I don’t know why people think guards counter thieves.
Thieves have the tools to fight guards.
They just need to go pistol pistol.
Range and kite the guard.
I’ve seen many skilled pistol thieves kill guards.
Problem is only that one spec can counter guards if the Thieve is skilled while all other guards specs hard counter Every other Thief spec.
And P/P are weak/countered by all other meta class builds, they have to give up quite a bit to do any damage which is negated by all of the low CD projectile hate, i.e. Engine reflects, war blocks, ele Reflects/ projectile Destruction, Mesmer Distortion reflect, rev blocks and Glint heal, Druid Sublime Conversion and so on and Guards have quite a few projectile hate abilities built into the meta build so no it isn’t a hard counter it just allows thieves to counter the aoe spam that guards push out.
It takes the thief having to be better than the DH to make P/P counter DHs but be weaker to every other meta build use in spvp
Heavens forbid Thieves mobility is hurt for a few seconds…
Heaven forbid classes not having to fear empty points due to passive gameplay…
Because that totally works when a DH JI and drops ToF on top of you…. or if it’s an empty point and there happens to be prepaid traps that you didn’t know about, and so on.
Curse you bloody conquest!
When playing thief it’s a gamble to enter an empty point if there are Dhs on other team if you don’t have dash and dodge onto the point
Use one of your (literally) 15 dodges. Stop complaining with the most broken, goofy, silly class in the game that just barely manages to function.
Please, teleport on top of the roof above you on Kyhlo while the rest of us are actually limited.
As a thief, you unfortunately shouldn’t win every fight you have. Sadly, you can’t get a trump card in GW2. It’s a trap for a reason.
You act like shadowstepping is some “godly” ability that makes me completely “unlimited”. You’re so obtuse it’s sad. Right now shadowstepping is more of a LIABILITY than it is a PERK with these traps.
And not only that, but how is this a “trump card” for a thief to win any fight? That’s not even possible, this would only affect thief vs guard!
never thought id say this but have you tried you know. not walking into the traps?
Because that totally works when a DH JI and drops ToF on top of you…. or if it’s an empty point and there happens to be prepaid traps that you didn’t know about, and so on.
No surprises there. The only lingering question is, should the Stealth Attack cool down be tied to Rending Shade and not across the board?
To be clear; if you spec for Rending Shade, your stealth attack has the 1s ICD.
If you didn’t spec for Rending Shade, stealth attack has no CD.I personally have no problem with 1s ICD, but to make more people happy, I think keeping the ICD in Rending Shade is a good compromise.
Why should Rending Shade have a CD in the first place? It requires the attack to land for it to proc if it lands you have a CD in the form of Revealed.
Not sure what you’re talking about. As of right now, whether you spec for RS or not, stealth attack have a 1s ICD. Since the ICD and RS was introduced at the same time, it’s a safe assumption that the decision to add the ICD was because of RS. So if that is the case, tie the ICD to RS.
The ICD is completely separate from Rending Shade, just because it was in the same patch does not mean they are related in any way, and it would be completely pointless to put a 1 second ICD on Rending Shade due to the existence of Revealed, since your attack has to land to even proc Rending Shades boon strip.
And the 1sec cd on stealth attacks shouldn’t have ever been introduced there was no reason for it and no explanation given by Devs for its existence.
No surprises there. The only lingering question is, should the Stealth Attack cool down be tied to Rending Shade and not across the board?
To be clear; if you spec for Rending Shade, your stealth attack has the 1s ICD.
If you didn’t spec for Rending Shade, stealth attack has no CD.I personally have no problem with 1s ICD, but to make more people happy, I think keeping the ICD in Rending Shade is a good compromise.
Why should Rending Shade have a CD in the first place? It requires the attack to land for it to proc if it lands you have a CD in the form of Revealed.
No
/15 chars.
The better idea would be to remove the Cooldown completely, there is absolutely no reason for it, no other class is effected by a cd and locked out of their Auto attacks while stealthed, especially since it takes more resources for Thieves to enter stealth to even get their Stealth attacks.
If someone is on point don’t go to that point, if you will be out numbered on point don’t go to point if someone rushes home at start leave point……… i.e. Stay at spawn till match is over…… if you see red run
This whole thread relies on the assumption that your entire team needs to stand on a point. You only need to have one person on the point at any given time to contest it.
There’s already a counter to AOE, which is to avoid stacking up on point. Rotate people on and off as needed.
If there is a large point, it should be far enough from spawn that downing the enemy bunker reliably secures the point. On Foefire, (depending on team comps) you can lose your bunker at mid but contest the point long enough via kiting and LOSing for your bunker to respawn and rejoin the fight, which essentially resets the whole endeavor.
Your entire team doesnt need to stand on a point, but every teammate should be able to contest because there will be times you need to. Not just contest, but go in to the fight and assist instead of spending half the time waiting for everyone’s one shot skills to end.
Its really so bad, thief has been reduced to spam or die, either you spam dp stealth, death blossom, unload or vault, using any of the other skills especially in a team fight is pretty much a waste of initiative.
The most ridiculous thing about this is they cant just buff thief to fight better with the team, because stealth will make any thing anet does look broken, the same way traps make any buffs dh gets look broken. Its amazing how ridiculous these devs are
Which is funny that people see stealth as OP with all of the Nerfs thrown at it i.e. Directly or by increasing the amount of Reveal being thrown around, right now it is almost pointless to go into stealth while in combat due to the stealth attack nerf and the amount of initiative required to stealth., while other classes get more reliable Stealth access with none of the down sides
Money…. they wanted HoT to sell and to entice players that pvp to buy into the more powerful specs.
And by them limiting Viable builds allows them to focus balance on the most widely used Meta builds
You will never see this build in top-tier play. There is a reason for that. Find that reason, and put it to good use.
yeah top tier gamers know the exact casting time of their atacks etc etc
but this permaevade build not only plays against the player , plays againts tech limitations of mid gamers that dont have a top tier computer and a top tier net conection etc etc.
if you get an average player that dont know by incstint their casting times and have a slower reaction time, adds a medium computer and a medium net conection landing and attack in the frames betwen evades is a lottery, in resume playing againts “perma evade” is not only a “git gud” matterAre you suggesting being a mid tier player or having high ping, latency or a lower tier rig is something a thief player not restricted by? I assure you that under those conditions it even more difficult for a thief as they have to time their own evades perfectly. This unlike throwing a 3 second block up or having a passive kick in.
Being a mid tier player or having lag and latency issues is NOT limited to every class but thief. When there lag in the game I pull my thief out and put in a warrior or scrapper or mesmer because those builds are more forgiving.
By the way there is no such thing as “perma evade” . There are vulnerable frames in every evade and the thief still restricted by initiative and or endurance. That evade animation can in instances make it easier to hit the thief as he locked in the same.
Just as example skill 2 pistol on theif is a slow projectile. If facing a player with swiftness up that projectile can be sidestepped or avoided without dodging at all. On the other hand If I see a DB thief and time my shot right, it all but certain to hit him .
The same applies to wells traps or other such AOE effects. If you see a thief spamming evades such as those death blossoms, you know exactly where he will land. Plan accordingly.
As to whether this perma evade “promotes” unskilled play another non arguement. All professions have the same types of builds . Passives flying up every time one gets in trouble is hardly “skilled play”. If a skilled player can beat said build every time than thet palyer using “unskilled play” will either die all the time to the same or will have to get better.
The only time a build can be called OP is if better then average or more skilled players have no way of dealing with it. If a skilled player can beat it than how is that not promoting skilled play?
im not sugesting it im saying it,“permaevade” xploits this.
Thief players can also had this isues but they had a build that xploits this isues in another players, other builds whith blocks blurs and other stuff arent not so timing dependants to beating them.
And that players walked the pasives aoe way is mainly fault of thieves. being jumped by an enemy apearing of nowhere taked the 50-75% of your health and having a very small time window to respond or they finish you imediatly causes this, a big weapon race that finally thieves losed.
Thieves aren’t the only Passives and Aoe are everywhereim pretty sure Pu Mesmer, is also another cause, but the biggest cause was the balance around lazy gameplay and HoT powercreep, how come thieves are the only class that has to rely on almost pure active defenses, which causes thieves with bad ping have even harder times than almost every other class? And one of Thief main defenses doesn’t mitigate damage to 0 and has hard counters built into classes. And once the next batch of Powercreeped Elite specs come out it won’t have the third Endurance bar…
so the reason for smaller cap points is to shorten the duration of the fight? You understand that some classes are better at fighting on smaller cap points than others right? and that is a huge problem since the matchmaking doesnt take profession mix into account
You have just basically said that shorter fights are more important than classes fighting on an even footing. You are saying, it doesnt matter if two (even 3) thieves are staring down a multi DH, multi condi war comp it doesnt matter as long as the thieves die quickly without wasting time bothering about contesting. This is why people have a problem with anet devs.
Lol im done.
The problem with longer fights is longer fights changes how the rotation games works. If the fights take too long then rotation becomes devalued and strategy turns to simply taking home and bunking mid.
A example of this is 3point maps in SW:TOR (back when it had 8v8 ranked) where that game’s more difficult capping system meant that teams simply take close and contest mid, and the team that capped their close first wouldn’t even need to cap mid. Thus winning simply became about getting the first cap and the rest of the match was just for show.
Thieves would actually be less useful with large nodes because with large nodes the gameplay turns away from rotations and towards bunking. And thieves strength as always been in rotations.
Before, the June 23rd patch that killed core thief, i was a combat thief so i would run S/D and D/P, rune of lyssa, 30 points in trickery, improvisation trait and old feline grace trait. I ran this because i really hated (and still do) stealthing but i liked the evade gameplay.
I noticed that this build was really good at fighting revealed and did really well in team fights and outnumbered fights against other classes. This was really useful on a large point because when i recalled out of range to avoid a pin i would still be on the point or very near it so i could still contest. This doesnt work anymore after all the changes.
Nowadays with smaller points thieves cannot participate in a team fight well because of DH traps and all the random AoE, Often times i would see a thief hanging back looking at a fight waiting for an aoe skill to end before jumping in, waiting because going to another point isnt a good option at that moment for whatever reason.
This is why Helseth (i think) said they dont pay any attention to what thief is doing.
DH traps are really bad for the game, the amount of stealth on thieves also really bad for thieves. Ive said this for months its only now people are finally beginning to understand why.
And I think this is why I’m seeing so many P/P thieves in mid-high ranked and why you almost never see a non-P/P thief in unranked. If they get even remotely close to melee range they melt from untargeted AoE and Unload will kill or come close to killing most classes most of the time plus it’s on a short enough cooldown they can usually get 2-3 off before they’re caught. It’s a cheese build and not viable at ESL levels but it’s enough to make them not-useless at Ruby/Diamond/lower Legendary.
warrior shield makes p/p thief kill itself.
I never killed myself to this but I did kill an ally DH that stood between me and the Warrior…… I couldn’t stop laughing when I realized what happened.
Wait…spamming evades while apply huge condi damage isn’t OP? That’s wildly OP! Though it’s not the most OP build right now. D/P is still a better build. The reason you don’t condi in high end pvp is because it dies in teamfights too easily, even with all the evading, and in smaller fights, players know how to counter it.
But yes, it is an insanely cheap build. Imo, it’s actually the cheapest and most faceroll build in the game, but it’s definitely not the most OP because it CAN be countered by good timing. Though that’s literally the only counter, aside from maybe walls that stop evading players.
You for got any immob also kills it instantly, as well as all aoe still causes damage since the evade frames aren’t up 100% of the time and ao on.
This is a tip for those using SA and stealth on steal. If you dodge and steal it will interrupt your auto attack and prevent yourself from accidentally revealing yourself and wasting the stealth.
Or you could turn off auto cast auto attack which doesn’t waste a dodge.
From the very beginng the Devs stated the wings will be obtainable after the year of the ascension just would be more difficult to get. S5 is not part of the year of ascension unless they change that.
If Thieves get 15 initiative baseline then Necros should get the increased lifeforce pool baseline too. And all the other professions should get their 5th specialization bonus as a baseline too.
Your main weapon skills costs aren’t balanced around your resource pool on those classes while the majority of Thief weapon skills are. And other classes don’t have all their Swaps/attunements/kits tied to 1 resource pool so your argument is pretty invalid.
I would advocate more for the thief to have their weapon skills actually all be balanced around the 12 Initiative pool instead of increasing the baseline Initiative, I can just see Anet taking the easier route which would be making Preparedness baseline.
The original argument was over being forced to take the traitline because of said bonus. Though my point was invalid over other professions, Necromancers almost always have to take soul reaping because of their reliance on Life force generation and shroud degeneration.
Lifeforce isn’t tied to all of the Reaper/Necro weapon skills though a completely different resource mechanic, so your argument of Lifeforce generation has absolutely no bearing or similarity to Thieve and Initiative.
the whole reason Preparedness should be baseline is due to the Devs have been balancing Thief weapon skills around 15 Initiative pool instead of the baseline 12, if they would rebalance all weapon skills around. The 12 Ini pool they could leave preparedness alone as a trait but I don’t see them taking the time or effort to fix the problem correctly, so the only other fix is to make Preparedness baseline.
This may sound strange but I find the thief in a good place right now. What isn’t in a good place is the bunker meta. If the bunker meta gets toned down, the thief only needs a few skills/traits adjusted to be a very balanced class.
To address your points:
1. There are numerous ways to generate Init outside of Trickery and I have found that several builds run quite fine without the extra 3 init.
2. S/Ds problems aren’t init related so much as nerf related. If they rolled back a few of the nerfs on that weapon, it could return to its former glory. S/P is fine as is. Most people don’t like it as much because of the extra skill required to use it but once mastered it is powerful.
3. I can see shuffling some traits around.
4. I am not for this. Thief HP is fine and doesn’t need warrior-esk base HP to run properly.
I would rather see them balance the Ini costs around base 12 in but that will never happen and if they did then it would inherently fix the disparity between the total Ini needed between each weapon set, but I won’t hold my breath for anet to revert nerfs, I can see anet being more prone to making preparedness baseline since it is the easiest and lazier route to fix the issue.
On the HP it would be nice and since by all acts I don’t see powercreep going away it’s pushing Thief further and further away especially with all the passives most every other class has. I put this as number 4 since it wouldn’t be a priority but it can easily turn into one later if they keep introducing powercreep.
If Thieves get 15 initiative baseline then Necros should get the increased lifeforce pool baseline too. And all the other professions should get their 5th specialization bonus as a baseline too.
Your main weapon skills costs aren’t balanced around your resource pool on those classes while the majority of Thief weapon skills are. And other classes don’t have all their Swaps/attunements/kits tied to 1 resource pool so your argument is pretty invalid.
I would advocate more for the thief to have their weapon skills actually all be balanced around the 12 Initiative pool instead of increasing the baseline Initiative, I can just see Anet taking the easier route which would be making Preparedness baseline.
The main Things I would love to see on Thief next balance patch are.
1. Preparedness Baseline- having this tied to a traitline as well as having Initiaitive costs balanced on a 15 Initiative pool kills Thief build diversity and Shoe horns all Thieves to use Trickery in Most Gamemodes. The Fix either balance all Weapon skills around the Default 12 Initiative pool or preparedness baseline.
2. Normalize Total Initiative Costs across all Weapon sets-having sucha wide range of Total Initiative costs on all Weapon sets causes some weapon sets to be unfavorable/under utilized. I.e. D/P and Staff having 16 ini total vs S/P and S/D having 20 total Ini.
3. Restructure Traitlines- most classes have Traitlines that accentuate a Single theme or style of damage, Thief traitlines bleed across and are unfocused I.E DA blending Condi damage and Physical, modifying steal with Mug which should be under Trickery under one trait line, traits should be separated and redistributed accordingly. This one will probably never happen.
4. Raise Thief Base HP, it has the least amount of passive defenses/ sustain yet has the lowest Base HP, raise base Hp to Ranger HP level.
Any input is appreciated.
(edited by BlaqueFyre.5678)
This isn’t bad, the big thing I would want them to do is finally make Preparedness Baseline, since all of the ini costs are balanced on a 15 ini pool, it is the main offender of killing Thief Build Diversity.
People need to read the deck posts …..
I will be updating this thread over the weekend, I have been tweaking a few builds trying to refine them.
The point is that they implemented a new map, something that almost no one was really waiting for. Creating and testing a new map costs quite a lot of time, while some good old never-used-weapon attacks are still the same as years ago. Anet has very wrong priorities when it comes down to PvP.
You do know that the balance team is different from the design team that pushes out new maps and so on right? They are most likely working on both simultaneously, and they have a timeline they stick to, every quarter they put class balance with the major updates, while small things like a new map and polishing go out in the smaller updates
Here is something I have been working on lately it seems to do well
Thieves got “balanced” this patch
So your saying just play DH and win? Ha, you know the trap trick only works the first time. If you don’t learn then its natural selection…
The funny thing is people keep saying that but none of them must play necromancers.
CC + tRAps is death to any necromancer. The highest most precious comodity in this game right now is stability and necromancers have the least
Actually I just want to remind everyone what necromancers lack
- The least Stability in the game
- The least (zero) blocks in the game
- The least (zero) invulnerability in the game
- The least mobility in the game
- The least hard cc in the game
- The least healing in the gameI’m pretty sure I can go on. So maybe you’re right. Just don’t play necromancers this season is maybe what Anet is trying to tell everyone huh?
Oh and you’re comment means nothing when talking about objectives like Chieftain / Svanir and Lords.
EDIT: and another thing.
ITs funny that you bring up the exact same retort every other person brings up when talking about DH. I’m tier 7 Diamond and there are STILL full teams of DH. I’m sure when and if I get to legendary it will be even worse. 4+ DH a game. about 6 on average. This is not amber.
So what you’re saying is NOBODY has figured out how to not die by DH. Not even in Legendary. lol
Just wanted to mention that Thieves/DD’s have the least (zero) stability, and also have zero invulns.
Thieves have stability on one very very underwhelming Elite… DaggerStorm…
There is a different title that will be awarded it won’t be illustrious legend, iirc it is the Indomitable Legend
You can’t get the Illustrious Legend title that was Season 3 only, as in the actual time limited season before the current one.
That depends on what you are comfortable with, Full marauder will work but a little overkill, a mix of Berzerker and marauder w/ some valk can be optimal
you should try one of BlaqueFyre’s build
Roaming Build Ideas.i really like his variant 1 build, the stats look pretty good
Thanks for this hahah, I took a break due to a Business trip but will be testing a few builds later this week will update the thread once I find a few other builds that catch my fancy, I still have to try your build well a variant that would utilize a lot all of the Life steal food/runes/Sigils and so on. I think it can run a 16k hp well enough.
Any invuln effects stop contesting
That depends on what you are comfortable with, Full marauder will work but a little overkill, a mix of Berzerker and marauder w/ some valk can be optimal
Do this ^ even in Wvw you don’t want full zero I run it because I am a masochist. So far the only classes in Wvw I have trouble against are guards and Revs since they can out last any burst and if you try to reset they reset as well
^ this SA is the better of the two defensive lines, if I wasn’t trying to improve on playing on thief I would run SA like I was all last season
I’m curious.
Is Thief, not daredevil, viable build at all?Tried D/D, P/P, S/P and now i found a somewhat “success” with Power D/P.
I’m coming back at the game after some time and while i wasn’t a brilliant player i think i was at least solid and nowadays i feel like anything that has a special class(like dareveil) just beat the crap out of me doesn’t matter what i use.
All that for WvW.
Core thief is still very Viable I use it all the time in All game modes, P/P is viable as well as D/P being the better set the S/X are viable as well but are more punishing.
In spvp I run pure Zerker Core thief using Da/Tri/Cs to great effect
You know the actual tournaments say like the Guild Challenger League as well as the WtS and don’t forget the old Paid tournaments from back in the day are the higher level of competitive play, the seasons were a complete laughing stock of exploits.
But you fail to address that’s the actual game mode is designed around premade teams not solo queue match ups, they added that in so that players didn’t have to team up for the more casual player base. Just because the option exists to queue solo doesn’t mean the gamemode was designed for that.
And you don’t need voice comms in the regular seasons you can be premades without it is a QoL improvement and the Op was solely referring to a WTS team not utilizing Voice Comms which they should have been since it is an actual competitive tournament. It’s not required but they would have done a lot better more than likely.
(edited by BlaqueFyre.5678)
I think a game mode that “needs” voice comm and complex multi player interaction doesn’t have much of a place in a public MMO.
It’s a minority, and a small one at that, who are willing and able to put in that amount of time and practice to come to gw2 and have fun.
“Pro League” doesn’t reflect the reality of the majority of the game. I wasn’t displeased by the results of AA’s matches in any case.
So games like LoL and so on shouldn’t exist since at the higher levels require comms?
Pvp is specifically for competitive players and is solely designed as a competitive team game mode…
Go to the home point. /tread
P/D is superior to D/D for condi.
Yes it can be more superior but it hinders the build when paired with D/D, I can say that P/D has never been an issue to face for me on a pure Zerker thief running Pure glass, the DB spammers give more headaches than P/D.
P/D provides more skillful play that can be better with the utility and Condi damage / kiting ability but it’s not a better build in the context of the "Perma"evade Thieves just sitting on point spamming DB and Dodges especially in PvP where they can actually sit on point.
It really annoys me when people say ‘high risk high reward’ the fact is it’s high risk low reward, I’m not rewarded for taking a higher skill cap class, it’s just too easy to pop invulnerability or bunker to defeat the class.
As the OP stated you can use another class with less skill and murder thiefs. I have no problem with disengaging but I can literally reset a fight 5 times and still not get some classes below half health. It’s certainly ball ache trying to finish off some classes with the amount of blocks available.
It’s also ridiculously hard fighting on point which people expect from our class…
Some professions have blocks because they can’t reset the fight 5 times and they have invulnerability because otherwise they get roflstomped by a profession that can reset fight 5 times, if in 5 times you can’t get somebody below 50%..the problem is you and definitely not the thief.
If you complain about professions blocking or going invulnerable..then maybe we should reduce the number of their blocks….while giving them Stealth, thief mobility how that sound?
You talk like thieves and other classes are on same level lol
Other classes do have mobility and stealth (e.g. druid) while being more bunkery. I also would like to remind you on revs which are thieves on crack.
Uh, no. Druids do not have thf mobility. Revs do though but without the stealth.
A 15 sec cd 1200 range evade Travel is great mobility don’t act like Druids don’t run staff and camp it…..
Kite.
Just try it. Thief can then swap to P/D and Immobilize you over and over again while dodging and running to you and also doing nice pressure to you with aa and Venoms. And if you are still alive he’s in your range within seconds for D/D weapon set
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If he uses SB instead of P/D than you have a bit easier yob but then he can simply #5, #5, #5 away from you to reset the fight.
The problem with them using those other weapon swaps is they are still drained of Initiative in most cases, it isn’t hard to kite them, if they are using the P/D they will be stuck with no ini for the DB spam after weapon swap. It’s one of the spam builds that if you don’t constantly spam the same skill it is harder by far to down people.
They lack the utility that thieves need to prolong / survive most match ups outside of evade spamming. It is far easier to kite a 900 range weapon than you make it out to be
Acro isn’t needed you can but it cuts into your damage by quite a bit
Literally it is DA 1,2,1 Trick 1,1,3 DrD 3,2,1
With Channeled Vigor as Heal, Shadowstep Signet of Agility and Either Bandits defense or Skale Venom with Basi Venom as elite. Run Dire or Carrion with Krait runes or Rune of Thorns with Agony Sigil and I forget the Bleed duration Sigil
“Pro” d/d Condi Thieves Press 3 as hard and fast as possible while hitting dodge as well…… Repeat,
The D/D Condi thief gives up a lot of mobility since it has to dump Ini into spamming DB, when they use DB the evade only lasts till the Apex of the Leap everything after isn’t an evade so you can CC them there, also Aoe s work great against this build.
If you can kite that forces them to use the evades defensively before engaging in Melee. Just look for the queues from DB, any daze/stun is certain death the same with Immobs. Don’t stand underneath the thief you will be loaded up with bleeds for days.
The best thief is better than the best of any other class. They are not a noob friendly class. Also thief did get power creeped allot. They were given passive 2 sec evade in aco free dodhes on cc and initiative on dodge and regeneration on dodge and condition removal on dodge. Their dagger auto was buffed their staff hits 10ks man. They have had allot of power creep. If you want them to kill we have to allow them to die. Anet took away their stealth to give them broken evades. The evades are preventing them from making thief more useful in ranked
Yet the Best Thieves don’t play Thief in the tournaments… Funny how that works
DeceiverX is the person to talk to about this, surprised he hasn’t posted yet.
There is one on Reddit, google it.
Neither are correct.
25% SA 10% Dash 10% food.Which really is .75 * .9 * .9 = .6075 or roughly 39% reduced damage.
I wasn’t factoring in food and neither was he as far as I can tell.
Let me get this strait, you think that a thief is OP because of stealth, when it is literally the only trully defensive abuility that a thief has. Let me remind you that without that stealth you would have killed him in maybe two or three hits because he has 11000-12000 hp, and almost not toughness, no stability, very little healing power. Also, let me remind you that because he is strictly condi, his Stealth attacks, do nearly nothing against you, and by chance if he was running a hybrid build and they DID do anything to you, he has to land it every time or else he will pretty much be stunned for 1 second. If he cannot kill you the most you can say about his build is that he was annoying. you know what thieves find annoying? Everything. Because everything is stronger than them right now.
This reply must be one of the worst replies I’ve read around here.
You think this build has 11kHP? Like they don’t run Full Dire? For the pancies that run this build, they will make sure that if anything ever manages to reveal them, they still have the toughness and vitality to run. Try two-shotting something with 21kHP and 3k toughness. Little healing power? Hello Shadow Arts. You can’t even AoE the kitten out of him while he is in stealth because of the 50% dmg reduction in stealth.
Thief only has 1 truly defensive ability? What about ports? An incredible amount of dodges? Blinds? More evades on weapon skills? Obviously, real thieves have to rely on their reflexes a lot more then other classes to stay alive, because core thief is glassy. This cancer is not, though.
His stealth attacks do nothing to you? How did you stay alive this long IRL? The whole idea of this cancerous build is to never leave stealth.
Literally the only somewhat true thing you’ve stated here is that thieves are having a hard time right now. But in WvW, a lot of thieves do quite well in any situation.
This Perma-stealth thing is not just annoying, it is made solely for trolling and will in fact work on you if you somehow don’t have supernatural awareness of your surroundings (because how do you see something that can stealth from a mile away and walk up to you?) and weren’t packing enough condi removal. Even if it only catches the less-skilled, a build like this, which pretty much has no real counter (other then not dying to it, which can’t seriously be thought of as a counter), should be removed from the game. Entirely. Condi thief without this insane cheese is strong enough as is.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this build is not OP, not even powerful. I also do not know how to fix it. It is just a sad realisation that it exists.
50% damage reduction? Try again it’s only 25%.