Guild Wars 2

Ragnarox.9601:

what skill he is auto attacking all fight , and skill 5 when need stealth, no skill just 2 buttons.

You could make that argument about any class and spec. With the exception of elementalist, all weapons deal damage by spamming autoattack and using a few other abilities on cooldown. A Longbow Ranger spams autoattack, except when they use Hunter’s Shot and Rapid Fire whenever the icon lights up.

Everyone’s skills are separated into damage skills and utility skills. Dealing damage is mostly a simple matter of spamming your damage skills when they light up.

The skill in this game comes from movement, dodging, positioning, and carefully timed use of utility skills.

Okay, it is not the responsibility of others to keep enemies in position for your skills. They are not your tanks. It is your responsibility to use positioning and skills such that pistol whip will hit them.

After all, if you’re standing over there and I’m standing over here, why is it my job to drag the mobs over to you or not attack so you can hold aggro? The player must go to the mobs, not the mobs to the player.

In GW2, a good group consists of 5 players who work well as a team but are all capable of handling themselves. If you want a group of mobs to sit still and eat your damage, either hold aggro on them or use your skills to make them sit still.

Adein.2031:

Dacromir.6207:

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

I tested in the Mists using Fraps:

1) Capture the sequence from before debuff application to after it’s gone.
2) Import the video into a video editor that allows fine-adjustment of timing (i.e. 1 frame at a time)
3) Find the time at which the debuff showed up and the time at which it went away
4) Subtract the numbers to get debuff duration

I performed the above sequence using S/D twice: once with no sigils, once with Paralyzation on the Sword.

Both resulted in the exact same duration.

Okay, but what was that duration? I got 2s repeatedly.

The problem could be that you’re counting frames. You may not be getting the framerate you think you’re getting, which would throw off the measurement. I’d slow down by time (i.e. 10% or 5% speed) and use that. Other than that, you tested it the same way I did.

I’ll retest it when I get home, and you should too. I’ll pay more attention to with sigil and without sigil, and I might even upload to youtube.

Warkupo.1025:

S/D still does pretty good in PVP. The Auto-Attack is really under-appreciated by people who don’t play the set for any significant amount of time. For reference, Crippling Strike, the third attack of our auto-attack chain, hits for 317 damage. Cloak and Dagger hit for 365 before the nerf. CnD+Tactical strike would have done a total of 584 while one sequence of your auto attack did 707. Aside from Dancing Dagger spam, our auto-attack was and is our best DPS option.

Yup. I tested it a while ago. With a high-power build, S/D autoattack was within 5% of D/D autoattack, but it is a 3-target frontal AoE and it applies cripple and weakness. The autoattack is fantastic.

If you can survive as a glass cannon, that’s fantastic and you should do so. That means you’re a good player, because survival as a glass cannon relies on skill and is very unforgiving.

Personally, I prefer S/D because it simply has more tools. I get a spammable stun break, which means that if I’m fast enough I’m basically immune to stuns. Your build has no stun breaks or stability at all, so if you get stunned you have to sit there and take it. I get a 3s daze (2s in sPvP) from stealth, which is a huge amount of control on the enemy. You don’t have any stuns or dazes. I get my shadowstep with Infiltrator’s strike, which closes the gap and gives me a guaranteed CnD with the immobilize.

However, your build does tons more damage than mine :P

ASP.8093:

Dacromir.6207:

Does that have the same model as the Steady dagger? If so, that’s what I’m using too!

Yes! OMG we’re totally twins.

Alrighty… what armor?

I’m using rogue chest, shoulders, and mask with duelist pants and fingerless gloves. Dyes: ebony (coat, mask), chalkboard (coat, shoulders), matte (shirt), and taupe (pants/boots).

ASP.8093:

The one Krytan thing I really don’t like is the dagger; I use Aureate instead.

Does that have the same model as the Steady dagger? If so, that’s what I’m using too!

I’m using the Krytan Shortbow skin. It looks like an ornate, but still functional weapon. I like it.

Honestly, all of the Krytan skins are fantastic. The sword is one of very few swords other than the basic skin that actually looks like a functional, steel sword.

Just type “Krytan” into the TP and filter by weapon type. You can get a low-level for like 1s.

Thorp.7982:

I just started using S/D after the patch and I find it to be the best weapon set we have available. I can’t imagine how effective it was before the patch.

It was fantastic. It’s still good, but imagine something like 8-10% more damage and add another second on your daze. You could tactical strike and get your whole autoattack chain off before they came out of daze. Daze would wear off the same time revealed would, so you could nearly perma-daze.

To be frank, the level of dazing was OP and I’m okay with the nerf (2s is still great), but I don’t think the damage nerf was warranted.

Great S/D thief build here. That’s currently bad for sPvP (patch nerfed almost everything about it :P), but it’s fantastic for WvW and PvE. You get good damage, with high AoE and sustained but low burst. You get great active defenses, meaning that you can avoid damage all over the place but you still can’t sit there and absorb hits. You can counter any enemy build; range, melee, conditions, burst, sustained direct, control… this build has tools to deal with each of them.

Two things.

First, it’s an extra health bar. Use it to survive incoming big hits. That’s obvious.

Second, you can use DS briefly to get some really powerful skills. For example, if you want an interrupt, you can hit DS, hit Doom, and leave DS. That gives you a near-instant fear (limited only by how fast you can hit buttons) that doesn’t take a utility slot or certain weapon. Dark Path is an excellent gap-closer; it has an AoE chill (hugely powerful!) and AoE bleeding (meh). For a melee Necro, that’s a fantastic skill. Just use Dark Path and spam Life Blast until you teleport, then drop DS and start stabbing. Life Transfer is great AoE damage, which is something that a Dagger necro will be a bit weak on. You pop into DS just for that skill, and you’ll be basically immortal for a few seconds while dealing high AoE damage.

Unless built specifically for it, you’ll usually want to dance in and out of DS. The skills are powerful, but it’s not worth wasting life force to spam Life Blast (which is fairly weak).

DS gets even stronger with traits.

Nephar.3746:

so, i rly dont get if this kind of posts are made by users that try to troll or they are just a complete oversight about the game mechanics. in this case i suppose u really believe what u are saying. have u any alt?

Not a troll. Everything I write on this forum is a carefully thought-out reply, and I do my best to back it up with solid reasoning. And yes, I have several alts. I’ve taken Necro, Ranger, and Elementalist past 40 and played dungeons with each, at least enough that I know a lot about their abilities.

evilapprentice.6379:

warrior: better survivability (or at least the same if we account or mobility vs better armor and higher hp), much better dps (even ranged single target) i think he is the best dps class right now.

Those 30-30-30-30-30 builds sure are the best, aren’t they?

Any individual thing you said there might be true, but as a whole they’re not. They’re not simultaneously more survivable and the best DPS class. I’ll go over each.

Warrior is better at absorbing hits. With healing shouts and defensive traits, they can facetank hits and live through it with tons of self-healing and toughness. On the contrary, Thief defense relies almost entirely on avoiding damage. I have tons of self-healing, but I still can’t take more than a few hits at a time. Luckily, a well-played Thief can largely go without taking hits at all. Against solo mobs, I can chain-daze and abuse stealth and blinding. Against a boss, I just dodge. Their attacks have such long animations that it’s almost easier for me to survive against bosses than against normal mobs.

However, Thief can take a dodge and stealth-heavy build at low cost (15 acrobatics, 10 shadow arts) and still build for high damage. We’re betting it all on our skill (if we screw up, we die), but we can out-damage a full defensive warrior with ease.

I might be willing to admit that a full-damage warrior beats us in damage, but I still bring lots of other things to the table while keeping a decent damage output.

evilapprentice.6379:

elementalist: better dps, better survivability, nothing more to say.. wonderful support.

Thief: better DPS, better survivability, nothing more to say. Wonderful support.

See? I can do that too. That’s not how you make a valid argument.

I’ll admit that an Elementalist can play a jack-of-all trades just as well or better than I can. However, we have a different toolset and style of play, and I much prefer how Thieves do it. Thief feels more natural to me.

evilapprentice.6379:

necro: our condition build is a joke compared to the dmg a necro can pull out and 3 health bar survivability..

I dunno, a dodge/caltrop P/D thief can put out some serious AoE bleeding. We can also go for a power/venom build, and do better at applying weakening conditions than them. It depends on build, but I think we can match (or nearly match) their condition damage.

Yes, their health pool is insane, especially with Death Shroud. However, we have stealth. Every class has different ways to stay alive. They get a second health bar, we can drop all aggro and regenerate while no enemies hit us.

evilapprentice.6379:

guardian: everybody wants him, almost mandatory in many dungeons for how easier are things with him. if u spec him for pure dps u still have better survivability than a tanky rogue and better dmg.

That bolded part is demonstrably untrue. That shows a fight between me (a tanky Thief) and a glass cannon Guardian. Sure, they do tons of damage to me. However, I use stealth and healing to survive it all. In contrast, when I damage her, she cannot heal through it. She’s doing tons more damage than me, yes, but when you see me attack her it’s clear that I have better defenses.

They’re also far from mandatory. I’ve run many a group without a Guardian where we’ve beat the dungeon with ease, and also many a group where the Guardian was the one holding us down. What matters is the player’s skill and build, not their class. I’ll take a skilled player of any other class over a mediocre Guardian any day.

evilapprentice.6379:

in the end i just want to remark that we are FAR BEHIND in pve, or at least if what i feel. if u think u are doing a good dps in dungeon u rly should try other professions and check it out yourself.. didnt meant to be rude but just quite stressed by the lack of flexibility and the weakness thieves show in pve.

Then don’t play Thief. You clearly don’t like the way you have to play a thief to do well, so it’s obviously not the class for you. Play one of those other classes that you think are better. But stop coming here and trying to tell us how bad we are.

(Also, use grammar/capitalization. It makes your post far easier to read. We have capital letters for a reason.)

evilapprentice.6379:

I tested with mesmer sigils and got nothing. I didn’t slow the video down, I just eyeballed it, but 43% (10 points in DA) should push the daze over 2s, and it doesn’t.Visually, I saw no difference between 33% longer daze and no daze duration increase (just in case DA’s condition duration doesnt apply for some reason), and 33% should be easily identifiable even visually.

I’m assuming you meant mesmer runes here, not sigils. It may be that those are broken (I’ll test when I get home today), but Sigil of Paralyzation definitely pushes the daze up to 2s (1.95s by my measurement, assuming there’s slight delay for the daze icon showing up). Condition duration does not apply, because stun/knockdown/daze/etc are counted as control effects as opposed to conditions.

evilapprentice.6379:

Also, your math doesn’t make any sense – 15% of 1.5s is .225, resulting in a a 1.725 long daze. Unless of course you have 15 points in DA, and it applies for you.

Yeah, math has always been wrong with the Sigil. With a 2s base, it raises the daze to 3s even though it looks like it should go to 2.3s. My theory is that the sigil actually applies a 30% bonus in stead of 15%, and that Arena-net’s rounding is wonky so that it always rounds up. That would explain 2s → 3s (2.6s, rounded up to 3s) and 1.5s → 2s (1.95s, rounded up to 2s).

In sPvP and small group WvW: killshot is fine. It has a long, obvious cast time. It is mitigated by toughness, and easily avoided. If you die to it, you deserve it. The warrior also has to build almost exclusively for this (or just burst in general) to get a hit that high, meaning they go down fast.

In big group WvW: killshot is fine. It’s much, much harder to avoid. You can expect people to spot the animation in a 3v3, but no one can reliably spot that in a 20v20 fight with chaos and culling all about. This will hit you hard, and kill glass cannons.

However, that’s still fine. People who run glass cannon in WvW know they’re going to die frequently, because they can’t rely on even fights and they know they’ll get surprised. That’s the choice they’re making. It’s also balanced out by downed state, which means that even though killshot can down a player really fast, their team can pick them back up if they’re coordinated enough. Other classes can do similar things.

I am not a Warrior, I’m not biased on this. Killshot is fine. That is all.

This will make you a 100% jack-of-all-trades build. It’ll be good, but be prepared to not excel at any one thing.

I’d recommend taking 2 each of Runes of the Monk and Runes of the Water. Combine that with the 10% in Arcane and the trait that gives boons when you swap attunements, and you’ll keep tons of boons up on yourself. It’ll make the build even better.

We’re surprisingly survivable. I 3-manned FoTM yesterday (the two PUGs were just grabbing the wisps in Swamp and ignoring chat, so we kicked them) and I died by far the least. I went down only once or twice, whereas my allies (damage hammer warrior and healing/grenade engineer) were downed frequently. I was able to pick them up every single time.

I did good damage to the boss, dazed frequently (3s daze every 4-5s), and did good AoE damage on mobs. I also gave great boons to my friends. Steal gives them 14.5s of fury/might/swiftness and 22s of vigor, as well as 2 stolen boons (36s cooldown on Steal). This really increased my group’s damage, and helped keep them alive and mobile.

My great mobility with all of my shadowsteps made me great for non-kill objectives, like carrying wisps in Swamp or lighting fires in Snowblind. I was able to remove the 25 stacks of might on the final boss in Aquatic Ruins (also gave 5 stacks to my group), which really lowered the damage we take.

Thieves have tons of utility/support, and I’m a valued member of my guild’s dungeon team. You just have to learn how to play it.

Adein.2031:

I like how they also nerfed the Daze such that the Sigil of Paralyzation doesn’t apply to the daze anymore (oh and forgot to mention that in the patch notes).

How closely have you actually tested this? I’ve heard several people mention it, but I wanted to test to be sure. I recorded some video of me using the daze on PvP golems and sparring NPCs. I slowed it down to 10% speed, and the daze icon lasted a little over 19 seconds with Sigil of Paralyzation. I replicated this several times. I’d peg the daze duration as ~1.95s with the Sigil. You may want to test this yourself more closely.

Mrbig.8019:

S/D is currently unplayable, like every other power/crit build, unless you go totally glass cannon, unviable by default.

Very good work with this patch.

It’s still playable. You still get a spammable stun break, great mobility and gap closing, and frequent 2s dazing. It’s still our most defensive weapon set by far. You just need to adapt to the lower damage, and maybe bump up the damage on your gear a bit to compensate.

Dancing Dagger is no longer a damage tool. It is, however, still a very useful skill.

For one thing, it’s a fantastic projectile finisher. It has a 100% chance to combo, it’s spammable, and it bounces.

It’s also a great ranged cripple or AoE cripple. If you’re chasing someone and you can hit them with DD, it’s worth using.

You just can’t use three DDs to insta-kill a ranger now. I’m okay with that.

.

S/D is still great for WvW. In fact, we got a small damage buff. However, the build is significantly weaker in sPvP, and it was already a mediocre sPvP build. In sPvP, stealth-heavy builds are significantly weaker, because you’re unable to contest or defend a point. If I’m defending, I go into stealth once and the node goes gray.

I’m probably going to have to come up with an sPvP variant.

Zunhar.4079:

Dacromir.6207:

Galandil.9641:

Well, Dacromir, the problem however is the fact that now (bug? intended? we never know with anet…) the sigil/runes do not function, if not, we’d have a 2.25 secs daze instead of a 1.5 sec.

And that would be fine, imo. However, due to the problem with sigil/runes, now we can use other sigils/runes, trying to improve a little the damage on the set. But I feel that doing so is similar to swimming against the current, too much effort for a very little reward.

Yes, IMO, a 2s daze is perfect. So if they’d make it so that using sigils or runes gave us the 2s daze, I’d be fine. I’m already used to using the sigil. But 1.5s is way too low. I understand lowering it from 3s, because that was too kitten high. However, they’ve swung from that end of the spectrum to the opposite, rather than settling in the middle (2s max).

I think 2 sec base, 2.5 sec with sigil/runes would be perfect. A 2 second daze isn’t a whole lot.
Still can’t believe how hard S/D got hit.

Nah, I ran with a 2s daze for a long time before I heard that Sigil of Paralyzation worked on dazes. 2s daze is still plenty powerful. If it was 1.5s base, 2s with sigil/rune, I could cope just fine. Obviously, I’d like more, but I’ve played with 2s for a long while and it’s very doable.

Julius.1094:

Does superior sigil of paralyzation affect all Control effects? How about knockdown? Do things that affect knockdown also affect blowout? The wording on abilities regarding control effects is needlessly confusing right now. ‘Stun breaks’ break all control effects it seems, but stun is a specific control effect. So if something says “stun” does that always means it affects all control effects?

I heard sigil of paralyzation affects daze, is that true? I think you should be using “control effect” when something affects all of them. Using “stun” when that is a specific mechanic within control effects is very confusing, I can’t tell what affects what. And this is hard to test because most control effects have short duration, some clarification on what affects what when it comes to control would be awesome. I hope a moderator can reply to this.

Pre-patch, I know for sure it affected daze duration. Post-patch, everyone is saying that’s no longer true. I can’t confirm or deny, because I haven’t been in the game post-patch yet.

Galandil.9641:

Well, Dacromir, the problem however is the fact that now (bug? intended? we never know with anet…) the sigil/runes do not function, if not, we’d have a 2.25 secs daze instead of a 1.5 sec.

And that would be fine, imo. However, due to the problem with sigil/runes, now we can use other sigils/runes, trying to improve a little the damage on the set. But I feel that doing so is similar to swimming against the current, too much effort for a very little reward.

Yes, IMO, a 2s daze is perfect. So if they’d make it so that using sigils or runes gave us the 2s daze, I’d be fine. I’m already used to using the sigil. But 1.5s is way too low. I understand lowering it from 3s, because that was too kitten high. However, they’ve swung from that end of the spectrum to the opposite, rather than settling in the middle (2s max).

shrewd.5319:

What is this obsession with S/D?

ANYTHING that uses Dagger Offhand got nerfed. Stop having tunnel vision.

The difference is how much we rely on skills.

For S/D, CnD → TS is our only tool for single-target damage. The majority of that damage comes from CnD.

For D/D, you can also use Heartseeker for single-target. Also, the majority of stealth sequence damage comes from the stealth skill, rather than CnD.

For P/D, the stealth sequence is the best single-target damage skill. However, P/D is a condition build, so the majority of stealth sequence damage comes from the Sneak Attack bleeds.

Of the three sets, S/D’s single-target damage got hurt the most, and we have no other single-target damage skills to rely on.

Also, S/D had the lowest damage of all thief weapon sets to start with. Nerfing S/D damage more than P/D or D/D damage doesn’t make sense. They also cut our daze in half, which sucks because the daze was central to our build. I understand why they did it (and reluctantly agree), but it still really hurts the build.

Turbolence.3842:

Dacromir @Mrbigtac
Only those who love this build can understand the irritation to the current nerf. It’s funny that now the other thieves, surely burst, happy not to have been fundamentally affected by the nerf say: Well be honest your daze and your build was Op .. ahahaha
However, do not be discouraged! I wanted to ask you, you will continue to use this build? w

Yes, the 3s daze was OP. I state that above. I think it was lowered too much (2s seems best to me), but I’ll cope. Other than that, there’s nothing OP about S/D. Sure, we’re hard to kill, but we have the lowest damage of all weapon sets.

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep using it in sPvP. It’s been hurt quite a bit. I still like the playstyle of S/D, but I need to see if I can raise my build’s damage in other ways enough to compensate for the damage nerf we got. I’m probably going to have to change it. They nerfed my specific build even worse by giving me -10% boon duration, which hurts since I"m a boon-heavy build.

It’s still fantastic for WvW and PvE.

Cal.1985:

So, you are saying that a skill that is kinda hard to land (oh god forbit to precast it and steal, shadowstep ^^) and gives stealh should also be very high dmg one?

Hm sounds reasonable…

@Mrbig
The dancing dagger was OP we can all agree here, no point of bringing it up. The sword stealth attack was buffed by 10% (nothing I agree), the daze was lowered to prevent daze lockng. The CnD was nerfed due to the reason above.

So please tell me which nerf was not needed?

Cal.1985:

It was OP pre-patch daze locking is so not fun. Ofc it will be nerfed. It was the most OP thief build, tho only few used it.

Are you guys expecting for the broken/OP builds to stay? Really? You gonna cry about that?

I’m not talking about the daze nerf. I can understand that. S/D honestly had too much dazing, too easily. I think it was a little heavy-handed (down to 2s seems right for me, and that’s still -33%), but I’ll cope.

What I"m saying is that the damage of S/D was nerfed, and I don’t see why. S/D is already our lowest-damaging weapon set. It has good AoE damage, but the single-target is extremely weak. CnD → TS was our only skill combo that did even half decent single-target damage, and they dropped it by 15.5%.

Nerfing the daze makes sense to me. I may not like it, but I understand. However, nerfing S/D damage confuses me, because I have literally never heard a single person complain about the damage, and it’s already our lowest-damage weapon set.

Cal.1985:

@Dacromir
Very wrong math – you cannot compare two skills that are different i.e. Sword attack from stealth has a daze attached to it.
Please think before post. Raw dmg is one thing, additional buff/debuff/conditions also counts. Please take this into consideration before you start making “math”.

Read the post. I am not saying that TS should have higher damage than BS. I’m saying that in a move that appears to be an attempt to lower D/D burst, they lowered S/D burst even more.

S/D has always done less damage than D/D. In this patch, they made both do less damage. S/D damage was lowered more than D/D damage.

tac.2167:

The +daze duration sigil and runes aren’t working on tac strike right now. I don’t know if this is intentional though.

I agree that this is still usable. It just feels severely limited especially without runes/sigils.

What? Screw that. Fixing or disabling the runes would be fine, lowering the daze would be fine, but both together is too much. That means they dropped the daze from 3s to 1.5s, which I don’t think was called for. 2s is just about right.

Now I’m all upset.

Mrbig.8019:

I appreciate you’ll keep playing it, but believe me : now this set is vastly sub-par.

Skilled opponents already took tons of times to be beaten, now we have less damage and less control, our dual is still broken and we’re left only with auto-attack ( which is also very slow).

overall, it’s not a valid alternative anymore: other classes skilled players, on competitive builds would totally destroy an S/D build anytime.

It’s sad because it was one of the best, skillful builds the thief had.

Probably they really want every thief to run with D/D or venom sharing P/D, in order to control that crappy, unbalanced mechanic which initiative is.

Yes, it’s sad that it’s hurting, but it’s still powerful. Don’f forget the spammable stun break. I haven’t tested it yet, but a Sigil of Paralyzation should take the daze up to 2s (which is still powerful). The damage is actually decent, and it’s AoE which is great. It still has great cripple.

I’m just going to have to adjust my stats so that they have more damage and less defense to compensate, and lament the days of the 3s daze. I ran with a 2s daze for quite a while before I discovered Sigil of Paralyzation, so I’ll be able to survive without it.

This nerf hurts, but S/D is still worth using. Barely.

Fixeon.5076:

Mrbig.8019:

Fixeon.5076:

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

Pls, delete this post, i don’t want to believe somone said something this silly.

Never kept 7 guys busy while killing them all one by one slowly? You would be surprised at how effective it was. I use to keep 10 people defending something stupid because they couldn’t kill me and every time they would try to leave I would make myself a threat to them. 1 person keeping 10 people busy and killing them is insanely OP.

EDIT: It was also very effective at taking out people on siege.

Fair enough. That’s at least a valid argument for why CnD might need a change. However, a damage nerf does nothing to change this. As a delaying tactic, CnD/perma-stealth has not changed one bit. The only thing that has changed is its damage.

Fixeon.5076:

CnD nerf was not ment to nerf D/D it was ment to stop thievs from whittling down people by only using CnD and staying near perma invis while doing so.

You could only use CnD every 3s (or 4s, depending on spec). That means that you would be dealing a paltry 40-53% of the damage you’d get from auto-attacking. It takes forever to kill someone doing that, and they should be able to heal through most of the damage easily. In addition:

A) The slightest screw-up on the part of the thief would leave them revealed for 3s.

B) This only works if your target stands there with a confused look on their face, waiting for the thief to show up.

This is a case where simply spamming AoEs will win you the fight, because you’ll deal more damage blindly spamming AoEs than the thief will by doing one attack every 3-4s. Additionally, you can use all of your blinds, snares, stuns, and whatnot, whereas they are limited to using only this one attack if they want to stay in stealth. If they get out of melee, they can’t keep it up.

The only heal they could use while doing this is horrible, and would only heal them for 3.2k every 15s (base). Their other two heals would make them skip an attack every 30s (lowering their damage to 36-46% of autoattack) or would make them evade backwards by 600", throwing them far out of melee range.

If anyone has ever died to this, they deserved to die. It’s a pathetically easy tactic to counter, and you get a good 20 seconds or more (if you’re a glass cannon that doesn’t heal and the thief has a non-stealth spec) to sit there and think about how to counter it.

This is not a valid reason for nerfing S/D.

I’m not talking about the other nerfs here. See this post for my opinion on S/D changes.

I just want to talk about damage.

Arena net said they’re looking into Backstab damage. I and most players agree that it was a little high; the problem (in my mind) is not the amount of damage, it was the fact that you could get the three-hit combo off in under a second (blindingly fast with Haste) while your enemy was stunned.

In contrast, I’ve never heard anyone complain about S/D damage. The AoE is good, but the single-target is mediocre at best.

For both S/D and D/D, the hardest-hitting single-target attack was Cloak and Dagger followed immediately by the stealth attack (from behind for D/D). Let’s look at how this patch has affected that damage:

Dagger/Dagger
Before
Cloak and Dagger: 504
Backstab: 830
Total: 1334

After
Cloak and Dagger: 338
Backstab: 830
Total: 1168

Total Nerf: 12.5%

.

Sword/Dagger
Before
Cloak and Dagger: 504
Tactical Strike: 311
Total: 805

After
Cloak and Dagger: 338
Tactical Strike: 342
Total: 680

Total Nerf: 15.5%

.

So… S/D damage was nerfed harder than D/D. I understand nerfing D/D, and I think everyone can understand it (even if you disagree, or disagree with the scale of the nerf). However, I don’t think anybody sees a reason to nerf S/D, and definitely not to nerf S/D harder than D/D. This gets even worse when you realize that this was our only tool for damaging single targets (FS doesn’t count; it’s wonky and misses too often), but D/D still has Heartseeker untouched.

I have no idea what Arena Net was thinking here. It baffles my mind. It’s not a case of disagreeing but understanding their reasons, it’s a case of absolutely having no idea what they were thinking. I’d love a dev response explaining the reasoning behind this, because even if I disagree with the change (and trust me, I do) I’d really like to know why they did it.

.

EDIT: I’d like to explain in advance, for anyone trying to replicate my math. I use the numbers on the wiki, and I take into account the 3% increase in damage from CnD’s vulnerability (just for kicks, accuracy is good). Power scales linearly. A 10% increase in power is a 10% increase in damage across the board. The wiki numbers use 916 (base) power and the sPvP weapons. This math is applicable no matter what your power is.

I’ve been in love with S/D since like a week after launch. I’m going to keep playing it, but this saddens me.

Tactical Strike daze
They went about this the wrong way. The 2s daze was fine. The problem was that sigil of paralyzation (and maybe rune of the mesmer?) bumped it up to a 3s daze, which is far too much. That’s a near-permanent daze, and nigh impossible to counter. Any good player will break the first couple couple of dazes, but no one (except sword thief, ironically) can break a daze every 4s. The only counter was stability, which we could remove. Daze-locking in PvP is not good.

They should have fixed their screw-up in stead of nerfing a core skill of S/D. It’s still better than the 1s daze we used to have(in pre-release?), but this is going to hurt us. I agree with others that posted above, in that capping the daze at 2.5s would have been a more reasonable solution. I am not happy about this.

Dancing Dagger
A little heavy-handed, but I agree with this. The damage if it hit the target once was fine. Against one target or 3+ targets, this skill was balanced. The problem was its damage against exactly 2 targets. It would hit each twice, meaning it deals 672 base damage to each. Compare that to Backstab’s 806, and you’ll see the imbalance. Backstab can only happen once every 4s minimum, but you can spam DD three or four times in a row. Against Rangers or exactly two opponents, this skill was massively OP.

I’m always sad to see less damage for my build, but I’ll cope. This skill is still a fantastic Projectile Finisher (100% chance, AoE, spammable) and it’s a great ranged AoE cripple. It’s just no longer a damage tool.

Cloak and Dagger
Backstab burst was pretty OP. The damage was fine, the problem was that you could get the three-hit combo off in under a second (0.5s with Haste). However, for whatever reason, they chose to nerf CnD in stead of BS. This means that S/D and P/D are getting hurt as well as D/D, which I don’t think was warranted.

Let’s do a little math real fast. They dropped CnD by 33%, but raised TS by 10%. Before this patch, CnD + TS would do 815 damage (504 + (1.03*302)). Now, it does 680 damage (338 + (1.03 * 332)). This means that our single biggest attack combo deals 15.5% less damage. In contrast, CnD -> BS has been nerfed from 1334 to 1168, which is only 12.5%. We were nerfed harder than Dagger/Dagger.

That’s not good. I understand the nerf to DD, I understand the nerf to TS daze (although I think they did it wrong), but S/D damage was not too high. We already have no burst whatsoever and decent (at best) single-target damage. This was our one way to damage single targets, and now it does 15.5% less damage. I don’t see any reason for this, and I think this was out of line.

EDIT: Fixed math. S/D was nerfed by 15.5%, not 17%.

Infatum.2481:

I use a fairly trap heavy build with sword + dagger as my main weapon set (usually running with flame and spike traps + both the trap traits). When I’m dealing with a thief I keep throwing down traps and using dodges and evade attacks. If you time your evades well you can avoid their nastier attacks your main goal being to outlast their stealth or take a backstab in the front, once they decide to flee a well aimed trap can be the end of them if you’re good at knowing where they’ll likely run towards. I’m guessing there are better builds for it though, I run with my PvE build in PvP so it’s not specifically designed for the task, but its what I enjoy playing. I have a pretty good kill ratio using this build, but thieves definitely escape more often than other classes barring mesmers.

Nope. Thief here. Traps are the best tool a Ranger has for taking me down. I’d recommend two traps and Lightning Reflexes, because that’s a fantastic stun break for when the Basilisk Venom hits you.

Xianxu.2543:

Are we… Are we talking about poison being underpowered now?

Apparently. I don’t really know why he brought that up, I’m just responding to what he says.

Xianxu.2543:

Also @Dacromir Nice video! Clearly you got a random video of a thief who seems to have the same exact alias as you do!

I know, right? I’m incredibly talented.

John Lucier.5486:

Waiting see any math posted.. still more misinformation.

Pay a little more attention when reading. I’ll quote the applicable part:

Dacromir.6207:

… a water/arcane Elementalist can heal up to 1,463 health every second. Math here.

(Emphasis added).

There’s the math. Especially click the link, it shows how I calculated the “1,463 health per second” number. Using a spreadsheet is far easier than typing it out on the forums. Spreadsheets win at numbers.

John Lucier.5486:

Poison does not have long duration and will not be kept up perma except for something like shortbow, so big tradeoff. Counting wasting a utility slot and dumping a TON of points into DA and maybe poison duration sigil or runes is not even feasible in the least bit, so bypassing that.

You need 5 points into Deadly Arts and Spider Venom. Combine the steal (10.5s every 45s) and the poison (31.5s every 45s) and you get 93% poison uptime. Put a few more points into DA for venom recharge or whatever, and that’s easily 100%. Points in Trickery will also push you to 100%.

John Lucier.5486:

If poison wasn’t meant to be damaging then why does it have a damaging function. Id be willing to keep its current form of being easily cleansed, low to moderate duration, but with zero damage if at least the heal debuff was far more major, at least that way it would have a role.

It is meant to be damaging. However, it’s focused on attrition fights. It does some damage in the short term, but it truly shines in long fights or against healing-heavy builds. It’s intended as a damaging condition that counters defensive builds.

John Lucier.5486:

I don’t want to compare apples to oranges, but one of my fav open world pvp games of all time had a debuff on the rogue/assassin archetype that was a 100% healing debuff, that could be cleansed easily, had moderate duration but obviously big gaps in applying which i would prefer.

They also had the tank/healer/DPS trinity and perma-stealth out of combat with stealth only as an escape tool. GW2 is different in a lot of ways.

John Lucier.5486:

I would also prefer if weapon sets were more streamlined for a given role, so multiple weapon abilities are not useless (also 1-2 attacks that applied burning would be nice) but anyway done with that ramble.

I’ll agree, most weapon sets have skills that need improvement (I think only D/D and SB have 5 solid skills).

John Lucier.5486:

You did flip flop because you made the claim the spamming was overpowered, when it is how the thief was designed

Quote me where I said that. I said that spamming is bad, but then I explained why P/D thieves have to spam if they want to deal damage, and went on to say that Body Shot at least should be changed so there’s a reason to use it. I think you and I agree on this.

John Lucier.5486:

and you specifically targeted the P/D set and sneak attack.

Yes, I did. Not because of the spamming, but because of the mix of range (even if it’s 900) and stealth.

John Lucier.5486:

But then above, you quoted me and agreed that the other weapon abilities are just extremely unviable for a condition build and the ones spammed are the only ones viable (ergo NOT overpowered).

Yes, this is exactly what I’ve said all along. P/D needs some skill tweaking so that it’s viable to do something other than 1115.

I made two points:

1) P/D’s mix of ranged attacks and stealth are a little OP, or at least merit discussion.
2) P/D forces you to spam 1115, because the other skills are lackluster. That needs to change.

You seem to have read #2 as “spamming is OP”, which is not what I said.

John Lucier.5486:

just because you post a random youtube vid of a thief playing in wvwvw, does not automatically make it yours or that you know how to play thief.

That’s not a random video. It is, in fact, my video. My GW2 name is “Dacromir”. My youtube channel name is “Dacromir” (I signed up for YouTube years ago as “MrPhilosomanic”, but if you check my Channel Page you’ll see that the channel name is “Dacromir”). My wiki name is also “Dacromir”, and my wiki page is referenced both in my forum signature and in my video descriptions. Finally, at the very start of that video, I say “Hey guys, this is Dacromir…” and you can verify the spelling by reading the captions which I typed out myself.

Pay attention. I disagree with lots of what you say, but this is a forum where people with different opinions can debate. I at least do you the courtesy of reading your reply and thinking before I reply to it. If you did the same, others might pay more attention to what you have to say.

Silent Killer Ruven.1986:

Well in pve w/o buffs, my thief has 2952 atk, 42% crit w/ 57% bonus crit dmg, 2811 armor and 14955 HP. Everyone I ask calls me crazy for going with balance, it’s like the majority of the community can’t fathom playing something other than a glass cannon or a bunker. The ones who do try to balance their stats in spvp don’t have the option because the gear isn’t available. Yes, I know people will say that it allows glass cannons to do more damage, but it also allows you the flexibility to have more defense and a broader range of stats instead of being ‘pigeonholed’ (as some people put it) into one of those amulets.

(/rage)Also, am I the only one that wishes they would change the pvp knights Vitality back to toughness? Knight’s is a great way to give yourself armor without having to give up too much offense, but if you use it in spvp, you’re leaving yourself with base toughness unless you use a crappy jewel for 125(which doesn’t help much with all the glass cannons running around) (/end rage)

I feel almost exactly the same. I take a little more armor and a little less crit/crit damage, but other than that my build is very similar to yours (stat-wise). I love it, because I have the offense to kill a bunker but the defense to survive a glass cannon.

I too wish that the knight’s amulet had power/toughness/precision. That would be nearly perfect for me, with a soldier’s jewel so I’m not running around with 10k vitality. Sadly, I’m stuck with either the stupid Soldier’s amulet (for too high defenses and miserable crit chance) or the Knight’s amulet (for too good vitality and crit but low power and glass cannon armor). Neither make me happy.

Hammer Warrior. Thief defense is reliant on dodging, stealth, and otherwise not getting hit. If you can lock them down, they have very low health and armor, and they die in a few hits. Most thieves take few (if any) stun breaks. The glass-cannons that burst you down will have no stun breaks at all. Once they get CC’d, they’re as good as dead.

Clone Mesmers and D/D Elementalists also do really well. However, the hardest fight I’ve ever had (to date) was against a Hammer Warrior. There are just too many AoE controls, combined with astoundingly high damage. They don’t care that I’m in stealth, because they can still smash me just fine.

John Lucier.5486:

Just because 2 attacks are spammed or given the perception of being spammed it does not make them overpowered. They COULD in fact be underpowered and either way none of the other attacks offer ANY benefit to the build.

Agreed, mostly. Dancing Dagger is a fantastic ranged cripple, but you rarely need it. #2 and #3 are trash.

John Lucier.5486:

If you actually played thief or made one to try to understand how they work, you wouldn’t be so ignorant.

I gots a thief, yo. I’m pretty good at it too.

John Lucier.5486:

-33% healing is nothing to write home about, it would be different if poison naturally had a 10s+ duration and was harder to remove but its not that way.

Poison (at least for thieves) actually has a very long duration. It’s easy to keep up near-permanently (with points in Deadly Arts), even if it gets removed several times.

Additionally, -33% healing is something to write home about. It all depends on what build you’re fighting, but that can make a massive difference by preventing the enemy from healing.

Let’s take an extreme case. You’re fighting a bunker Elementalist. Under ideal conditions, a water/arcane Elementalist can heal up to 1,463 health every second. Math here. Now, obviously they’re not going to time every single heal correctly, and they’re going to be busy dodging or they’ll be stunned for some of the time. I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume 1k hps (68% efficiency). If that’s the case, then maintaining poison on that Elementalist would effectively deal 417 (+0.1 per condition damage) damage every second.

At 500 condition damage, that’s 5% more damage than Burn, or 607% more damage than Bleed. That’s a ton of damage.

So is poison amazing against a glass cannon build? No. However, it scales in effectiveness with the enemy’s healing. The more defensive their build is, the stronger poison becomes. It’s the game’s best counter to a bunker, since all bunkers rely on healing for the core of their sustained defense (block/protection aside).

John Lucier.5486:

Also in practice, any DoT that ticks slower is actually going to do even less damage because that is more time in between ticks a condition remover can be used and you cannot stack something like poison, which if changed would actually make it useful (like the damage would tick faster like a bleed but the healing debuff wouldnt say double or anything).

You have a slight, but understandable, misconception here. Both bleeding and poison tick once per second. Bleeding appears to tick more often, but that’s only because you’re seeing each of 8 stacks tick every second. So there’s that.

I also think you’re talking about having poison be compressed in time (i.e. lasts half the time, does twice the damage). That would be nice, but I don’t think that’s the intended role for poison. We have three damaging conditions in the game: burning, bleeding, and poison. Burning applies really high damage the moment you apply it, but usually doesn’t last that long. Bleeding does low damage per tick and has a medium duration, but you can stack it. This means it does high damage once you get multiple stacks going, but it has a ramp-up. Poison does low damage, but has a long duration and debuffs healing.

I think Burning is supposed to be the “fast damage” condition. If you apply Burning, you deal high damage in a hurry. Bleeding is the standard damage condition. It deals damage reasonably fast, but you have to stack it to get the most damage. Poison is the attrition fight condition. It’s not very strong in a short fight, but in a longer fight that healing penalty really starts to kick in and give you a strong advantage.

John Lucier.5486:

Once you feel like posting actual information with REAL reasoning to back it up (like you claim but fail to do) I will be happy to discuss it further, but if you want you can continue to argue basically that Blue is not a color, when clearly it is.

There. Actual information, real reasoning, and a nice chunk of hard math to top it all off.

Also, I’m willing to continue to continue to discuss the merits or lack thereof of poison, but I think you kind of pushed us off-topic here. Back to P/D, could you show me where I did this:

John Lucier.5486:

flip flopping my in the last part by agreeing with me

.

I’ve read through my posts, and I can’t find it.

Also,

John Lucier.5486:

you cut little pieces of my post to twist the context

I don’t think I misrepresented anything by taking context out, but just in case I’ve been careful to keep your full argument for this post. All context is intact.

TL;DR: He counted his ducks by row before they hatched. Hijinks ensued.

Judas.5432:

Dacromir.6207:

TL;DR: It’s amazing what a Norn will go through to avoid their annual bath.

?

That’s just a whimsical TLDR. It’s something that pleases my strange sense of humor, and sometimes makes people who skipped the post go back and actually read it. It’s also a sign that I spend too much time on Reddit :P

Some great points in here. However, one thing I’d like to talk about:

PvP gear will be from now on used in WvW.

No. Just no. I have put a lot of work into balancing my stats just the way I want them. In WvW, I get just the right balance of offense and defense for my build. I have carefully tuned levels of each stat. I take high power and toughness, moderately high precision, moderate vitality and crit damage, and just a little healing.

In sPvP, my build is incredibly limited. I’m forced to take the Soldier’s Amulet, because it’s the closest thing to my build. However, even with the Berserker’s or Rampager’s jewel, I have abysmal crit rate and damage, which really cuts my damage down. I could take the Knight’s amulet, except that I’d have far lower power and I’d lose all my precision.

In sPvP, you have very few options in terms of stats. There are 10 amulets, and that’s really all the choice you have. If you want a stat balance that isn’t present among those 10 amulets (like Power/Toughness/Precision) or if you want to focus on more than 3 stats, you’re out of luck.

Until they add a lot more stat customization to sPvP, this is a horrible, horrible idea. One of the big reasons I prefer WvW to sPvP is that my build is exactly how I want it in WvW. In sPvP, I have to choose between too much damage and too much defense.

Also, this would remove progression in WvW. WvW is almost a whole game in itself, and you can level up solely from WvW (although it would be brutal). There is supposed to be level and gear progression in WvW, and you’re not supposed to be guaranteed an even fight like you get in sPvP. Exotics are easy enough to get that there isn’t a balance problem. It’s not like you have to spend hundreds of hours grinding to get them (which is a problem other games have); you can get several different stat sets in a timely manner from just doing WvW.

John Lucier.5486:

You lost ALL credibility…

No, I didn’t. I made an argument, backed up with reasoning, based on facts. I never say anything that’s factually inaccurate. I also provide a possible fix. I was actively participating in the discussion, and just because you disagree doesn’t mean I lost credibility. What you’re doing here is avoiding the argument by saying that I have nothing of value to contribute.

I made an argument, but then backed it up with reasoning. You follow up your baseless accusation of lost credibility with several poorly-founded statements:

John Lucier.5486:

ALL thief attacks that apply bleed are underpowered

That’s a sweeping overstatement, and not adequately backed up with reasoning. I think you could definitely make an argument for some attacks being weak (pistol #1, for example), but the amount of AoE bleeding we can apply with Caltrops, Death Blossom, and Uncatchable is extremely powerful.

John Lucier.5486:

poison is also next to worthless.

I think you’re coming from a damage point of view, in which case I agree somewhat. Poison is equivalent to ~2 stacks of bleeding or 25% of the damage of burning, and given how easy it is to stack bleeding, that’s not very much. However, you’re making a big mistake in overlooking the -33% healing. Any bunker build is depending on high self-healing to keep them up (especially Elementalist), so hitting them with -33% healing is devastating to their defenses. You don’t just use poison for the damage.

Sweeping statements like this are almost never accurate. It’s better to look at specific skills/traits/whatever than to make a broad statement like that.

John Lucier.5486:

Also you exaggerate just like all the nerf thief posts, only in a masked version, saying its some super ranged set

I don’t really exaggerate. I had two main points. First off, P/D encourages 1115 spamming because the rest of the skills suck. I don’t think anyone is contesting that.

The second is that the mix of range and stealth could use some investigation in terms of balance. Basically, you can attack from range. The moment your enemy closes into melee, you vanish into stealth (dealing high damage with CnD), open a 900" gap, and hit them with the really powerful Sneak Attack. As soon as they get into melee, you can use CnD again and rinse/repeat. This makes kiting very nearly impossible against a P/D thief, and it also makes the intended counter to stealth (AoE control/damage) far less effective.

Sure, it’s not quite as easy as that sounds, but I still think Oozo raises a valid point (meaning it’s at least worth discussing), and I expanded on it.

TL;DR: It’s amazing what a Norn will go through to avoid their annual bath.

Don’t take this the wrong way. You’ve put a fantastic effort into this, and you have some really valuable things here.

Everything you’ve put here can be found on the wiki.

If any of this information isn’t on the wiki, please put it there. The wiki is the number one place people go to look up GW2-related information, and by adding this information to the appropriate wiki page you’d be doing a huge service to the GW2 community. You’ve done a lot of great work here, and if you put it on the wiki (or check that it’s there) it’ll be seen by far more people. I think the minion pages especially could use the info you have here.

If you need/want help with wiki editing, send me a message here or drop a note on my talk page. I’m pretty good with most stuff, and I’ll be able to point you to more capable people for the rest of it.

No, no, no… sadness is a weak and pathetic emotion, and not worthy as a source of our power. In stead, our initiative system should be based off of the rage of nubs! We’ll start out weak, but as people rage and quit we’ll grow more and more powerful on the fumes of their anger.

After biding our time sowing anger and hate, we will rise up and reap our dark harvest of rage. Then, powered by our glorious spirits of hatred and bile, we will dominate our enemies and laugh as they all flee before our majesty. Even flaming us on the forums will be in vain, for it will only make us stronger.

Danicco.3568:

I have 26k with a non-Vitality build

Sorry, gotta call you on that. Warrior base hp is 18k. To get to 26k, you’d need ~800 vitality from gear and traits. That’s definitely not a “non-vitality” build, and it’s actually a fairly vitality-heavy build if not entirely vitality-focused. I’d wager that at least half of your gear has vitality on it, and probably more. In sPvP, you’d have to take the Knight’s Amulet (the one with the very highest vitality) or the Soldier’s Amulet (second highest) + Knight’s jewel (highest vit jewel) + Runes with vitality.

Your point is still valid (Warriors have ~8k more health than Guardians), but that’s utter BS right there.

Oozo.7856:

The other thing I think needs to be looked into are the 1115 pistol/dagger thieves that save all of their initiative for cloak and dagger and just autoattack people to death over time. It’s cheese. It’s not skillful. It is far too effective. And, trust me, it will remain that way even after rendering is fixed.

Ranged damage mixed with stealth has always been an issue in MMOs. What keeps a melee thief that heavily uses stealth in check are AoEs. But, AoEs are not effective against pistol/dagger. If they are built for stealth and survival they can regularly suceed in 1vNs as we’ve seen in several thief movies. Some of those thieves are legitimatally good, but some are not and are being carried by cheese mechanics.

You make some great points here, and (unlike some other in this forum) I’d like to discuss this.

For one thing, I think you’re slightly overstating the P/D thief’s ability to be effective at range. At range, they really can’t do anything except autoattack (body shot actually lowers DPS) and cripple to deal damage. Any class with actual ranged damage will beat a P/D thief in a range v range fight.

For P/D to be truly effective, they have to stealth frequently. They can do this a couple of times using slot skills, but that means they’ve taken very little utility. After that, they have to go into melee to stealth. This means that you can still use AoEs against them.

However, although I disagree with how serious you make it sound, I agree overall. A D/D or S/D thief has to stay in melee at all times to deal damage. A P/D thief can get into melee, stealth, get out of melee, and attack. By dancing in and out of melee, they can avoid a large portion of the AoEs that would otherwise counter them.

I think that this playstyle is good, and worth keeping. We shouldn’t get rid of the melee/ranged mix with stealth. It’s a really fun, fluid way to play, and very thief-like. I think it’s worth keeping, but it definitely needs rebalancing.

In my eyes, the unbalanced part is the pistol’s stealth attack. It’s really strong, and it’s ranged. With a ranged stealth attack, the thief is able to stealth in melee, open up a wide gap, and then resume ranged attacks. Against a melee opponent, this is a devastating anti-kite ability. The moment the melee enemy gets within range of the thief, the thief can stealth and open a gap, and then follow with a very powerful attack.

I think that changing Sneak Attack would really balance P/D. My personal suggestion would be to change it to Backblast. Backblast has a 300. It does the same direct damage as Sneak Attack, but only applies the bleeding if you’re behind the target.

This will prevent a lot of the problems with P/D as it is now. The thief will be able to open a gap with stealth, but they’ll sacrifice their powerful stealth opener to do so. If they want to do optimal damage, they have to stay in semi-melee range. This still allows them high melee/range flexibilty, but you should be able to counter their stealth with well-placed AoEs. This would still give them the option of auto-attacking if they want to stay out of traps/wells/etc, although they’d do less damage than in melee range.

Finally, I think all thieves can agree that Body Shot needs to be changed. Right now, it’s a worthless ability to use while solo (actually hurts your DPS, and costs initiative). It’s only worth using in group boss fights, but in that case the target usually has plenty of vulnerability on them already. If Body Shot was changed to something a thief would actually use in a solo fight, then you’d see far less 1115-spamming. As it stands now, our P/D skills are:

1) Damage.
2) Useless solo.
3) Buggy gap opener.
4) Ranged cripple.
5) Stealth, huge damage.

This means that unless the thief is struggling to kite you, there’s no real reason to use #3 or #4. With their stealth and ranged stealth attack, they’re rarely going to have a hard time kiting anybody. By changing up Body Shot (and a change to #4 would also be nice), we’ll cause thieves to use their other skills more often.

I get:

• 10s of Fury/Might/Swiftness to myself and allies from Steal
• 15s of Vigor to myself and allies from Steal
• 2 stolen boons to myself and allies from Steal
• 15s of Might (x2) when I stealth
• 2s of Swiftness from dodging
• 4s of Regeneration from my heal

I take 15 Acrobatics, and then another +30% boon duration from runes (Monk and Water). This gives me:

• 4.5s of Fury/Might/Swiftness when I Steal
• 6.75s of Vigor to myself and allies from Steal
• +45% duration to the stolen boons
• 6.75s of Might (x2) when I stealth
• 1s of Swiftness from dodging
• 1.75s of Regeneration from my heal.

To me, that’s definitely worth it.

Now, is it worth going into Acrobatics solely for the boon duration? No. It’s also not worth it to go into Trickery solely for the condition damage. You put points into traitlines for the trait bonuses, not for the stats you get. However, the boon duration from Acrobatics is very helpful, and it meshes well with my build. I chose Acrobatics for the boon duration and the mobility/dodging. Without one or the other, I would have rather put my points in trickery.

Boon duration is great, and doesn’t need to be changed. We can use it to keep permanent swiftness and vigor on ourselves, as well as self-stacking a ton of might and high regen uptime. I’m sorry that it doesn’t fit with your build specifically, but it’s still great for some people.

Asomal.6453:

(you can heal 2k+ whenever you go invi).

Nope. You can heal up to 1.2k in stealth, and that’s assuming you stay the full 4s. During this time, your enemy has 4s in which they can heal up as well (or at least allow the CD to tick down on their heal). After all, other classes can heal up while attacking you. In order for a thief with this spec to heal up, they have to sit there and not do damage.

Only way to pass 2k healing in one stealth (except for refuge) is to have 400+ healing power on your gear, in addition to the 300 from traits. In that case, I don’t really think that a 2k heal over 4s is that OP, because you sacrifice tons of stats in other areas to get that healing.

Ultravalefor.5038:

Stealth stomping prevents a downed Ranger from using their pet on the attacking thief.

Many times I have rallied in close battles or at least also downed my opponent by commanding my (very) hard hitting bird pets while downed. And even though the thief is still there, telling a pet to basic attack requires a selectable target. (they can’t swing at the air like so many thieves tell us to do)
F2 doesn’t require a target, but we can’t exactly control which direction our pets are facing at any time, downed or not.

Basically, stealth stomps remove the Ranger class’s only method of fighting back while downed. Our regular downed skills are trash—and probably are that way specifically because we can still use our pets.

You still have that AoE daze, though. That will interrupt the thief, and force him to either re-stealth or stomp you in the open. Either way, he’s taken a minimum of 7s to stomp you. If you’re running alone, the odds of your pet doing enough damage to let you win after you’re downed are extremely low, and this is hardly a valid argument for stealth being OP. If you’re with friends and they haven’t saved you in 7s, then they’re horrible players.

Calle.8746:

Aedil.1296:

EDIT2: Calle with lvl 62 guardian i can actually manage 2/3 ppl in WvW with ele barely 1 and yes my main is always been ele and i started with it since beta, it’s not a matter or L2P trust me is a matter that after beta ele sucks.

Lol…just lol. I don’t need to trust you because I know you are wrong. I play an Elementalist myself. I own with it. I often find myself 1v3ing people and dropping them all. There’s NO ONE I face in PvP that I don’t feel I have a chance to beat. If I lose I always put up a good fight.
So no trust me, this is a L2P issue.

Might I respectfully submit that both of you are wrong?

I think it’s just a matter of playstyle. Each of the 8 classes has a certain playstyle that’s distinct from the others. Likewise, each player has a different playstyle. It could just be that Calle’s playstyle meshes really well with Elementalist, but Aedil’s playstyle doesn’t? Maybe Aedil is a better match for Guardian.

I’m a thief. I’m a good thief, objectively. I leap into 3v1s and 4v1s in WvW all the time, and frequently come out on top. I have no issues surviving PvE content in melee range, and I can count on one hand the number of people who can consistently (more than 50%) beat me in a 1v1 so far.

I’ve played, at one time or another, Warrior, Necro, Ranger, and Elementalist. With all of them, I could be a decent or even good player. I would never die in solo PvE (except to champions or gross stupidity), and I would do decently in PvP. However, I could never reach the level of skill I can with my Thief. It could be that Thieves are overpowered, but I don’t think so (especially not the way I play it).

There are several people in my guild that are roughly equal in skill to me. We either duel eachother to a standstill (no kill after 5+ minutes of fighting) or have a 40-60% win ratio. They’re all non-thief classes. A couple of them have played Thief before, and none of them were able to get beyond “good” on their thieves. So they had the same success with my class that I had with theirs. Thief is best for me, Warrior/Elementalist/etc is best for them.

I think it’s hard to see this from your point of view. Elementalist does epic things for you, Calle, because it fits you. If you’re making a judgement based only on your experience, it’s a logical conclusion that anyone who cannot play as well as you is not as good of a player. However, they could be an equally skilled player, but with a style of play that doesn’t fit well with Elementalist. This would make them perform far worse than you on an Elementalist, even though you’re of equal skill.

Likewise, Aedil, I don’t think anyone can argue the fact that Elementalists can do awesome things. So if you’re not able to play that well as an Elementalist, then there are basically two reasonable explanations. Either you’re playing badly, or Elementalist isn’t the class for you. You pick which one.

Either way, whining on the forums isn’t helping anything and just makes you look bad.

I’d give some other classes a try if I were you.

Two videos that prove you wrong.

Here is me fighting a D/D Elementalist. Just look at all that self-healing, protection, stability, and mobility.

Here’s a video of an Elementalist fighting a zerg. Yeah, she totally dies in seconds. She definitely doesn’t hold off far greater numbers for a really long time, and even get a few kills.

As far as I can tell, axe is really only useful for its high hit volume. 50 feet is still too close to count as “ranged damage”, although you can kite somewhat from that range. It’s direct damage, but it’s weak. Life Force generation is decent, but not amazing.

However, it has the highest hit volume (hits per sec) of the necro weapons, which make it great on effects that have a chance to occur on crit or on hit. If you have lots of traits that apply bleeding/vuln on crit, lifesteal on crit food, and a sigil that does something on crit (flame blast, self-healing, bleeding, might, etc.) then it’s powerful.

The vulnerability is also great for increasing your group’s damage.