Guild Wars 2

Why does it feel as though the people saying that the Thief traits aren’t lacklustre are the same people who hate the class and want it to be nerfed into oblivion?

I have two questions that I think desperately need to be answered:

What is the justification for…

1. Forcing PvP only players to level characters in PvE that they don’t like (I have one level 80, all of my alts are low level PvP characters) just so that they can unlock the new heals/utilities? This completely goes against everything GW2 has stood for in terms of skill > gear by giving everyone equal equipment and stats from the word go.
2. Destroying the value of high rank gear obtained in PvP by allowing wealthy PvE players to buy the high rank gear and show it off without even doing PvP? On the same note, transferring PvP gear skins into PvE (that aren’t unique, that’s another subject, because unique PvP skins need to exist and be transferable to PvE to draw players to PvP for the unique rewards/etc) will devalue PvE skins that aren’t very easy to obtain. For example, Arah dungeon armour is pretty hard to get in PvE, so any PvP player being able to take theirs to PvE devalues it a LOT.

Thanks, and please answer these two questions in some way!

Lmfao, that sounds 100% identical to what happened to me in WvW recently, I can’t believe that you guys spent so long chasing me instead of capping a point or two…

Thanks for the thread about me, my ego and desire to troll on my Thief both got a little bigger. <3 xx

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Enemy-Players-on-Minimap-thoughts-and-gripe/

I really don’t think it’s a good idea to make so many topics. We can discuss the state of the Thief profession just fine in your first topic.

As for your suggestion for HS, it would completely destroy HS and make it absolutely terrible. Why would you possibly want to nerf it so kittening hard?!

Just read the Backstab suggestion and now I can see why you suggested this, but it’s still absolutely terrible.

ATTENTION NECROMANCERS:

Your forum can be found here.

Thank you.

Tl;dr summary: I don’t like Thieves, please ban them from the game, thanks.

Fhaeris.9237:

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Rome wasn’t built in a day. They are doing what they can. Ragging them about it won’t speed up the process.

That’s true, but it’s not an excuse for doing basically nothing in 1 year.

It doesn’t help that the game was launched early and wasn’t finished when it was. There is so much unfinished content that it’s honestly just sad that Anet wasn’t given more time to finish it. When the game launched, PvP was practically non-existent, and all of the stuff that is in the game now AND MORE should have already been in it.

I really can’t wait to see what this game is going to be like when PvP is actually finished, but it’s going to be a while.

Excellent post, agreed.

:( I was one of the many Thieves who fell victim to it tonight. It reeks of shoddy game design and it’s just so ridiculous that I can still hardly believe that Anet actually listened to the QQing and created an unavoidable stealth counter rather than just encouraging players to learn the already existing counters.

You shouldn’t use Valkyrie, Ghost, you should use more Zerker + Soldier pieces. Look for Wish’s “building a better D/D Thief” thread for all of his math and stuff which shows why Zerker + Soldier is optimal.

As long as the character that you want to transfer it to wears medium armour, yup, and it’s very easy, all you need is an empty character slot and you can do it in less than 10 minutes!

1. Create a new Thief, make sure that you chose “Anonymity” for the hood.
2. Transmute the Anonymity Hood into a WHITE or BLUE item (IMPORTANT).
3. Put the new “Account Bound” Anonymity Hood into your bank.
4. Take it out on your other character and equip it (if it asks to soulbind, hit yes).
5. Enjoy your new hood!

Correction everyone: IR hasn’t been able to break stun in months, they nerfed that already. The reason the nerf is bad is because it kills the mobility of S/D Thieves which are already glassy as kitten as it is. It removes our ability to IR stomp and it removes our ability to return to safety if we are focussed too heavily.

It’s not an infinite get out of jail free card, it costs 5 initiative for goodness sake. What they should do instead is lower the return availability time to 10 instead and see what affect it had. If it was stilll good then lowering it again would be fine.

Also, it’s not just this nerf that matters, it’s the nerf to.initiative that Anet are wrongly calling a 33% buff to all builds that matters most.

xiv.7136:

backstab:

- done by someone who is invisible
- no build up time or pre-combat requirement
- 100% crit chance
- no cooldown
- no initiative cost

While I agree with your brief analysis of killshot, I completely disagree with you about backstab, and here’s why…

• Thieves can’t stealth for more than 4 seconds (traited) unless using Shadow Refuge, so a Thief is almost always visible before using stealth to prepare for a backstab.
• Backstab itself does not have 100% crit chance at all unless traited, and 99% of the time a Thief will take Executioner over Hidden Killer since their crit chance is already over 50-60%.
• The cooldown on Backstab is actually 3 seconds thanks to the revealed debuff and as long as it takes to get into stealth again via Cloak and Dagger or a utility. Cloak and Dagger uses 6 initiative (4 if traited) which regenerates at a rate of 1 per second (unless traited/using the correct utility) so each CnD uses 6 seconds (untraited) of initiative. Furthermore, if the Thief uses a utility to stealth then they have a minimum of a 40 second cooldown (Blinding Powder) before they can stealth again, slightly less if traited.
• The skill itself doesn’t have an initiative cost, but see above for the cost of Cloak and Dagger.

Try not to spread misinformation on the forums, there’s enough of that going around already.

Thanks.

Jastorm.5972:

sorry looking at hot join.. all you see is thieves… and its because of initiative change everyone is flipping to thieve because its even less skill to spam them now.

lolwat?

Thieves have one of the highest skill ceilings (hard to master), and Thief initiative regeneration was actually nerfed overall for the builds that took all of it and balanced out to be a very, very minor buff for those that didn’t.

In other words, Thieves weren’t buffed, the strongest build (S/D + SB 10/30/0/30/0) was nerfed hard and the other builds received a barely noticeable buff.

If you’re actually having trouble with Thieves, then may I politely suggest that you post on the Thief forum with any issues that you’re having; we’ll be more than happy to help you.

You can keep BP up with a couple of initiative traits (I can’t remember which ones), or you can use the D/P dual skill for a five second blind and shadowstep to target.

For a fun variation of a condition build you can use D/D for LDP and P/D for the auto-1 bleed application combined with dancing dagger for a constant semi-AoE cripple. You can also play around with using CnD on the P/D set for the pistol stealth attack that applies five stacks of bleeds.

Foss.4830:

Incurafy.6329:

Foss.4830:

Incurafy.6329:

• Fleet Shadow: Increased move speed from 33% to 50%.

…What?! Thieves can already get away soooo easily in WvW why on earth would they EVER consider making this EASIER for them?! Along with the culling problems…..I just dont understand why they would buff stealth in ANY way right now.

rootnode.9546:

Because as a thief, you’re sooo slow. Bow, 5, done.

Maybe this is Anet saying that the Thief is SUPPOSED to be able to be fast, agile, and mobile? You know, like it says in the class description? Get used to it.

;)

k thats fine…..if they didnt also have the ability to dish out more damage then most of the other classes in the game.

In WvW stealth is already MASSIVELY abused. 9/10 encounters with enemies are thieves. Half the time when your fighting them you cant even see them due to culling issues.

Now you make them move 20% faster allowing them to get behind the target faster pulling off backstabs more easily and if things start looking ugly just turn and run and no one could possibly catch you.

This was really just unnecessary. Thieves were already highly mobile and a skilled thief could get out of any situation.

Everyone should know by now that Anet does NOT balance WvW which is exactly why PvE changes affect it and PvP changes only effect s/tPvP. Yes, culling needs to be fixed but it’s not some easy thing that they can hotfix (as they’ve stated here) and it’s certainly not something that only affects Thieves (Mesmers/anyone in a zerg) or makes us OP in any way.

Thieves are supposed to be agile/mobile to make up for their squishiness. Stealth is the defence mechanic that aids with that mobility.

Also, other classes are just as capable of bursting as Thieves are, so please, that argument has been done to death.

Tulisin.6945:

Incurafy.6329:

The increase of Fleet Shadow from 33% to 50% is quite an interesting choice though, it’s like they’re trying to say “Yeah Thieves can get away easily in Stealth, that’s the point! In fact, you don’t like it? Good, we’ll make them even better at it!”

What are your thoughts?

This actually grants some legitimacy to “stealth is what allows thieves to escape” whining, unfortunately. Previously it was mostly pure mobility that allowed thieves to escape, with the stealth masking the mobility taking most of the blame for thieves being hard to catch. People were beginning to understand, however, that if you had superior mobility then thieves were catchable, it wasn’t really the stealth at all. With this change, stealth and mobility will be directly linked so folks saying “they get away because STEALTHAX!” will be technically correct.

That’s a very good point, but you can pretty easily counter all of those posts now by citing this patch which increased the speed and made Thieves even better at escaping while stealthed. If people want to QQ about it then whatever, because it’s clear that Anet is on our side here.

Turtles All The Way Down.5608:

Yes OP thieves are overpowered and boring, so if you level a OP/boring class to 80 first and then switch to an alt, you’ll have to choose between being overpowered and not having fun, or having fun and feeling like you need to complain on the forums a lot. Welcome to my world.

Look, dude, you were destroyed by a few dozen Thieves, we get it, but stop spamming our forum with crap about how OP we are. Roll a Thief, learn the class, then learn how to counter it on your main. Complaining on the forum doesn’t help.

Sanduskel.1850:

real thieves don’t need permastealth. i manage to do fine without that scrub crutch.

There are no such thing as “real Thieves” and stealth is not a “scrub crutch”.

Wether you like it or not, stealth is just as much a viable playstyle as evasion. Stop going around preaching this stupid crap about how evasive Thieves are better just because you play one.

The change goes against everything that GW2 PvP stands for (skill > gear/equipment, everyone is on an equal playing field) and I will be seriously disappointed in Anet if it goes through.

I’m glad to see that you’ve adapted to the Thief playstyle, that’s great!

Here’s just a few tips to make Thief more fun in PvE than auto-attacking and hitting BP every 4 swings…

• Put 5 points into Trickery for initiative on Steal and use it for an extra DB.
• Use Roll for Initiative for an extra DB (or two, depending on initiative level).
• Use Signet of Malice for constant heal ticks with every hit on every enemy (think about it for a moment, 5 enemies in a mob x 3 hits for each one x heal tick for each hit = a lot of healing ).
• Switch to Shortbow when completely out of initiative and RoI/Steal are on cooldown and kite the mob around your Caltrops. Doing this you can very easily solo melee Champion bosses as long as you stay out of their range and keep mobile.

Hope you enjoy the Thief!

Bas.7406:

Auesis.7301:

I already sent you a PM on here Markus, but you can also get in touch at auesis@gmail.com if you want to know anything else, or just send a PM on here as well

Great to see the Thief community working together :P

I think this community would be great at doing that if 8/10 threads weren’t just us defending ourselves from attacks by QQers.

Honestly, you don’t even need to add those buffs to see if it becomes a viable skill or not. All that has to be done is fix the pathing issue, that’s it. Adding buffs to an otherwise good skill is just stupid.

What a load of crap, post your stats and some context with proof next time.

I really don’t understand why a post telling everyone to calm the kitten down and stop abusing Anet makes you want to leave, but ok… can I have all of your stuff? Name is on the left, just mail me your gold and anything else you can liquidate, thanks.

They should just rollback all balance to March 2013 and start over from there, lol.

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I’m sick and tired of hearing that X tactic is cheese but Y tactic is perfectly viable and based on “skillz”.

So let’s just get one thing straight here:

There is no such thing as cheese, only players willing to use whatever means are at their disposal to win.

You don’t like D/P? Good, don’t use it.
You don’t like CnD chaining? Good, don’t do it.
You don’t like cheese spec X? Good, don’t use it.

Here’s a bit of a read for those of you who are about to scream and cry and moan about how only bad players use cheese specs because they’re obviously addicted to dairy products:

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

/end

The only two things worth complaining about are the 1.5s cast time of Destroy Shadow Trap when it’s supposed to be a stunbreaker (LOL) and the indirect nerf that killed Pistol Whip that looks like more of an oversight than an intended change.

It wasn’t popular, but S/P was viable pre-patch, regardless of what you may think.

What the kitten are you kitten on about you kitten? Why I oughtta rub your belly, you’re just so kitten cute!!!

Sanduskel.1850:

Novomundum.8325:

I see. So the dp builds is op while everything else is fine. I can’t believe some people are condemning an entire profession based on 1 builds though. seems a bit close minded. But now, what’s the deal with dp? is there really absolutely no way to solve their nigh immortality?

Well 90+% of my fellow thieves use that spec. Thieves who don’t rely on perma stealth aren’t opd at all. They don’t need the crutch.

Stealth isn’t a crutch, it’s one of the two viable build types that Thieves have, and acting as though any Thief that plays a stealth build is somehow inferior is plain kittening stupid.

Now venoms are OP? What’s next, traps? LOL!

a t s e.9614:

The people that hate skyhammer refuse to adapt their build . Bring CC and stability , I know you give up on some stuff but knocking people off the cliff is fun . Skyhammer is my favourite map and I don’t want it to be removed it from the game . I always win on skyhammer , 75% W\L ratio on that map , it’s where my build shines , a full CC warrior

Please remind me where my CC and Stability comes from as a Thief? I seem to have misplaced them!

Justin ODell.9517:

Aza.2105:

Between 4v5, skyhammer, being grouped with rank 5s and other clueless players….its frustrating. I can understand the OP perspective.

Agreed. We’re working on all of the above.

Justin, an honest question if you don’t mind:

How hard would it be for you to prioritise something such as a requirement that each player press the “I’m ready” button within the match start time limit, else everybody is booted back to the lobby and rejoins the queue with the players they had already been matched with while the game searches for more?

If it wouldn’t take you that long to implement, why can’t you just include it in one of the bi-weekly PvE patches? It would improve SoloQ considerably with that change alone.

Thanks if you do reply. (Y)

They’ve already said that we will be getting double reward chests from tournaments for the first two weeks after the Halloween events… what I would like to know is why we can’t just get that now, lol.

The amount of times I’ve used Withdraw to my death because I didn’t have the time to reposition before using it is insane, not to mention the amount of times I’ve just activated a panel, ran behind it, then used Scorpion Wire to kill someone with almost no skill involved (or been killed in a similar fashion).

Honestly, the map is terrible for competitive play (especially with the undodgeable-point-and-click-12k-damage secondary objective… argh), and I still fail to understand why it’s in SoloQ when it was removed from TeamQ.

At the very least it would be nice to have an Anet dev (Josh? Justin?) actually give us a reason why they want to try and make it work in SoloQ instead of just ignoring the daily threads made about it. The same goes for commenting on Skyhammer farmers and the birthday gifts and why nothing has been done despite them destroying the value of ranks and glory.

I really don’t know why anyone is saying anything BUT “leveling a Thief is the most ridiculously easy and enjoyable thing you can do in Guild Wars 2.”

Seriously, DD death blossom + Caltrops + Signer of Malice + SB = faceroll the entire game solo including solo most champions.

“But they’re still there! How does the stake miss?!”

For the same reason that a Thief can use magic to create a zone of invisibility that only affects allies and themselves: IT’S A VIDEO GAME.

Seriously dude, WOW, wanting it changed is one thing, but using RL-physics to justify a change in a video game is just plain stupid.

What: Thief
Why: It exists.

Don’t use Valkyrie, mix Soldier and Berserker instead. Here’s a link to the math behind Soldier being better than Valkyrie:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Post-Your-Build-Thread/page/3#post2426220

I honestly do want to go back to the days of four burst and one bunker, it was the most enjoyable meta imo thanks to the twitch gameplay and skill involved in avoiding a burst combo or three.

Just a quick note on your question about which utilities, the three you mentioned (Step, Refuge, and Sig of Shadows) are pretty much standard in WvW for most Thieves. I’ve been running them with BV and Hide/Withdraw for a LONG time and they’ve never let me down. With your build you could use Withdraw with Centaur runes and Vigorous Recovery for near perma-swiftness and replace SoS with Blinding Powder, or do the same but use different runes for less swiftness up time.

Feel free to edit this as you see fit, Inf, I am probably wrong in a lot of places. I know I missed a few too but I cbf trying to think of them right now… quote this post to get the code for the formatting if you want it.

Honestly, Shortbow is fine. I use mine 90% of the time in tPvP and only swap to D/P to burst. The damage and utility of the set is perfect, the only set that rivals it is D/P.

Firstly, never apologise for bad English, yours is excellent and better than a LOT of people who speak it natively. Anyone who tries to attack you for your English is an ignorant kitten.

Secondly, I don’t think that putting poisons on our F-bar is the best idea, but I’m all for changing F1 to a steal + shadow step ability with return and F2 to using the stolen item.

It’s a video game…

Of course it works without the trinity or dedicated healers, just look at the player hosted 2v2/3v3 tournaments in the past few months!

What we need is 2v2/3v3 with no respawns, that’s what many of us were hoping for when we asked for TDM.

Zenith.7301:

BUT SIDESTRAFE AND SWING WILDLY AT THE AIR GUYS MAYBE YOU’LL GET LUCKY AND HIT THE THIEF FOR 4K BEFORE HE HITS YOU FOR 8-12K.

You seem made, died to a Thief lately?

HINT: Everything you just stated about the whole “every 6 seconds!!111” is impossible. Roll a Thief and learn to play.

To OP: These numbers were landed under exaggerated circumstances and you know it. You can’t just post a screenshot of a high hit and expect us to instantly believe you. You cannot hit that on a level 80 with exotics under anything but special circumstances. Record it (even your laptop will be able to record it, trust me) and upload it to YouTube and we’ll believe you.

Until then, quit trying to make us look even worse, and coming from a fellow Thief of all people.

Divinity.8041:

Whatever, just give me what top thiefs are running, need to know meta.

Considering how rude you’re being to the people who are trying to help you I have absolutely no idea why anybody would tell you anything! How about you search the forums and learn the ridiculously obvious meta yourself!

Disgusting!

No, Leeching Venoms applies very specifically to “venom” type utilities. If you take a look at your utilities, you will see that they have a type prefix. For example, Shadow Step is a deception type utility, where as your signets are (obviously) signet types.

So, whenever you see a trait that mentions a type, it means that type very specifically, and nothing else. The poison you apply with Lotus Strike is just a condition named poison and has nothing to do with the venom type utilities.

Hope I helped!

Would that have been so hard for you to do, Stooperdale? If you’re not going to be helpful, don’t even bother posting on a thread asking for help. You might try to argue that this question has been answered before and the OP could have done a search, but it’s an incredibly rare question so finding an answer would be a lot harder than finding an answer to “how to stealth” or something like that. ;\

Hype.8032:

yep, interrupt that hs through BP and you cost the thief 9 initiative… no cooldown though.

This is false, the 9 seconds of initiative lost is a cooldown! That 9 initiative takes 9 seconds to regenerate passively, making it a 9 second cooldown.

This really isn’t hard to understand people.