Guild Wars 2

Just put on HealSig.

Do you have any idea what the coefficient on Final Thrust is? If the animation was any quicker, it’d be an absolutely monstrous skill.

I think this would be a good idea.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Arganthium.5638:

I’d support as 10s, maybe 15s CD increase. It’s an extremely powerful utility for its CD.

So is portal, but that’s on a 1 minute cooldown too. Anything more than that and it’s in Elite Skill category.

Portal has a 90s CD (which can in fact increase).

Veil has a 90s CD, Illusion of Life has a 130s(? On my phone atm) CD, Mist Form has a 75s CD, Sanctuary has a 120s CD… Shadow Refuge is far from being in the “elite skill category”.

I’d support as 10s, maybe 15s CD increase. It’s an extremely powerful utility for its CD.

DaShi.1368:

Arganthium.5638:

People go for offensive setups because it’s theoretically better. Sure, at lower levels, people like I take zerker simply because it adds a bit more edge to our play as well as a “fun” factor. Even at higher levels, though, theory suggests that Zerkers is the best amulet for a lot of classes and builds. For example, virtually every thief build must run zerker in order to avoid becoming an UP Warrior. Many Mesmer builds must run zerker in order to maximize the utility of their skills. Objectively speaking, power amplifies your damage input/output more than any other stat in the game, so there’s that that you have to consider as well.

This theory works in PvE where monsters either one shot you or don’t do enough damage to warrant a defense. Berserkers are the best choice because toughness and vitality don’t matter much.

In sPvP, it’s a different story. sPvP is more about outlasting the other guy. The only builds that come close to one shotting are berserkers and that’s against other berserkers. Also, bunkers may not have as much damage as berserkers; but against berserkers, bunkers feel like damage kings.

This is the root of your problem. I don’t base my theory crafting on PvE, thank you. I’m almost a purely sPvP-dedicated player. I only play PvE for Living World achievements and rewards every once in a while. When I compare stats, I do so mathematically; there’s a very noticeable effect of different stats on offense and defense.

In sPvP, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that you should outlast the other player. You seem to be one of those “defense is the best offense” people. Well, you’re wrong. Defense is, undoubtedly, important, at least against very, very strong and balanced competition. However, offense is always the necessary route to victory; you can’t just play defensively and suddenly- ta da! your opponent is downed. That’s not playing defensively, that’s playing offensively. No, no; in sPvP, the objective is to capture as many points as possible. In order to do so, there are many strategies, some offensive and some defensive. Most teams, though, don’t run 5 bunker guards; they’re fairly offensively-oriented overall.

1. Berserker vs Berserker = short fight. Victory usually goes to the highest skilled.

2. Bunker vs Bunker = long fight. Victory usually goes to the highest skilled.

3. Bunker vs Berserker = short to medium fight. Victory usually goes to the bunker regardless of players’ skill level.

You’re terribly misinformed. Zerker vs Zerker fights can often last long, as a matter of fact, due to the fact that each player knows the damage of the other. This, however, depends on the matchup.

In Bunker vs Bunker, nobody wins. Ever. It’s virtually impossible for a mid-range damage dealer or tank to kill a bunker (I know this from my experience running Soldier’s on my thief), so it’s completely impossible for one bunker to kill another. Furthermore, if two bunkers are fighting each other on a point that’s capped, one side is clearly doing something very, very wrong.

In Zerker vs Bunker, Zerker usually wins, as a matter of fact. Toughness and Vitality scale far worse than power does, and there are many, many more ways to stack damage then there are to stack defensive stats. You’ve obviously never talked to a professional player; I can guarantee you that they are in agreement with me (at least in that zerker builds should be able to kill bunkers).

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just because we don’t have any plans to remove skyhammer from solo arena right now, doesn’t mean we aren’t kicking around ideas. I can’t get into much detail about it, but we’re trying to figure out how to measure it’s effect on solo arena.

I love how this is such a typical ANet response. Keep everything extremely vague in order to keep the concerned pacified while the devs do less for the game than the players do (just look at the Balance forum). There is absolutely no transparency here, and quite frankly, it’s extremely frustrating for those of us that are actually concerned about this game. The next balance patch, from what we’ve been hearing, is still ages away (though, not surprisingly, even a rough time frame is difficult to determine due to ANet’s policy of keeping everything as vague as possible), and people want to know that things are going to change for the better if they actually have to wait for that long. These types of responses are not helpful to the community whatsoever.

Unfortunately, one straw poll of 300ish people is a very, very small amount of our active player base. It may not seem like we have many people playing because we are all spread over different servers, but our active numbers are much, much bigger than that.

You don’t need a straw poll in order to determine that certain classes/builds have a massive theoretical advantage over others on that terrible map. Sure, keep it in hot join; hot join is meant to have fun, and even though the map is poorly designed, at least it can be enjoyable. However, SoloQ is meant to be competitive. The entire point of balance is to give classes equal footing. However, Skyhammer goes completely against this idea, and gives some classes a massive advantage over others. For instance, thief is nearly inviable on Skyhammer, because of its lack of stability and CC, as well as its frequent reliance on skills like Withdraw, Roll for Initiative, and Shadowstep that call for a more open and less hazardous battleground. On the other hand, engis and warriors are able to get tons of CC’ing ability via AoE stability and lots of knock backs/pulls. If SoloQ is going to be held as a “competitive” game mode (which is a pretty terrible joke even without Skyhammer due to the ridiculous ranking system) then maps like Skyhammer have to go.

…Sorry if that sounded ominous.

When doesn’kitten

Chaos Archangel.5071:

…

• Chaos V – With DE, Debilitating Dissipation is just too good to pass up. I feel it actually offers better defense (both for yourself AND allies) than Illusionary Defense because of the constant AoE Weakness application and further pushes the lockdown aspect of this build. Speaking of which…

• Sigil of Hydromancy/Energy – I really like Hydromancy for lockdown builds because Chill is such a great control condition, having it reliably on an AoE every 20 seconds and comboed after iLeap > Swap > Frenzy is great.

• Superior Runes of Lyssa – I liked the concept of the Ogre Runes for more damage, especially with the rock dog, but the Superior Runes of Lyssa take really good advantage of Signet of Inspiration. I tend to use the Boon Storm rotation before popping Lyssa runes and then dropping them all on my allies, it really helps turn the tide of a fight.

Thanks for your comments Chaos, they’re much appreciated. As for these three suggestions…

• Debilitating Dissipation- I still find it extremely difficult to convince myself that this is the case, but ultimately I feel that I have to agree with you. It also requires my opponents to play with more skill, and hurts them for AoE spamming all over the place. Also, given that I’m using Shattered Conditions, there’s less of an incentive conflict between Shattering (to clean condis and burst) and keeping clones (to provide extra defense).

• Sigils- I’m definitely planning on trying out SoHydromancy when dual sigil slots come out for 2H weapons, trust me. Just feel more comfortable with Sigil of Fire at the moment, though. As for Sigils of Energy, I’m honestly not sure they’re necessary- at least, not while Critical Infusion has yet to be nerfed (though even then I have Vigorous Revelation). I’ve never been much of a fan about those sigils. Still, a good suggestion that I will take into consideration.

• Runes- Obviously, I can’t just write off any of your suggestions… But Lyssa Runes? The synergy from the 4 and 6 abilities with the support aspect of this build is obvious, but I feel uneasy about the fact that all of my utilities have extremely long CDs (except, more or less, for Mass Invisibility, though that obviously has its own problems, at least in sPvP). It’s not like my thief, where I get the buff from healing on a 15s CD and the buffs on a kitten CD. I just… I dunno. I’ll have to try it out. Just feel uneasy about it.

Thanks!

Swagg.9236:

Stogzlol.4795 isn’t necessarily trying to argue whether or not the Thief skills in that list are poorly cued (even though they are). The reason why Arganthium.5638’s list of attacks with a damage coefficient above 1.3 is a poor argument is because the vast majority of the skills listed there are very well cued (aside from a few notable exceptions that should be nerfed in their own respective ways) to the point where if you’re hit by something like [Ice Spike], [Big Ol’ Bomb] or Ranger greatsword [Counterattack], you mostly deserve it. Those skills earn their damage coefficients. Most Thief skills don’t deserve high damage coefficients since they don’t have long cast-times, are typically poorly cued and don’t possess any post-cast delays.

There are two things critically wrong with this statement. First of all, thief skills do have long cast-times, especially when you take after casts into account (or “post-cast delays”, whichever you prefer). We’ve already had this discussion before. I presented you empirical evidence regarding these casts, and in return you presented me a single trial which was highly biased towards its result without any real analysis performed in its conclusion. A “true” instant-cast skill with zero after cast might be Elementalist’s Lightning Flash or Blinding Flash, thief’s Signet of Shadows and Shadowstep, Guardian’s Judge’s Intervention, Warrior Stances, and so on. There are very, very few weapon skills in the game with extremely short cast times, and even fewer with zero after cast.

As for the skills that you say “deserve their damage coefficients”, that’s another matter entirely. While it may be true in the context of that individual skill, it may not be so in the context of combos performed with other weapon skills during the casting time. For instance, if I use Phoenix on you on my Ele, you could very well evade into a Fire Grab. These types of skills are long-term investments; they might not provide you with damage right now, but they could in the near but unclear future. There are other considerations as well to take into account, of course. For example, you might not be immobilized now, but you could be immobilized when the skill hits. You might have 50% Endurance Regeneration right now, but you might have 0% when that skill hits because you just dodged an Eviscerate. You could have 20% Endurance right now, and judge that by the time the skill lands, you’ll just barely have enough Endurance to dodge, but that doesn’t account for the possibility that you might have weakness, which is a factor that you can’t really control much (and even if you can control it, half a second of weakness might just be enough to get you killed). You could have a condi clear ready and an evade, but then get stunned and are unable to counter that. The net result is that while these skills, by themselves, do represent a pretty heavy and often worthless investment, in the context of all of the other skills that they are accompanied by, it is very, very difficult to simply write off these skills as “deserving their damage coefficients” just because of their delays between casting and damage. Not to mention- another ally of yours might step in at just the wrong moment (perhaps he was pushed back, or portaled, or used some kind of mobility skill) and just barely managed to get hit by the skill. That’s a possibility as well.

People go for offensive setups because it’s theoretically better. Sure, at lower levels, people like I take zerker simply because it adds a bit more edge to our play as well as a “fun” factor. Even at higher levels, though, theory suggests that Zerkers is the best amulet for a lot of classes and builds. For example, virtually every thief build must run zerker in order to avoid becoming an UP Warrior. Many Mesmer builds must run zerker in order to maximize the utility of their skills. Objectively speaking, power amplifies your damage input/output more than any other stat in the game, so there’s that that you have to consider as well.

Aza.2105:

Arganthium.5638:

hooma.9642:

Mek.2947:

The drawback is you waste 5 initiative?

if u are stealthed and miss u dont waste anything.

want to backstab guard with aegis? just attack 2 times… this example shows how bad stealthed attacks are.

If your opponent manages to pull off two Backstabs on one stealth, then either a) the thief managed to get a lot of stealth for a very long time or b) you’re just a bad player. Assuming the first isn’t true, missing your BS gives opponents an idea of where you are positioned, which in turn makes it extremely easy to counter you for a few more seconds. With Backstab’s relatively long cast time, these few seconds tend to mean that your opponent isn’t going to be able to hit you again. Unless, of course, you choose to stand still.

Backstab has a 1/4 cast time. How is that long?

Why don’t you try using it in-game. Almost every cast in the game is longer than what the tooltip says, especially when you take into account after cast. For instance, thief’s pistol has an after cast so long that its total cast is more like 1s than .5s. Infi Return, which supposedly has a cast time of .25s, actually has a cast time that is more like 1s or so as well. Backstab has a much longer cast than .25s, trust me. Go try it out for yourself.

Dhampyr.2104:

Arganthium.5638:

It’s ultimately not a good build because the amount of investment you put in just to get stealth and condi removal from Torch (neither of which is particularly great) just conflicts too much with Shatter builds. Not to mention, iMage is absolutely godawful.

Hmmmm… well, the investment is just one trait (Domination Adept traiting the torch, and that trait slot isn’t really critical to a shatter build anyway), and while I agree completely that iMage is bad, phantasm damage isn’t really a priority in a shatter build. I don’t think that I would run torch in a shatter build, but that would be my personal preference rather than it not being a good build.

It’s not just the trait, it’s the weapon set as well. Torch has no synergy whatsoever with Shattering, but it can work very well with PU. Almost entirely exclusively, virtually every stealth build in the game is a dedicated stealth build. You either play knowing that you’re never (or almost never) going to go into stealth, or you play where stealth is a primary defensive and offensive mechanic. Stealth just doesn’t work well with Shattering; Shatter builds focus on a constant stream of damage output with a few spikes in between, whereas Stealth builds, of all sorts, use stealth either as an extremely powerful defensive mechanic (like PU Mesmer, where you’re constantly generating defensive boons while stealthed) or an extremely powerful offensive mechanic (just about any D/X thief). I just can’t see this build getting much of anything from stealth here. It certainly can’t be used offensively, but the defensive options are pretty lackluster as well- a single 3s Stealth usually isn’t going to get you out of trouble, not by itself, anyways. It just seems like a waste of two weapon skills that could be covered by one, maybe two utilities anyways.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Malchior.5042:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all,

In case you haven’t seen some of the posts I’ve already made, I’m back! I’ll be covering PvP/WvW/Balance teams for community coordination.

That’s pretty much the short version. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here!

- Allie

After spending the past several months training with the elite Shaolin monks, can you beat Grouch in a 1v1? We must determine who is Grand Master Poobah of PvP Community Team

Lol, neither. I nominate supcutie.

I’m voting for Countless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RwKNkwcEZo&feature=player_embedded

Just… That laugh.

Vuh.1328:

Arganthium.5638:

Vuh.1328:

Cynz.9437:

are you seriously implying that sb3 does more dmg than clone spam + shatter? wow, i saw everything now

No i didn’t, it does however deal more damage than a shatter right into a evade spamming thief

Immobilize, chill, CC, cripple, and some well-timed attacks can destroy virtually any evasion build.

OR any other build for that matter, but easier vs any other build not relying on evades

Evasion builds tend to use evasion as their only defensive mechanic. No defensive stats, virtually no stealth…You pull those counters on an evasion thief, and unless they’re the real deal, they’re going to get absolutely smashed to pieces. These are evasion build-specific counters. Sure, they’re good to have against builds of all other types, but against evasion, they have the additional benefit of annihilating those builds’ only real defensive mechanism.

hihey.1075:

30 points in critical strikes are mandatory for dealing any sort of direct damage.
Acrobatic is better than Trickery as it boosts Initiative gain and Vigor, so you will have more dodges overall.

Both of these statements are false. Objectively, CS gives you very little damage, and most of the traits are lackluster anyways for the investment that you put into the tree. I get the feeling that this idea originates from two different roots:

1. The fact that thief needs to deal high damage in order to be effective- that’s an inarguable fact.

2. The fact that most of the original thief builds (D/X builds) didn’t need to run points into SA or Acro (or not many points, anyways), nor did they need to invest much into Trix. Furthermore, the fact that most DA traits above Adept tier are useless in the vast majority of situations would make it sensible to take 30 into CS before going over 10 into DA.

For the most part, this is still true. However, there are a few builds that can get away without 30 (or, in fact, any) points into CS. Mostly, these are going to be the absolutely terrible rarely seen P/D builds and some S/D builds. S/P is very burst-oriented, so it makes sense to take 30 into CS. The same goes for D/X builds. However, S/D is different in that many if not most meta builds take 30 into Acrobatics. As a result, you have many fewer points that you can just spend going into a tree just because you can. As I stated earlier, most DA traits above Adept tier are pretty useless (especially to S/D builds), but Serpent’s Touch and Mug are both critically useful traits, and the 100 power that comes with them is extremely good as well. So that leaves over 30 points (of course, you could always be like Jumper and not invest 10 into DA, but instead invest 10 into Trix).

From the traditional point of view, 30 CS would be the way to go instantaneously. However, I’m of the mindset that the utility and additional DPS (from initiative buffs, Steal utility, and Lead Attacks) is just as good if not better than the DPS you get from CS, which, again, is relatively in the grand scheme of your total DPS. Furthermore, since S/D isn’t as much of a burst build as it is a bruiser/DPS (but not GC) build, it makes even less sense to be so dogmatic as to choose CS over Trix 100% of the time. There’s a reason why increasingly more builds nowadays are running a 10 30 0 0 30 setup no matter what weapon set is being taken. Trickery has been a highly underrated trait line for a very, very long time, and perhaps understandably so. However, in the context of how much damage you do from stats and other buffs, +300 precision, +30% Critical Damage, and Executioner really aren’t enough to say that CS is “mandatory for dealing any sort of direct damage.” If I had a video of my 10 0 0 30 30 build on me, I’d post it just to show my point, though, unfortunately, I do not have such a video at this time (though I’d gladly make one if requested).

Also, Trickery boosts initiative far more than Acro does, especially if you’re going to be running a WvW build which absolutely should not take dual S/D. If you take Hastened Replenishment (which, IMO, is a superior trait to Sleight of Hand for S/D builds), then there’s absolutely no contest; Trickery wins outright by a massive margin.

Vuh.1328:

Cynz.9437:

are you seriously implying that sb3 does more dmg than clone spam + shatter? wow, i saw everything now

No i didn’t, it does however deal more damage than a shatter right into a evade spamming thief

Immobilize, chill, CC, cripple, and some well-timed attacks can destroy virtually any evasion build.

It’s ultimately not a good build because the amount of investment you put in just to get stealth and condi removal from Torch (neither of which is particularly great) just conflicts too much with Shatter builds. Not to mention, iMage is absolutely godawful.

I finished reading over the changes. Rather than addressing each and every one of them individually, I’ll post what I think is a good and largely unbiased summary of your changes.

Purpose
To reduce thief’s overall damage by a) reducing weapon coefficients and b) adding CDs to many of the thief’s skills. Furthermore, to reduce the ability to constantly apply blind to opponents and add to the thief’s utility by a) giving them a unique condition and b) splitting a large number of their skills into chains.

The philosophy behind all of these ideas is just flat-out wrong. First of all, as I and others have pointed out, many of your statements are inherently self-contradictory. For instance,

Swagg.9236:

The Thief is a profession so innately crippled; with such a one-dimensional and predictable play-style…

…With such changes as a whole, we can bring the Thief back down to a level which allows opponents counter-play opportunities…

But even if we put aside those contradictions for a second and look at your main ideas, they are still terrible. For instance, as I pointed out before (and you never addressed), thieves actually have some overall fairly low damage coefficients, which, paired with their lack of AoE pulsing (or, for that matter, AoE outside of Shortbow) and conditions, means that thieves actually have fairly average or even low damage. As a result, we have to rely on things like Zerker amulet in order to deal damage. Now, I and many other thieves have accepted this fact and still play thieves in spite of it. However, to claim that we do more damage than other classes is simply absurd, and it is quite objectively disprovable. As for the weapon CDs and the reduction of teleports, you’re basically turning thief into an UP warrior. The only really unique mechanic that we have is initiative, and once that’s removed (or effectively removed), then the difference between us and warriors is completely nonexistent outside of the fact that warriors have… Well, pretty much better everything over us, even if we only look at base stats and weapon coefficients. Understand one thing: we don’t want to become some kind of generic class, which you seem to think that we should become:

Swagg.9236:

When it comes to raw damage, Thief’s role would be of a more consistent combatant like an Engineer or Ranger instead of someone that just engages instantly from range for huge damage and then either dies or breaks off to try it again.[which isn’t really true anyways, but whatever you say]

As for the “blind spamming”, seriously, just stop. Nobody even runs 10 in SA anyways (and for a good reason), but that dumb trait is pretty easy to counter anyways, whether it’s by condi cleansing or by swinging your sword around/using AoE. It’s not like thieves are using this trait to blind you every second or something anyways. Black Powder only works on downed opponents, and Shadow Shot is one of the most telegraphed attacks in the game.

As for adding utility, we’re fine as we are right now. I really don’t see the logic behind these changes; we already have lots of utility from mobility and stealth. Nothing more to it. I’m not sure how you play thief, but you obviously don’t play correctly.

And the chains? There’s no logic in this. It just makes combat infinitely more confusing and cluttered, not to mention, it horrendously weakens the flow of skills and thus the thief’s offensive output.

You’re 100% claims and 0% evidence; heck, you don’t even have personal credibility to support what you’re saying. You have nothing to back you up. But hey, if it makes you feel any better to pretend to be some kind of pro, go ahead, be my guest.

It’d be nice to think that Kill Shot, with its animation, is easy to predict and evade. In a 1v1, it is (though the projectile speed means you have to predict when the projectile is going to fly and then evade accordingly, something that is much more easily said than done, but still possible). In any fight with 5 or more people, though, Kill Shot is just another animation among thirty others that often just isn’t going to be seen, especially if the warrior is flanking correctly. In WvW, I’d be pretty impressed if you could see a Kill Shot among five hundred projectiles and animations flying around.

24 February 2014- Swapped out Signet of Inspiration for Blink. Though the idea of support is fully valid in both WvW and PvE, in sPvP I felt that you didn’t give or get that much for the utility slot. Blink gives me more mobility and an additional stun breaker, and is extremely flexible.

hooma.9642:

Mek.2947:

The drawback is you waste 5 initiative?

if u are stealthed and miss u dont waste anything.

want to backstab guard with aegis? just attack 2 times… this example shows how bad stealthed attacks are.

If your opponent manages to pull off two Backstabs on one stealth, then either a) the thief managed to get a lot of stealth for a very long time or b) you’re just a bad player. Assuming the first isn’t true, missing your BS gives opponents an idea of where you are positioned, which in turn makes it extremely easy to counter you for a few more seconds. With Backstab’s relatively long cast time, these few seconds tend to mean that your opponent isn’t going to be able to hit you again. Unless, of course, you choose to stand still.

Warrior (nerf)

Ranger (buff)

I’m becoming of the opinion that Ranger needs a buff even more desperately than ele does. That being said, ele needs some pretty large buffs as well.

in addition to whatever other effects come with them, force an opponent to face the issue that getting hit with any Thief attack typically bears an enormous consequence.

Like getting damage done to you? Because it’s not like you get 3s stunned by BS or something.

This, combined with the lack of Thief skill cool-downs, has the potential to turn fighting a Thief into guess work and twitchy skill spam rather than clutch counter-play governed by quick, conscious decision making.

“Has the potential” being the key phrase here. Most spammy thieves do nothing for their teams and are, as a general rule, godawful. To act like no thief requires uses “quick, conscious decision playing” (as you seem to be implying) is just flat-out abhorrently wrong.

To fix this issue and give the Thief a real place in GW2, I’ve made many changes to rebalance its damage,

By decreasing the damage of extremely powerful skills like Surprise Shot? Right. Also, I’ll remind you that the only class that fewer skills on the list I put above than thief is necro, though Ranger does manage to tie. Thieves, if anything, do very little damage, which is only offset by initiative and the fact that they tend to build to do lots and lots of damage while taking a lot themselves.

increase its base survivability,

It’s not like thief’s survivability is bad, it’s that thieves don’t build to be survivable most of the time.

introduce more combat utility outside of just stealth/blind spam

In order to “blind spam” you typically have to go 10 into SA. If you know anything about thief, you know that there is not a single meta build that runs even a single point into SA. As for stealth, only D/X and some P/D builds have any significant access to it. Either way, it’s one of the thief’s relatively unique mechanics anyways, and apart from S/D’s evasion, our only defensive mechanic. We also get lots of utility from Headshot, stomp insurance, support via Shadow Refuge, mobility, etc.

and also to give the Thief a unique condition that would give it a more defined role in both PvE and PvP.

It already has a well-defined roll.

With such changes as a whole, we can bring the Thief back down to a level which allows opponents counter-play opportunities without stripping the Thief of its ability to contribute to a fight.

So thief has no well-defined roll, but still needs to be brought “back down”? And, as you said earlier, thieves play very predictably, and yet opponents have no counter-play opportunities against it? What a terrible argument, truly.

Looks like you haven’t gotten any smarter.

Swagg.9236:

Guild Wars 2 was a game with combat designed around the player anticipating an opponent’s moves and appearance by reading the opponent’s actions and gear,

No it wasn’t, otherwise there would be visible casting bars.

then either preparing a plan of attack or actively counter-playing properly after the opponent had engaged.

Then there’s the Thief.

Is that supposed to imply that thieves can’t be actively played against? That certainly seems to be what you’re saying, though in the context of your next statement

The Thief is a profession so innately crippled; with such a one-dimensional and predictable play-style that it requires evasion tanking, blind spamming, direct-to-target teleports and super-high damage on every attack in order to compete with any other class in the game in its only function: kill the selected target. In order to be remotely functional in GW2 combat, the Thief has to break every single rule in the “How to balance combat in GW2” book. This isn’t to say that other classes don’t break these rules in their own ways, but the Thief is founded on breaking those rules, making the entire class a mess that goes against the fundamental conventions that govern balanced GW2 combat.

You seem to be contradicting yourself (not to mention you have no evidence to back up your claims about how the game was designed).

Furthermore, Thief attacks, thanks to their universally high base damage

Empirically incorrect. First of all, thieves have no additional base damage stats; as a matter of fact, all classes have the same base offensive stats. As a result, what we really have to look at are damage coefficients. Let’s use one of the highest weapon coefficients that thief has- 1.5 on LS (we could compare with BS, but there are a ton of attacks that do lots of damage just barely wouldn’t make the list). So let’s see what skills have Standardized Weapon Coefficients greater than 1.35 (90% of LS’ damage)(including multi-hit attacks):

Elementalist

• Fire Grab
• Churning Earth
• Dragon Tooth
• Phoenix (Explosion)
• Drake’s Breath
• Burning Speed
• Meteor Shower
• Ice Spike
• Lightning Surge
• Eruption

Engineer

• Jump Shot
• Blunderbuss
• BoB
• Grenade Barrage
• Flame Jet
• Detonate Flame Blast

Guardian

• Whirling Wrath
• Faithful Strike
• Mighty Blow
• Smite (at least 5 strikes)
• Zealot’s Defense
• Sword Wave
• SoWrath (explosion)

Mesmer

• Phantasmal Berkserker
• Illusionary Warlock
• Confusing Images
• Blurred Frenzy
• Phantasmal Duelist
• Illusionary Riposte
• Phantasmal Swordsman
• Phantasmal Warden
• Mind Wrack (three clones)

Necromancer

• Ghastly Claws
• Life Siphon
• Life Transfer

Ranger

• Maul
• Counterattack
• Rapid Fire
• Barrage
• Hunter’s Call

Thief

• Backstab (back side)
• Heartseeker (< 50%)
• Unload
• Pistol Whip
• Cluster Bomb

Warrior

• Hundred Blades
• Rush
• Arcing Slice
• Fierce Blow
• Backbreaker
• Earthshaker
• Arcing Arrow
• Volley
• Kill Shot
• Triple Chop
• Eviscerate (any)
• Pulverize
• Counterblow
• Skull Crack
• Final Thrust (either)
• Whirling Axe

And that’s not including AoE pulses or conditions, neither of which thieves have in abundance. Of course, not all of these skills are very good, or hit often enough to always do more damage than LS, but many, many of them deal more damage than LS does anyways (100b only needs to hit a few times to do more damage, for instance), and to act like all of these skills are worse than thief’s skills is, quite frankly, absurd and ignorant. Thieves quite definitively do not have more damage “universally” than other classes do.

Saint.4876:

Thieves need a form of defense other than stealth!!!

“Yeah, like evasion! The community would be totally okay if thieves could use evasion instead of stealth as their sole defensive mechanic!” Oh wait.

Oh my goodness Countless

The Ideas
Many of the Mesmer’s traits and abilities have a very strange yet beautiful way to coordinate with one another. For instance, Phantasmal Healing and Illusionary Membrane work together like a well-oiled machine to reduce the amount of damage you take (which is further amplified by the defensive natures of the stats attached to both trait lines, and the increased boon duration you get from Chaos!). Vigorous Revelation and Deceptive Evasion is another match that, after the incoming nerf to Mesmer’s vigor, will become far more relevant than it is currently. Bountiful Interruption works well with Signet of Inspiration, and Phantasmal Strength works well with Phantasmal Fury. One of the main points of this build is to maximize the coordination between all of the mesmer’s abilities in order to consequently maximize his/her effectiveness.

Because of this coordination, I believe that Mesmers are able to have tune in to three different build types- Lockdown, Support, and DPS- very easily without stepping on their own toes in order to fit all three in. For instance, on thief (which is my main, though my Mesmer is easily my primary alt), it is difficult enough to get one of these three build types down, and impossible to get all three at the same time. Thieves can do tons of damage, but to do so they typically have to invest very heavily into their traits which have no real ability to “cooperate” with one another anyways. The closest that thieves can get to playing two different play styles involves mobility or stealth, though neither of those is a build type in and of itself, and tends to be very closely connected to the DPS aspect of thieves anyways.

Of course, the thief is only one example of another class that doesn’t have a lot of ability coordination, but if you look across all classes, you find that with the exception of those builds with extremely overpowered mechanics (/cough Healing Signet /cough), most builds can only pull off one and occasionally two different build types. Plus, in doing so, they aren’t really flexible either in combat or out of combat; they have to stick to one specific method of play in order to do well.

In light of these facts, I might say that the primary purpose of this build is to be extremely flexible. That’s what it really all boils down to, and how effectively you use this flexibility and coordination will make all the difference while in combat.

Notes/Possible Changes:

• Shattered Conditions- could eventually change to Restorative Illusions, though that would require me to take Mender’s Purity and Null Field. I’m not particularly optimistic about either of those changes (at least, as far as permanent changes go), but they’re certainly options to look at in the future, and most definitely options for possible stat changes you can make for certain situations. As it is right now, though, Shattered Conditions is absolutely incredible, in spite of the doubt that has been cast upon the usage of this trait in the past.

• Bountiful Interruption: Could theoretically change to Chaotic Dampening, but giving the effectiveness of this trait, I doubt that this change will actually happen.

• Mantra of Concentration- could change to another stun breaker in the future. However, given how amazing the Mantra is right now (both for support and for stun breaking), there’s little chance that this will be going away any time soon as well.

• Illusionary Defense- may change to Dissipating Debilitation, for reasons listed in the first item of the “Pros” list. This change is more likely to happen than the aforementioned ones, but still isn’t necessarily likely at all.

• Runes- this is the one thing that is almost certainly going to change. I feel that this build absolutely needs more toughness, but Dolyak Runes aren’t exactly optimal for a DPS play style. On the flip side, all Power+Toughness runes aren’t very good anyways. I’ll update the build in the future if I do indeed choose to adjust the rune set.

Hey all,
I’ve been running around in both WvW and sPvP with this build (or small variants on it) recently: [url= http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAW8dlwzipnVTlGZ9IiJF9mvd6RytcTXJF42FC-TsAg0CtIsRZjzGjNSbs2MsYVw2CA]0/20/20/30/0 S/F + St Build[/url]

Your first impression upon looking at the build and seeing the weapon sets and traits are that it’s extremely similar to Chaos Archangel’s “Chaos Maestro” build, and, in a manner of speaking, it is. However, there are a few very large differences between the two builds in terms of design and purpose:

1. Chaos’ build is almost purely support, whereas support is more of a collateral effect, but nonetheless an extremely powerful and important one.

2. The trait differences would also seem to be relatively small, but in the context of all of the other differences between the builds, these differences as well as the differences in ways that different traits are utilized massively changes how the build works.

3. You might look at some of the build variants listed in Chaos’ post and say that this build is something of a mix between the “Purifier” variant and the “Lockdown” variant, but in truth neither of those variants, even when their individual benefits are summed up, really cover the scope of this build’s ability, and, furthermore, the trait lines for each of those builds are very different from those of this build.

If nothing else, even if the build isn’t original to me, at least let this post be an advertisement for a build type that, IMO, isn’t seen very often.

Pros:

• Very flexible, both in-combat and out-of-combat. In combat, you can easily shift between roles simply by how you play- aggressively, defensively (Illusionary Defense gives you a broad range of control over how defensively you play), and so on. Outside of combat, many of the trait choices can be swapped out to change lots of the ideas behind your build. For instance, you could take Debilitating Dissipation as opposed to Illusionary Defense to switch over to passive defense and to get a bit more protection in very large battles. You can swap Shattered Conditions to Restorative Illusions, and then swap Vigorous Revelation and/or some utilities for condi cleansers, and then you’ll become a massive source of healing support for your teammates. Those are just a few different types of traits you can use; your actual flexibility is much larger.

• Good condi clearing without the usage of utilities

• Semi-hybridized between direct damage and condition damage

• Good reflecting ability, which is often an important tactic to have up your sleeve

• Swiftness!

• Lockdown- the combination of Chaos Storm and Temporal Curtain make this a very potent build for locking opponents down.

• Support- with SoInspiration, Vigorous Revelation, Shattered Conditions, and Mantra of Concentration, combined with the lockdown aspect of this build and Bountiful Interruption, this build is able to create massive support opportunities for your teammates.

• Damage- with the large number of boons that you apply, combined with Zerker Amulet and Phantasmal Strength, you can typically build up a large amount of pressure on your opponents solely from direct damage.

Cons:

• Although the build is flexible, it is, in some respects, a “jack of all trades, master of none” type of build. For example, it can’t Lockdown as well as a designated Lockdown build can, nor can it provide as much support as the Chaos Maestro can. The damage is pretty excellent with Ogre Runes, but then it lacks some much-needed toughness (more on this later). That being said, the primary reason for this being the case is that it’s hard to focus on doing all three of these things to your opponent at once, as opposed to do them individually. Thus, the potential of the build might be much larger in the hands of a skilled player.

• Lack of defense without changing your runes from the more traditional Ogre’s to something like Dolyak.

• Not a beginner-friendly build.

• May require you to play a wide range of different play styles depending on the situation, which can be a bad thing if you don’t like to play defensively one moment, aggressively the next, passively the next, and so on.

Certainly not. I wouldn’t put them in the top 50% easily, and I think an argument could be made that they aren’t even one of the top 6 most popular classes.

Leadfoot.9071:

Arganthium.5638:

SallyStitches.4096:

Which would you say is best for solo queue; d/p or s/p?

Probably S/P. Virtually everybody runs D/P.

Actually seems to me like S/P has been steadily gaining in popularity in soloq lately. I think they are both decent for soloq – you trade a bit of burst from the d/p set for some extra survivability options in the s/p set.

Its been gaining popularity, but it’s still far from the level of usage that D/X builds see.

Fortus.6175:

yet no need to be in stealth when the enemies are dead, so please, YOu tell me you are being sarcastic

1. Stealth
2. Assume opponent is completely unweary
3. ???
4. Everybody on opponent’s team is dead.
5. Profit

Yup.

SallyStitches.4096:

Which would you say is best for solo queue; d/p or s/p?

Probably S/P. Virtually everybody runs D/P.

Fortus.6175:

Cynz.9437:

30/30/30/30/30 build is so OP

I wont call you ignorant, but you sir need to know about the D/S and D/P that plagues sPvP. They have access to all of the afore mentioned stuff without having to fall in your uncivilized and near sighted fail of a joke.

Ah yes, the supreme D/S thief builds, how I despise them. And D/P? My god man, how can you possibly capture a point while your opponent is stealthed?

Thedenofsin.7340:

Arganthium.5638:

For crying out loud, you people… Helseth is a terrible Mesmer/person anyways, so it’s not like I care that much. I’ve played a thief since the beginning, and I can easily defeat them with my Mesmer. They’re not UP but Mesmers are easily on the same level as they are.

This is simply untrue. Helseth is quite good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYz9RbHHE4w

So let me see if I understand what you’re trying to do here: you picked out a SoloQ game that was already selected very specifically by Helseth and are using that as evidence that Helseth is a good player. Okay, sure, maybe we can let that go past. But how good were the other players? They all sucked terribly. They hardly made any offensive maneuvers against Helseth’s team, and their technique was absolutely godawful (not to mention- no idea how that thief was so easy to kill. If Helseth hadn’t played so passively/defensively… But I’ll get to that in a second.) They had three (!) guardians on their team. Two is certainly playable, but at three guardians you’re starving yourselves for diversity. The other team played insanely defensively (and they practiced extremely bad defense as well); the fact that Helseth stayed at the far point for virtually the entire game and outnumbered or had even numbers with the other team in just about every fight should attest to this.

But that wasn’t even the end of it. As I hinted to earlier, Helseth was horrendously defensive in his play. I can’t even begin to say the amount of time that he spent hiding away from or in defensive positions relative to his opponents. Just look at some of his plays; at the beginning of the game, he sat around away from far point for no apparent reason. It would have been understandable if he was legitimately trying to hide, i.e. with a well-timed stealth, behind an object, etc (though I doubt those techniques would’ve worked, at least against good play), but he ran head-on into that 2v1 anyways, so I’m not sure what kind of purpose he was trying to fulfill. Then, he spent almost no time on point. Unless I’m playing a stealth thief, I stay on point for as long as physically possible. Helseth was just dashing onto points and then dashing off. He’s not presenting a threat, he’s just randomly walking around. I doubt I need to emphasize his other plays; they’re obviously extremely defensive, even passive (when he’s just standing around doing nothing). That was a horrid video.

BlackDevil.9268:

Arganthium.5638:

For crying out loud, you people… Helseth is a terrible Mesmer/person anyways, so it’s not like I care that much. I’ve played a thief since the beginning, and I can easily defeat them with my Mesmer. They’re not UP but Mesmers are easily on the same level as they are.

Yeah, I can also easily beat them on my mesmer, so that must mean mesmer is 100% on the same level as thief!

Helseth is one of the few people who actually know how mesmer should be playing in tpvp. Playing 1v1 builds in tpvp while fighting completely kittened thieves doesn’t mean you’re on the same level.

Lol. I was even playing nice with you guys and using anecdotal evidence as opposed to theoretical evidence, with which I can build a much, much stronger argument against the idea behind this post. However, if you’d like to give me evidence that contradicts what I’ve said that is not based on direct experience, be my guest.

Thedenofsin.7340:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Thedenofsin.7340:

are you going to recognize the “Apex Predator” problem you have created?

Could you elaborate on what this “Apex Predator” problem is?

Apex predator: Apex predators (also known as alpha, super, top or top-level predators) are predators with few to no predators of their own, residing at the top of their food chain

The “Back cap/roamer” role can be performed by several professions: thief, mesmer, elementalists, and warrior. Thief, however, performs this role far better than any of the others. It has superior damage, superior mobility, and superior survivability. On top of this, thieves dominate their direct competitors in a 1v1 situation (warriors to a lesser degree, but we all know warriors are currently pretty broken).

This results in thieves being the go-to class for that role in the meta, with no competition.

1. Guardian (specifically a Med guardian) and engineer can easily fulfill that role as well.

2. Thief’s weapon coefficients are, generally, abhorrently low. On S/D, the only attack that deals any significant amount of damage is LS, which misses at least 50% of the time anyways due to practical reasons.

3. Not many thief builds have good mobility; that tends to be the realm of S/D, if anything.

4. Thieves are the most survivable out of all of those classes? They have the lowest base health and medium armor, not to mention that you have to go full zerker (in general) to beat other classes. 0/10.

5. Even in 1v1s, it’s rare that thieves “dominate” other classes. Mesmers can easily go toe-to-toe with them in a sharp but unclear fight (probably with even chances). Non-bunker guards have a few tricks they can use to maintain a strong defense against thieves (I’d give my guard 60-40 or even 70-30 chances in light of this fact). And on engineer, controlling the enemy thief can give even a mediocre engineer good chances against a good thief.

6. If nothing else, there are many very basic holes in the defense and offense of thieves. That makes them extremely easy to counter, once you have the basic knowledge.

For crying out loud, you people… Helseth is a terrible Mesmer/person anyways, so it’s not like I care that much. I’ve played a thief since the beginning, and I can easily defeat them with my Mesmer. They’re not UP but Mesmers are easily on the same level as they are.

Cynz.9437:

Yasha.5963:

Amaterasu.6280:

Oh and spamming BP against a s/p thief is dumb…don’t do it.

Why is BP no good against pistol whip?

because BP blind pulses slower than PW attack speed, you will eat pretty much entire pw even if thief sits in BP

^ which, presumably, he won’t, unless he’s a bad thief anyways. Experienced players know how to melee characters standing in BP, so you have to use it, if at all, as a distancing mechanism (i.e. put the field between you and your opponent as a sort of obstacle to prevent them from doing melee damage to you. It’s like having a miniature Ring of Warding that you’re on the outside of).

hellsmachine.4085:

OP needs to L2P. Try dodging their obvious attacks.

Yeah, you just have to dodge all of the Eviscerates, Kill Shots, Volleys, Staggering Blows, Backbreakers, Earthshakers, Pin Downs, Combustive Shot pulses, Skull Cracks, Pommel Bashes, Tremors, Shield Bashes, Whirling Axes, Impales, Arcing Slices, and Final Thrusts. Of course, it’s not like every warrior build has all of these, but many of them (particularly the adrenaline skills) have a very short CD, which, combined with the shortened weapon swap CD, makes them extremely difficult to evade. With all of the vigor nerfs, and the fact that you can potentially remain perm-stunned (or the equivalent thereof, anyways), it’s impossible to just evade everything.

This is an interesting idea. I think it could use a bit more tweaking, but it’d go a huge way towards making P/P a viable build. Overall, the idea is great, and wouldn’t necessarily be a buff or a nerf, per se.

Django.5923:

Thief
- S/D and S/P perma evade trickery thieves. (The combination of mainhand sword with 10.0.30.30.0 // 10,0,30,0,30 is not allowed)

I think you mean 10/30/0/30/0 and 10/30/0/0/30.

Are other S/D and S/P builds allowed? I run a 10/0/0/30/30 S/D build, so I’m wondering whether or not that would qualify for this tournament. It’s not exactly meta, but its playstyle is pretty similar to those other S/D builds.

Oh, and I might be interested in being part of this tournament. Depends on when it is though.

Narcarsis.5739:

Dagins.5163:

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

What… do people even play this game?

I’m surprised we still do.

Though I’ll also add that blinding the stun on PW is about as good as Headshotting it. The only burst that S/P has is from PW and once you know how to counter it it’s really a kinda pointless weaponset in comparison to other thief weapon sets.

Harper.4173:

1)HS was designed to offer good sustain to warriors WHO DON’T SPEC FOR HEALING POWER. Second of all if you NERF THE PASSIVE THAT MUCH AND BUFF THE ACTIVE IT’LL JUST BECOME ANOTHER HEALING SURGE / MENDING. Ergo useless.

2)Warriors are supposed to be mobile. Look at :
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warrior
First thing it says is SPEED.

3)No other class works like that. What are you even saying.
4)Hammer was already severely nerfed. You want to take it out of the game completely ? at least ask for that.

All in all I hope you do realize how far off you are.

Warrior’s weakness is his inability to specialize and do as well as other classes in specific roles.

1) It would take over 2500 Healing Power for some classes, like thief, to match warrior’s HPS with no Healing Power. Not to mention- the Healing Power coefficient for HealSig is actually higher than many if not most other classes as far as HPS goes.

2) Warriors are supposed to be mobile, they’re supposed to be versatile, they’re supposed to do high damage, they’re supposed to be tanky, they’re supposed to heal for a load, they’re supposed to clean conditions well, they’re supposed to spike very well… They seem to be “supposed” to do a lot of things very well, don’t they?

3) Just because other classes don’t work that way doesn’t mean that warrior should follow that rule (that being said, the original idea was pretty strange anyways). Though, as Ash said, Elixir S does more or less work that way, but that’s a very specific skill.

4) I can’t tell you how often I’ve found myself perma-stunned by warriors this week. The nerf to the weapon was minimal (especially given that hammer already had loads of stuff behind it anyways), and the fact that you can keep an opponent CC’d for as long as you can is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

And that is not a weakness of the warrior. In fact, warriors can specialize in just about anything they want, I don’t know where you’re getting this idea from. It’s just that warriors are able to be so good at everything at the same time that it’s more beneficial to choose not to specialize them and make them a king of all trades instead.

I just hotjoin nowadays. SoloQ is pointless, and I doubt that TeamQ’s rating system is much better, but nonetheless the presence of professional teams there makes it much more difficult to climb up the ladder anyways. Not to mention- I’d rather be at the top of a SoloQ ladder than a TeamQ one. Hotjoin is easier for just dropping in and out of matches, it’s a lot less stressful, and you get more choice over which maps you’re going to be on (especially since the cycling of maps is constant). Sure, the vast majority of players are absolutely terrible, but at least I have more fun and am more productive than I would be doing SoloQ and TeamQ.

KarsaiB.9475:

2/ For thief :

They already have loads of evades and stealth. Being able to access stability and protection by themselves every 60 seconds is way, way over the top.

They shouldn’t be able to get stability, aegis and protection unless being monitored by a guardian, as an assassin type class, while still benefitting from fury and swiftness, especially when not traited into trickery.

Basi Venom is already one of the worst elites in the game, and all of those “loads of evades and stealth” are offset by 1) the fact that we have the lowest base health (along with ele and guard) in the game, and 2) these are our only defensive mechanisms anyways. In order to make the elite good, we have to completely sacrifice our rune set. The net result is a very good elite, but one that also requires you to give up your rune set as well. I don’t see how this makes Lyssa OP in any way.

You have 360 laurels?! :o

As Ron said, you can just trade them in for hundreds of gold. Otherwise, you can get random crap like an Infinite Cat Tonic, a mini cat, and whatnot. If you’re an 80, then you can pretty much get all of the ascended trinkets/amulets/etc that you need in case you ever want to play WvW.

EDIT: oh yeah, and you can get dyes as well, which are always nice.

style.6173:

ryan.6217:

Spyder.9713:

d/d and s/d are 2 of my favorites… I tell my buddies d/p is for noob thieves that cant land cloak and dagger lol!

That is how i generally feel. Personally I think S/D is one of the most boss things a thief can throw at some one. When you can kill some one and all they have to complain about is evades (Which every class has), you know you beat them fair and square.

D/D is also great! I’m glad it’s making a come back! I know it never fully died, but the reason I turned my thief into P/D in the first place was because of the D/P movement. I was fed up with the flack about stealth, and furthermore watching it get so heavily abused i figured conditions would be safe!

Go P/P in an upper level tourney and be successful. That will be a boss.

S/D, S/P, and D/P are the three meta builds right now. Can’t say someone is a boss using those.

There is nothing “meta” about S/D. The build is almost completely extinct.

Nice guide, surprised I never saw it. It might be 5 months old but it’s still applicable to today. I’ll add this to my “Guide to Thief Guides”.

frans.8092:

Arganthium.5638:

Thief builds are built on one of two (and a half-ish) types of defensive mechanisms.

No, builds for thieves come in all shapes and sizes. First of all, stealth does not negate damage and more often then not you have to dodge to avoid something, even in stealth. Stealth is not such a good defensive mechanism, S/P and Shortbow thieves show this. Stealth is also an offensive mechanism and non-sword build with little or no investment in stealth as defence need evasion as much as anyone.

Feline Grace is good as it is now, it provides much needed defence and nerfing it does so for all builds.

As I said in my post, stealth is also an offensive mechanism… This and the fact that it at least provides some degree of defense makes it a possible defensive mechanism. Also, please tell me a single non-sword build with “little or no investment in stealth as defense” that’s viable because of evasion via Feline Grace.

Virtually every top thief in the game, over time, has …

There are many, so anyone making claims on behalf of them would best start collecting and categorizing the hundreds of builds and playstyles before claiming anything about ‘virtually every’. For the moment it seems that the active thieves in this thread, including the good ones, are disagreeing with your reasoning.

Only one or two of the other thieves in this thread are any good. The others I’ve hardly ever heard of, or have nothing to show that’s they’re any good anyways.

Caed’s …. Jumper’s

You can not balance around a handful of excellent (sPvP) players. I am curious what Caed and Jumper would think of your suggestion.

Yes, yes you do. And this is what Jumper said…

Jumper.9482:

Infiltrator’s Return – Increased initiative cost from 2 to 3. Cast time reduced to 0.10 seconds from 0.25 seconds. This ability now ignores aftercasts and cancels skills in queue.

Jumper.9482:

Feline Grace – Reduced effectiveness of this trait by 20%.

Not to mention that he mentions in the same thread that he wrote this after consulting with Caed. Also, he mentioned removing the skill queuing from IR, something I forgot to state, but is nonetheless important.

Interceptor.2653:

Arganthium.5638:

Lol, that’s true. Nothing more infuriating than seeing some idiot mindlessly spamming 3 on SB. It’s not like he’s doing anything useful, but there’s a burning hatred inside of you to kill him/her, and it’s ridiculously difficult to do so.

Do you have some sort of mind-reading device, then? I’d say it’s a fair bet that someone pushing SB#3 knows exactly what it does.

What? Don’t twist my words, that’s not what I said at all. Look at the definition of “mindlessly”, I never stated or even implied that a player that spams SB #3 doesn’t know what the skill does.