Guild Wars 2

Imo sigils all matter on what weapons you are using. For instance I wouldn’t use sigil of force on my d/d because it does not offer the burst that sigil of air/sigil of fire offer.
Sigil of force used to be the go to choice for mainhand before the sigil change. But if I was playing a staff ele I would use sigil of force because of the large amount of people I am hitting is a small amount of time which makes the CDs on fire/air inferior to force.

My current setup is dagger/dagger shortbow with air/fire on the daggers and bloodlust on shortbow. I always have my bloodlust sigil on my offhand for stacking and either sigil of energy or fire in the other slot.

I haven’t used accuracy sigil yet because I usually run around 35%-40% crit chance which I think is a good spot to be in, 50% is awesome to have but I think it’s a little too glassy. Having the extra 7% might be useful on my shortbow for cluster bomb spams which would raise my crit chance to 47% without making myself glassy. I’ll test it our some time.

In Spvp my dagger setup is the same but on the shortbow I run sigil of fire and sigil of might. I like this combo because it allows me to deal out some decent AoE damage between clustbomb and fire sigil and also gain some decent might so I can swap to D/D and burst. But I might be swapping one of the sigils out for bloodlust because I am getting better staying alive and having another 250 power would be sweet.

Sorry if none of this makes sense, I’m really tired but I wanted to respond.

EDIT: In order to give you a straight answer I would need to know what weapons and build you are running.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

D/D can use heartseeker for both gap closer and gap maker, which is cheaper and better than P/D’s gap maker. By that alone, removes D/D’s reliance on SA.

D/D heartseeker is a gap closer ,but P/D #3 is a instant 600 range gap maker that inflicts torment while heartseeker is a 450 range non instant gap maker which has to the right camera angle to do so and can be affect by chill and cripple making it useless. The 3 main damage dealers of D/D are all melee range so having regen, longer stealth, more toughness, and possbily blind is awesome in revealing some of the pressure.

P/D’s gap maker relies on hitting someone in melee range, what if your fighting against another ranged player? You’re a sitting duck without SA’s extended stealth and shadow’s rejuvenation.

You are right that P/D would have more trouble sticking on range target for lack of a gap closer but thieves have teleports like steal, infiltrators signet, and shadowstep to get closer to our targets. Also P/D is ranged so they could still hit their target if they are ranged but not get the #5 #1 combo off.

Who says you can’t build Soldier/Valkyrie with D/D? Thus your “squishy” comment is moot.

Never said you couldn’t. Just said that D/D is usually a more busty build and high crit is a nice thing to have with burst so just by gear D/D is normally squishier.

And I won’t try to convince you anymore. Both P/D and D/D are strengthened when in using SA for different reasons. Sorry I had to run, gotta go see a baby!

Sorry the quotes came out weird I’m rushing and I don’t know how to work quotes. :P

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It seems rampant how this misinformation of “D/D requires SA” is being spewed everywhere. You can build Acro or Trickery around D/D and it will still do great. It doesn’t rely on SA. What relies heavily on SA is the P/D set, not D/D.

How does P/D rely on SA the most? P/D has a gap maker and is ranged unlike D/D. This makes P/D really easy to kite people around unlike D/D which needs to be front and personal. Also P/D is usually a condition build so Dire FTW, unlike D/D which is usually a burst spec and is a lot squishier than P/D condition. I just don’t see why out of all the thief specs P/D is the one that needs it the most, maybe the second set to rely on it the most but the first.

Shockwave.1230:

Bug fixes and a feline grace nerf is all I want to see.

Maybe have it replaced by removing a condition on dodge with a CD of 2 seconds?

Thanks for clarifying!
Ya that definitely needs to be fix. I have had steal gone obstructed on full CD and such. I hope the steal bugs are fixed.

NinjaEd.3946:

Rework our healing power scaling (healing power = less damage, I think that alone is a sacrafise that should be rewarding for heals)

Could you explain this? I don’t understand what you mean.

Zord.6130:

Bring back old Shortbow #3 animation.
Remove the delay between Steal and Mug/Sleight of Hand.

Yes! Bring back the shortbow animation. What do you mean by the delay in steal with Mug and sleight of hand. I don’t use the trickery line and I don’t see a delay with Mug. What I have noticed is this teleport bug with steal that makes me off target. :/

shinigamith.7120:

I hope that…when i go into stealth, people who targeted me with a chaneling skill stop following me with their attack… yeah i find this terrible..really…

Agreed. This is going to be a even bigger issue with the longbow buff on rangers…

Anyone have any fears of what might happen to thief?

With the changes to both the ranger and engineer class already revealed for the next patch I thought it would be an interesting topic of discussion to talk about the hopes and fears for thieves in the upcoming patch. So what are you hoping to find in the patch and what are you hoping you don’t find in the next patch?

Hopes:
I hope that more condition removal and survivability is worked into the acrobatics tree, and reworking of lot of the crappy traits such as Hard to Live. Also a venom and trap buff!

Fear:
Nerfing shadow arts without balancing out with buffs in other traitlines.

Prysin.8542:

make it 5 seconds all over. Boost damage on stealth attacks by 3% – DONE.

An additional 2 seconds forced out of stealth is enough time for a good player to destroy a thief, no thanks. And if it was going to be 5 seconds I think a bigger damage boost than 3% would need to even it out. 10-15%??

Quakeman.9378:

mao.9832:

Actually the only real problem with D/P is the abuse of stealth with SA trait line. If you don’t know how to counter a blind then it’s your fault.
I think as said before to change Black Power to Dak field with 5ini instead of 6 and change the 4th skill of Pistol giving it something like 2x shots instead of 1 with half sec and it would be fine. This will make p/p viable and d/p still good.

It’s hard to counter blinds when they are so easily applied. Yes, if I realize that the thief popped a bp in the middle of my CnD, if I react fast enough, I can in theory sheathe my daggers to cancel the CnD, but this is anything but easy to do. I can dodge the shot from bp, only to have the thief reappear and plop another one down. It’s not blind we’re talking about here, it’s d/p’s ability to apply more blinds than one can deal with at times. It provides a much more forgiving play style. I can tell an immediate difference from when I play d/p instead of d/d, I don’t have to worry about anything really. And as I said before, I still feel like getting rid of d/p’s ability to stealth is too much. The whole purpose of dagger mainhand is for backstab, so that would completely defeat the purpose of the set and make it basically useless.

If D/P was nerfed by making #5 a dark field than D/P would become a utility weapon set. Having 2 gap closers, a spammable interrupt, and a AoE blind field on a weapon set is awesome to supplement another build. How I see it, if D/P #5 is changed to a dark field, there should be a small buff to either #3,4,5 to make it even more of a utility weapon. It would give another option to thieves who run shortbow for the utility.

Also when one main weapon set is destroyed (D/P) another is born (P/P).

RyuDragnier.9476:

Azawrath.7304:

RyuDragnier.9476:

If we changed more than the field from smoke to dark, there’s a chance of the move becoming too OP or too useless. Just a change to the field gets rid of the main annoyance of the D/P set (easy stealth), while keeps its usefulness as a blinding field and a quick blind on the enemy. This change also strengthens P/P by giving it the one thing that weapon set needs, some sustain (through projectile finishers that leech life) to make up for the lack of escape moves. Though to be honest, I would prefer the initiative being dropped to 5 instead of 6 if the field was changed.

While P/P would finally become a viable weapon set if #5 became a dark field, D/P would be destroyed imo. Like I stated before, would you or anyone use D/P if #5 was changed to a dark field?

I am not arguing that the on demand stealth is not the problem, it is, and the blind spam just adds to the problem. This is because once the thief is out of stealth and can be seen, players are hit with blinds making that 3 second window of revealed a lot safer for the thief. I think that on demand stealth needs to be nerfed hard, or both the on demand stealth and the blind spam both need to be dialed back a bit.

I never use D/P outside of certain PvE fights (such as that hylek on the little canyon top in Dry Top) to begin with, and when I do use the set it’s for the blinding field. If I’m fighting in WvW, I stick with D/D for my stealth purposes (due to the high risk/reward for it). If I’m fighting most things in PvE, I stick with P/P because you don’t really need stealth abuse in PvE.

I rarely PvE so I totally forgot about that aspect of the game, so this new D/P would still be viable in there, also P/P would be viable so that’s also a plus. A problem with the nerfing of D/P will most likely result in even more thieves in Spvp jumping on the perma evade S/D build, also in WvW. But this could work out because than the perma evade build will be nerf and than finally Anet and people will see how weak thief is out of stealth. I’m starting to like this dark field on D/P… :P

Carpboy.7145:

Quakeman.9378:

Carpboy.7145:

Dp isn’t a crutch, unless you use it with SA. I can roam perfectly fine with dp trickery. Are there some matchups i know i won’t win? (Most things condi) You bet. So i dance around them a bit to try and gauge their skill level. If i know ill be able to kill them i stick around. If not i shadow step away and find one of the many other people in WvW fight. And that’s ok with me

The problem is that the vast majority of D/P players do use shadows arts. I do not feel that SA should be nerfed, because D/D heavily relies on it.

Thats a bit hypocritical. You don’t wanna nerf SA because that screws dd users. Ok thats fine i understand. But anything you do to dp won’t only nerf dp SA, itll also affect dp trickery. The trickery build HEAVILY relies on the blinds for survival since thats all they got.

Well it’s true, nerfing SA will not fix the problem and will do more harm than good. This is because D/D strongly relies on the SA trait line because the weapon set itself does not offer a lot of protection like D/P does or S/D. Also D/P does not need SA to have a high stealth upkeep time.

So should that be allowed? A build that does not have points in a stealth trait line be able to stealth so much?

Unlike D/P, D/D has a very easy counter play, make the thief miss the Cnd which can be done is a lot of ways. The problem is that D/P does not have a counter (That I know of). You cannot punish a D/P for missing his BP +HR combo because he can’t unless interrupted, but the BP has such a long field duration (4 seconds) that even if the thief is stunned he can still recover and leap through the smoke.

Quakeman.9378:

I feel like removing the ability to stealth will completely ruin the weapon set, and I don’t really want that. What if the following is done:
1: Black Powder’s blinding shot is removed, and only puts the smoke field down
2:Shadow Shot: blind replaced with a cripple (vulnerability/weakness maybe too; anything really)

I believe that something like this might make D/P thieves much easier to deal with, while having the set viable.

If on demand stealth must stay (I think it should but should be nerfed) than not only must the BP blinding shot be removed but there needs to be an additional nerf to BP, maybe shortening the blind field duration.

I do not believe that shadow shot is the reason D/P is the OP weapon set that it currently is. Having shadow shot does not help with the blind spam ability of D/P but if the blinding bolt on BP is removed than I think the blind on shadow shot should be kept.

I only say this because the majority of the QQ I see comes from BP. Whether that be the on demand stealth in WvW or the strong blinding field in SpvP.

NinjaEd.3946:

IMO shadow shot is fine, its the stealth spam that’s an issue allowing to many screw ups and letting you reset on demand. I don’t know any thief using d/p in wvw that doesn’t have a heavy investment into their initiative, so they always keep it on hand to escape if need be or reposition. It comes down to chain stealth where it becomes a time out which isn’t fun or fair game play. I believe it should come down to a nerf in the way combo finishers work off of combo fields.

1. Allow meld in shadows to effect combo skills (leap or blast on smoke field in this case)
2. Change the mechanic of combo finishers/fields to apply a lesser effect each time if used on the same field. For example: BPS->Leap(4 sec)->Leap(3 sec)->Leap(1 sec). So the DR doubles each time until its basically non existent. Between the time it took to turn around and leap, the old set up granted about ~7 seconds of stealth? (correct me if I’m wrong). This new set up would only get about ~5 seconds.

For those using 2/6/0/0/6 with dp they didn’t sit in stealth for very long anyways. They actually used it just to reposition and land a BS immediately so it doesn’t effect them. For those using x/x/6/x/x with dp they would have a better start but they would need to fuel a new BPS rapidly to fund their stealth up time which would mean a heavier investment into their initiative which means they just get weaker and weaker somewhere else. Even if they decide to carry smoke bomb and drop it on the smoke field, that field still applies DR towards them (although the skill itself would still grant 3-4 seconds depending on traits).

I do not think nerfing combo finishers and combo fields will fix anything, it will end up doing more harm than good to this game. Many class and many guilds rely on might stacking, retaliation, stealth, and healing from combo fields, not just thieves.

RyuDragnier.9476:

If we changed more than the field from smoke to dark, there’s a chance of the move becoming too OP or too useless. Just a change to the field gets rid of the main annoyance of the D/P set (easy stealth), while keeps its usefulness as a blinding field and a quick blind on the enemy. This change also strengthens P/P by giving it the one thing that weapon set needs, some sustain (through projectile finishers that leech life) to make up for the lack of escape moves. Though to be honest, I would prefer the initiative being dropped to 5 instead of 6 if the field was changed.

While P/P would finally become a viable weapon set if #5 became a dark field, D/P would be destroyed imo. Like I stated before, would you or anyone use D/P if #5 was changed to a dark field?

I am not arguing that the on demand stealth is not the problem, it is, and the blind spam just adds to the problem. This is because once the thief is out of stealth and can be seen, players are hit with blinds making that 3 second window of revealed a lot safer for the thief. I think that on demand stealth needs to be nerfed hard, or both the on demand stealth and the blind spam both need to be dialed back a bit.

Shinobi.3240:

Hello!

To be honest, why do you even care about all the whine.
Good players already found out how to deal with thieves.
The others will continue to search for a way that make them not look bad and thieves overpowered. It´s never their fault if they lose. They don´t want to improve. They want to drag others down to their level of skill.
So maybe you should start to do it like i do … come on the forums … shake your head and laugh a little bit about all the nonsense that gets posted here … log back into the game and have some fun.

Best Regards,
Shinobi

The problem is that while killing a thief can currently be done if you are good and know what you are doing, the majority of players aren’t good at fighting thieves. So having the majority of players in a game QQ about a class and say they aren’t having fun anymore because of the class raises red flags for Anet. This usually ends up in a nerf for thieves while the thief class is begging for buffs in other trait lines. So I have a hard and boring time playing my thief when every patch thieves are becoming a harder and harder class to play without having other trait lines open up to create new builds.

I didn’t say leave, I said dance around. From your post it seems that you could poke and dance around the enemy without having to worry about being attacked. Both S/D and D/D have to get into melee range which gives a chance to fight back. S/D does have a lot of dodges and mobility which allows it to jump around but its a lot easier to catch than a D/P thief. Once a D/P thief goes stealth I might never see it again… That what I’m saying

Carpboy.7145:

Dp isn’t a crutch, unless you use it with SA. I can roam perfectly fine with dp trickery. Are there some matchups i know i won’t win? (Most things condi) You bet. So i dance around them a bit to try and gauge their skill level. If i know ill be able to kill them i stick around. If not i shadow step away and find one of the many other people in WvW fight. And that’s ok with me

Your post bring up another point for D/P being very strong.
Having the ability to dance around a player with D/P and have the ability to leave shows that D/P is still strong even without SA. Compared to S/D or D/D it is very hard to dance around an enemy without being engaged.

I do agree with you that D/P stealth should not be so easy and I do understand that it generates all the QQ for thief. If that is going to happen with D/P than should it need a buff? I really don’t know if it should or not… maybe lessen the initiative of #5? Or maybe have the projectile from #5 steal life (which I guess it would since its a dark field).

Another question we have to ask ourselves is “Would you play D/P after the nerf.” I hate D/P the current way it is since it is easy mode so I don’t care if its nerfed to the ground. I never planned on using it anyways. Most of us are blinded (Haha D/P) by the hatred for D/P and don’t care if it stays a viable set after the nerf we want.

We need some D/P player feedback in here to see if they would still use D/P after the nerf.

When I was first on my thief I used D/P because it was super strong being able to chain stealth with 4 heart seekers. I also realized that it was a super crutch for players so I started playing D/D. Now I am trying to get myself off of the SA trait line but I am having a really hard doing that in solo roaming especially in outnumber fights. But I can run it in group setting where I don’t take aggro.

Anyway back to D/P… the two strengths of D/P is insane blinds and on demand stealth. The #5 skill offers both of these which is why it should be the target of nerfs. Without the stealth from the smoke field + HR there is no point to the weapon set. Nerfing the on demand stealth will destroy the build and make it completely unusable. Dagger main-hand relies on stealth to do the majority of its damage with backstab.

Idea #1 – Completely remove blind on #5
Idea #2 – A player can only be blinded once per smoke field
Idea #3 – If a player is in the field for more than 1 second they are blinded and get rid of the blinding projectile.

EDIT : Idea #4 – Make it so if a the BP + HR combo hits a player the thief does not stealth. I think that would make it less spammy and have to use a little more brain power to use the build.

My favorite idea would be idea #3 because it offers for good counter play while still keeping D/P as a viable weapon set for thief. When the field goes down the player has a second to dodge out of it to avoid being blinded, and it also allows for a player to run in and deal damage before being blinded.

D/P should also get a nerf…

The only advice that has kept me from raging when I lose to another thief or player is ask a single question. Did I lose to the player or did I lose to the build?

If I lose to the player I admit to myself that I lost fair and square and it was my fault but I can improve. If I lose to the build then I just shrug it off and try to not let it bring me down. The reason for this is I play D/D as a thief and D/P thieves are constantly giving me a hard time because it is a hard counter to D/D with the blind spam.

Like I posted before, I think SA is not viable in Spvp because too much burst is given up that could be going into Deadly Arts or Trickery. I play my thief in spvp as a glass cannon who’s job is to kill enemy squishies and help burst down bunkers. If I can’t do that because I have points in a defensive trait line then its not going to work as well.

Yes SA will allow you to have more survivability, but I think what most people are saying is a good thief has good positioning so there wouldn’t be a reason to be more tanky.
A good way to play this game is start out tanky and slowly make your way towards glass as you get better at positioning and dodging key attacks.

First off I have seen a lot of your posts Zacchary and I don’t think anyone defends the thief as well as yourself. With that being said, I am also getting tired just reading the QQ, let alone having to reply to it.

I posted in a Spvp forum post about OP thieves the other day that I hope Anet nerfs the thief into the ground, so people can stop QQing, and I can actually be looked as as a skilled player instead of a OP thief who can’t play another profession. This is what the whining has brought me to, me begging for unreasonable nerfs to my own profession just so I can play in peace.

With all this QQ I hope the thief is nerfed to the ground. Then I’ll get on my thief and kill these noobs. And when they complain for nerfs Anet can’t because there will be nothing left to nerf.

What are your stats? If you are glass then another glass thief can easily get those numbers. Also the thief could have been a signet thief and hit you with 20 stacks of might on.

I’ll be completely fine with these buffs to other classes if the thief gets a little more love, possibly rework some traits… cough cough Hard to Catch, Assassin Reward, and like the other 20 useless traits.

D/D is still a viable weapon set in Spvp, it’s just a lot more challenging to use than D/P and S/D. I use 5 6 0 0 3 with D/D and it works out for me. The only problem with D/D is that it is a harder to 1v1 unless you can burst them down quickly.

The only reason why SA trait line is not good is because too much damage is given up for 30 points into it, and it will only benefit yourself and not help your team.

I’m starting to like this Zacchary player…

I don’t know the cause of the problem but same thing is happening to me. Only the original mistforge weapon has the particle effects. Also I miss clicked and bought a rifle instead of a pistol. Already sent in a ticket for that too.

EDIT: I’m blind… buying the mistforge weapon gives you both the hero and the mistforge version. I clicked on the hero version thinking it was the mistforge. GG

I went from 271% (121% + 150%) to 228% (78% + 150%) So I dropped 43% crit damage. Ouch!

I run 5 6 3 to make up for the lost damage but I only hit for 5-7k backstabs when before I could hit for 8-11k easy. So pretty big nerf to my damage. Don’t know what I am going to do now.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Dahkeus.8243:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Like I said, Thief is only weak because the player controlling them is weak.

Yea, we get it. You can stop thumping your chest now.

I’m responding to those who don’t.

Or you’d rather see me post “L2P” instead?

So what is the best way to get better? I have over 2k hours logged in on my thief but there are just some player, about 60% of them are warriors, who I cannot win against. I don’t know if its just that they are better than me or it is the build they use, or a combination of both. If it is the build that is countering me I guess the solution would be to keep dueling that build and learn how to fight it. Any other tips to get better?

DeceiverX.8361:

I’d say it’s in a good spot. If anything, D/P is a little too much, actually.

The amount of skill it takes to beat a thief as a ranger is higher than that it requires of the thief.

I’d also argue active defense is better than passive defense. What’s better, a 100% reduction in damage with lower/no cooldowns or a 33% reduction or a one-time block with a 90 second cooldown? Stealth versus more base hp? I’ll gladly take the stealth. I’ll take that active defense and get way more value out of it than someone just relying on numbers, thank you.

The reason why I wrote this post was because I had just been crushed by a GS/Hammer warrior that night. I felt absolutely useless fighting the warrior since my backstabs could only hit for around 4-5k and the warrior would just regen the health back in a matter of seconds.

So that is why I wrote this post saying that I think passive defense is better then active. The warrior could just eat my backstabs and just regen in a matter of seconds without having to do anything. Also the warrior was decent so he would swing in the area I just stealthed and get a couple hits in which dealt a high amount of damage. That is why I posted that passive > active.

Now I see that I just need to change up my build to fight better in duels and in WvW. I was running a 10 30 30 0 0 D/D backstab build but I think my armor was wrong since I was very squishy and not getting enough damage to justify for the lack of armor.

I will still stand by my opinion that thief is weak to conditions when not using stealth. We can use food, a signet, runes, and a sigil to cleanse conditions. But the lyssa runes are getting nerfed and the food, signet, and sigils only cleanse 1 condi which is not enough to go up against a necro, engi, or any other condi class.

Also I agree that D/P is a very strong weapon set that should get knocked down a peg.

Dead Muppet.9718:

AikijinX.6258:

We’re worse than Rangers.

Only a thief will eat a ranger for breakfast in wvw and not break a sweat.

A thief will eat a bad ranger for breakfast. A thief will eat any bad player for breakfast. Actually any decent player will each a bad player for breakfast. There are good players out there that play ranger that will kick your kittin in. The majority of players that play the ranger are either new to the game or they are not that good. Good players would rather play the warrior or some other competitive class and be god mode.

Ranger is a weak class mainly due to the crappy AI system but thief is actually weaker and the only reason why you see thieves eating rangers is because almost all rangers are new or bad players like I said already.

I don’t know if you are joking but I agree. Thieves really only have one way of dealing damage and one of defense which is stealth. The problem with this reliance on stealth is it makes thief builds very one dimensional which leads to a weak class. Thieves don’t have any inactive defense such as blocks, protection, or agesis. We rely on stealth and dogging which are both active defense and active defense isn’t as effective as inactive defense. The thief will become a strong class when it is no longer dependent on stealth.

I understand that there are builds that do not use stealth but they are not very strong and they don’t hold up against good players.

Hey guys lately I have been dueling a lot of players from other servers to help get better and I realized that players of equal skill on other classes I have a really hard time winning against. Everyone says that thief is OP but we are only OP against unskilled players.

Put us up against a player of equal skill on another class and we will probably lose (Or at least me). Thieves just seem to have to sacrifice way more than other classes to do more damage or to survive. So I wanted to discuss if the thief community thought the thief was weak both in Spvp and in WvW compared to other classes.

I am currently on HoD and I play mainly anywhere from 3-10PM EST. From what I can tell they have 30 points into SA and some points into CS in order to get the quickness on crit skill.

I asked a fellow thief on HoD and they said it was some new S/D dueling build that a thief on SoS created. I don’t know if it’s true but I haven’t seen a build like it and it is very effective in 1v1s.

What is this new S/D build that every thief in WvW seems to be running? I keep encountering it and it has high survivability why still dishing out a good amount of damage.

Also I want my backstab to hit MY target, not the clone, pet, or minion right next to it.

Black powder (#5 of pistol) blinds once every second for 4 seconds. That being said pistol whip on S/P hits 9 times in around 2 seconds. This allows you to hit the thief even if you are standing in his black powder. Most D/P thieves run closer to glass cannon since they think they are invincible in black powder, so you will be able to drop them fast with pistol whip. Also the stun on #3 and #4 in S/P will interrupt their flow as stated above.

I’m waiting for the balance comes out to see what to do since Anet said there was “good” changes some to thief. Last time “good” changes came to the thief class we had perma stealth nerfed. It was a well deserved nerf but a nerf is a nerf. Maybe thief will actually get a buff :O Positive thinking!

IMO this is a great idea. +1
But to reply to needing the blind to a downed enemy you can use #5 on the SB to do an AoE blind.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Is this a serious thought or were you just wondering?

Slow Clap Well played… Well played…

In all honest I don’t Spvp on my thief a lot. Come to think of it I rarely do Spvp to begin with. I don’t know the state of thieves in PvP but apparently it is a lot worse then WvW. Sorry for wasting your time.

vrilek.4038:

10/30/30/0/0 build thief has no access to vigor. Your point of view is WvWvW i presume. Someday you will learn that d/p thief is the most difficult class to master in this game on pvp level. Thief is very weak against condies compare to other classes. Everything you said is so wrong … And PU mesmer which is banned on most 1v1 server? Where did you come from buddy?

I mistyped and i meant to say that not all thieves run 10/30/30/0/0 which means that they can have access to vigor.

Yes I’m talking about WvW.

Can’t tell if you are trolling but D/P thief is one of the easier builds in game. In any game mode in GW2. Period.

You are right, thieves are weak to conditions. Never said they weren’t. I just said that thieves have stealth as a migration to avoid getting attacked or conditions in the first place.

I originally came from Yaks Bend and then transferred to HoD. When PU mesmer first came out I was having a hard time, but I learned how they worked and used their clones against them. What makes thieves so strong is we have all the time in the world and when you realized that you will be a way better thief. I’m still working on it myself.

Maybe in dueling PU mesmers are OP because it is frowned upon to wait in stealth which is why I really don’t duel on my thief.

Also I have thought that we could be in different tiers where average skill is different, maybe we are just facing different difficulties of players which is the reason why our views are conflicting.

NinjaEd.3946:

Excuse my asking, but when you evade a back stab it doesn’t break their stealth but it does show the works “evade” very clearly. Does this also apply to “miss” from blind? Cuz if so, then blind does in fact counter d/p thief backstab because the enemy will then see where the enemy is (behind them….).

I don’t see Azarath’s counter to condi engi to be at all plausible. You can’t avoid the aoe’s forever. A smart thief will avoid aoe’s, but a smart engi will know where to put them. It works both ways, you can’t avoid the condi spam from engi especially for 1 condi every 3 seconds. Even still, condi engi aren’t squishy so even if you manage to get a backstab off, you won’t kill them. Spam hs and you’re likely dead by then (1. for being a fool, 2. for being new). Can you put a dent in them? Absolutly, but again smart engi can outlast any d/p thief with their amount of heals/evasions. It’s even more apparent in pvp, where condi engi is absolutely insane and power thief is meh except against other glass builds, which seem to be in small numbers these days.

First off, I am pretty sure that if a thief is blind it will not say “Miss” the way it says “evaded” for the enemy.
I think we have a different definition of “countering”. Because a blind on a D/P is not a counter in any way, its merely an inconvenience. Countering is when it completely messes you up. For instance a blind on a D/D thief it not carefully watched and taken care of can easily mean the death of the thief.

Secondly, I don’t know what D/P thieves you have been facing but they are stealthed until they backstab. So unless a engi can put AoE everywhere I don’t see how it can be done. Also most condi engis are extremely squishy. I can kill most with a D/D burst or take them past 50% health.

Third. Do not compare Spvp thief/engi to that of WvW. A thief in Spvp is totally difference class and an engi in Spvp is even more powerful then in WvW.

hihey.1075:

About engis: a Engi with any skill will not have any problem in using his blocks and Invulns to avoid being backstabbed if he sees the thief avoiding his AoE. Plus, while Shadow Embrace is a good trait for condi removal, the condis put out by a nade engis are usually too many to only rely on SE for cleansing. Also, the Engi has so many interrupt skills that the thief will have a hard time against a good one. I suck as engi and made one just to understand how they work, and guess what, I melt D/P thieves.

About warriors: Their attacks are telegraphed but a D/P does not have any source of Vigor. The only way he could mitigate damage is with blinds, against which Warriors have zerker stance. Also, using hammerstun near the BP field will force a dodge from the thief, making him waste half of his Ini pool. Not to mention the #4 skill insta-aoe knockback, the #3 cripple (usually an immob) and #2 weakness are all great against D/P.

PU mesmers are a counter because if the thief is stealthed to cleanse their condis the thief will not do any damage.

Blinds not affecting D/P thieves is the most fun statement I’ve read in this thread.

Condi Necros have an istant interrupt with Doom. Again, I suck at necro but I kill so many D/P thieves with it that it’s extremely fun.

The only easy thing about D/P is chaining stealth and saying “hey look i’m stealthed you can’t kill me trolololol”. A good player will crush a D/P, period.

A D/P thief can perma stealth. Last time I checked engis do not have perma invuls so eventually the thief will get the backstabs. A thief with a brain isn’t going to stay in the AoE of the engi so there won’t be a lot of conditions to remove. And lastly if the engi wants to interrupt the thief usually they have to see them unless they are using a AoE stun.

For warrior. Now all thieves run the standard 10/30/30/0/0 so there is a chance they are running vigor traits. Secondly for a thief, stealth is a great damage migration tool (Pro Tip) Also the warrior can be stunned to prevent a combo attack or the thief can blind. Berserker stance is only a 8 second skill on a 60 second CD, gives plenty of time for the warrior to be blinded. The problem with D/P is that it is a very very forgiving build to play. So even if the thief gets stunned or immob it really doesn’t matter because they can just perma stealth and regen up to full (The warrior might also be regenerate but it was by the thief’s choice, not the warrior.) And weakness can be removed in stealth before he backstabs.

For PU mesmer: If I recall correctly, PU mesmers really only have bleeds, torment, and confusion, and maybe some others like burning but it doesn’t happen very often. Since they rely on mainly 3 conditions its very easy for a thief to either use Hide in Shadows which will remove the burning, bleed, poison, and another condition. Now they are cleansed and ready to strike again.

“Blinds not affecting D/P thieves is the most fun statement I’ve read in this thread.”
Umm haha? I really don’t see how D/P affect by blinds. Their stealth is not hit based so blinds don’t affect it. And if they need to backstab, they miss once and can just stab again since they don’t unstealth. Hence one of the reasons for the OP’s post.

Arikyali.5804:

I have a personal ‘kill list’ for my thief, where I try to come across a class/build and try to beat them. So far, I have a few more to cross off the list, but I will need advice for these:

1. DPS guardian

2. MM necro

3. Some kind of warrior build that facerolled what I thought would be an easy fight, and wrecked me in 0.5 seconds. Bloody hell, didn’t even have time to react and evade that burst.

Edit: I’m a d/d thief, offhand p/d. Shortbow was nice, but I find the pistol mainhand to be much more effective.

Ok I’ll try my best to give some tips

1. A DPS guardian usually runs Greatsword/Sword Shield. That being said the main burst comes from bubble created by the shield, the spin to win, and the #2 on the sword I think which slashes and reflects projectiles. Usually they are also constantly blinding you on top of that. So when the bubble shield goes up you can either hit them 3 times to break it or get away from them before it explodes. If you do not hit them 3 times in the duration it will explode and do a ton of damage, like 5-7k. When the guardian uses the spin to win or the slashes with the sword, it would be a good idea to use the stolen ability to interrupt them. That is what I can think of off the top of my head. Lastly, be aware of the conditions you have on your bar, because a blind can really punish you if it makes you waste your CnD. Just auto attack to get rid of it.

2. A MM necro is definitely a underestimated opponent. Because it has so many NPCs around it, landing a backstab becomes a very challenging task. Luckily you have a lot of targets to CnD off of. Mainly just CnD off of a NPC and backstab the necro. Then just back off and CnD off another of his minions and go in again for a backstab. Also if you manage to land your D/D burst, immediately use the stolen skill to interrupt the heal and continue to heartseeker/ AA.

3. Lastly the warriors that roll in 0.5 seconds that don’t go down :/ These atm are the hardest classes for me to face besides D/P thieves. Most of these warriors will run great sword and axe/ shield. The main damage comes from the axe special attack called eviserate (can’t spell) which will take you down to half health. Also 100B is used to deal damage. Since the warrior skills are either very slow or telegraphed warriors need to lock you down. They will either use the shield bash to stun you and then use the axe eviserate on you. Best thing to do is to double dodge when you see the shield stun coming because they expect it to land and have already pressed the axe attack. Usually then they use 100B they will immob you and you should CnD off of them to cleanse the immob and get out of there, or use a teleport. In order to kill a warrior you need to try to keep up constant poison in order to lower their passive healing. Do not try and burst them down because you will waste your utilities and end up getting crushed. Reserve your dodges and stunbreakers for their big attacks. Fighting a warrior is a very hard fight to win, even if they are of lesser skill.

hihey.1075:

Travlane.5948:

hihey.1075:

Alex Behemoth.4952:

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I will get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then they must step up their game and improve

Fixed it for you. Nice try though.

Also, fun fact: the people who are complaining are only (bad) WvWers, as almost no one in PvP is complaining about stealth thieves.

really good point. cant realy play stealth well bc of 4 sec revealed in pvp. i think its way too long. they should have put thieves in medium HP range. not lowest.

I won’t speak about the Reveal debuff being longer in sPvP, but what I say is this:
PvP players (hence those who know how to play, to an extent at least) already know how to counter a D/P thief.
Bad WvWers don’t. And the difference is, in PvP you MUST overcome the difficulties you are facing in order to win. In WvW, you just tell your buddies “heh, stealth op” and come to the forums asking for nerfs.

This post isn’t making sense to me. So you are saying that PvP players know how to kill D/P thieves. I’m kinda confused but comparing fighting a D/P thief in Spvp and a D/P in WvW are two completely different things. First off, the builds are different. Spvp D/P thieves have less damage and +1 second revealed. Facing a stealth based thief that has to stay out of stealth for an additional second is game changing. The problem with the 3 second revealed is that you can dodge once able to stealth up again while 4 seconds still gives you a chance to deal damage.

hihey.1075:

Classes that counter D/P thieves in a 1v1:
-Nade/bomb engis
-Hammer Warriors
-D/D eles (assuming the thief is actually dueling and not just trolling)
-PU mesmers (arguable)
-Zerk Guardians
-Condi Necros

Of course, you have to know your class and know how D/P works in order to beat them.

The majority of these classes counter a brain dead D/P thief. A D/P thief with any skill with perma stealth outside of the Engis AoE and come in for a backstab, run away and stealth. Rinse and repeat.

Hammer Warriors could be a counter but their attacks are very telegraphed and they require to be in melee range which can be a problem with pistol #5.

D/D eles I could actually see being a counter with all of the AoE they have but then again a D/P thief can just stealth until the Ele stops. Just like the Engi.

I would have to say that PU mesmers are not a counter since a D/P thief can perma stealth and completely avoid condis and clones.

Zerk Guardians. I assume you mean the ones that teleport every where and blind constantly. I don’t really see how (maybe you can enlighten me) since blinds really do not affect D/P thieves.

And lastly condi necros. Condis hurt every class and this could be a counter if you can put enough condis on the thief before he stealth.

If anything almost all of these builds/classes are counters to D/D thief. The trend with these classes/builds are they have very high AoE and usually blinds and blocks. Most D/D thieves will get shredded if they stay in range of these classes to try and stealth. The problem is that D/P does not need to be in range of these classes to stealth and then can backstab, run and stealth. Rinse and repeat.

Tonight I dueled a D/P thief many many many times. Lost every time. Not ashamed to admit it. The thing was that I switched to D/P from D/D, and I haven’t used D/P in 4 months. And I won.
It just shows that the thief I dueled did not have as much skill as I did and the second I made the playing field more even I won. Just goes to show that D/P is super easy mode.

Tao.5096:

what’s the point of nerfing thief build and some other ones which can be countered if you will use your Brain? /no offence, not directed at you anyway

D/P is an easy build but doesn’t mean it’s flawless and it can be countered by any class.
Problem lies within players and lack of creativity. Mostly works this way:
- if someone beats me up all the time with certain build, it means it’s too OP – wtb nerf.

I’m saying that because I have seen it in lot of games and it always did end up with never ending nerfs on that class – already have seen NCSoft doing that, outcome was horrible.

D/D build with CnD properly used is OP as well – how much does it take to learn how it works and prepare for a counter?

Well, I’ll quote a some admin from other MMO:
- Let’s make everyone have 1 HP and 1 MP and let them pvp – fair and square.

D/P is not flawless, you are right buts its close. D/P has almost all of the benefits of running D/D without many of the disadvantages. Does D/P have counters? Sure you can interrupt them but what else can you do? Please tell me I’d love to know more, I don’t have a brain :O

An OP class IMO is a class that either does not have a counter or is countered by a small number of builds that are either not viable or not used. I could easily destroy any build/class in the game if i was built for it! But the problem is that you can’t be build to counter every build in this game. Thus OP builds need to be nerfed so that more classes can counter them or builds that don’t counter them can still win if tactic and skill is used.

Nothing is worse then a good player losing to a player of lesser skill because of the builds being used.

Also D/D OP if used well? Thats not OP, that’s called knowing the class and build very well and know how to play off of advantages. D/D is far from being OP since stealth relies on actually hitting the target which can be countered by blinds, evades, blocks, etc.

P.S. /No offense still means offense

Blocks, evades, etc. are defensive abilities which means they are supposed to negate damage and not punish the player. I do believe certain classes and runes do punish players for attacking a blocked enemy. But since blocks and evades do do their job which is to negate damage I see no problem.

Also tell me how a shield on a players arm that is in front of them can block a hit from the back :P

Blocks, evades, etc. become very useful against thieves when they don’t allow the thief to land a CnD. But you also mention OP D/P which doesn’t need someone to stealth off of. IMO D/P is an extremely easy build to play. I do think they need to nerf it but I haven’t decided which part of it should be nerfed.

So I don’t agree with blocks and evades punishing you but I see where you are coming from. But I totally agree there is no skill involved in D/P and something needs to be done about it.

We could just end up having stealth nerf as a “buff” and then have nothing done to us for months while all the other classes get buffs :/