Showing Posts For Arganthium.5638:

Rune of the Strength

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I’d guess that there’s a 95% chance that either PoI or Runes of Strength will be nerfed for sPvP within the next two balance patches, with PoI probably being the more likely one to get nerfed. If PoI gets nerfed in sPvP, it’ll also be nerfed for PvE/WvW. Of RoS gets nerfed, I’d give it an 80% chance of being nerfed in PvE/WvW too.

So it’s probably not worth it if it’s really that expensive.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Nobody owns builds
I’d love to live in a world where that was the case, but unfortunately most of the GW2 community seems to disagree.

Okay, look at it this way. If someone took the 20066 build or a slight variant in to a match, no single sensible PvP player would say that you were “copying” Sizer, in the same way that no sensible WvW player would say you are “copying” Yishis if you take x66xx.

[addressed in last comment]

You’ve kind of doomed yourself with this thread. I get that you’re annoyed, but you really should have risen about some of these replies instead of the hostility I’m seeing. Just responding with things like “you just suck” does not help your cause in any way whatsoever.

[rest addressed in last comment]

From the stories I’ve heard in the past, running a build like 20066 in sPvP could very well get you called a Sizer copycat. Hell, I know a guy in the OMFG (Mesmer forum) guild who named his pet on his ranger “Pyroatheist” and got called a “Mesmer wannabe” (or something to that effect).

As for the “you suck” comment… Well, I hardly see comments such as

Of course arganthium ill give you credit for your kittenty ineffective outdated 2/0/0/6/6 build and continue to put sizer’s properly updated 2/0/0/6/6 build on my rotations that i use when i play thief and spit at your setup.

… as being highly constructive, and I know I’m not going to convince people like Nolimitz of the point I’m trying to make with my post anyways, so there’s no point on being constructive with them. That’s just my take on it.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Nobody owns builds
I’d love to live in a world where that was the case, but unfortunately most of the GW2 community seems to disagree.

People relate the build to (insert popular player). When they say Sizer’s build they are literally it as if he created the build when in fact they are just relating it to Sizer in many cases.

People come to my house and see a Pitcher filled with Red drink they are probably going to call it Kool-Aid even though it might be called Fruity Powder drink with a stick of butter added to make it taste richer therefore it literally isn’t Kool-Aid.

In your case you may have created the build and it should probably be referred to as Arganthium’s build – Popularized by Sizer but do you think anyone will go through the trouble of that on this or any other forum?

Check the mesmer forums there are probably 50 PU variations with different names and maybe a trait changed(if that) sometimes it is only just some sigils or runes but same concept. Most will call the build PU anyway unless it’s something Osicat made.

I get why people aren’t going to call it “Arganthium’s build – Popularized by Sizer”, and I’m not even necessarily annoyed that it’s called Sizer’s build, per se. I just feel like a lot of people are overhyping the build and treating Sizer like he’s some kind of god which, to be honest, I don’t think is entirely deserved in the context of the contents of this post.

Apparently, 2 0 0 6 6 sucked up until a month or two ago as well, and now everybody thinks it’s amazing in spite of the fact that very little changed about the build itself (outside of Runes of Strength)…

I would like to add there are other changes that affected the rise of this build that you may not have considered.

One of which is the nerf to Critical Damage.

That’s more of a change to other builds, or just all builds in general, which doesn’t have much bearing on 20066 itself. I know why the build has suddenly become more popular, I’m just saying that the build in and of itself hasn’t really changed

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Mmm. There are a few general arguments/comments/whines here that people are bringing up that I want to address…

You weren’t the first to play the build so it doesn’t belong to you
In all probability, neither was just about any other player who is said to own a build, but that doesn’t keep us from giving ownership to people for those builds. Plus, if that’s the case, then you shouldn’t be calling it Sizer’s build anyways.

Well, Sizer played it in ToL, whereas you never played it in any major tournament.
To the extent of my knowledge, Jumper’s build was called Jumper’s build a while before he actually played it in a large tournament. Either way, though, I’m not sure why playing the build in a tournament is more important than the summation of writing a guide on the build, promoting it in the community, etc.

Lol well I’m just gonna “patent” my [sucky build]
The difference is that the build that I wrote a guide on the build, updated the build multiple times, advised people who were seeking to play the build (I was the go-to guy for the build for a year); I played it competitively within the (now dead) E-Sports guild along with a lot of players who were famous or near-famous, but were certainly well-known to any good sPvPer, plus I took the heat for making the build that nobody else was going to take (and, ironically, I’m taking the heat for the build again).

What’s the point of this thread?

Anyway, to all the people that don’t understand the point of this thread, it’s no fun being laughed at for using a certain build, only to discover that a year later every single thief is using it and giving the credit for the build to someone else.

The traits/utilities/runes are different, which makes it Sizer’s build and not yours.
The only significant differences are in 1. Power of Inertia and 2. Runes of Strength, the two combined making the build different enough to make it a variation (though not an entirely separate build) on 2 0 0 6 6. Every other difference (i.e. Sleight of Hand, Shadow Refuge, Pain Response) is pretty insignificant overall, or has been included under the umbrella of the 2 0 0 6 6 build that I proposed originally, and I’ve stated multiple times how those traits/utilities can be put into the build. The point, however, is that they don’t create enough of a difference in play style to make them significant by themselves. PoI+Runes of Strength, on the other hand, do, and if you guys want to associate that idea with Sizer, then go ahead. However, the initial idea of 2 0 0 6 6 as a trait set is far from belonging to Sizer.

Nobody owns builds
I’d love to live in a world where that was the case, but unfortunately most of the GW2 community seems to disagree.

Stop being such a baby
Lol

Your build sucks
Apparently, 2 0 0 6 6 sucked up until a month or two ago as well, and now everybody thinks it’s amazing in spite of the fact that very little changed about the build itself (outside of Runes of Strength). But honestly most (emphasis on most- the exceptions know who they are <3) of you saying my build sucks/still sucks either have never played the build before or have nothing in general to back up your claims in the first place. Or, you just suck.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Dude who gives a kitten.. I used this build long before I ever “heard” of it, and not your kittenty variation of it either, the exact one thats popular now.. I’ve tried just about any build combo you could come up with, as have thousands of people.

The only people who post these builds and “promote” them are #1 attention seekers or #2 people seeking Youtube views.

Obviously you didn’t impress anyone, so nobody thinks of you when they consider the build.

“intellectual property” “my idea” “i was first to blah blah” – who gives a kitten .

Except that, unlike you, I have evidence to show that I used the build before anybody else claiming to do so. Even if I wasn’t the first to play it, I still was the first to do a lot of things for the build, which neither you nor anybody else can claim. I also think it’s extremely funny that, after writing about this build for well over a year, you have never once made a comment stating that you played 2 0 0 6 6 / 10 0 0 30 30 until now, of all times.

I hope you have something to back up your tasteless insults.

For all you know, Sizer got this build directly from me (with a few adjustments). Who are you to say that nobody was impressed? And either way, the point of this post was not to determine who was and was not impressed by my build, but to establish my ownership of the build.

Obviously, the guy who just responded to my post seems to give a kitten.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Dude they have a different GM trait, they’re not the same build.

Builds are never referred to by their specific traits, just point allocation. For example, you wouldn’t call Toker’s build a 2 6 0 0 6 III, IV, X, XI, V, VII, XII S/P build, you’d just call it a 2 6 0 0 6 build. For Jumper’s old build (0 6 0 6 2 S/D S/D), you’d refer to the trait point allocation and weapon sets as his build, even if you had different traits. It’s hilarious that suddenly people want to use a double standard against me to remove my ownership of the idea of the build with comments such as yours. If I changed Sleight of Hand on Toker’s build to Hastened Replenishment, that wouldn’t suddenly make it my build. It might make it my variation of the build, but I still couldn’t claim the build itself. Similarly, Sizer might take variations of the build, or even create the most popular variation of the build, but the build itself still belongs to me.

Furthermore, Sizer, from what I’ve heard, changes his traits around a lot anyways, so it’s not like you can really say he has different traits from me in the first place.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

(edited by Arganthium.5638)

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

You seem to be missing the point i was making for the last couple of posts;
Name recognition for Sizer is much higher than for whatever your ingame name is.
Therefore people immediatly know it’s a 2/0/0/6/6 s/d-sb with III-II III VIII-V VII XII
with air-fire and fire-energy.
Aside from some people on the forums, most ingame don’t know you but know Sizer since TCG won the ToL. Deal with it.

I’m out by the way so don’t even bother with your delusional ‘People are supposed to know who I am.’ Maybe people will know you when your team wins the next big tournament

Yes, I’ll stick to my delusional “people are supposed to know who I am” statements, and you can keep to your delusional “well, Arganthium made this build over a year ago, wrote about it and streamed it, and played it and advocated it, but it’s really Sizer who owns the build” statements.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Beside, nobody owns this build

‘sizers build’.

Oh.

A name doesn’t declare ownership. My name for example is not ‘Property of [insert my parent’s name]

I’m not seeing the point you’re trying to make with the “My name for example is not” example, but that’s missing the point. Unless you actually meant “Sizers” instead of “Sizer’s” (and I’m quite certain that’s not the case), the term “Sizer’s” refers to something as belonging to Sizer, the same way that I would say that Guild Wars 2 is ArenaNet’s game, or that [some limousine] is the President’s limousine.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Beside, nobody owns this build

‘sizers build’.

Oh.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I don’t care. I don#t know you but I know Sizer.
Most people know Sizer while not knowing you. For me it’s Sizer’s build
because he won the ToL with it and made it popular.

No, for you it’s Sizer’s build because you’re too stubborn to change your mind in the face of the truth. Saying “I don’t care” makes you look ridiculous at best.

The only reason that Sizer won the ToL with it and I didn’t was because ANet made it extremely difficult for me to join the tournament, and my team fell apart because of a lack of committment from people looking to join. I also find it insanely funny that you think that a single tournament allows you to own a build, but streaming/writing guides/theorycrafting/arguing with other top thieves/etc about the build doesn’t give you an ounce of credit.

You make yourself look like a little child begging his parents to acknowledge
some petty achievement of his. I explained the reasoning behind my terminology perfectly fine but your ego obviously can’t handle it.

For a person that considers the creation of the somewhat unorthodox 2 0 0 6 6 build to be a “petty achievement”, you seem to be pretty intent on arguing about its ownership.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I don’t care. I don#t know you but I know Sizer.
Most people know Sizer while not knowing you. For me it’s Sizer’s build
because he won the ToL with it and made it popular.

No, for you it’s Sizer’s build because you’re too stubborn to change your mind in the face of the truth. Saying “I don’t care” makes you look ridiculous at best.

The only reason that Sizer won the ToL with it and I didn’t was because ANet made it extremely difficult for me to join the tournament, and my team fell apart because of a lack of committment from people looking to join. I also find it insanely funny that you think that a single tournament allows you to own a build, but streaming/writing guides/theorycrafting/arguing with other top thieves/etc about the build doesn’t give you an ounce of credit.

My biggest question is why did my comment get mentioned? I don’t think sizer made the build I was stating that since he streams with it and does good with it people think he made it. It’s happened to me, people think I made 2/0/6/0/6 which may or may not be true. I’ve ran that spec for well over a year too and I made it popular so people think I made it. But I was kind of defending whoever did make it you or whoever idrc, it’s a build and a streamer uses it so it’s always going to be labeled as his build, live with it.

I mentioned your comment because people don’t seem to understand that the build was originally created by me. And up until less than a month ago, 2 0 0 6 6 was labeled as “Arganthium’s build” (when it was referred to at all), not Sizer’s.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

(edited by Arganthium.5638)

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Man, get over yourself please…

Do you really think that you were the first person on earth to play a 20066 build?
You clicked so fast on the traits that you acquired the right to own every 20066 build?

No to mention that 3 traits are different. In addition a build that is good today WASN’T good months ago, since patches introduced changes.

Sizer, a top thief, used this build and many people copied it. No one is wondering about who’s the very first thief in the world that used a 20066 build. Simple as that.

Was I the first person to play it? Probably not. However, as far as I can tell from my experience (which spans to almost the day the game was released), I was the

- First to write about it, and theory craft on the build.
- First to write a guide on the build
- First to have streamed videos in which the build was used
- First to have used the build in a tournament
- First to have advocated for the build
- First to make serious calculations on the stat distributions included in the build
- First to have kept constantly updating the build for the community’s use

Sizer, on the other hand, really doesn’t have any “firsts” to counter my own. And, to counter your point about “clicking so fast on the traits that you acquired the right to own every 20066 build”, would you say that Sizer has the right to own every single 20066 build because he/ToL (from what I’ve heard) streamed it? On the other hand, everybody refers to 2 6 0 0 6 S/P as Toker’s build, or 0 6 0 6 2 as Jumper’s build (or, at least, it would still be referred to as Jumper’s build if people still knew who Jumper was today. At the time, however, that was in fact what it was referred to). Neither of those players put in as much work into promoting the build as I did, and yet they get ownership of the build and I’m left empty-handed.

Also…

- Changing some traits around does not give you ownership of a certain point allocation, nor has it ever in the GW2 community. Plus, I’ve even advocated some of the trait/utility changes for many players throughout the build’s life span.
- The build was fine three months ago, and if you look at the changes over the last few months, from what I’ve seen, S/D has received virtually no buffs. Instead, other builds have been nerfed. To think that that means that S/D was bad three months ago but is now suddenly good is, frankly, ridiculous.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

No offense but this is what i was talking about as in the build does not make its popular its the player. sizer is very skilled and is the main reason he sets trends, but people on the forums tend to think there a build is made popular by the build itself but it is the player that plays it. also sizer does not use 2/0/0/6/6 he uses a variant of it, i remember watching something with sizer and his build wasn’t 2/0/0/6/6.

First of all, I’m just responding to what I’m hearing. I’m sure that Sizer doesn’t use 2 0 0 6 6 every time he plays, but that doesn’t stop people from calling 2 0 0 6 6 “Sizer’s build”.

Secondly, I’ve seen Sizer play. I’m not massively impressed with him, but I would say he’s better than your average thief. That being said, just because he plays a build does not mean it belongs to him. For instance, there are many extremely famous people that use Facebook, but we don’t attribute the creation of Facebook to those extremely famous people. Hell, even if this was how we assigned ownership to builds, Sizer wouldn’t be able to be called the build’s owner. We’d have to give that to Mistpedia or Twitch, because the only reason Sizer was able to popularize the build was through those two organizations/businesses. I would just as easily have played in the ToL (which, if I’m not mistaken, is where Sizer played the build) if not for the fact that I was on a forum ban at the time, preventing me from creating a post looking for a team, and my in-game team fell apart when nobody wanted to commit to a team with Nettle and I.

It might not be serious to you people, but this build is my intellectual property. I created it, and to say that Sizer owns it is not only wrong but extremely offensive.

EDIT: I admit that “intellectual property” was not the most technically correct term. However, the idea belongs to me, which makes it my intellectual property in that it is “a work or invention that is the result of creativity”, but not my intellectual property in the legal sense.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

(edited by Arganthium.5638)

PSA: 2/0/0/6/6 is not Sizer's build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I’m sorry if this comes off as a bit of an angry rant, but…

I’ve been off of these forums for a few months, and I came back to find that apparently 2 0 0 6 6 (formerly 10 0 0 30 30) has become relatively popular (somebody made a thread on the build, which is enough for me to call it popular I guess). I’m not going to lie, I’m actually kinda amazed that the build has been graced with an appearance at the top tiers of play.

However, then I saw some comments such as these (emphasis mine)…

The sizer build is the most effective one on thief at the moment.

Sizer’s build is an ‘evade tank’, it’s got a lot of evades that provide a lot of sustain. It also offers perma vigor. Between signet of agility, feline grace, and perma vigor you can literally dodge 6 times in a row. On top of that you have evades from flanking strike and withdraw. You also can evade via teleports. You have Slight of Hand too, and basi venom, for 2 interrupst. You have 3000 more health than any non-acro thief build, it’s basically as close as it gets to a bunker thief.

Combine all the above defenses with with a Berserker’s amulet and you have a pretty rediculous build on paper (I think it could be tiered on the level of Soldier’s Strength Rune Hambow Warrior and Celestial Strength Rune D/D Ele). I think it’s the thief’s best build honestly, but choose not to run it because I feel like having that many dodges and evades with that much damage and mobility isn’t an intended playstyle, so I don’t want to get used to it only to have it nerfed in the future and feel like I was playing with a crutch.

@ panicbutton: we know sizer didn’t come up with it but i don’t even know the
name of this other guy. plus sizer made the build popular and everybody here knows immediatly it’s a 20066 s/d if you say ‘sizers build’.

Idk who made the build I don’t really think anyone does tbh. But people think whoever made the build popular made it, which can be true but idk about this build.

I actually created the build well over a year ago and have been playing it ever since. I created this guide to my old variation of the build at the end of July 2013: http://intothemists.com/guides/293-sd_heavy_boonsteal_harassment_thief_by_arga

As you can see from the pinned “Guide to Thief Guides”, the build was later adjusted to the state that I currently use it in (and to a state extremely close to the one used by Sizer): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp3pVOx0J8PNBNh4d4vb1KQ3RL2E-TZRBwAROCAA3fgcZgHnAAAPAAA

Now, anybody who’s been around the forums for the past year or so may know how hard I fought to promote the build to the community, and I was met with a very large rejection from a very wide range of thieves. So, I hope that you guys understand that the fact that people are suddenly proclaiming it to be the best thief build now and are yet attributing the build to Sizer agitates me a lot. For those of you out there who have continued to attribute the build to me, such as RedSpectrum and Panicbutton, thank you. However, I do want to establish that Sizer leapt onto the 2 0 0 6 6 boat ages after I and some other S/D players did, and I’ll be checking in with Sizer soon to make sure that he isn’t plagiarizing the massive amounts of work that I’ve done on the build.

Again, I apologize for the nature of this post, but I hope you all can understand the amount of effort I put into making 2 0 0 6 6 viable, and why it makes attributing the build to Sizer extremely annoying to me. Thanks.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

2/0/0/6/6 - S/D utilities (spvp)

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I’m the reigning expert (?) on this build, I guess, since I created it and have used it for well over a year.

I take Shadowstep because this build’s only real condi removal is from Infi Return (if you’re not running Lyssa), and the burst removal is extremely useful. It’s also really nice to have.

SoAgility is a fine alternative, I just don’t like it personally because 180 precision is surprisingly unhelpful, and the utility itself isn’t that great anyways compared to SS. But, again, it’s a fine alternative.

Spectrum is at least partially correct on SR- SR doesn’t work very well with the build’s talent at staying on-point. I also partially distrust the utility because a good Mesmer (or, generally, anybody with knock back/pull) can completely wreck you. That being said, it is extremely useful in teamfights, at least occasionally. In truth, it really depends on your playstyle. I fight extremely well solo IMHO and I can harass single targets very well in battles or harass groups solo, especially when there are significant terrain features (a month or two ago I was beating a group of four people solo at the trebuchet on Kylo because of some insane teleportation action). However, I refuse to fight on teams, and I can’t be managed by another person very well. So SR isn’t that great for me, but SS and RFI work very well with my playstyle. It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess.

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Theorycrafter

Thoughts on an old S/D build

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Honestly, the build sucks. You’d have to be pretty good to get a kill or two with it- is that what you mean by “really good thieves”?

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Theorycrafter

Guide to Thief Guides

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Are these forums dead or what? last updated 2 months ago, with 1 year old builds inside..

Two comments:

1. I haven’t been visiting the forums… Like, at all, these past few months. So there’s that.

2. Thief builds have literally come to a standstill, to the point where I’d say that my 10 0 0 30 30 S/D build would probably be considered “new” even though it’s over a year old because nobody plays it. There are really not any “new” builds to the extent of my knowledge, and certainly not any that deserve special mention. I think it’s extremely unfortunate for the thief community, but we’ve been in this state for a while now.

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Theorycrafter

Perplexity Runes in PvP, PLEASE NO

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Necro, Mesmer, Thief, Warrior. Each of these professions can easily stack conditions to cover confusion.

I’ve considered this for a while, and the truth is that I don’t think thieves will really be able to take advantage of these runes. S/P would have to become a hybrid damage-condi build, which justifiably IMO tend to be bad. It would certainly be worse in light of the fact that PW is getting nerfed.

P/P (the only other weaponset with CC that thief has) might be good, because of the bleed on auto. However, probably the biggest problem with the set is the lack of condi removal, which has plagued P/P forever. Furthermore, I’m not sure bleed is enough to supplement the confusion.

I’m much more interested in how Guardian and Engineer builds might be affected by these runes. Burn is a strong condi to supplement confusion, and I think engis can find some creative ways to abuse Perplexity. Rangers might also find some utility in Perplexity builds with SB and LB, though I doubt ranger perplexity builds will be as OP as those of other classes.

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Theorycrafter

r70 vs r40 - Who do you Want in your Team?

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

moot point.

no one cares about ranks, they’re pointless.

When paradigm was on top, azshene wasn’t even rank 40 (lel).

High rank means you’ve played a lot and/or farmed hotjoin by spamming granades on nifhel (cough cough), by no means i shows how skilled you are.

this at least for rank 35 +, after that it’s really totally random.

moreover plying solo and playing in a team is like sea and earth: you can be the best solo player in the world and suck kitten in team q becaues you don’t know how to rotate with your team.

Overall you can’t tell, so who cares lol.

This.

After r35 (and I might even argue r30) there’s more that goes into how well you do than just experience playing matches. Having a build that fits your play style, for instance, and that you enjoy. Understanding what makes a build or strategy strong or weak. Exploiting those weaknesses and playing to your strengths.

Then there are other factors, like being able to play with a team well, or playing solo well (for TeamQ and SoloQ, respectively). Personally, I’d much rather play with a r40 who plays slightly worse than a r70 but is open to criticism and change, whereas the r70 is an egotistical, stubborn brat. Creativity and innovation in play and buildcrafting are both important to me as well.

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Theorycrafter

Perplexity Runes in PvP, PLEASE NO

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Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I wanted to come in here and clear a few things up. We wanted to add this runeset because it will open up a lot of builds increasing build diversity.

Yeah, just like how boosting thieves’ initiative, constantly refusing to buff certain weapon sets (thief’s P/X and necro’s D/X come to mind), only patching every 4 months, whack-a-mole balance, your over-nerfing of some ele skills, and your constant over-buffing of some skills and abilities (like PW, HealSig, Dhuumfire, etc) followed by either over-nerfing or hardly nerfing at all have boosted build diversity.

And then there’s the useless community, telling ANet how its changes will only reduce build diversity, even though it’s ridiculous that something like buffing initiative would reduce build diversity by reducing the need for initiative-focused builds, and throwing out useless comments like “Warriors are heavily increasing the opportunity cost of using, for instance, Soldier’s amulet on a thief or a Mesmer”. No, those couldn’t possibly be true. I mean, just look at the huge number of builds in the meta today!

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

All thief specs are OP and have become more OP recently.

Why did no-name thieves suddenly shoot to stardom with each thief buff in recent times? It is because it became so braindead to play.

Toker? Sizer? LOL okay then. Nope, nobody ever heard of them before.

Also, are P/P and P/D OP as well? You did say all thief specs, after all. And where’s your proof? You keep saying “X is OP” but don’t provide any reasons for why X is, in fact, overpowered. It’s ridiculous. To be honest, the only reason why I’m still involved in this argument is for others to see how ridiculous people like you look for making all of these silly arguments and only supporting them by slamming your first down and saying “BUT I SAID IT’S OP SO IT MUST BE” or something to that effect.

What is the point in discussing selective skills by themselfs ? That does not promote a good argument at all. In fact indeed you should discuss used scenarios of gameplay not just “theorical… blablablabla”. Because if not you could say “mesmers got the highest mobility in the entire game.” not mentioning that their portal is once every 1 minute.

Wow, you are completely missing my point. By your argument, I could argue that literally every skill in the game is a mobility skill, because I’m not considering it by itself. Blurred Frenzy? Just use blink. Line of Warding? Judge’s Intervention. Heck… I can press W while using Combustive Shot, that must make it a mobility skill. No, you’re missing the point. People are always arguing that things like, for example, “Blink < Infi Arrow” (silly comment courtesy of Denofsin) when arguing about mobility. They don’t say “Churning Earth+Lightning Flash > Infi Arrow”, because then they’re not arguing about mobility any more, they’re arguing about damage.

As for your comment about Portal, I do consider CD’s. I also consider things like Shadow Refuge having a CD, or Shadowstep having a CD, or whatever. Honestly, I fail to see what the point of this comment (or the vast majority of your others, for that matter) is.

Again, Mesmers are able to only use portal once every 1 minute. Thiefs can e-a-s-i-l-y disengage a team fight, and they’ll even lol at being focused while evading most damage and shortbow quickly to places, so yes, excuse me when you compare “single skills” but in 95% scenarios, thiefs have the higher mobility and disengage tools.

Okay. First of all, you really need to differentiate between killing an opponent and winning a strategic battle. For instance, take bunkers: they never kill opponents, right? So if that’s the case, bunkers must be bad; even if they do catch up with fleeing thieves, they can’t kill them. Therefore, bunkers must be horrible builds. But wait! What’s the point of having a bunker in the first place? It’s to hold a point (generally, either mid or home). The idea is that, by holding the point, you can continue to gather from your point node and eventually win the game. So, you see, it doesn’t matter if the opponent flees; if he/she does, you’ve won.

As for the evasion and shortbowing all over the place… Have you ever even played the class? Shortbow doesn’t teleport you 900 units forward, it travels you to a place up to 900 units away from the place where you originally shot the arrow. Usually, in the time it takes for the arrow to land, you’ve already traveled at least half of the distance you’d usually travel by foot. D/P and S/P thieves also typically have very little access to Swiftness, further reducing their mobility, and S/D thieves have to sacrifice their evasion in order to maintain some kind of decent evasion.

Other than that, thieves are bad at keeping you from going where you want to go, but many other classes (mesmers included) can. Thieves also can’t access instant teleportation to an area (since Shadow Trap is probably the least reliable utility in the game); Mesmers can (and if the thief is somehow running over to decap your home more than once per 90s on average, you have a serious problem. Honestly, I’ve never seen this be the case even once before). I mean… At this point, I don’t even know what to say to you. Some of your comments (“Thiefs can e-a-s-i-l-y disengage a team fight”) are just wrong on a strategic basis (you could lose mid, for instance), or are just outright false in general (“in 95% scenarios, thiefs have the higher mobility and disengage tools.”) (given my comment about the 90s point-assault time). You’re going to have to give me more than just these random statistics and blatant ignorances of strategic fact in order to justify your position.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Too Much Dodge? What About Thieves?

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

  • FS- available to virtually no thief build in the current meta because of how badly S/D is looked upon. Either way, there’s a significant after cast on the skill, and (as I’ve written about recently) you can generally take out S/D just through brute force anyways (last paragraph).

I hope everyone believes you that S/D is underpowered. (laughs manically)

I never said it’s UP, I said that it’s looked down upon because of how good D/P and S/P are. Otherwise, if you take away all of the clearly OP builds in this game., I personally think that S/D is a fairly average weaponset. I’ve played it so much that I know every counter to it, and I thus have fairly good results against the weaponset with all five of my toons (including Mesmer).

“I’m bad at this game! Let’s find a scapegoat to blame all of my problems on!”

That seems to be what a pathetically large portion of unskilled mesmers are saying right now.

“I’m not OP. Everyone else is bad at this game” That seems to be what the overwhelming majority of pathetically unskilled thieves are saying right now. Reminds me of the World of Roguecraft days. God there were so many bad rogues who thought they were great. Then the class got balanced and they had kitten-fits because they realized they were actually terrible at PvP.

World of Roguecraft = GW2 today

Dude. You pretty much offered up Dagger Storm as being viable in sPvP. It ain’t.

Then you put up Hastened Replenishment and implied that it was so good and common that it should be considered in this discussion of thief initiative and thus thief evasion. Again, you stepped way out of the bounds of your knowledge.

Even Countless, who made that second vid, didn’t describe it as anything other than “taking a jab” at thief’s evasion, and now you’re trying to put it up as some kind of solid evidence that thief’s evasion is overpowered.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen you (or, at least, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you) write a post not comparing Mesmers to thieves, and then complaining about how OP thieves are. That’s pretty sad. As Evil said, you’re all claims with no evidence, just like so many other complaining Mesmers. I can make up all kinds of silly reasons why Mesmer is insanely OP and is better than every other class in the game, but I refuse to do so because I always provide some kind of evidence to base my claims on, and in this case, there would be none to support me. You, on the other hand, don’t seen quite as logically inclined.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

[NA] Curie LFTeam for Legendary Tournament.

in Looking for...

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Nettle.9025 and I are in the process of creating a team for the tournament at the moment. If you’re interested, you can mail him or I in-game (can’t reply to any messages on these forums- banning restrictions /sigh). Can’t log in right now, but if I don’t hear anything from you or Nettle by tomorrow I’ll make sure you personally send you mail in-game to see if you’re interested. The restricted playing times shouldn’t be a problem.

~Arganthium

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Too Much Dodge? What About Thieves?

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

“I’m bad at this game! Let’s find a scapegoat to blame all of my problems on!”

That seems to be what a pathetically large portion of unskilled mesmers are saying right now.

First, I’ve already discussed why that second video really can’t be taken seriously, at least, certainly not in real play.

As for the mentioned skills…

  • Withdraw- D/X thieves certainly don’t have access to this skill. Either way, I fail to see how the evade on this skill is any stronger than the Block on Shelter, the full condi cleanse on Consume Conditions, the more flexible condi cleanse on Healing Turret (combined with regeneration and allied healing), the condi cleanse, Water Field, allied heal, and regeneration on Healing Spring- whatever. In all truth, Withdraw is a somewhat average skill.
  • PW is only available to one weapon set. It’s also a root, which makes it vulnerable after the animation finishes (easier to predict how the thief is going to maneuver). The problems with PW are much deeper than just the evasion.
  • FS- available to virtually no thief build in the current meta because of how badly S/D is looked upon. Either way, there’s a significant after cast on the skill, and (as I’ve written about recently) you can generally take out S/D just through brute force anyways (last paragraph).
  • DS- an annoying skill, but it’s extremely difficult to use without instantaneously losing the strategic battle (and when I say “difficult”, I don’t mean that skilled players can do it- I mean that it’s rare that you can just use DS and still cap/decap/avoid the decapping of a point). Not to mention, the skill does virtually nonexistent damage.
  • RFI- wow, a utility on a 60s CD that gives you a 3/4s evade!?!?! OP pl0x nerf.
  • Hastened Replenishment- LOL. There is, to my knowledge, exactly one thief in sPvP that uses this trait. Ironically enough, that’s me. However, to think that the trait is used for defense by allowing you to evade is an absolutely massive mistake- the trait serves a very significant offensive purpose, as a matter of fact. Not that you’d read that anywhere or hear it from any other player.

By the way, when you saw my build a couple of months ago, which used this trait, didn’t you say that my theory crafting was “a bit off”? LOL.

Also, I could just as easily argue (about mesmer) that “no profession, no build has this much access to clones and team teleportation, and it’s pretty bad.” That doesn’t make Mes OP.

Ihales hit the nail on the head with his/her post.

Because it is their defense mechanism. They don’t have protection, stability, immunity, blocks, invulnerability, high armor and HP or any other damage mitigating ability most other classes have. And their dodging was already nerfed, they were first with engineers and rangers iirc.

Hmm… what’s that thing thieves have lots and lots of access to that allows them to escape, restart fights, gain health, remove conditions… oh yeah – Stealth.

No stability? Lyssa Runes every 45 seconds says, ‘hi’. Consume Plasma says, ‘hi’. Dagger Storm says, ‘hi’.

And armor? Please. Thieves are a medium armor class. Elementalists and Mesmers are light. So no points on that argument, either.

Stealth is virtually inaccessible to S/P and S/D. D/X has virtually no access to evasion.

You can’t get Lyssa Runes every 45 seconds with Dagger Storm, and both DS and Basi are pretty bad elites.

Consume Plasma is a profession mechanic. Distortion says hi.

Dagger Storm… Go back to PvE.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Pistol Whip is more of an anti-mobility skill- for yourself. The stun is far too short to make it any significant immobilizer, and the root is extremely harmful to a player’s own mobility.

Lolwot? Except you can literally teleport to the player while line-of-sighting him, with him unware you’re about to pop in, use PW which, by the way, evades all damage… and teleport back. So its basically a 100% no risk setup… and you’re saying its “extremely harmful to a player’s own mobility” ? wot m8?

I’m talking about specific skills here. IS might allow you to teleport, but PW in and of itself doesn’t. That’s what I’ve been discussing for a while now… Specific skills, if you saw my list. Otherwise, I could argue, for example, that Churning Earth has amazing teleporting ability without mentioning that you need Lightning Flash to teleport while using the ability. I’m saying that PW, by itself, is harmful to your mobility; chaining it with IS (preceding) and IR (afterwards) doesn’t change that. It just makes for a period of good mobility followed by nonexistent mobility followed by good mobility again, you make it sound like PW teleports you twice or something.

I’d also be much more selective about the usage of the phrase “evades all damage”… You might burn yourself when you take everything into account.

Laughable? There is a certain group of people (not me, but a significant part of the forum-going population) that believes that warriors have better mobility than thieves. I provided evidence to you that other classes have a lot of the same mobility that thieves have, so I’m not sure what’s so laughable about this outside of your outright ignorance of the comments you’re trying so hard to refute.

This certain group of people are clearly idiots. Even though warriors do come close when talking about mobility do not compare only moving skills. Just think of a team fight going on… which class has the easiest tools to simply disengage without being seen and run to far point for a decap? This needs to also be taken into account when you’re saying “mobility” else lets go ahead and chose elementalists as the best “mobility” class. Btw, the answer for the question starts with “Thi” and ends with “ef”.

Yeah, S/D can “disengage without being seen” with that insane stealth we have. Also, unless thief can now travel faster than light, I’m pretty sure that Mesmer can travel back home faster than thief can. And remember those “movement-impeding” abilities I was talking about earlier? This is where they really come in handy.

Anyways, mobility is far more useful than just for “lol letz dcap far” purposes. That you don’t acknowledge its dynamic purposes in battle (no, that doesn’t mean “its ability to run away”) is telling of your lack of any sort of strategic knowledge.

Either way, I’ve built all of my classes around mobility; thieves running off to decap a point is rarely a problem. And, of course, you can always help solve the problem by having a bunker or tank sitting on home point (or nearby).

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Area denial and movement control…Here:
(skills)

Lol?

Half of these skills are so ridiculously off from the skills I mentioned that I seriously have to doubt that you even read my post.

Choking Gas is an AoE (which is about to be nerfed anyways) that can be countered relatively easily with condi removal. Most AoE’s (that don’t directly impede movement, like Frozen Ground) aren’t even pseudo-Area Denial skills because their effects aren’t significant enough to make it worth staying out of the field. Choking Gas is far from being mobility-impeding (and it certainly doesn’t boost your own mobility).

Pistol Whip is more of an anti-mobility skill- for yourself. The stun is far too short to make it any significant immobilizer, and the root is extremely harmful to a player’s own mobility.

Body Shot? Have you ever even used this skill before? Either way, it’s virtually unusable even without it being as bad as it is because of how bad P/X builds are.

Disabling Shot falls largely into the same category as PW does, although here it’s a bit less clear. The cripple, again, is hardly meaningful, and the mobility is so lacking in versatility that it’s almost as bad as a root (especially when you consider how difficult it is to hold a point while constantly moving backwards).

Headshot? Wtf?

You even trying to compare thief mobility to that of others is what is laughable.

Laughable? There is a certain group of people (not me, but a significant part of the forum-going population) that believes that warriors have better mobility than thieves. I provided evidence to you that other classes have a lot of the same mobility that thieves have, so I’m not sure what’s so laughable about this outside of your outright ignorance of the comments you’re trying so hard to refute.

I’m not sure if you’re serious, or you really are not that versed with the burst potential of a fresh air ele…

I’m stating facts. The largest portion of the “burst” comes from other skills and from stat allocation, not from a relatively measly 0.7/1.9 damage coefficient across one/two skills. Otherwise, just about any build in the game could be considered a burst build.

The point is, with other berserker builds vs thief…you need to set up your burst.

Are you saying that thieves don’t have to set up their bursts?

Accompanied by the many “outs” a thief has to respond to the largely telegraphed burst it isn’t even a comparison.

I spent three paragraphs (two of which you admittedly ignored) talking about how those “highly telegraphed bursts”, by necessity, cannot be “highly telegraphed”- certainly not as highly telegraphed as you seem to imply.

As for “outs”, thief has literally only two direct defensive mechanics (outside of stat allocation): stealth and evasion. We all know what stealth’s problems are, and either way, only D/P has any significant access to stealth. As for evasion, S/P builds quite patently have a serious lack of evasion due to most other meta builds due to their lack of access to the Acro trait line and their lack of vigor. As for S/D’s “outs”, again, I addressed that in the two paragraphs you completely ignored.

The thief will avoid the burst potential from other berserker builds at a larger rate than the other way around. Conversely a thief will land their burst at a higher rate because of the shorter turn around times on their set up. Hey…I missed my pistol whip steal…I’ll just use it again and use inf sig to land it. I would assume someone claiming to be at your level would understand this.

Claiming to be at my level? What level is that? I’m not sure what you’re referring to here.

Thieves also have just about as much access to burst as any other burst build in the game: eles can access Fresh Air virtually whenever. Mind Wrack has an extremely short CD and doesn’t interfere with your personal abilities (it doesn’t have a cast time), and Phantasms’ skills have CDs completely separate from your own. Burst engineers have a huge number of resources to pull from in order to burst, and is much more able to land their burst (with the amount of CC they have). Also, how many times do you see a thief stealing and using PW and then consecutively doing the same thing with Infi Signet? Personally, I rarely see this- the initiative loss from PW is pretty large for this to happen so quickly, and the root is a significant impediment to being able to use the skill again so quickly.

I don’t know where you are going with this. Same with your next section.

Really?

The point is that your statement is ultimately self-contradictory: if burst builds are predictable, then they should naturally be able to be countered by defensive mechanics with ease and thus should not exist… (etc etc)

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I take it from your follow up session that your “evidence” consists of listing abilities. I can list abilities as well, but I’ll differ to the people who have already listed them.

What did you want me to post? An in-depth analysis of why of those abilities provides mobility or decreases enemy mobility and is thus relevant to your question

Feel free to offer up some suggestions and videos on how as any other profession you get to bring the same mobility and impact for your team as any other berserker build compared to that of an S/D thief.

I don’t understand you…“HEY GIVE ME EVIDENCE!” When asked for evidence to support your position, “I’ve provided it previously”

I gave you a source to look for what you wanted to find (or, given what your comments have consisted of as of late, what you didn’t want to find). I then proceeded to provide additional evidence to answer your question that did not involve providing a source to look at.

I guess we’re just going to list abilities now…I just have to laugh at that one.

Sorry? I fail to see how answering your request for “suggestions… on how as any other profession you get to bring the same mobility… as any other berserker build compared to that of an S/D thief” with a series of abilities that show how other professions can get the same amount of mobility as an S/D thief is laughable.

Are you saying Fresh Air has large telegraphs? Or are you saying you think I said that eles do have large telegraph?

Sorry, I guess I missed the memo that we were now considering Electric Discharge (with an incredible damage coefficient of 0.7!1!!1) a “burst” skill. Even with Lightning Strike (which becomes significantly more predictable after the attunement change and Electric Discharge), you’re still hitting for less than a Level 1 Eviscerate.

Not sure what point this served

A misunderstanding.

And there’s the problem having this discussion with you…with the large telegraphs of other professions burst, the s/d thief though not “perma-evasion” is near “perma-evasion” to avoid too much of the burst of other professions.

Imagine you bursted at random times (as opposed to specific times) while fighting a thief. Now, say that the thief evades (for example) 50% of all damage (which is being extremely optimistic- or pessimistic, depending on your point of view). Are you implying that you would hit your bursts 50% of the time when you burst at random, but almost never when you burst at specific times? Because if that’s the case (with largely non-telegraphed bursts, granted), then you’ve got a serious problem with your skill level.

Now, we could go back to this argument about telegraphed bursts, but again, how many bursts are really that telegraphed? And how often is that telegraph a problem? I provided you reasons why the telegraph on Mind Wrack isn’t always a bad thing (and can sometimes be a good thing). I gave you an example of a burst on Guardian that was extremely quick. I mean… If bursts are so telegraphed, then why do burst builds even exist? Bursts, by definition, are few and far between, and most builds have evasion/vigor, protection, Distortion, teleportation, invuln, etc. as defensive mechanics in their kitten nal. Bursts have to be fairly rapid in their consecutive executions in order to overcome these mechanics, but then they stop becoming burst builds and are much closer to GC/DPS builds, and if that’s the case, then that “burst damage” stops becoming burst damage and simply starts becoming a build’s regular damage.

The point is that your statement is ultimately self-contradictory: if burst builds are predictable, then they should naturally be able to be countered by defensive mechanics with ease and thus should not exist, unless those bursts get closer together- but then they stop being burst builds, by their very definition, and it becomes impossible for S/D thief to “evade” all of those bursts, because that burst becomes regular damage. Obviously, though, burst builds do exist, and they can be dangerous to S/D thieves (just look at how good S/P is against S/D). As a result, you have to contradict yourself by saying that bursts are not very highly telegraphed or are extremely difficult to evade in general, in which case, my argument reverts back to the first of these last three paragraphs.

The problem with having discussions with people like you is that you have ONE horse in this race; others have 8.

I guess you must’ve missed the part where I said that I play 5 different professions consistently (and the only reason I don’t play more is because I don’t have the real-life money or the in-game money to buy three more character slots).

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

(edited by Arganthium.5638)

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

So, you’re saying the match up of Sizer vs Helseth isn’t proof in one statement and then saying it is proof to support your position in the next?

C’mon, man, just read what I said. I said that it isn’t evidence that S/D is OP in one sentence, and then stated that, if anything, it is evidence to the contrary in another sentence.

Also, I’m not sure what this “evidence” you’re referring to is.

People have given you reasons as to why it is strong, you just choose not to listen.

Those arguments mean absolutely nothing without the evidence to back them up.

Compared to all other berserker builds S/D is still strong. Feel free to offer up some suggestions and videos on how as any other profession you get to bring the same mobility and impact for your team as any other berserker build compared to that of an S/D thief.

I’ve written lots about this in the past, you can just go through my past posts if you’re really that interested. You also neglect to mention that thief is terrible at impeding enemy mobility outside of one, maybe two skills. Just a few examples, though…

Mesmer- has nearly the same amount of mobility via Blink, Portal, Phase Retreat, and Curtain (if you’re a Focus user). Can also largely impede enemy mobility via CC, immobilize, cripple, chill (for certain disruption builds). Has a longer attack range than thief (1200 versus our maximum 900).

Guardian- can have a lot of mobility via Flashing Blade/LoFaith (for Sword and GS users, respectively) combined with JI. Can also impede mobility via CC and area-denial.

Elementalist- has a ton of mobility/mobility-impeding skills, such as:

  • Lightning Flash
  • Burning Retreat
  • Frozen Ground
  • Gust
  • Windborne Speed
  • Static Field
  • Unsteady Ground
  • Shockwave
  • Burning Speed
  • Frozen Burst
  • Shocking Aura (sometimes)
  • Magnetic Grasp/ Leap
  • Frost Aura (sometimes)
  • RTL
  • Updraft
  • Earthquake

And so on.

Anyways, hopefully you’re getting the point now.

Outside of an elementalist every other berserker profession has huge telegraphs to their burst.

Lol what? Eles don’t have large telegraphs to their bursts?

It also depends on what you mean by “telegraphs”. For example, I could argue that my guardian’s JI+Smite Condition+VoJustice+Zealot’s Defense burst isn’t highly telegraphed, since you can’t predict it before it happens (but once it does, it is easy to see). Telegraphs aren’t always bad, either: Mind Wrack’s “telegraph” can sometimes be beneficial by allowing you to stack bursts consecutively so that it becomes impossible to evade all of them.

An S/D has so many options to handle that (between teleports and evasions). You’re hardly going to be able to lock down an S/D thief as any other berserker build. If you don’t have random AoE flying around, you’re not hitting them with your burst.

S/D is hardly able to be considered a “burst” build in the first place. The only attack it has with a decently high coefficient is LS, and LS is always preceded by FS anyways. If nothing else, that is a massive telegraph. Otherwise, the weapon coefficients on other skills aren’t nearly high enough to qualify them as being bursts.

If you have “random AoE flying around” to attack an S/D thief, you’re countering the thief incorrectly. There are multiple points during the thief’s attacks where he’s vulnerable (i.e. during IS, at the end of FS, etc.). That’s taking the more difficult route, though. I just prefer the “brute force” method where I basically put pressure on the thief as I would against any other class. The thief doesn’t have some kind of perms-evasion on, and since most of the damage coefficients are relatively low, you can survive and thrive just by going up to the thief and using your attacks regularly.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

S/D is still ridiculously overpowered because it does massive damage whilst be even harder to target than a bunker guardian is. Any build dishing out massive damage should be balanced around the fact that the other team can counter play it by focusing that target. S/D this is impossible. That is why it is still really overpowered.

Show me one vid (post December 10th) where this is the case. I can crush S/D thieves on any of my five toons. S/D is extremely easy to focus, especially since cripple, chill, and immobilize are all devastating against the build. Its sole defensive mechanic isn’t even that strong- certainly hardly any stronger than, for example, protection, given the damage loss required to maintain large amounts of evasion, and the fact that it is S/D’s only defensive mechanic.

Even if the build is harder to kill than a bunker, it certainly isn’t harder to defeat- you can easily decap/cap against an S/D build.

S/D compared to S/P and D/P may not be too strong, but it certainly is relative to other berserker builds.

Really? Why is that? You people are quick to make these kinds of claims, but there’s literally nothing to support them. I run zerker on all of my toons, and I can still beat S/D builds. Heck, the only argument I’ve ever seen for S/D being “OP” was a tournament in which Helseth was supposedly getting destroyed by Sizer, who was constantly harassing him. In reality, if you took three seconds to analyze the gameplay (rather than say “look! Sizer is 1v1’ing Helseth! Therefore S/D is OP”, as most people did when they saw the vid), you’d find that the battle between the mesmer and Sizer was very even, perhaps even in Helseth’s favor when you consider the fact that Sizer was doing nothing for his team.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I doubt anet will nerf lyssa runes, which actually would help the game a ton seen as all the OP builds (all warrior and thief) totally abuse these runes.

Yeah, because having a full-out condi clear (like some other classes, such as engineer and guardian) while also having a severe lack of traits and utilities that condi clear (or clear only very specific condis) as well as some generally ineffective boons for 5 seconds in exchange for a terrible elite and four wasted abilities on runes… Talk about OP’ness right there.

The thing to remember is that (imo) the best 3 roamer builds in the game are thief. S/p, S/d and D/p are all too strong right now. You can’t just nerf pistol whip into oblivion because it doesn’t solve the problem. The problem is way deeper than that.

Woah, wait- S/D is “too strong” right now? When was the last time you saw an S/D thief in tournament play? For me, well over half a year ago. I still play the weapon set because I enjoy it, but you just don’t see the weapon set being used in tournament play any more. Though if you’d like to provide some other type of “proof” that S/D is “too strong”, I’d be happy to show you the evidence I’ve provided to the contrary. Even Helseth can’t seem to find any argument against S/D outside of just shouting at people like me.

I would love to see them just hit around 10 thief skills/utilities. I still think if this happened thief would be more than viable. It is so inherently strong that anet shouldn’t, in theory, be concerned with overnerfing it.

Such as?

The only way I would accept thief not being nerfed in the upcoming patch is if lyysa runes receive a big nerf. Removing stab and aegis does only a little. I would like to see the 6th part be put on a 70 second icd. This alone would make thieves require a ton more skill to be used profitably. No “second wind” from lyysa runes being abused.

Thieves suffer from condis (especially movement-impeding conditions) way more than every other class in the game. I’d be okay with the buffs being removed (or condis being turned into buffs), but to put a 70s ICD on the 6th ability would kill thief. We generally have pretty terrible condi removal (especially since IR was given an insanely long cast time), and we already have to sacrifice a lot just to accept taking Lyssa in the first place. Personally, if it wasn’t for the condi clear, I would much rather take either Ogre’s or Scholar’s.

With the fact that all thieve specs are OP, I actually like the idea to just nerf their profession mechanic. A nerf to steal would be a really good change for the game.

Yeah, P/P, P/D, SB, and S/D builds are all super OP.

How would a nerf to steal help you? You seem to be largely claims without evidence or reasoning, and to be honest, I fail to see how such a linear mechanic like Steal makes thief specs “OP”.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Best stream Na

in Community Creations

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

So playing S/P now qualifies as “top tier thief gameplay”?

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

How to get into the leaderboard

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Pretty much what Chase and Locuz said. Especially once you start getting 4 out of 5 matches being Skyhammer and your teams zerg all of the points.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Pistol Whip

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

A significant portion of the thief community (myself included) disagreed with the initiative regeneration buff. We argued that it would create multiple powerhouse specs while giving little advantage to building to boost initiative. At this point, I think that our prediction has come into full fruition with the ridiculous domination of S/P in the thief meta, as well as the 10 30 0 0 30 spec, which focuses entirely on utilizing that extra initiative we’ve received while doing tons of damage. On the other hand, some of the other changes (like the “.25s” cast on Infi Return- which is more like 1s- and the pushing of Assassin’s Reward to a GM trait in return for a virtually nonexistent buff to scaling with Healing Power) of the December 10th patch have been extremely harmful to build diversity, and, again, the domination of certain specs in higher-level sPvP play shows this to be true.

Anyways, I personally think that S/P is really only slightly OP, in reality (not like 400-500-HPS-OP’ness). However, it’s so stupidly easy to play that I absolutely despise the weapon set. I’ve seen a number of bad thieves turned into “pros” just by PW-spamming. D/P is equally bad as well, especially with the December 10th patch. The only thief spec that requires any skill whatsoever (relatively speaking), S/D, has been nearly killed by the absolute domination of S/P and D/P. I’m probably going to run S/D for the Legends tournament, but that’s more an act of habit and rebellion than it is a try to win the tournament, per se.

That being said, Thedenofsin continues to blatantly ignore some of the facts about thieves in general. Warriors, for instance, are still extremely good at killing thieves, but just about any class can kill them either way (I’ve killed warriors on my 5 toons- thief, mesmer, engineer, guardian, and elementalist). Spamming PW is also a one-way ticket to losing initiative (both the resource as well as a “fighting initiative”- being on the offense). And, as I’ve said many times before, the Sword autos on thief all have long casts/aftercasts. Jumper largely based his play style around taking advantage of certain parts of the cast times (though that still didn’t make up for the disadvantages of having the cast times), but S/P can’t really take advantage of those casts like S/D can.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

(NA) r42 guard/engie looking for team

in Looking for...

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Are you looking for a permanent team or just a temporary team (for the upcoming tournament)?

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

[EU/NA] lf Team for Tournament of Legends

in Looking for...

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Hi,
I’m LFTeam as well. In case you don’t happen to find a team, you can contact me in-game and we can form a team together (I’m NA). I main a thief, though I can also play mesmer (virtually any build), guardian (I specialize in DPS guard though), engineer, and elementalist.

~Arganthium

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

[NA] mez lfg for the legendary tourney in may

in Looking for...

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

If you happen not to find a team, I’m LFTeam as well and we could create one together. I personally main a thief but can play mesmer, guardian, engineer, and ele as well. Depends on what kind of a team you’re looking for.

Otherwise, good luck!

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Tournament of Legends

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Were people this mad when they made a $10,000.00 tournament? That was for real money, did the pve community cry then? The winning team could have bought a few legendary weapons with the winnings. So why so much crying now? The best 5 players this time don’t get money, or graphics cards, or any real world loot. They win a legendary weapon that arena net owns, that they get to show off. Personally if I was one of the top pvp players I would rather have another chance at the $10,000.00 not some legendary.

Big difference. If someone buys legendaries on the TP someone else spent the effort to build them. Here Anet pulls 10 legendaries (5 NA, 5 EU) out of nowhere.

Now I know why you are so worked up about this. You are actually proud of being one of the guys with most Achievement Points in the game, as if the Achievements themselves were actually challenging to get.

10 people will come out of this tournament with a Legendary. And I can stand by this claim that they will be in fact, worthy of one. Can you say the same about the PvE method of getting Legendaries? Where a skilled individual might try for years and not get one sight of a precursor, where a bowbear comes along and gets first shot first suceed at getting a precursor? Where’s the effort/worthiness there huh?

Whenever I see a guy walking by with a Legendary in PvE, I’m not impressed. But you’re kitten right I’m gonna be impressed when I see a guy walking with a Legendary in PvP. That shows what he has done, and what he is capable of.

Of course this whole scenario will be flushed down the toilet when Anet allows for skin-cross over between PvE and PvP. Then the 10 legendaries in PvP will mean absolutely nothing to the infinite-spam of PvE legendaries, created through luck and mindless grinding.

you got it all wrong, I am not impressed by winning a tournament in GW2 at this point either, maybe if it was done without using any meta builds, but wait for it. sPvP in this game doesnt require any player skill.

If that’s the case, why don’t you prove it by competing in the tournament?

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Thief Vs Mesmer

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

The fact that a lot of the best mesmers in the game have to switch to other classes in tournament play says a lot.

As does the fact that some of the “top Mesmers” (like Helseth) continue to get smashed or play like complete noobs no matter what class they’re on.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Tournament of Legends

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Another anet hosted tournament after a ‘huge’ balance patch.

/facepalm

Which is why I’m only looking for a team for this tournament. The balance looks pretty terrible tbh, but there’s a pretty nice reward here and no big risk since you can play the tournament from home on a single weekend.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Tournament of Legends

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Can we get details on who will be able to enter the tournament? I wasn’t able to enter PAX last year, and I’d be pretty disappointed if I couldn’t enter this this year.

Otherwise, I’m glad that ANet is giving PvP’ers real rewards.

Secondly, I am a bit annoyed just because all they did was to play what they enjoyed the most (PvP)

Wow, how dare ANet give rewards to people for doing something they enjoy?

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

(edited by Arganthium.5638)

Thief Vs Mesmer

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Haha, the sole purpose of the “poking fun at gw2” video was to take a jab at how much dodge thieves had access too. You’re kinda going overboard with assuming I was trying to make a build for thief just for that video. :P

Countless

No, I’m just saying that you can’t use that video to also say that thieves have a ton of defense as well, realistically speaking. The first time I watched it, I thought it was pretty funny, but I didn’t think that it was meant seriously enough to actually be used in an argument.

Idk, man. I guess I’m just sick of people totally underrating mesmer and then using thief as a scapegoat for all of their problems.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Thief Vs Mesmer

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

^ Yeah you’re right, low survivability.

Countless

I respect you as a player, Countless, but not as a theoretician or a strategist. For a build that was clearly designed totally to be defensive and evasive, my (granted, somewhat superficial, but nonetheless relatively accurate) calculations showed that you had an 82.5% evade uptime. Undoubtedly, that’s pretty high- that’s inarguable. Yet, given that the damage output from that build was virtually nonexistent, and the fact that you had to sacrifice a whole lot of resources (all of your initiative, endurance, heal, and utility). At best, in the context of how little damage/control you had, the lack of defensive ability (inherent in being a thief) outside of evasion, and the huge risk you would run in a match of getting off point and losing ticks on one, I would say that your video shows a great example of a possible bunker build but one that ultimately would be weaker than any bunker guardian build.

Your video shows a build that is severely deficient in damage and point control, and contains serious weaknesses that would be exploitable by any half-decent player. It also lacks the proper ability to stay on-point at any given time. Of course, you could try to establish that this much evasion is a hallmark of thief builds in general. That’s grossly inaccurate; virtually all D/X and P/X builds have absolutely nothing to give them additional evasion on top of base, except, possibly, from Bountiful Theft, but that’s been nerfed to the point where BT’s vigor is highly unreliable. You could go a bit deeper and say that Sword builds have high evasive abilities, but the same thing applies to S/P that applies to D/X and P/X, particularly given that the standard S/P build is 10 30 0 0 30. So the only real weapon set that you can make this argument for is S/D, but S/D is becoming increasingly more uncommon in today’s meta anyways, and S/D builds can’t evade as much as the build you showed could because FS chains into a non-evasive skill (unlike Disabling Shot). Furthermore, that 17.5% “window of opportunity” (and that’s being extremely pessimistic about how large that “window” is, given my previous argument) is much more significant since S/D practically requires high DPS, low stat-survivability in order to word. There’s also the after cast on the auto attack and FS that make the build vulnerable as well. The net result is that you really can’t argue from that video that thief has any efficient level of survivability (certainly not from evasion, and not in sPvP, either).

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Thief Vs Mesmer

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

I’ll just summarize your post:

Why play a mesmer when a thief (which- we are going to assume- fulfills the same roll) has better:

  • Burst
  • Mobility
  • Stealth

And to summarize Den’s points:

Thieves are (again, supposedly) better in that:

  • PW is better than Blurred Frenzy
  • Shadow Trap is better than Portal
  • Shadow Refuge is better than Mass Invis
  • Infi Strike is better than iLeap
  • Thief’s auto on sword deals more damage
  • Shortbow 5 is better than Blink

So first, to address Grim…

1. OK, so I don’t have any doubts at this point that S/P and D/P specs are incredibly easy to play for the reward that they give. However, are they really better than Mesmer’s burst? That’s a very different question. Yes, clones have to run up to opponents. However, just as there are disadvantages to this, there are also very strong advantages to this. For example, an evade during a Mind Wrack is less likely to evade the full burst, which is untrue of other burst attacks in the game, and using Diversion can interrupt your opponent three times in a row. Also, while clones are running towards an opponent, it is possible (if I remember correctly) to generate more clones that will not explode while those other clones are running towards the opponent, meaning that you could potentially have 6 clones up (three of which are about to burst) in battle. This allows you to “mix and match” bursts by using, for example, Mind Wrack to use up an opponent’s evade and then iZerker once your opponent’s defenses go down. Otherwise, the fact that there is no cast time on using burst skills and the fact that you have very strong burst has great synergy with your class mechanic is hard to overlook.

And if you’re going to talk about thief burst builds, please, for the sake of Zhaitan, do not use S/D as an example of a thief burst build. At best, it’s GC, but far from being burst. I’d also like to see a video of you using S/D, and for you to reconcile how “amazing” the weapon set is with the fact that very few people are using the set any more (one of the most prominent modern S/D users, Sizer, was recently asked by his team to swap to D/P. That should tell you something).

2. I’m pretty sure that’s more of a problem with teammates than with the skill itself. Otherwise, on my build (linked in my sig) I often get roughly the same amount of mobility in my build as a thief, and can significantly impede enemy mobility (which my thief can’t do) as well.

3. Most people consider a reliance on stealth to be a disadvantage. Either way, mesmer has lots of defense through a wide variety of defensive mechanics, such as BFrenzy, strategically using your shatters, interrupts, and so on. However, I do think that SRefuge should have its CD increased to 75s. Otherwise (for reasons I can expand upon later) I think that SRefuge is well-balanced, as is Mass Invisibility.

Now on to Den:

1. That’s a difficult thing to determine. PW, for instance, is worse as a defensive skill. It also typically has an effectively longer “cool down” than BF does because of how hard it is to land. PW also has a significantly longer animation, and a much more resilient root as well.

2. Shadow Trap bugs literally all the time. It’s way too unreliable to be used much, and isn’t very flexible either. I haven’t seen anybody use this utility in the last half a year, and for a good reason.

3. See point 3 to Grim.

4. If it’s better, it’s only because iLeap is bugged, and that isn’t a problem with IS. Otherwise, iLeap has an effectively shorter cast time, produces a clone, has a 2x longer immobilize, applies cripple, has an immob that is harder to evade (since Swap can be used at any time), is a pseudo-stunbreaker, and is way better for setting up combos. On the other hand, IS has somewhat lackluster damage, and is extremely costly to just use whenever. It also has a more impeding cast time, especially when IR is taken into account. It’s also rare that it will bring you back into safety, unless you either have 1. very good positioning or 2. your opponents are idiots. Typically, no matter what class I play, I can instantaneously catch up with a thief that has used IR. Also, you should really stop using the “lol haz no CD is there4 OP” excuse that you’ve been using, otherwise we can start talking about how strong clones, Virtues, DS, etc are.

5. Thief’s auto also is less fluid and has longer cast/aftercast times.

6. How? SB 5 isn’t a stun breaker and doesn’t have an instant cast. It also requires you to use up a weapon slot, which is far worse than using up a utility slot. It’s also bad to use in-combat, particularly because of how it requires you to swap to your utility weapon, SB.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

5v4 15+ wins in a row

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

A week ago a SoloQ team I was on was losing badly. The score got to ~250-498 when one of the other players suddenly dropped out.

We won the game by holding a constant 3-cap and not dying once. That’s ridiculous.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

best stat hands down

in Guardian

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Power is, mathematically speaking, by far the most powerful stat in the game. Even if you’re an ele (with the lowest base health and base defense), power will amplify your play far more than any other stat. It’s honestly a mathematical fact.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

At this rate Anet might delete PvP......

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Countless,

Yes, I did say that. I also said in that post that we are investigating ways that we can get proper metrics to reflect the majority of the playerbase. If you knew the amount of players that actually played PvP in our game, then you would understand why a strawpoll with 300 votes is not sufficient.

That’s not to say that we don’t talk about it internally. We talk about it quite a lot.

If the issue was as simple as me making a strawpoll, I’d do it; but it’s not. A very, very small percentage of our playerbase even visit these forums, let alone vote on a poll.

Well, you’d figure there might be a problem when your entire SoloQ team (yourself included) agrees to go AFK during a match on Skyhammer.

The problem, Allie, is that your comment is completely empty; there have, to my knowledge, never been any statistics taken by asking the player base questions in-game, as you seem to imply. Furthermore, such an action seems unlikely to ever occur, and with good reason, due to the difficulty of being able to take these statistics. As a result, you have to rely upon some other source to tell you that Skyhammer is bad. This community has been screaming these reasons out to ANet, and yet we obviously continue to be ignored, as our reasoning receives no response from ANet and Skyhammer is still part of SoloQ.

Also, let me add that if after a year and a half of this game’s release ANet still can’t find “ways that we can get proper metrics to reflect the majority of the player base”, and that’s what ANet is balancing based upon, then it’s highly unlikely this game will ever be balanced. This statement also doesn’t make sense in the context of something Justin said…

Chaith.8256 is right though, a lot of those changes were in response to what the playerbase wanted at the time.

I do have reason to believe that the straw poll is faulty, but the methods that ANet has been using are just as lackluster.

EDIT: my last comment was said due to sampling bias and a lack of random spreading. Silvermember was spot on with his analogy with the Fortune magazine.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

(edited by Arganthium.5638)

My body is ready

in PvP

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Anybody that thinks that is what is going to happen I feel sorry for them. At best they will make it account bound and then end the transmute to white to unbound it. Doing that will completely destroy the market and anet doesn’t intentionally do it.

Yep. ANet does a pretty good job with balancing the economy when necessary, and they’re certainly not going to just drop the price of Infinite Light. It certainly won’t be selling for 850g even if the sword becomes sellable, anyways.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Best theif build currently?

in Thief

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Can be used for both. Not sure I’d credit it to Caed though, think somebody else may have created the build. Not sure though.

Anyhow, my analysis on different thief builds (based on weapon sets and trait distribution)…

Weaponsets

D/P and S/P- both ridiculously overpowered for what incredibly little skill their builds require. Easily the two best thief weapon sets the class has. Great for bursters.

S/D- far more difficult to play than D/P or S/P, though certainly no more difficult than any other “difficult” build in the game (and all of the most “difficult” builds in the game that aren’t completely UP are pretty easy to play anyways). Good for bruisers.

P/D- just a terrible weapon set (though not as bad as P/P). This weapon set will never be good in any game mode. Won’t even grace this abomination with any more of a description.

P/P- won’t even grace this disgusting nonsense with any description whatsoever.

Trait setups

25 30 0 0 15- the build that nobody uses any more. It’s still pretty good, but its damage focuses more on stats than trait allocation, as is the case with 10 30 0 0 30.

X X 30 X X- just a completely unskilled build that’s only good for noobs in WvW that have ascended gear and would otherwise wimp out with any other build.

X X (Anything other than 30 or 0) X X- see above. Slightly less wimpy, but still pretty unskillful.

10 30 0 30 0- an S/D setup. Pretty easy to play IMO.

0 30 0 30 10- another S/D setup. Also pretty easy to play, though not as much as
10 30 0 30 0.

10 30 0 0 30- a setup that can be used with S/D, S/P, D/D, or D/P. Probably the more skillful than 10 30 0 30 0 and 0 30 0 30 10 (assuming you’re running S/D), though S/P and D/P builds with this setup are just… Ridiculous. Any D/P or S/P build running these traits is probably going to be the best thief build the profession has at the moment.

10 0 0 30 30- another S/D setup. Roughly as skillful as 10 30 0 0 30, maybe slightly less (but more so than 0 30 0 30 10). These S/D builds are fun and solid but ultimately worse than 10 30 0 0 30 D/P or S/P.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Perma Swift. Perma pain

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Warrior mobility is fine and working as intended.

Read this :

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap

Particularly : A leap is a skill mechanic that causes the user to rapidly move forward a certain distance. This may be to attack an enemy target, move to a targeted area, or move to an ally. Leap skills are used for positioning and thus control in battle.

Due to the rapid movement, leap skills can move the player out of the range of an attack similar to dodging.

Nobody said that it wasn’t working as intended, just that the intentions aren’t justifiable.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter

Back after 8 months - S/D - No chance?

in Thief

Posted by: Arganthium.5638

Arganthium.5638

Thank you for the writeup.

So I am right in saying that the advantage of this build is basically the ability to bunker a point better than the other meta trait setups.

I agree that this setup is indeed a very “bruisery” type setup. However, this leads me to another question. What advantage does this build have over say a Warrior, the current meta bruiser, in a team, and why would/should a team take a 10/0/0/30/30 thief over say a 10/0/30/0/30 hambow warrior, or 15/0/25/0/30 Axe Warrior? The ability to strip boons is nice, but I get the feeling it lacks in all other aspects that can be expected from a warrior for the bruiser type role.

Lack of proper stability for resses/stomps is also not ideal, and I am not sure how much of a beating it can take if the bunker needs to step off point for a second.

To be completely honest, I don’t think that there’s any (or much) reason to run a 10 0 0 30 30 thief over a warrior. Hell, I don’t even think that there’s a good reason to run any S/D thief in place of a warrior, and I think that D/P and S/P are well on their way to going out the window and replaced by warrior builds or some other class’s builds. Today, I think that S/D is a great fun build, but against proper play it fails because of some theoretical disadvantage if your opponent plays a good build. The only thing that thief has that some warriors don’t is mobility (which is great for team fighting a node decapping), but some warriors already have as much if not more mobility than thieves anyways.

Anyways, that’s about as optimistic as I can be.

Thanks for all your replies guys, really eager to get back playing after such a long time now.

Arganthium, i understand when people want to keep their original/self-designed builds under wraps a bit but would you be able to give me any indication of the exact traits you use in 10,0,0,30,30 build? It’s so different to anything I’ve played with S/D & SB before – feel like due to being so rusty at the moment it’s a good time to try some fresh styles of play.

Thanks

I have a link to my current build in the “Guide to Thief Guides” stickied on this forum.

You can also swap AR for Quick Pockets and the run two S/D sets, or trade out Hastened Replenishment for Sleight of Hand.

Thief|Mesmer|
Theorycrafter