Guild Wars 2

Condition removal while in stealth is strong, but i’m not sure it’s op. There are lots of builds with so much condition removal they are virtually impossible to kill by it and i’m not sure thieves fall into this group either. The reliance on being in stealth poses a significant liability. Applying a lot of conditions followed by an interrupt when going into to stealth, or stuns/fears to give the conditions time to deal damage can work, especially with the thief’s small hp pool.

You can also counter the heart seeker through black powder combo. A well timed stun, fear, knock-back or immobilise before the heartseeker lands will prevent stealth and waste the thief a lot of initiative. It’s not as simple to prevent as just dodging CnD, but it can be countered and places the thief at a significant disadvantage if achieved.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Revealed-Debuff-to-be-Reverted-in-PvE-and-WvW

If you knew roughly where he was then any of the 12 people could have used skills like updraft, earthquake on an ele or fear me, earthshaker, stomp on a warrior etc when the stealth was going to wear off. Follow it up with some burst damage and another stun for good measure and he’s dead.

Stealth is an incredibly powerful mechanic when people don’t bother to counter it :P

I feel that the most powerful aspect of the thief profession should be the initiative system. The ability to use skills as needed to respond to another player to create a high skill cap and where your aptitude with the profession depends on how well you predict/react to another player and well you manage your initiative. Unfortunately the current weapon skills available to the thief don’t really support this, or are too clunky to be used effectively.

Infiltrators strike sort of achieves this where you can set up a shadow return if dealing with a shatter mesmer for example to avoid the burst damage. Due to the way skills queue though, often many evade skills wont go off quickly enough to avoid the damage, rendering them useless.

Providing a melee weapon with a short duration block skill, such as the spear gives, could enable thieves to be much more resilient when dealing with dungeon bosses as well.

Burrid.4739:

Does the whirlwind steal reflects projectiles?

Yes, it does. A fact that many rifle warriors i run into don’t seem to realise either :P Reflecting a killshot is probably my next favourite use of steal.

I always enjoy stealing whirlwind axe from an axe/mace warrior. Use it when their tremor skill it heading towards you and you can reflect it, knocking them over with their own ability and letting you finish the animation to deal a lot of damage unopposed from a skill you also stole from them :P

The crit chance and crit damage obviously is but the power isn’t. I think you were looking at ‘effective power’, which is the combination of several factors.

P/P is more of a situational weapon set imo. If you want the safety of ranged combat and can afford to sacrifice the extra evades and mobility of shortbow for slightly higher single target damage, then P/P is your best option. In just about every other area, P/P falls short.

If you’re looking to build around it though i’d go with at least 10 in critical strikes for pistol mastery and 20 in acrobatics for quick recovery. As P/P really just involves spamming unload whenever you can, the faster you regenerate initiative the better. You should probably go with the full 30 in critical strikes for all the extra damage it gives and another 5 in acrobatic for +10% damage while your endurance isn’t full. Although you may want to consider what your alternative melee weapon set is going to be when allocating the rest of your trait points.

For gear you can get away with full zerker or some valkyrie. If you need to take less damage, P/P probably isn’t the best weapon set for that situation anyway.

Yes and no.

Black powder will just make any melee opponent that doesn’t have unshakeable trivial; you can take on several enemies and never get hit. Signet of malice with caltrops and short bow skills like choking gas will give you a ridiculous amount of healing when fighting large groups of enemies. Daggerstorm inside a blackpowder with signet of malice can also deal a lot of damage to large groups while healing you up and either blinding or reflecting most attacks.

The downside is dealing with champion mobs for example, where blind doesn’t really work. You can still kill these will good use of your evade skills, but it’s much more work and skill than say doing it on a guardian. Also, if you’re facing several ranged opponents, it’s difficult to mitigate their damage and a thief generally can’t take much damage.

Overall, there’s very little content you can’t solo, the profession just isn’t as forgiving as a warrior or guardian for example.

If you’re playing a high burst damage build in pvp or any kind of direct damage build in pve i would go with 6 scholar. Getting 1 divinity rune instead just gives you +10 to all stats and +2% crit damage, which doesn’t make much difference really while opening with the backstab combo with +10% damage can make a big difference. In pve i find i’m at full health most of the time in a group.

If you deal more sustained damage then maybe ogre would be better but generally divinity runes are very overpriced for what they actually give.

I think it was the usual pistol/dagger condition thief build you were facing. They do have very high self healing but this relies on stealth, as does a lot of their damage. All you need to do is not let them stealth :P

When they start the cloak and dagger animation, dodge roll, interrupt it etc. This will force them to use their emergency skills, such as shadow refuge, to heal up. After this you should just try to burst them down, making sure to avoid cloak and dagger. Obviously any stuns or CC will help land this damage too. Note that if you have greatsword or focus, you can use illusionary wave or temporal curtain to push/pull players out of shadow refuge. Quickly follow it up by some burst damage while they have the revealed debuff and it’s possible to get a quick kill.

This is more difficult on a mesmer due to your clones though. If he’s running to one of your clones, he’s probably going to use it to stealth. Use your shatter skills to prevent this or keep the amount of clones you have out to a minimum. Another problem can be bad team mates :P If they don’t bother to avoid cloak and dagger then the thief can just use them to heal up. There’s not much you can do here lol.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

TheGuy.3568:

Snip

You’re still missing the point. You have again explained how toughness can be superior to vitality, which i have already said i agree with and made similar points myself, but failed to explain why it is a better option for most people playing thieves.

This was already explained in several posts and I can symphatize with TheGuy losing patience when you don’t even bother reading what was posted, not just by him, but by others.

Let me try to sum is up for you. If you have 15k health, but can only heal for 500-600 per sec, you would want to reduce the incoming damage as much as possible so that your healing does not lose effectiveness. Since Thieves cannot heal as well as other profession, toughness is necessary to accomplish this. Because having a large pool of health due to high vitality only means that you have a larger bucket to fill up.

The idea that vitality allows us to handle condition damage better or that so we can handle a burst is false. We can handle condition damage without toughness and vitality since we have a lot of utility skills for that. As for burst, you would want to reduce that damage by having toughness instead of vitality because, again, the reason I have already stated, toughness allows your healing be more effective.

There are benefits and drawbacks with both, i’m just saying that there are builds and situations where vitality is significantly more effective than toughness. You can keep saying toughness is better ‘overall’ and it is for some builds, but i think people should understand how these work and look at their own character to make a decision.

Overall means that whether the damage comes in a large burst or sustained, toughness reduces them each time they are applied.

Keep in mind that the damage displayed in the tool tip is based on a target with 2600 armor, in other words 1980 Defense and 620 toughness for medium armor wearer. So if you have toughness lower than 620, those skills will hit you for a lot more.

There isn’t one clear answer imo, but with most of the thief community seemingly playing glass cannon builds, I think additional vitality would be the most beneficial in general.

Neither vitality nor toughness benefits a glass cannon build, that’s why it’s a glass cannon.

IMO, having less health pool but with high toughness makes it easier to keep myself alive than the other way around.

You have only reiterated the benefits of toughness, which have agreed with and stated myself several times. There is more to staying alive than just reducing the damage by as much as possible. This is an oversimplification of the issue and neglects other factors. At no point have i commented on condition damage either.

The most effective defence in a given situation is the one that keeps you alive the longest, so let me provide some more examples. I’ll use the same conditions as before; if we take vitality we have 15k hp with 2000 armour and if we take toughness we have 10k hp with 2500 armour. Now lets see how these builds respond to 500, 450 and 400 dps (or 400, 360 and 320 dps if you have 2500 armour). They will both heal for 6000 hp when their drops by 6000 hp and then heal every 30 seconds afterwards, so roughly what you’d see with hide in shadows. When the hp drops to 0 or below, the player is obviously dead.

As you can see, it’s only when the dps drops to 400 that toughness lasts longer than vitality. Of course you don’t receive constant and consistent damage in game, these examples only serve to illustrate a general trend and how vitality can be more effective in surviving damage beyond initial burst damage.

Edit: I apologize for dragging this thread on but i felt that there was misinformation being given. I did read and understand the points posted, but evidently i didn’t explain myself very well ( the confusion over toughness and armour didn’t help either :P ).

I kept saying that you highlighted the advantages of toughness over vitality, but not how it was more beneficial for thieves. By this i mean that you have to take a significant amount of damage before an additional amount of toughness saves you more hp than an equal amount of vitality would afford you, as i think the graphs show. If a thief is trying to burst someone down, along with their limited defence abilities, they’re not likely to be fighting long enough for the extra toughness to pay off and overcome the benefits of vitality. This is why i feel you haven’t explained why toughness is the superior option for most thieves.

I hope my examples given will suffice in showing why at least vitality can be a better option than toughness for some builds looking to increase their defence.

TheGuy.3568:

Snip

You’re still missing the point. You have again explained how toughness can be superior to vitality, which i have already said i agree with and made similar points myself, but failed to explain why it is a better option for most people playing thieves.

There are benefits and drawbacks with both, i’m just saying that there are builds and situations where vitality is significantly more effective than toughness. You can keep saying toughness is better ‘overall’ and it is for some builds, but i think people should understand how these work and look at their own character to make a decision. There isn’t one clear answer imo, but with most of the thief community seemingly playing glass cannon builds, I think additional vitality would be the most beneficial in general.

Ensign.2189:

snip

Yes, i agree. There are some situations where you might want to deviate from those guidelines though, but in general i think they act as a good rule of thumb.

TheGuy.3568:

Considering I wrote a detailed explanation before why toughness is better why should i have to again? It is not my fault you didn’t read it and understand it. Its math not opinion and it been explained over and over and over. You simply aren’t getting it.

Do we really have to do this again? Toughness is better in most situations ie in general (same meaning as the word “overall” since you seem to be having issues with this one word’s definition). Neither toughness of vitality is necessary. You are arguing antics with semantics and it kind of stupid and repetitive now don’t you think?

My condescending tone is intended. Why should I respect you as an equal when if you clearly didn’t read what I said, or worse understand it.

To sum this very long correspondence up. Your point is vitality is sometimes better.
My point toughness is better most of the time. Now do you understand my condescending tone?

BTW left the adverbial definition of overall up there since you seemed to miss it the first time.

I don’t need you to ‘respect me as an equal’, I just expected some common decency. I understand your points, i just don’t agree with you. You explain why toughness can be superior to vitality, which are the same points i’ve brought up, but you don’t explain why it is better in most situations. While you say it is math not opinion, you have offered nothing but opinion.

Toughness does save you more hp than vitality will give you eventually but, if you’re playing a d/d glass cannon build and plan on bursting people down for example, you’re probably not going to be fighting long enough for it to pay off. You play a condition build that will often engage in longer fights as you lack burst damage and have high self healing to deal with the damage that comes with it. That makes toughness ideal for your build and play style but i think people playing these builds make up a minority of the thief community.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

Yes, you’re quite right that i tend to use armor and toughness interchangeably, but my overall points are all still correct and my examples are sound. I’m still not sure you understand what i mean though lol. If you assume defence = 0 then toughness and armour are effectively the same thing and what i’ve written will be accurate if that helps.

When i say 500 additional toughness will reduce the damage you take by 20%, i’m speaking about it relative to having 2000 armor. So if you get hit for 10k damage with 2000 armor you only take 8k damage with 2500 armor i.e. 20% less damage.

I’ll explain my example again (and make an effort to use armour and toughness correctly lol) Lets assume you have 10k hp and 2000 armour. A thief attacks you and hits you for 13k damage, instantly killing you as you only have 10k hp. Lets look at this situation again, but this time we can choose between an extra 500 vitality or 500 toughness.

If you have 500 extra toughness, you now have 2500 armour. Therefore you get hit for (13000*2000)/2500 = 10400 damage instead. As you only have 10k hp you still die however.

If you have 500 extra vitality you now have 15k hp. You get hit again for 13k damage but you have 15k hp, so you survive with 2k hp left. In this situation, vitality is the more effective defence.

In general i think vitality is more useful in dealing with short duration fights or burst damage. Toughness will eventually beat vitality as fights go on and you heal through damage, but as most thieves generally try to burst people down, and the fights don’t last very long, I would generally advise taking more vitality over toughness.

Of course your build, play style and the situation at hand can mean that more toughness is more effective.

As I said, I understand the calculation, but I have a problem with your base numbers.

In your example, you assume that 500 Vit is 20% increase, when it is actually a 50% increase based on a 10k HP. So it is an unfair comparison that you increased Vit by 50% and only increased Toughness by 20% — of course, Vitality is obviously going to look better.

If we properly use 20% increase in Vitality, that’s only 50 Vitality which equates to 500 more HP, not 5k. In this scenario, 20% increase in Toughness (500) will reduce the damage by 2600 dealing 10400 instead of 13k. With 500 Toughness, our effective health is 12600. Adding 20% Vitality will only give us an effective health of 10500.

If the damage is 11K instead of 13K, having +20% Toughness gives us an effective health of 12200 and 20% Vitality is still 10500. In this scenario, the vitality dies and the toughness survives.

This is using your 20% premise and it’s obviously not a fair comparison since 50 Vitality is not equal to 500 Toughness.

It is a 50% increase in my example because that’s how it works in the game. You can’t choose to have 20% more vitality or 20% more toughness; you can only choose to have say 500 more vitality or 500 more toughness. The percentage increase is just dependent on your stats before the increase.

Whilst i’ve rounded the armour and hp values to simplify the example, having 10k hp and 2k armour is roughly what a thief has for base stats. The choice between a given amount of vitality or an equal amount of toughness is a real decision the player can make and its effects are more accurately modelled by my example. It is fair and valid whilst your example doesn’t reflect what occurs in game as I understand it.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

I still don’t think you understand what i’m trying to say.

Let me use an example. So Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

I’ll just refer to (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) as ‘base damage’. So, if we rearrange, base damage = damage done * target’s armour.

If you have 2k armour and you take 13k damage then the base damage is 13000*2000 = 26000000. Now lets assume you get hit again by the same guy with the same base damage but you have 2500 armour. As damage done = base damage/ armour, you take 26000000/2500 = 10400 damage.

Therefore 10400/13000 * 100 = 80%. So having 2500 toughness means you take 20% less damage compared to having 2000 toughness. i.e. you see a 20% reduction in damage with the extra toughness compared to not having the extra toughness.

I see your problem. You are mixed up. You think Armor = Toughness, when Armor = Defense + Toughness.

You think that you need 2000 Toughness to mitigate 20% damage when in fact you only need 20 Toughness because Thieves have a base Defense of 1980.

Your calculation may be correct, but your base numbers are all wrong.

So if you take 5k damage when you have 2000 armor, you would have taken only 4k with 2500 toughness, saving you 1k hp. If you take 25k damage with 2000 armor, you would only have taken 20k damage with 2500 toughness, saving you 5k hp.

You need to work on your consistency when trying to communicate your points, because mixing up armor and toughness leads to so much misunderstandings.

By the way, in your example, whether you value vitality more than toughness, you’d still be dead since Thieves do not have that much HP.

Yes, you’re quite right that i tend to use armor and toughness interchangeably, but my overall points are all still correct and my examples are sound. I’m still not sure you understand what i mean though lol. If you assume defence = 0 then toughness and armour are effectively the same thing and what i’ve written will be accurate if that helps.

When i say 500 additional toughness will reduce the damage you take by 20%, i’m speaking about it relative to having 2000 armor. So if you get hit for 10k damage with 2000 armor you only take 8k damage with 2500 armor i.e. 20% less damage.

I’ll explain my example again (and make an effort to use armour and toughness correctly lol) Lets assume you have 10k hp and 2000 armour. A thief attacks you and hits you for 13k damage, instantly killing you as you only have 10k hp. Lets look at this situation again, but this time we can choose between an extra 500 vitality or 500 toughness.

If you have 500 extra toughness, you now have 2500 armour. Therefore you get hit for (13000*2000)/2500 = 10400 damage instead. As you only have 10k hp you still die however.

If you have 500 extra vitality you now have 15k hp. You get hit again for 13k damage but you have 15k hp, so you survive with 2k hp left. In this situation, vitality is the more effective defence.

In general i think vitality is more useful in dealing with short duration fights or burst damage. Toughness will eventually beat vitality as fights go on and you heal through damage, but as most thieves generally try to burst people down, and the fights don’t last very long, I would generally advise taking more vitality over toughness.

Of course your build, play style and the situation at hand can mean that more toughness is more effective.

While they’re not useless, skills like pistol whip and dancing dagger should be tweaked, as suggested numerous times before.

Pistol whip offers damage that is less than the auto attack chain while using up 5 initiative. If you have the first strikes trait as well, using this ability can significantly lower your dps. Personally i’d like to see the first the part of the animation sped up so you can time the evasion part of the move more easily whilst also increasing the dps of the ability overall, but I think an increase in the damage at least is warranted.

4 initiative for dancing dagger is too much; it needs to be reduced to say 3 or increase the damage to gives builds like sword/dagger a little more burst. Obviously you don’t want to return to the huge amount of damage it use to pull off with 2 targets but the 50% reduction in damage was a little much imo.

With the nerf to quickness, critical haste also saw a nerf in burst damage also without any compensation iirc. It never offered much of an increase in your average dps to begin with but it’s very weak atm.

TheGuy.3568:

Its not my kittening problem if you have issues with the English language.

“o·ver·all (vr-ôl)
adj.
1. From one end to the other: the overall length of the house.
2. Including everything; comprehensive: the overall costs of medical care.
3. Regarded as a whole; general: My overall impression was favorable.
adv.
(vr-ôl) On the whole; generally: enjoyed the performance overall.”

I used it as an adverb. Learn English.

Also stop using opinion to counter facts. Plenty of players have put in huge amounts of time and effort to calculate the figures for us all. Players like you who want to argue fact with opinion need to stop. Toughness outperforms vitality as a defensive stat. You want to go into hypothetical scenarios and other bullkitten where it assure that vitality is the better stat that’s fine. If you play the kittening game it leans toward toughness but you still need vitality or neither if you are good at dodging.

Its not so much debate and discussion and kittening math.

Let me simplify it since it seems you are hell bent on debate.

Which stat is better Toughness or Vitality?

Toughness, it is better a mitigating damage overall.

Can you stack only toughness for a defensive spec?

No, you need vitality also.

Do you have to have vitality and toughness in a build?

No.

So what is the best defensive stat?

Vigor.

Next time take your time reading what I write carefully before you respond.

Are you being obtuse on purpose or are you simply missing the point? I’m not sure why you’re getting so upset over this but the patronizing tone isn’t helping nor does it make you correct.

There are situations where vitality is superior to toughness and situations where toughness is superior to vitality. I’m not saying that vitality or toughness is better; i’m simply trying to say that the most effective attribute is determined by the circumstances.

But if you remain intent on proving that toughness is better ‘overall’, please give a comprehensive explanation with specific examples to prove this point and I will gladly admit i’m wrong if you’re correct.

TheGuy.3568:

Sigh, you really have to read what other people right. Did I say toughness is absolutely better than vitality?

Its true as your armor scales up the effectiveness drops per point up until the 2700-3000 where it starts to horizontal. However, if some one ask you which stat is better (like the op asked) the answer is toughness. The fact is toughness no matter your hp mitigates the same amount. HP really requires replenishing to continue to mitigate damage. Now there is no reason for a player to go pure toughness or vitality but there is also no real reason to carry either depending on your build. The one thing we do know is that the best mitigation in the game is simply avoiding damage (something thief is good at).

Now before we argue over which stat you should use remember the OP ask which is better and its not like this is the first time this question has been asked. So in the long run we can have these responding post about who’s right and who’s wrong but who really gives a kitten? This has been asked time and time again fact is toughness scales better to a point and past that point you would be better off defensively with more vitality.

That being said when it comes to healing and raw mitigation toughness simply does a better job of defending you.

Please remember no matter how much you get hit and what the value of the hit is toughness reduces the damage as a coefficient. HP is a raw number that tells you how much damage you can take. Every time you take a hit HP’s effectiveness as a defensive stat drops. Unless you can continually fill the pool hp is the lesser of the 2.

As far as condition damage goes fact is it is better to avoid and cleanse it than to assume having High HP will mitigate it. Look at the warrior forums to understand as I don’t feel like writing another paragraph on it.

To the OP you will need both if you plan to play defensively where you soak damage (not a good idea on a thief), but either way toughness does perform better when you add in all factors. If we are talking about optimizing number 15-16k hp and 2700 armor would be about as high as i would go with a defensive build. Remember every point you place defensively is a point you didn’t place offensively. It is all about balance.

You said ‘Toughness outperforms vitality overall. There isn’t really all that much debate here’, which sounds like you’re saying toughness>vitality all the time, which isn’t true and is misleading imo. There are situations where more toughness will mean you can survive a fight and there are situations where more vitality will mean you can survive a fight.

There isn’t a simple answer here and people should be aware of how both these attributes work to make an informed decision about which to choose.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Ensign.2189:

As a general rule, you want to have enough vitality to survive and react to an incoming burst of damage; after that, toughness and healing power are preferable. For a thief, toughness is generally preferable to healing power because thieves themselves scale very poorly with healing power, while toughness amplifies healing from other sources as well.

Wouldn’t it be the other way around that toughness should be enough to survive a burst?

My healing skill cannot heal that much, thus it is important to mitigate the damage thru toughness so it will be easy from me to top my HP off.

Healing a large max HP often stumbles from the long healing CD. :/

Vitality offers more bang for your buck if you take relatively little damage. Taking burst damage offers a lot of front end damage, but compared to a fight that may last for several minutes, the damage you take is relatively small.

Lets say you can choose between 20% damage reduction through toughness or 5k hp through vitality, you need to take over 25k damage before toughness reduces the damage you take by 5k or more.

Your math is wrong.

19k incoming damage only deals 10 damage against 1980 armor (base level 80 Theif armor).
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but i assume you mean base damage/armor rating = damage done? When i say 20% damage reduction i simply mean 20% reduction relative to the damage you’d take without the additional toughness.

The point is. If my armor reduces a 25K damage by 20%, it is even better against damage lower than 25k. You got it backwards. The lower the damage, the better my armor.

If my armor can prevent 5K of 25K (20%), then I can prevent 5K(100%) damage against 5K damage.

This is the reason why we are scaled down when we side kick.

If you look at the link I posted, the damage is directly divided by your armor. It’s not by percentage like you think it is.

I still don’t think you understand what i’m trying to say.

Let me use an example. So Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

I’ll just refer to (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) as ‘base damage’. So, if we rearrange, base damage = damage done * target’s armour.

If you have 2k armour and you take 13k damage then the base damage is 13000*2000 = 26000000. Now lets assume you get hit again by the same guy with the same base damage but you have 2500 armour. As damage done = base damage/ armour, you take 26000000/2500 = 10400 damage.

Therefore 10400/13000 * 100 = 80%. So having 2500 toughness means you take 20% less damage compared to having 2000 toughness. i.e. you see a 20% reduction in damage with the extra toughness compared to not having the extra toughness.

So if you take 5k damage when you have 2000 armor, you would have taken only 4k with 2500 toughness, saving you 1k hp. If you take 25k damage with 2000 armor, you would only have taken 20k damage with 2500 toughness, saving you 5k hp.

Shukran.4851:

valkyrie amulet?

Beserker amulet with valkyrie jewel; i prefer the extra toughness over the slightly higher crit chance. There’s little difference either way tbh though.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Ensign.2189:

As a general rule, you want to have enough vitality to survive and react to an incoming burst of damage; after that, toughness and healing power are preferable. For a thief, toughness is generally preferable to healing power because thieves themselves scale very poorly with healing power, while toughness amplifies healing from other sources as well.

Wouldn’t it be the other way around that toughness should be enough to survive a burst?

My healing skill cannot heal that much, thus it is important to mitigate the damage thru toughness so it will be easy from me to top my HP off.

Healing a large max HP often stumbles from the long healing CD. :/

Vitality offers more bang for your buck if you take relatively little damage. Taking burst damage offers a lot of front end damage, but compared to a fight that may last for several minutes, the damage you take is relatively small.

Lets say you can choose between 20% damage reduction through toughness or 5k hp through vitality, you need to take over 25k damage before toughness reduces the damage you take by 5k or more.

Your math is wrong.

19k incoming damage only deals 10 damage against 1980 armor (base level 80 Theif armor).
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but i assume you mean base damage/armor rating = damage done? When i say 20% damage reduction i simply mean 20% reduction relative to the damage you’d take without the additional toughness.

TheGuy.3568:

Toughness outperforms vitality overall. There isn’t really all that much debate here. Toughness also effectively increases your healing. As far as condition damage goes if you are good a cleansing then toughness is still the way to go.

Not necessarily. I used this example in other thread but lets assume you have 2000 armor and 10k hp for the sake of simplicity. You can choose between 500 toughness for a 20% reduction in damage or 500 vitality for 5k more hp.

If you take vitality you get hit by an attack dealing 13k damage. You have 15k hp however so you survive. If you take toughness you take (13k*2000)/2500 = 10400 damage. As you only have 10k hp you die. Taking vitality here would mean you survive with 2k hp to spare.

The higher your armor rating, the less useful toughness becomes relative to vitality as well.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Ensign.2189:

As a general rule, you want to have enough vitality to survive and react to an incoming burst of damage; after that, toughness and healing power are preferable. For a thief, toughness is generally preferable to healing power because thieves themselves scale very poorly with healing power, while toughness amplifies healing from other sources as well.

Wouldn’t it be the other way around that toughness should be enough to survive a burst?

My healing skill cannot heal that much, thus it is important to mitigate the damage thru toughness so it will be easy from me to top my HP off.

Healing a large max HP often stumbles from the long healing CD. :/

Vitality offers more bang for your buck if you take relatively little damage. Taking burst damage offers a lot of front end damage, but compared to a fight that may last for several minutes, the damage you take is relatively small.

Lets say you can choose between 20% damage reduction through toughness or 5k hp through vitality, you need to take over 25k damage before toughness reduces the damage you take by 5k or more.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV4alUmiPHdy9E95Ey2jKUn4JuHOFT1UaFoJA;TsAg0Cvo4ywlgLLXOukctoYYxuAA Is roughly what i run when i run this spec in spvp. Obviously you can switch traits around to your liking, such as getting 2 initiative when going into stealth or 100% crit chance from stealth, although i think executioner provides more damage overall for the playstyle of d/p or shortbow. The build focuses on longer fights however, and you can’t expect to quickly burst down most professions from full health as you may be able to with a glass cannon build.

A good source of burst damage however is black powder followed by heart seeker then, mid way through the heart seeker animation, steal to your opponent to deal mug damage and subsequently land the heartseeker and stealth before using backstab. Alternatively hitting blinding powder then hit backstab and mid way through the animation steal to the opponent to deal mug+ backstab damage if you want to land the damage more reliably.

The build is quite well rounded and use of blinds and stuns with the healing of shadow’s rejuvenation will allow you to stand toe-toe against just about any build. The reduced dps however will make certain builds difficult to near impossible to finish though, such as bunker ele’s.

The two compliment each well. The more health you have, the more effective toughness can be and vice versa. Generally though, for long fights toughness is more effective and if you plan on bursting people down vitality is more effective.

I think it depends more on play style with no clear answer. I would opt for a mix of the two in general though, although i would sacrifice say more vitality for toughness rather than more power. I use soldier for head, coat and legs with beserker for everything else and either ruby or scholar runes. I feel this gives me a nice balance, although i think our trait selection is different.

Have you tried a 10/30/30/0/0 build? Not quite the dps as a full GC build, but 30 in shadow arts adds a huge amount of survivability if you use your stealths well. 10 stacks of might from shadow refuge with backstab+mug damage offers some significant burst damage too.

Pistol off hand also provides some great tools for reducing damage with black powder for melee attackers and shadow shot for gap closers. It’s far superior to d/d against most professions imo. Head shot can also be very powerful, but this requires some practice and good insight into what your opponent is going to do to be used to its potential imo.

Stealth is an interesting mechanic in that its effectiveness is determined by how well the player uses it and how well the opponent responds to it. I think an issue with it can be long stealths, such as that granted by shadow refuge. With your average 3/4 second stealth, you can use certain abilities to counter a potential sneak attack, but with longer stealths you can use an ability and have it expire before the thief may choose to break stealth, leaving you with the impression you can’t really do anything against it.

Why are they considered OP by most people though? I think it’s simply the burst damage, although this has been significantly reduced. It is countered quite easily in most cases and i view GC thieves as free kills most of the time though. The profession as a whole is lacking in almost every area imo. Thieves do have some strengths, and our ability to escape a fight is unmatched for whatever that’s worth, but it cetainly due for some buffs.

Arganthium.5638:

… Which is why we run full zerker. c:

25/30/0/0/15 builds tend to run full zerker too except they get 250 more power, 5% more damage with daggers and extra burst damage from mug :P

They’ve mentioned adding some kind of boon hate mechanic to the thief profession at some point in the future as well as giving greater mobility skills other weapons sets. I think the profession will see some buffs in the future, but i doubt it’s going to be soon.

‘Bunker’ builds have been around since launch for thief also, usually with 30 in shadow arts for more healing in stealth and sometimes 15-20 in acrobatics for more initiative and dodging. The problem is there pretty significant loss in dps. Something like a 10/30/30/0/0 still offers good damage but, with reduced burst damage, the usefulness of these builds in spvp and tpvp is limited, especially when compared with other professions.

Well the trait line also increases healing power and has several traits that offer extra healing. It fits in quite nicely with that theme imo.

I don’t see why there is such aversion to the idea of having an on crit effect in the trait line when there are plenty of other similar traits in the game that lie in trait lines that don’t grant precision. I quite like the idea tbh, although i think the numbers could be altered to be more balanced.

While i like the idea of vigor too, it doesn’t really feel like it belongs in the shadow arts trait line and would make much more sense in acrobatics trait line. But, as said, neither does power shots or venomous aura :P

Generally vitality is more effective in surviving burst damage while toughness is more effective in surviving smaller but continuous damage.

For example, lets say you have 10k hp and 2k armor and you can choose between 500 vitality and 500 toughness. 500 vitality will increase your hp by 5000 and 500 toughness will reduce the damage you take by 20%.

A thief comes up and backstabs you. If you take vitality he backstabs you for 13k, but you have 15k hp so you survive with 2k hp to spare. Now if you take toughness he hits you for 10,400 damage. You’ve reduced the damage by 20% but you only have 10k hp so you die. Taking vitality means you survive the burst.

Now you’re fighting a longer fight. You take damage but heal when you can so over the course of the fight you take 30k damage. The opponent needs to deal 5k extra damage to overcome your extra health if you take vitality. However, if you take toughness you only take 80% of the damage for 24k damage. The opponent has lost 6k damage due to your toughness and this will only increase as the fight goes on while vitality will only ever mean they need to deal 5k more damage. Taking toughness here will mean you can survive longer.

It can be but it’s not very reliable imo. If a thief doesn’t open with it or they join mid-way through a fight it may have already activated and be on cooldown.

It can also be annoying in normal combat as it can proc and incur the reveal debuff when you need to stealth and potentially get you killed.

Rome.3192:

I completely stopped following that thread, thanks. He doesn’t say they’re changing Hundred Blades, though. He just said he agrees that something needs to be done about the said skill. Boon-hate will probably be the first buff to warriors, they sound pretty clear on that. They are considering everything else.

He says that it ‘needs’ to change, so i think it’s quite likely we’ll see some change to the skill or at least some change of its effectiveness relative to the other warrior skills in the future.

The situation with 100b is quite different to pistol whip though; 100b makes all other weapons sets inferior in terms of dps while pistol whip just means pistol whip is lacklustre. I doubt it’s very high of their list of things to do, if at all, but i can’t think of a good reason not to buff it.

John Sharp mentions it in here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/The-main-warrior-questions/page/2

The opposing team doesn’t sound very good quite frankly. They didn’t lose all those points because you were able to stealth, they lost them because they decided it was a good idea to waste their time chasing you at the start of a match. The same result could have been achieved on many other classes.

I don’t think the changes to reveal were meant to stop what you described.

Several changes have been made to the thief profession to balance certain aspects of our play, such as our burst, however these changes have also hurt other areas of the thief profession, such as our sustained damage and survivability. Now i’m not asking for the insane burst of the backtab combo with the old haste back (i’m actually quite glad it’s gone) but the profession is certainly lacking in both pvp and pve.

Maybe an increase to the daggers auto-attack damage to make up for fewer backstabs or increase in the regeneration duration from shadow’s protector due to fewer stealths. Fixing the bug with shadow’s protector wouldn’t hurt either.

It would be nice to see some acknowledgement of the thief’s inadequacies by the dev’s and that an effort is being made to fix issues with the profession that have persisted since launch.

I would like to see the first part of the animation sped up perhaps. This would increase the percentage time you’re evading and overall dps. The ability could be changed to hit up to a maximum of 5 targets instead of 3 as well, although the thief could really do with some better aoe options with melee weapons.

I don’t think your gear layout is optimal and there are a few traits i would swap around, but the core build idea is certainly viable and offers much greater staying power at the cost of lower dps.

I would advise focussing on either direct damage or condition damage rather than the hybrid you seem to be going for. If you go with condition damage then you don’t need to worry too much about power, crit chance and crit chance and can instead focus on condition damage, toughness, vitality, healing power etc to make a more survivability character.

Played well, any profession is good in PvE or PvP, however these professions do have some innate strengths and weaknesses that can make them better suited to PvE or PvP.

A thief’s high burst damage and escape options for example are ideal in a PvP setting to quickly finish someone off, but in PvE high sustained damage and staying power is generally more useful. If we look at a warrior in PvP then they have some limitations, such as poor condition removal. Of course these depend on the build but the few ‘viable’ warrior builds generally suffer from similar weaknesses.

In general I would say that thief is the least suited for PvE, or at least it is one of the most difficult to play. In a difficult fight on my thief i have to pay attention to what enemies are doing and constantly move and evade to survive. On my guardian i have to remember to use my heal skill :P For PvP I would just suggest trying anything that piques your interest in sPvP and see what your enjoy.

A thief could just lay down black powder around a downed ally too, making impossible for anyone to stomp them.

People who complain about thieves being noobs are generally noobs themselves. When I use to try a condition build people would complain about how quickly i could apply bleed stacks when they would make no attempt to move out of my caltrops, or how OP backstab is with basilisk venom when they didn’t use a stun breaker or try to avoid it.

The profession has some very strong abilities when other players make no attempt to counter them. Play against decent people who know how to deal with these builds and you’ll see the profession isn’t nearly as OP as the forums would have you believe.

With that said, there are some gimmicky builds that can get cheap kills, which are annoying, but there is a difference between cheap and OP.

There are thief builds that can handle protracted engagements and take on several people at once, but even the tankiest thief builds can’t withstand much damage. The thief’s only real defences are stealth and their mobility. You’ll have to make effective use of both of these to deal with longer fights. As said already, you generally want to go in, deal as much burst damage as you can that get out. Try to have an escape plan every time you come out of stealth.

The glass cannon backstab build is great for dealing with new players or other glass cannons, but it doesn’t really have the tools to deal with players if they don’t die to your initial burst damage and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for a more forgiving play style to ease into the profession.

zone.1073:

The key is burst, but patience with burst. Force the ele into a situation where they must mist form prematurely. Then burst.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnibXlp2vQg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogxyy5Q-834

While I agree with your point, those videos don’t really show that :P The elementalists activated mist form for no good reason. That was really just them making a mistake rather than the warrior playing very well.

There’s no easy way to land it against a player who knows how to try and avoid it. Generally you don’t want to just run at a player and use cloak and dagger first thing as it’s quite obvious what you’re trying to do.

Abilities like steal and infiltrator’s signet can be used midway through an animation to teleport to your target and land either CnD or backstab. Shadow step can also be used if you target it well. Of course any immobilise like basilisk or devourer venom will help, as will any abilities to slow your target, like cripple or chill, or speed you up, like swiftness.

Have you tried dagger/pistol as well? You can gain stealth by using black powder and then heart seeker while in it. This requires more initiative but it doesn’t rely on landing an attack to gain stealth.

If i steal from a thief, i generally save the stolen item so i can stealth and hopefully activate the backstab animation and steal again for some burst damage. But, as the op pointed out, this is usually guess work and sometimes just results in a wasted opportunity as my steal may not come off cooldown until the stealth has expired.

More information about our skills is always useful and i can’t see a reason not to provide the cooldown time.

Void.4239:

it was never the meaning for mug ( a 10 traits point add) to do more then 2k added dps on an already uber mechanic, the 5-6 k hits you can build to is something that needs a fix , read my post above if you want to know why its to much for the
mechanics of steal.
3 stacks of might for 15secs woud be alot more balanced then the huge spike it can bring now , steal realy doesnt need to do dps at all its just to mutch for 1 skill to have plain and simple

really wondering what is taking the devs so long to realize this. its an easy fix that doesn’t harm the class at all

It doesn’t add more than 2k dps, unless you’re confusing dps with base damage. Even if you could deal 6k damage with a critical hit from mug every 32 seconds with a 55% cirtical chance, that averages for about 150 dps.

You don’t want to over-nerf the ability to the point of being useless either, otherwise you may as well remove it. If you have 3000+ attack then 3 stacks of might is 105 more power, or roughly 3% more attack damage . If it’s up for only 15 seconds as well with a ~45 seconds cooldown then you’re averaging about 1% more damage overall.

Is the damage mug deals too high? Possibly, although i can’t say i have an issue with it when fighting thieves, but i don’t think the suggested changes would bring ‘balance’ to the profession.

In organised play your role as a thief will be roaming, meaning you want high burst damage and mobility. Generally this means you want shortbow and either dagger/dagger or dagger/pistol to use backstab. I prefer dagger/pistol for the extra utility and ability to stealth without needing to land CnD.

Sword/pistol has it use with the gap closer/immobilise and ability to stun, which can be effective in helping to take down certain builds, but i wouldn’t recommend it over the burst damage provided by dagger.

Bleed specs don’t have much use. They take longer to kill and their damage is more easily mitigated with condition removal. If you have someone like a necromancer that can apply several types of conditions with you they’re not as bad i guess, but in tournaments i wouldn’t use them.

Note that organised play is very different to hotjoin. Most of the time you’re joining a fight midway to quickly finish a player so you can hold a capture, which is why high burst and mobility is needed and why higher survivability isn’t so useful. Hotjoin is generally just a mess of people trying to hit each other :P

Mug doesn’t really provide much in the way of sustainable damage. 1 attack every ~45 seconds gives very low dps; the traits only use is as a form of burst damage.

It would probably have to be a nerf in sustained damage as well though as you would have to balance it around condition thieves, who would benefit much more from the proposed change. On your average GC thief you would be doing half or less bleed damage with a shorter duration. Condition damage also has the issue of being able to be cleansed.

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

when you attack from stealth you get the revealed debuff. it makes you unable to stealth for 3 seconds.

Note that this is only attacks that deal direct damage. Abilities like choking gas or the first part of shadow shot that cause only condition damage will not break stealth.