is totally understandable as many important animations are too hard to watch, and instant casts can kill you. It takes to be a computer to evade all of these. Difficulty above human level.

so either the sd thieves you have seen are all blind or have the reflexes of a turtle.

Elxdark.9702:

Anonymouse.4760:

Elxdark.9702:

lol im the only thief who thinks s/d is better post patch?

I mean ok Felice Grace is nerfed af but still I think if you use the proper s/d build its pretty strong.

About you video, nothing new to see really…

So you think its better now, but also admit its nerfed? Makes sense

As for the gameplay, can’t wait to see your S/D video bud. You seem like a real star player.

hahaha, re-read what you just said

I said Feline Grace was nerfed not s/d.

If you played around your dodges that’s not my problem friend.

There was a reason no notable players ran crit strikes s/d before the patch so if you think that this patch miraculously changes anything about that then you’re an idiot.

pack.

as far as gear goes it would be better to simply min max a build for yourself then swear by a certain stat blindly.

Anonymouse.4760:

Maugetarr.6823:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Also found that feline grace is now dead. I decided to experiment with shadow arts line and I didn’t notice any less dodges compared to acro line

Yeah, it wouldn’t really feel different if you’re already in trickery. With bountiful theft and SoH, you already have 50% uptime on vigor. Assuming you start from 0 endurance, you’ll recharge about 3 dodges in the CD of steal or 130 endurance total. With endless stamina alone, you get 142 endurance. Since you start with 0 endurance in this example, the most you could activate FG is 3 times, keeping vigor up for 16 seconds receiving a total of 165 endurance in the 21 second period. Assuming you do everything perfectly, feline grace and endless stamina result in only 35 more endurance every 21 seconds.

The old feline grace front loaded your dodges allowing it to be useful in short fights. The new FG+ES is a mediocre improvement that’s only seen with excellent play over protracted fights.

P.S. throwing in dagger autoattack’s endurance gain further detracts from the feeling of usefulness

Thanks for doing the math on this, Maugetarr!

oh

Justine.6351:

Hehehe, now I can get back to mowing down those used to be evade spammers with my longbow!

I might even pickup a lashtail devourer and let them pewpew too!
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rending_Barbs

it would be fun if there were no evades or reflects in this game it’s pretty op that my skillful 1 spam can be avoided honestly. i don’t think the damage on rapid fire is high enough either dude

(PRE PATCH)
These are some clips that were left sitting on my hard drive for about a month out of laziness. Most of them are ripped from a few of my streams before the patch. I realize these aren’t as entertaining as 1v5ing a bunch of kittens in wvw and that’s why I considered not posting this. However, with the most recent patch I find S/D to be very useless so I decided to post this as my farewell of sorts (hopefully it won’t be permanent.) So even though this isn’t anything crazy like 1v5ing a bunch of bad players, I still think it displays a decent level of mechanical skill. Tell me what you think.

AquaBR.9250:

J Eberle.9312:

P/p thief for pve was good?
What have I been doing this whole time!?!?!?/!/!/

i never said that, but yes, when you know how to play the game, but of course you don’t, you just use endure pain and hit 2 on your greatsword warrior with any build and hit 50k, you don’t know the word kiting

please teach us how to press 3 and run in circles oh mighty and skilled p/p thief

I recommend going back and reading what I have now put in bold as I think it will improve your play dramatically.

Kageseigi.2150:

Thanks, guys! Really helpful! :-)
Wow, so much to learn!

If I may ask this also… can an offhand dagger Cloak and Dagger off of any of these? I know I’ve tried it with some, but to no avail. I just can’t seem to keep track of which.

cloak and dagger will work on endures but not invulns.
endures such as: endure pain, signet of stone, protect me

invulns (will not work against): mist form, obsidian flesh, mesmer invulns (blurred frenzy, distortion), all guard invulns, warrior shield and engi shield, engi shrink

so for the most part no you cannot cnd many invulns, familiarise yourself with the mechanics of each class. the easiest way to deal with invulns is to simply infil return away and infil strike/re-engage when it is over as you should have already left an infil in a safe place. furthermore, infil strike/return is more crucial to s/d than evades imo so if you aren’t using it correctly/frequently then you aren’t using s/d to it’s full potential

it was just overgeneralising and lazy advice that won’t really allow him to get better, for thieves who know how to fight mesmers they don’t need to rely on things like “never go in melee range” they know when to do certain things and why. that’s what being good at thief is, or any class for that matter.

rather than simply say that you die when you get near him and therefore never get near him. why don’t you play a shatter mesmer for yourself or at least learn about them to see which mechanics you are ignorant of.

for example, the reason you die in melee range is most likely due to them shattering their clones using mind wrack which is the reason for you dying in melee range, this can be nullified with a simple dodge as can many other of their key damaging abilities such as mirror blade. I can tell you that when fighting shatter mesmers one of the most important things to do is always dodge mirror blade, it does a good amount of damage and spawns a clone on hit which will then be combo’d with a mind wrack. this one simple combo alone will deal half your health easily.

so as I said you should try playing a shatter mesmer yourself in pvp and you will learn how to fight them twice as effectively. this goes for any class you struggle with
metabattle.com for all meta pvp builds if you don’t know them

instead of dodging around and trying to throw attacks simply take ur infil return which you should have left in a safe spot and wait for the invuln to be over before infil striking back in. this is how u tell whether something is invuln bud

endure pain has an icon on warriors skill bar, warrior shield block will have their shield raised, guardian shelter will have a blue shield, guardian ult will have their weapons raised to their chest channeling, guardian shield of wrath will surround them with a blue shield, engi invulns will either be a raised shield or they will be small, ranger signet will show on the skill bar, not sure about protect me but not many will use it because if their pet dies it ends, mesmer invulns will show an obvious blur effect to the mesmer or they will be swinging their sword similar to pistol whip, ele invulns will either have an icon on the skillbar (obsi flesh) or they will be an obvious white mist, thief and necro have no invulns

good luck advancing your play dude

Kageseigi.2150:

Anonymouse.4760:

The players who liked to use S/D competitively in pvp aren’t jumping for joy about this patch.

edit : " The new acro line is great against cc " i loled reading this considering the whole point of the trait line was supposed to be don’t get hit in the first place. Perhaps critical strikes suites you better after all.

I’m not saying anybody is overjoyed at the nerf to Acro. But I am saying that what is done is done. Unless Anet changes it, the Acro dodges are lost. Would I like them back? Yes. I’m not counting on it to happen, though. It has become a situation of “adapt or die.”

But is that the death knell of Sword/Dagger? I think it’s too early to say that. Will it overtake Pistol/Dagger at high levels? I doubt it seriously. But it wasn’t going to before either. Does it mean that the Sword/Dagger is no longer effective? Of course not. It just can’t be used in the same style it was.

The new Acro line is somewhat contradictory. On one hand, it rewards more skillful use of dodging/evading to avoid getting hit, but even that reward is inferior to the ability that the old line gave you by default. On the other hand, it gives you tools to escape times when you do get hit.

So yes, Sword/Dagger must take on a transformation of style now. Because Critical Strikes suites me better than the new Acro, perhaps I suit the new Sword/Dagger style better also.

It is what it is. No more, no less.

One thing I have discovered, however, is running glassier builds without reliance on Acrobatics or Shadow Arts leads to improvement as a player. Eventually, I’ll be able to survive and thrive with the current level of damage output that the patch brought while using the Assassin amulet. I’m not there yet, but I’ll get there.

yes playing crit strikes sd means you can faceroll on your keyboard and kill things without much mechanical skill and/or matchup knowledge, every good sd thief knows that. is it viable in top tier pvp? no, or you’d have seen it. in the months leading up to the most recent patch I never saw a single sd thief in a tournament, acro or otherwise. i’m sure playing sd crit strikes with assassins amulet will develop you sooo much as a player surely I will be seeing you winning esls sooner or later bud.

Kageseigi.2150:

Say goodbye to sword/dagger, yet shortbow is still ok? Interesting.

No thank you, the nerf to Acrobatics just means I don’t have to choose between it and Trickery.

Besides, the change happened two days ago. It would be premature to set anything in stone right now, especially burying a weapon set due to a reduction in vigor. There are new tricks to be discovered and learned.

you were choosing between acro and trickery? thanks for letting us know not to take your opinion seriously

condi thieves are scrubs anyway