Guild Wars 2

Raine Akrune.8416:

I’ve been playing a S/P thief and beat d/d and d/p thieves all the time in WvW/sPvP.

S/P in WvW…wow, I hope I run into you out in the wild someday. I can always use another sparkly bag.

Although, I could see you catching some glass cannon builds or low skill players flat-footed and blowing them up. Against a high skill player patiently running a balanced build with D/D or D/P, you’d be pretty severely handicapped, though.

Adaneshade.2409:

Just curious who’s not running SA now? If for nothing else, the toughness/healing seems enough reason to have at least SOME, I’m with Cygnus on this.

I actually put even more points into SA since they broke Hidden Killer. When they fix HK, I’ll go back to what I had before patch.

Fey Zeal.7032:

This recent nerf did little to address what I see as the real problem with Theifs and whether it really was or wasn’t necessary is not something I will or can comment on.

The fact that a thief can wait for Stealth to wear off naturally, attack you and then go right back into stealth with Cloak and Dagger allows stealth to be chained endlessly. Now, granted you aren’t going to stand there and wait for them to keep attacking you but it’s like Ele bunker builds there’s nothing you can really do to take them down. And in spvp I assume you need to be able to take players down in some cases.

As a solution, I feel, a Reveal “like” debuf should be applied when coming out of stealth from Cloak and Dagger naturally. If you use a different Stealth skill while still stealthed from CaD, the debuf could then be dropped from occurring, should you let stealth wear off naturally in this case. This way stealth skills are not affected and perma invis is stopped.

Maybe someone else can explain why this single skill is not excessive or over powered…
because I don’t understand how it is not the focus of anet’s attention, in regards to Theif.

Them doing that is really a non issue.

1) As others have pointed out, C&D alone isn’t actually going to kill anyone.

2) As you pointed out yourself, no one is actually going to stand there and let a thief do it. You know they will be standing right next to you, ON A TIMER. There’s any number of things you can do you disrupt or attack the thief with that information and turn the tables. Even just a simple dodge leaves the thief visible and initiative starved because they don’t get the ini refund on C&D for successfully stealthing.

3) You compare it to not being able to kill a bunker Elementalist in sPvP. The bunker ele is massively more powerful in sPvP because they can 100% contest points while being unkillable. A thief being unkillable through chain stealth doesn’t contest the point at all while in stealth. For the purpose of winning the game, they accomplish nothing outside of just being a distraction.

If a thief is chain stealthing, and you do not feel that you can catch or kill them, just let them run away. They aren’t doing any serious harm to anyone while they chain stealth and aren’t contesting any objectives either.

Karolis.4261:

Daeqar.8965:

Mug’s greatest value/threat is in cheesy glass cannon burst builds. Outside of those builds, it’s not all that dangerous.

With 4s revealed + culling removal, players running those cheesy burst builds are pretty much free kills.

Increases reveal does not touch those cheesy mug burst builds. However it does kick right to the balls for stealth builds.
Ps.: Do not call 25/30/0/0/15 or 30/30/0/0/10 d/d a stealth build, couse it aint.

Of course 4s revealed hurts them. Against a decent build, cheese burst can’t possibly get a kill in the first combo. (It’s impossible for them to kill me in my balanced build even if they get a full combo on their first pass, for example.)

Now, after they blow their cooldowns in a failed attempt to one-shot, they are fully visible and vulnerable for 4s before they can even attempt going back into stealth. Before, they only had to wait 3s and were culled for a bit to start making them more difficult to locate.

I could kill them before without a lot of difficulty because they were so squishy; now they are like sitting ducks. Paper ducks, actually.

Daeqar.8965:

BS + C&D combo 2062+1196 1.00s
(3258 dps) (815 damage per initiative)
Death Blossom 474+1551 0.50s
(4050 dps) (405 damage per initiative)
Heartseeker <25% 1595 0.75s
(2127 dps) (531 damage per initiative)
Autoattack Chain 2592 1.50s
(1728 dps) (initiative free)

A few more numbers that folks may find informative regarding D/D dps… To actually evaluate the value of the abilities, you have to relate them to how much better they are than autoattack chain, for how long they provide that boost, and at per initiative cost. You get a wonky [(% dps increase)*s/initiative] unit.

22.1 [% * s / ini] – BS + C&D combo
13.5 [% * s / ini] – Death Blossom
5.8 [% * s / ini] – Heartseeker (execute range)

So, if your purpose is purely max possible dps while using D/D, never use Heartseeker unless you are doing it for the leap and/or leap finisher – not even in execute range. BS+C&D combo is the best single target use of initiative. If you have 2 or more targets nearby, stop using BS+C&D entirely and just use Death Blossom.

These values are non-crit values right out of the game for a “balanced” build against default armor value. They are pre-modifiers, of course. Gear, lower real world armored targets, cooldowns, modifiers and all tend to make the values much higher in game, but generally not in a manner that would impact the comparison. Hidden Killer builds WOULD skew more towards old rotation. Assume all builds have 2 initiative refund trait on stealth. I apologize for the forum removing all the tab/spacing, otherwise it would be more readable.

Backstab 2062
Double Strike 482+482
Wild Strike 730
Lotus Strike 730+168
Cloak & Dagger 1196
————————————————————————————
Total 5850 3.0s
(1950 dps) (1.33 initiative spent per second)

Backstab 2062
Double Strike 482+482
Wild Strike 730
Lotus Strike 730+168
Double Strike 482+482
Wild Strike 730
Cloak & Dagger 1196
————————————————————————————
Total 7544 4.0s
(1886 dps – 3.4% less) (1.00 initiative spent per second)

BS + C&D combo 2062+1196 1.00s
(3258 dps) (815 damage per initiative)
Death Blossom 474+1551 0.50s
(4050 dps) (405 damage per initiative)
Heartseeker <25% 1595 0.75s
(2127 dps) (531 damage per initiative)
Autoattack Chain 2592 1.50s
(1728 dps) (initiative free)

So, add a execute range Heartseeker every 3 cycles in place of Wild Strike or a Death Blossom every 5 cycles, and the overall dps gap closes even more.

So, for raw stand still and dps PvE type cycles, the overall impact on dps isn’t that huge on D/D, and similar results can be found in other weapon sets.

stof.9341:

Daeqar.8965:

Auesis.7301:

Instead, Thief got nerfed completely and utterly in to the ground. All PvE stealth rotations are dead.

When you add in the extra #1 spam and using the extra initiative spent on 2nd best attack, the dps on the PvE rotations don’t actually go down very much. Increased vulnerability is the main thing, but in a dungeon setting periodic stealth wasn’t much protection anyway with how mobs want to keep chasing stealthed players.

There is no 2nd best attack that is better than autoattack. In fact, the autoattack is the best DPS for sword main hand.

Figure the damage/initiative and damage/second done on Pistol Whip and Flanking Strike. It’s not that bad and has more output than autoattacks. And we were talking PvE…MH sword stealth cycle is pretty wimpy dps anyway compared to other weapon sets. If you’re worried about dps and performance in the dungeon, you shouldn’t even be using it in the first place.

Okamakiri.8746:

You are severely over-estimating the DPS of AA. Note I said DPS, not damage… CnD-> BS not only does way more than the entire AA chain, it also does it nearly instantly, hence way higher DPS.

To put it in some simple to understand numbers. If CnD -> BS -> AA does 15k dmg in 3s, that’s 5k DPS. Lets say that of that 15k dmg, 5k is AA, 4k is CnD and 6k is BS (I’m being conservative here. Due to “Hidden Killer” trait, BS will average way higher than AA on anything but a pure GC build with 100% Fury uptime). Even if you’re able to put out 1/3 of the AA damage in that extra 1s, that means the new rotation damage will be 5k + 5k/3 + 4k + 6k = 16666 over 4s, which is 4166DPS. 5000 / 4166 = 20% DPS loss. And that’s ignoring the reduction in might stacks from “Hidden Assassin” and the effect of “Hidden Killer”.

Also, we don’t have the initiative to support another attack between AA and next CnD. Even with “Infusion of Shadow”, we barely have enough initiative-per-second to maintain the rotation as is. For optimum DPS we also need to keep our initiative above 6, to get benefit from “First Strikes”.

I’ll try to get you some more accurate numbers when I have time. And I know there’s not enough initiative (right away), but if you’re spending the same amount of initiative over a 1s longer interval (or longer to fit different timings) then you have one of two things happening:

1. You’re accumulating (or retaining) a little bit of extra initiative with each cycle, which you will eventually want to spend on an initiative attack because you physically can’t spend it on more rapid stealth cycles.

2. You were already initiative limited and could not sustain 3s revealed cycle in the first place.

Ensign.2189:

I sincerely doubt they tested the change at all, as there’s no way anyone with any familiarity with the class would have signed off on it.

I expect it was probably more a matter of someone getting voted off the island, hehe.

Auesis.7301:

Instead, Thief got nerfed completely and utterly in to the ground. All PvE stealth rotations are dead.

When you add in the extra #1 spam and using the extra initiative spent on 2nd best attack, the dps on the PvE rotations don’t actually go down very much. Increased vulnerability is the main thing, but in a dungeon setting periodic stealth wasn’t much protection anyway with how mobs want to keep chasing stealthed players.

Scootabuser.4915:

…revealed apply to us even if we leave stealth without doing any damage.

That wasn’t as much of a nerf as this was.

Disagree completely.

That change would have destroyed a thief’s ability to turtle and play defensively, which with this change remains entirely, 100% intact. Taking that defensive ability away from the class just to preserve a little bit of offensive capability would have been a huge mistake.

Frankly, I’m ashamed that so many thieves on the forums are so short-sighted to think the 4s revealed is a worse nerf.

Okamakiri.8746:

No it’s not. At the end of an AA chain there is a pause before it starts again. So for that extra second of revealed we’re mostly just stuck there twiddling our thumbs. This is a huge nerf to both DPS and survivability.

There’s not a pause. I assume you’re mainly thinking of D/D because it has that limpy feel to the rotation because of how the first attack lands two separate numbers and how the ability durations play out. It does resume to the front of the chain immediately, though.

Just let the minimum next attacks land in order to resume stealth and then recalculate dps out of the overall average damage done across the new, longer time interval. To make things even more complex – you just lowered initiative per second expended, so you can add an Heartseeker or some other initiative attack over x number of cycles completed. You have to take all this sort of thing into account. Just using rough napkin math, I’m getting ranging more like 11% to nearly 0% depending on your assumptions.

It’s really more a matter of increased vulnerability and it’s real-world impact in being able to safely deliver damage instead of being forced to turtle or retreat. Raw damage output capability is not affected nearly as much as many here are assuming.

Again, I’m not debating the nerf; I’m just pointing out that characterizing it as a 33% damage nerf and similar is not accurate.

Auesis.7301:

Daeqar.8965:

Vilkata.9078:

Straegen.2938:

Daecollo.9578:

Straegen.2938:

Daecollo.9578:

Every trait you have got nerfed by 25%, so did your damage and survivability.

Neither 25% or 33% is remotely accurate unless a player lives almost solely in stealth which pretty much nobody does.

This combo is just as viable with just as much damage: Steal/Mug, BS, HS, HS, HS.

Sure there are thieves that live in stealth but those are primarily griefers. All they did was add 1 second of out of stealth damage when coming out of a stealth attack. It will have an effect but not nearly 25%.

99% of thieves who play use stealth.

Holy hell… 1 extra second on the reveal absolutely cannot effect a thief by 25% or more. Period… cannot be done and under any circumstance. Do people here think for that one extra second a thief is standing still not using some non-stealth attack/skill or that most thieves constantly spam some in-stealth attack?

Only players who stay in semi-perma-stealth by spamming CnD or the like the entire time will notice a significant drop in DPS.

It does have an actual 33% affect on long term dps of several builds. One example is a 10/30/30/0/0 build that uses a CnD BS followed by full AA chain for poison then CnD again to repeat combo. If I don’t need to heal or purge conditions you won’t even notice me go into stealth because I keep positioned at the side or back of the target. This nerf kills that Rythm and lengthens the time between repetitions by 33%. So does it do anything to a single burst? Not at all but long fights against bosses and large groups will definitely feel the effect.

It reduces the stealth rotation by ~33%, but the additional space in the overall rotation gets filled with #1 spam or something better. That addition mitigates the 33% down to something more palatable. It would take a bit of math and some assumptions to figure out what that number actually is – at least offensively. It’s hard to quantify the part of being more vulnerable and even how that affects real-world offensive capability.

In terms of hard math though, 33% is definitely erroneous.

Try with S/D. Hitting C+D after your auto-attack chain finishes, Revealed ends EXACTLY as you get the chance to hit C+D again after the third hit. Now you have to twiddle your thumbs as the cycle reverts to the first attack, or you have to dodge whatever comes your way in the bigger gap that has now been left. DPS is lower. Period.

I didn’t say dps isn’t lower; I just said 33% isn’t the right number. It’s grossly inflated, actually.

Straegen.2938:

GC or not mug should have been adjusted as it is certainly one of the best bang for buck traits on any crit build. Taking just mug gives steal a poison for 10 seconds, a free mid-range HS and the ability that is stolen. Add in Hidden Thief trait followed by BS to the mix and most characters will wilt under that damage. This also means easily dropping 10k damage on a player before the thief is even seen.

You’re taking a whole bunch of different things that have nothing to do with the Mug trait and lumping them in with it and saying Mug is great value, though.

Second, most crit builds are glass cannon because for a thief it’s usually pointless to stack crit unless you’ve already stacked power.

Mug adds damage equivalent to the middle damage tier on a Heartseeker (mediocre damage quantity) and adds it to a 45s cooldown you’re going to use anyway. Situationally, it can be very good, but in the big picture of overall damage (considering the cooldown on Steal) it’s nothing really special. Just for example, Elementalists have 4-5 10pt traits available with roughly equivalent overall value depending on their build – it’s just that some of them are for things other than raw damage.

Vilkata.9078:

Straegen.2938:

Daecollo.9578:

Straegen.2938:

Daecollo.9578:

Every trait you have got nerfed by 25%, so did your damage and survivability.

Neither 25% or 33% is remotely accurate unless a player lives almost solely in stealth which pretty much nobody does.

This combo is just as viable with just as much damage: Steal/Mug, BS, HS, HS, HS.

Sure there are thieves that live in stealth but those are primarily griefers. All they did was add 1 second of out of stealth damage when coming out of a stealth attack. It will have an effect but not nearly 25%.

99% of thieves who play use stealth.

Holy hell… 1 extra second on the reveal absolutely cannot effect a thief by 25% or more. Period… cannot be done and under any circumstance. Do people here think for that one extra second a thief is standing still not using some non-stealth attack/skill or that most thieves constantly spam some in-stealth attack?

Only players who stay in semi-perma-stealth by spamming CnD or the like the entire time will notice a significant drop in DPS.

It does have an actual 33% affect on long term dps of several builds. One example is a 10/30/30/0/0 build that uses a CnD BS followed by full AA chain for poison then CnD again to repeat combo. If I don’t need to heal or purge conditions you won’t even notice me go into stealth because I keep positioned at the side or back of the target. This nerf kills that Rythm and lengthens the time between repetitions by 33%. So does it do anything to a single burst? Not at all but long fights against bosses and large groups will definitely feel the effect.

It reduces the stealth rotation by ~33%, but the additional space in the overall rotation gets filled with #1 spam or something better. That addition mitigates the 33% down to something more palatable. It would take a bit of math and some assumptions to figure out what that number actually is – at least offensively. It’s hard to quantify the part of being more vulnerable and even how that affects real-world offensive capability.

In terms of hard math though, 33% is definitely erroneous.

Maladon.5760:

You should be using Executioner anyway

For certain builds, Hidden Killer is vastly more dps gain. Generally, these would be builds with frequent stealth cycles and semi tanky gear like Power/Vitality/Toughness. It also has much more predictable results.

Rafahil.2857:

You felt that it was too big of a hit? Seriously? You think the current nerf is less of a hit?

You didn’t even factor in how this affects traits that rely on stealth. Mainly the Shadow Arts trait line. Do you know your own game?

Be certain they did factor it in, and yes, it is less of a hit in every facet of the game except for arguably PvE dungeons.

Mug’s greatest value/threat is in cheesy glass cannon burst builds. Outside of those builds, it’s not all that dangerous.

With 4s revealed + culling removal, players running those cheesy burst builds are pretty much free kills.

The important thing here in terms of Shadow Arts value as a trait line is that you can still chain stealth periods as long as you don’t attack from stealth, which preserves the value of many of the best traits in those situations.

A player getting focused can still chain two stealth periods together and purge 4 conditions and get the same amount of healing as before. So, someone still has full opportunity to play defensively – which is the primary intent of that trait line which also happens to provide toughness and healing bonuses.

If a player is playing purely offensively, yes, it is a significant nerf.

Assuming most people are using some form of balanced playstyle and using both behaviors, I would still tend to view Shadow Arts as arguably the best trait line Thieves have available.

avilo.1942:

EvilSardine.9635:

Seriously? So thieves and endlessly cloak and dagger players like they do currently? A thief appearing for a quarter a second just to cloak and dagger again is stupid.

Why isn’t this issue with Cloak and Dagger being dealt with?

Probably because it’s not an issue, it’s more of a “learn to play” issue.

^

A thief chaining Cloak and Dagger like that isn’t doing significant damage. Also, even though you can’t readily see them; they are extremely vulnerable.

They are going to be standing right next to you, exactly ON A TIMER. You know when and where they will be…use your imagination. Dodge, CC, PBAoE…there’s any number of ways to deal with it and turn the tables. Even just the simple dodge will leave the thief visible and initiative starved.

Okamakiri.8746:

Dual.8953:

You can still stealth near infinitely. Now you’re weaker if you don’t stealth near inifinitely.

Isn’t it hilarious?!?!? It’s such a poorly thought out change that I can’t help but just laugh in disgust.

Yeah, it’s so horrible to sit in chain stealth somewhere and not be a threat to anyone.

The effective PvE nerf is pretty stiff, but I’m not terribly worried about it. Even before, if you are playing a Thief in dungeons, any pretense of high performance is abandoned anyway. Reroll anything else → profit.

It’s more important to maintain niche value in PvP and at least be good at something.

Drawing Guy.3701:

I would much prefer the 3s reveal no matter what over the on hit reveal upped to 4.

Personally, I find the 4s revealed to be massively preferable to always getting revealed even when not attacking.

I’m finding the patch notes to be rather encouraging compared to what could have been.

I do suspect that Anet may find 4s to make thieves a little too weak on the whole when folks start adjusting their builds to be more durable due to the extra exposure – which will magnify the loss in offensive power from less frequent stealth openers. But they won’t decrease the revealed debuff; they’ll nudge other things instead.

Adaneshade.2409:

Nice paraphrasing there, only a noob would use just one or the other rather than a good combination of the two or be foolish enough to run a build that dies should they get knocked down and hundred bladed or something like that. You have to design your build tough enough for the odd occasion that you can’t use an escape and have to eat someone’s burst in order to be at maximum usefulness in this meta. Killing isn’t what’s important in this game’s version of PvP, it’s surviving and controlling an area (applies both to PvP and to WvW).

Being forced to flee is the same as losing as you lose control of that territory.

I’m not a proponent of glass cannon builds, even for thieves. And I actually agree with a number of the things you say, but I was just using a little sarcasm to point out that a lot of them are also ludicrous. You take things to such an extreme that your reasonable points are weakened because they are frequently paired with statements that are obviously wrong at face value.

There are lots of different roles and functions in WvW – it’s actually the most nuanced game mode we have available. One niche function in team based play in WvW is scouting and providing immediate information in voice chat – enemy movements, disposition of forces, siege locations, portals and veils, and other things like just being a distraction, murdering dolyaks, or just killing/delaying enemy scouts before they get useful info. A disciplined group with a good leader can do powerful things when they have eyes and ears. Thieves are far and away the best class for this and a skilled player can provide a lot of value with a coordinated team/guild. And, it’s usually best served with durable builds with lots of stealth – not glass cannon griefer builds. This function runs away, a lot, and is very successful because it can. The revealed buff change will very much affect good thief players providing this function.

Even without providing that role, general purpose players frequently have good reason to run away in WvW. Why? Because the WvW setting rarely presents a fair fight. It’s not a turnstile of players waiting their turn for a 1v1, or even 5v5 or 10v10 in open field. Running away is strategically more valuable than dying in most cases. You maintain your position in the map, which may take minutes of running to reach, and may continue to harrass objectives and occupy enemy players. Is it still losing? Absolutely, but letting overwhelming numbers kill you with no chance of winning is rarely better.

To put it bluntly, if a player is running thief and not using a considerable amount of stealth in their build, they probably rolled the wrong class. As it is now, stealth mechanics are very nearly the only thing that objectively (quantifiable contribution towards winning) makes a thief worth playing over other classes. Sure, a skilled player can make a low/no stealth thief build and have fun and success with it, but in every case I can point out at least one (often multiple) different class that can provide a very similar or essentially the same basic gameplay at a higher/better level. Stealth is the ingredient that makes an objective person admit, “Yeah, no other class can do ‘that’ or do it that well.” A thief player pretty much has no choice but to use lots of stealth if they intend to play this game at a high level. Of course it’s not the only tool in their bag, but it is a primary one.

Adaneshade.2409:

The stealth nerfs will be GOOD for our profession as a whole as it will drive out some of the bads … we now get a patch that will “separate the men form the boys”. It’s high time for the class to be respectable.

…

Any build that relies totally on stealth openers would fall into this category. [Only a noob would use high damage/utility attacks that cost zero initiative.]

…

The GC builds that don’t rely on distraction and evasion instead of stealth require tons of skill to play for sure.

…

Why would anyone run from a fight?

…

Only a good thief would stand there and take it like a man instead of using evasion and stealth to avoid damage.

Olba.5376:

So even if they made it so that Mug dealt negligible damage, it’d be just fine.

I agree, however it would also be a negligible value trait at that point. They would need to replace it with something else or just put some sort of alternate effect on the trait.

EasymodeX.4062:

Because it’s a good baseline. Not only is it possible and semi-likely depending on your opinion, but you can use the numbers to interpolate damage against targets with toughness, protection, etc.

Furthermore, the exception context is not “non-Berserker”. It’s any build that doesn’t use toughness in particular. Hence Carrion, Valkyrie, and other gear compositions that have no/low toughness will also be hit with the same damage levels. Thus, that level of damage is more common than most Thieves want to advertise (if they ran with max DPS).

It’s the same discussion as why you don’t see Mesmers advertising that they can do 4k crits on their autoattack, 8k on their phantasms, or 12k+ shatters.

Possible, yes. Semi-likely…basic statistical analysis on getting 3 crit rolls eliminates that by itself. It’s more like “semi-likely at being possible” based on the number of people that run low toughness.

And if a player runs a paper build, it’s partly their own fault (or at least a calculated choice) and any class can hit them for obscene numbers.

EasymodeX.4062:

It’s enough to complain about the combo with realistic numbers. Something like 4k Mug crit + 7.2k Backstab crit + 1.8k C&D non-crit (no particular order) on a decently built character. 13k in nearly an instant is worth complaining about.

Glass on glass is more like 6.5-7.5k Mug, 6-8k CND, 9-14k backstab, just under 2k air proc.

In WvW at least, since you can get +110% crit damage without too much trouble. which you can’t in sPvP.

Why use Glass on Glass numbers though? It’s extreme and represents a small minority of real situations…plus the targets are probably dead after the 12k damage taken anyway. It has no more value than giving bunker vs. bunker numbers on the other end of the spectrum that are half as big as the ones I used.

Plus, it’s not reasonable to complain about someone winning statistical lotteries and getting all crits. Even if they are GC geared with 50% crit chance, it’s only 1/8 chance to get all crits, and folks running those type of builds to hit that hard aren’t using Hidden Killer. For people running reasonable gear, they’re looking at more like 2% chance, maybe less.

Edenwolf.6328:

Ive been hit for 8k by mug out in wvw, this is just crazy on top of the other hits. 8k mug, 8k cloak and dagger, 8k+ backstab all in 1.5 seconds = anyone dead. Yes I know cloak and dagger recieved a nerf, but out in wvw I still get hit by the occasional 8k surprisingly. IMO mug should only be critting for 3k max, 8k is just silly.

I always have a hard time figuring why people make comments like this about the burst combo… 8k+8k+8k… I’ve heard 10k+10k+10k too, both from victims of the combo and even from thieves themselves exaggerating about how hard they hit someone.

To start, the abilities don’t hit for the same damage. Backstab hits substantially harder than the others. Mug and C&D both hit for about the same as the middle damage tier on Heartseeker – basically a medium direct damage quantity. It just doesn’t make sense to claim that they all crit and all did roughly the same damage.

Second… Even for backstab to crit for 8k, you have to either hit a nearly paper thin target (little or no toughness), have damage cooldown (signet) and buffs, or have gear with an obscene amount of crit multiplier – or some combination of all that. To have the other two abilities both crit for that much (and backstab obviously for even more because it hits harder) you pretty much need celestial alignment.

It’s enough to complain about the combo with realistic numbers. Something like 4k Mug crit + 7.2k Backstab crit + 1.8k C&D non-crit (no particular order) on a decently built character. 13k in nearly an instant is worth complaining about.

P/P needs Bodyshot to be replaced with some other ability that has PBAoE and a Blast finisher, IMO. Call it “Overcharged Shot” or “Proof Round” or something…I can already imagine the comical Asura animation.

Sifu.6527:

P/P is awesome in duels.

It beats P/D, S/D, S/P, SB, D/D, etc you name it.

Not if I’m playing most of the other weapon sets, it doesn’t. It is workable against a lot of players, though.

I kinda like the proposed change. Our couple rapid attack channels end up generating about the same passive healing. The only cases where the old passive generates more is Dagger Storm inside a group or shotgunning Cluster Bomb inside a group, in which case the current passive is argued OP by some. But the change makes the passive roughly 2x better for more typical attacks, like #1 spam with pistol or dagger.

Basically, it normalizes the effect to no be lackluster and weak in some cases and not overly strong in others.

There’s really no replacement for manpower. Even if keeps were beefed up more, all it does is buy defenders slightly more time to react. If you don’t defend or are heavily outnumbered, it’s just a matter of time no matter what.

If you do have the manpower, it becomes all about scouting and proper reaction. Keep scouts in certain areas of the map on key assets. Tail giant zergs and keep tabs on where they go. Then, have organized defenders that can react. A swiftness buffing group can generally run anywhere they need to go on the map within 2 minutes or so if they are organized, react appropriately, and don’t stupidly put themselves badly out of position.

And even if attackers get through all the doors and walls, they still have to defeat what should be an equivalent force on the other side.

If anything, when you put adequate people into the equation on both sides, some places are actually too easily defended. Fully upgraded objectives loaded up with siege weapons can become too difficult to wear down even with just a handful of defenders manning the siege.

One thing that sometimes appears unbalanced is the power of mega-zergs…50-60 people and having so much supply they can flash build 5 superior rams on each door. They can melt through so fast and protect themselves with sheer numbers just by stacking that there is either not time to respond or nothing that manned counter siege can do about it. However, it’s not that hard to scout a giant zerg and either fight it or instead attack 2 or 3 targets while they focus on one. Also, lets say they flash build 5 + 5 superior rams and take a garrison or something…it takes a pretty long time to resupply that many people with that much supply before they can repeat the process on something else – especially if you use some supply denial tactics.

Columba.9730:

LOCO.1785:

Columba.9730:

Secondly, if Spvp and WvWvW are the same, how about we balance thieves in WvWvW the same way they are balanced in Spvp?

Because there not the same… Far from it.

They’re not, it he claimed that they were!

If you actually believe that, I encourage you to re-read my post and the one it quoted and engage in some critical thinking. Clearly, I made no such claim, and I’ll assume your misinterpretation is just an honest mistake rather than intentional.

Mayhem.1935:

Because manning that arrow cart is to beneath a thief in large scale, am i right?

Of course not, but it certainly doesn’t make a thief special, unique, or worth playing. No class’s role in WvW should be manning an arrow cart because there’s nothing else they can do as well or better than someone else. After all, manning flame rams is already off the table since thieves are squishy.

Columba.9730:

Where does it say that only thieves are allowed to solo?

Secondly, if Spvp and WvWvW are the same, how about we balance thieves in WvWvW the same way they are balanced in Spvp?

No where, and there’s lots of people that run around with D/D Ele, GS Warr, Mesmer, and even some Necros and bunker troll Guardian builds and the like running around solo looking for 1v1 targets. And lots of them have great success with it and particularly look for Thieves to single out. I even saw a Ranger doing it last night who was shockingly good, although I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t cheating because I saw him using abilities of sorts that were completely new to me.

The thing is, most other classes have lots of good teamplay options to build for – and they use them. Why would they setup for dueling instead of setup to actually win? Thieves don’t have much of an option because small scale is literally the only thing the class is good at – the only thing that makes them special. They are deliberately designed to be lacking in other areas as a trade-off. The only logical thing left to do is scrounge for small scale tasks in WvW that are helpful and just be really good at them, no matter how limited those tasks may be.

Mayhem.1935:

Daeqar.8965:

Sunflowers.1729:

sPvP is based around holding points with very small numbers of people. WvW is not. If you fight a thief in sPvP and he is unable to kill your fully bunker build, you win cause you have successfully defended the point. If the same thing happens in WvW it is at best a draw, unless you both happen to be solo with no NPCs (which is extremely rare) in a supply camp or something.

And WvW is based around holding points (objectives) with very large numbers of people. Thief happens to be even worse at that comparatively than with very small numbers.

Yet so many people want to be terribly worried about what happens when they run around solo, even when it has very little impact on contributing to a win.

Completely untrue. GC thief? Equip a short bow in a tower/keep/castle and go to work dropping long duration posion fields and cluster bombs for 3-7k at a rather rapid pace. Thieves like to make other players believe they are bad at keep defense to make up for being unopposable in open settings. Just stop lying. Listen, i play p/d +d/p in open world, but if i want to attack/defend a tower, i toss on a Shortbow and GET TO WORK.

Shortbow is the only useful team build for a thief in WvW. Although, not so much for standing around on a wall raining down aoe, which is pretty lame team play for pretty much any class. It’s pretty easy for folks to to simply walk out of aoe or just stack up and tank it if ramming gates or something. What it is useful for is the on demand blast finishers. And running it with glass cannon gear is a terrible idea if you intend to do your job and stay stacked up with your team for coordinated fighting zerg vs. zerg.

Even so, other classes still have much better and broader team building options. Having one niche use in a group doesn’t equate to a class with powerful team-oriented build options.

Sounds like I’ve been “getting to work” a lot more with my team/guild a lot more than you have.

Sylosi.6503:

The only people who need to “l2p” are those who don’t understand why thieves (and with a different mechanic Eles) are unbalanced in WvW.

In open type PvP risk vs reward is a fairly fundamental concept, thieves break that concept pretty badly in WvW because the combination of stealth + mobility and the way stealth is implemented in GW2 – multiple in-combat stealths + no reveal on damage makes escape far, far too easy and the balance of risk vs reward is just way off.

I have a thief, ele, mes, necro & engy at 80, and the difference between them in WvW in regard to risk vs reward is huge, I can virtually be as sloppy as I want on my thief, it doesn’t matter if I go into a 1v1 or 1v2 without checking around for other enemies if other people turn up 90% of the time I can escape, compare that with my necro or engy and it is a totally different story.

The same thing goes for being outplayed, losing on my thief, generally no problem, again 90% of the time I’m gone, necro/engy most of the time I rightly face the consequences, risk vs reward.

The thief in GW2 is possibly the most OP thief/rogue class I have ever played in an MMORPG (in WvW), in most games they recognize having a get of jail free card is very powerful as it essentially breaks the PvP concept of risk vs reward, so you typically get one in-combat stealth on a very long cooldown (several mintues), where as in GW2 I get numerous in-combat stealths, it is just mind boggingly bad design.

Outside of risk vs reward, there would be less complaints over it, if the class actually had a high skill floor, but it doesn’t it has a very low skill floor and what is worse it puts the skill emphasis on the target rather than the thief, hence the hordes of clueless bads who make up 90% of thief players, will try to defend the broken mechanics.

But then I guess as it is blatantly obivous the classes were designed for tPvP, and that WvW was “just for fun”, it is no surprise that some classes are pretty game breaking in WvW.

You would have a good point in WvW were a 1v1 or similarly small arena style game mode.

Instead, the advantage of low risk mobility just translates to making functionally good scouts or behind line dolyak killers while classes with better/more team oriented builds are better suited to handling the real objectives. Running around looking for stragglers to gank doesn’t contribute much at all to winning nor does it even produce as much reward (bags) as playing with a team.

Sunflowers.1729:

sPvP is based around holding points with very small numbers of people. WvW is not. If you fight a thief in sPvP and he is unable to kill your fully bunker build, you win cause you have successfully defended the point. If the same thing happens in WvW it is at best a draw, unless you both happen to be solo with no NPCs (which is extremely rare) in a supply camp or something.

And WvW is based around holding points (objectives) with very large numbers of people. Thief happens to be even worse at that comparatively than with very small numbers.

Yet so many people want to be terribly worried about what happens when they run around solo, even when it has very little impact on contributing to a win.

Columba.9730:

Perma stealth, highest dps in the game, +50% run speed. How is this balanced?

Sounds pretty good if it were true / accurately represented.

“Perma Stealth”
Some builds can chain stealth for very high uptime, but it’s not permanent and a thief in stealth is a thief not doing damage, otherwise they pop out with revealed debuff. If they are actually attacking someone from stealth, they can only have about 50% uptime of stealth at best – usually less. If they are chaining C&D on ambient mobs as stealth naturally wears out to get nearly permanent stealth, they aren’t actually hurting you are they?

“highest dps in the game”
This one is just categorically wrong. “Dps” usually is associated with sustained damage over time. Generally, initiative regen limits thieves to the low end of classes for dps, which is part of why they are lackluster in PvE. Even if you look at it in terms of burst damage, there are other classes that can numerically burst for more. If you had instead something like “safely delivered burst in PvP” or something like that, you’d be onto something.

“50% run speed”
There’s a trait that provides this while in stealth only, however it doesn’t work in combat and scales down to 33%, which is the same as folks running swiftness. Most people don’t even take the trait because it’s not good. Realistically, a fighting thief can at best hope to just run lots of swiftness like everyone else, but has fewer avenues available to accomplish it. More commonly, lots of thieves just run Signet of Shadows for +25% speed, which isn’t as good as perma-swiftness that a lot of classes have convenient access to.

Mayhem.1935:

Hi. First of all i want to preface this with a few facts.
1- I am a Champion Shadow in tpvp/spvp. Not a big deal but it is what it is.
2- I have lvl 80 chars of thief/mesmer/warrior/ranger
3- I prefer small man fighting in WvW, solo to under 10 players.
4- I have played MMos since UO with alot of time in DAoC as a nightshade RR8 before ToA exp.
5- My thief spec is p/d + d/p.

Now with that said i want to simply state some of my experiences with the thief in wvw.
1- I do not die. I reiterate. I DO NOT DIE. I may not “win” a fight, but there is no possible way i can die to players, even 25+ zergs. It just cannot happen. Call it culling call it whatever you want to, it never happens. Stealth and unpredictability with huge mobility is the culprit that i utilize fully.
2- Stats. I keep reading about spvp this and that on this thread like it matters. Thieves in spvp are fine yes because just like every other class they are pigeonholed to have only certain available stats with caps on crit . In wvw you can min/max your stats with ascended gear and exotics to make a stone cold killing machine. I’ve tested with a GC build and it is a JOKE how fast you can take someone out. Steal +mug c/d bs and its essentially over. Yes it isnt a “one hit” but it happens in a second flat so it might as well be.
3- Thieves are squishy and have no hps or defenses if they spec that way. This on paper is absolutely correct. However, this doesnt matter. Again, IT DOESNT MATTER. You cant die if you cant get hit. “AOE everything, L2P!” Seriously i LOL at all the AOE im 100 paces away. Shadowstep in, insta bang someone dead, shadow step back im safer than if i had 100000000 hp. All the thieves using this “crutch” of no defense are lying or not playing well.
4- People arent as bad as you think, thieves make people look bad. “they dont dodge” “they run around aimlessly” etc etc. Dodge what? Run to where? THEY CANT SEE YOU. Yes, there are some bad players. And mediocre ones, some good ones and even great ones. None of that matters. THEY CANT KILL ME. And that is a problem. I’m not a great player. I just play a thief.
5- Mobility. Yea i am currently playing p/d so yea ppl can run away from me if they are eles, or some warriors even if they have a proper weapon set. But on GC you have got to be kidding me. SB5, SS, HS movement no one escapes but them. 5 classes have no where to go if i dont want them to.
6- Stealth. Wow, just wow. In any -real- game that claims balance, ( not perfect world or some nonsense) this stealth is just OP. Health regen while stealthed, constant access to stealth IN COMBAT, remove conditions in stealth, move faster in stealth. Complete invis in stealth (no detection). Full time stealth in other games like WoW/DAoC/etc had slower movement speed, a way to detect if you where too close to other enemy players and they notice you, and removal of stealth on dmg. This is a big F up on Anet.
7-Thieves are terrible in mass fighting. This is not the case in the slightest. Keep defense/siegeing SB is like your own personal mobile siege weapon. Poison fields that do 33 less healing in a large raidus +weakness, cluster bomb that hits like a truck to multiple targets. See a downed or low life guy? Port in finish him off, port back undetected, easy peasy.
8- Thief in WvW is absolute GODMODE. Out of all my classes it was the only one i could be lvl 20 in wvw and kill actual 80s. I would get STOMPED hard on my other characters if i tried that. If you play a thief and feel you are underpowered or need buffs or we are “fine”, well…

There a lot of things in your post I can agree with, if not literally, at least with the sentiment.

Although, it’s also pretty clear through you using two single target weapon sets among other things that you say that you’re pretty much just running around looking for people to pick off and kill rather than actually playing WvW. If not that, you’re at least on a low tier server where there’s just not enough people around to play with or against in the first place.

Otherwise, there wouldn’t be crazy things like being able to survive team zerg fighting in a glass cannon build where just the carpet of aoe will kill you in a matter of seconds – and then contending being essentially invincible in glass cannon gear unless you’re bad. It’s not a matter of skill but circumstance.

You correctly mention that Shortbow is quite useful in team/zerg fighting, although it’s pretty much the only competent team synergy build a Thief has available primarily to bring on-demand blast finishers. It’s a niche function worth bringing a couple thieves for, but it’s not spectacular compared to several other classes’ team building options.

LadyLad.1389:

hammer.9721:

you still dont understand you said one thing in one quote and the exact opposite in another.

and lol at thieves only die because of that talent and yes i do agree it is crap.like i said things are different when you go up against players of the same level but think what you want

oh and for the record i do think overall thief is the best one on one class in wvw but that is mainly because people spec gc on the other classes. once people start to learn what i did months ago they are not that hard to beat.i would much rather fight a thief on most of my 7 80’s than a mesmer who knows how to play.

Wait a minute… You said “go against the same people” as if when we switch to our Thieves, we all of a sudden start fighting new servers, and not the people we’ve been fighting previously.

Do you honestly believe that? When I go from a Ranger, Necro, or Engineer to my Thief, and zone back into the same zone and fight the same people who’ve been roaming solo for hours like I have, all of a sudden change?

…..

The guy could use some capitalization and stuff, but I can’t figure out where you got what you think he said from what he actually said…

JaironKalach.4938:

Near as I can tell, both sides are applying a firm stance hold and heavy skepticism of the opposition. As long as you believe that the other guy is lying and exaggerating and/or you spend your time lying and exaggerating, no interesting discussion can take place. Once you break off of that tactic, maybe both sides can learn something.

One side is saying that it is their experience that at moderate skill level, with a glass cannon build, they find it easier to remain competitive as a thief than they have as other classes at moderate skill level, with a glass cannon build. They feel that this is a result of stealth/burst.

At least that what I heard…

So… If these are malicious people with an agenda, they are just trying to make a point and will exaggerate and will lie to achieve their agenda. If all that is true, why bother talking with them?

However, if these are rational reasonable people, they have a good reason for their beliefs. It would be worth your time to try to understand the basis for their belief, if for no other reason than to be able to incorporate that data as part of your belief system.

A lot of times, the difference between one person’s conclusion versus another person’s has nothing to do with objective facts and is instead a product of value system.

In particular for this thread, one person might primarily value helping their server win WvW by playing as a coordinated team with their guild emphasizing large scale fighting. Another person could instead primarily value winning 1v1 against random players in WvW. Those two people could very rationally reach entirely different conclusions about class balance and for one to try to assimilate the other’s value system would not necessarily be a good thing.

Dokyo.3685:

Daendur.2357:

Aeolus.3615:

I would drop thief damage by alot, and give more loads of invisible options as traits and skills, any player can kill target with thief w/o effort its too dammn easy(damage wise not invisibility problem).

thieves can do a good burst damage… anyhow less than warriors.

Seriously? I’ve never been 3 shot by a warrior. Oh yea I also know they are there and can target them back which helps. Nothing like getting killed by “Unknown” that you can’t even target.

Of course I don’t get 3 shot anymore since I got a lot more tough/vit, takes at least 5 or 6 hits now to kill me. It’s kind of silly that the only thing I really consider when gearing/traiting is will I be able to have a chance against a thief with this setup, the other classes don’t even really cross my mind.

Numerically speaking, Warriors can burst for more than Thieves. Greatsword and Rifle providing some of the more common offenders. They also have substantially more overall damage capability, even outside of burst combos. Successfully delivering it in a broad variety of circumstances is another issue, though.

Xsorus.2507:

LadyLad.1389:

Daendur.2357:

Ok you reported it… let’s write it down to not be offensive nor provoking.
I don’t believe what you are saying. I think you are largely exaggerating your statements trying to make your point.
You didn’t provide any evidence.
Anyone can write anything and pretend it’s real.

What good is evidence, when all you guys do is tear it apart with made up stuff, like has been done with Xsorus videos? Evidence isn’t enough, and I wasn’t being offensive, nor provoking. You just took it that way.

Seriously, those of us who started off with other classes, and are now playing the Thief realize just how much easier the class is to play, than our original classes. The Thief plays an entirely different game than does all the other classes.

I don’t know how anyone could deny this, with a straight face.

You can’t post a video of a thief playing as proof its overpowered, because the only evidence in that video is every other player is just bad

At least that’s what I got from this thread.

It’s hard to provide real, scientific evidence on a forum. Typically, it’s impossible for a player to access the type of data set they would need to do so.

Generally speaking, posting videos is just weak anecdotal evidence for most arguments. One person can post a cherry picked compilation video of stomping low skill players on a thief. Another person can create a cherry picked compilation video of them stomping low skill theives. Is there any truth at all to be gleaned here? Perhaps just that skilled players win more, but even the videos fall short of “proving” that.

There is no proof to give. All anyone can do is try to make well reasoned arguments with statements that hopefully closely mirror what readers actually experience in the game for themselves. It’s just a process of logic and honesty (or deception for some folks.)

Unfortunately, with something like this most people are too emotionally attached or biased to be moved one way or another. They just cherry pick out logical processes and statements – however flawed they may be – in order to further build up their predetermined conclusions and disregard the rest. (Which interestingly mirrors the process of making a “proof” video to post.)

TainoFuerte.8136:

Daeqar.8965:

I didn’t watch your video,

The mentality of the Thief defender. “I don’t know what they are talking about, but should defend this class anyway”.

I don’t know what the rest of your post has to do with anything – someone said Thieves can’t solo towers when they obviously can, but I like your example, because if a thief is caught in the act he can stab a guard and run, or hide and wait for the person to go away, or prep an attack. The person coming to defend has to wonder which of the everythings a thief can do in stealth is he gonna do, versus any other class where we can plainly see if they are running away or not so he can go do something useful for his server instead of being tied up by a single thief.

Lets back up here… I point out that PvDoor is irrelevant and that any class can do it. So you respond with a video reiterating that a thief can in fact PvDoor. Why would I take the time to watch it?

Like I already said, any ONE person of similar skill level playing any class can stop any other class from soloing a lord. It’s not even hard to do. Thief nor anything else can solo lords in towers in WvW because WvW has defending players. We’re not talking PvDoor here, which any class can do. It’s also pointless for ANet to try to balance a large scale game mode for a condition in which no one is actually playing.

Gildo.2643:

I’m a little confused about all the people talking about how worthless a thief is in a large fight. I’m not a gw2 pro, haven’t played every class yet, but I’ve done a fair amount of wvw with guard, war, ele, and thief. Thief I actually leveled from level 2-80 entirely in wvw, and never had any issues staying alive or getting kills in large zergs.

When I first started playing thief, compared to guardian which I had most experience with at the time in wvw, I thought thief was terrible in zergs, but that was just because I had gotten use to playing a tanky guardian build. Once I got past the idea that my glass cannon thief couldn’t be a front line dagger fighter ikittenerg, and started playing with pistols, I had no problem being productive in zergs. The medium range burst damage of pistols, coupled with your speed and stealth is fantastic for dropping people who get a little brave and over extend, forcing someone off a piece of siege, or forcing one of their aoe casters to play defensive(if not, kill them outright). In addition, stealth stomping/ressing is always a valuable asset to any encounter, no matter the size. I find it out right comical how many thief players are on here telling other people to learn 2 play, then pushing the false claim that thiefs are useless in zergs and die easy.

……

I get the impression that you mainly play WvW solo and just join up with some random zergs sometimes or maybe even frequently.

If that’s wrong and you’re actually in an elite, coordinated WvW guild, feel free to correct me. Although, I doubt one would let you level up your thief with them all the way up from level 2.

Okay, so you figured out you can stand back and pick off folks with pistols while they tangle with the zerg…and help stomp and rez. That’s pretty much something you could do with any class, just spec single target ranged and go to town. Some classes even do it a LOT better; try out the same playstyle with a rifle warrior, for example.

Folks talking about Thieves’ limitations in large scale WvW aren’t talking about being “useless and die” or glass cannon daggers on the front line, like you mention. They’re talking about the ability to create purpose build group synergy specs for highly coordinated group fighting.

Jinks.2057:

This is simply false.

D/D is the weakest weapon set the thief has.

I imagine D/D + Shortbow is the most popularly used Thief weapons because D/D is the weakest….oh, wait. nvm

Draygo.9473:

@ OP please look at this thread from 4 months ago.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/An-alternate-scoring-system-Accounting-for-population-differences/first
A simple population modifier wont have that much impact by itself, I can run it against the model I developed in that thread to test your theory, but it will probably result in the sameish point differential that we see now.

I haven’t read it all, but it looks interesting. Significantly different than what I was proposing though. You were also trying to predict and assume objective holdings from what I skimmed so far. It seems you kinda set out to force scores closer together for servers with big population disparities, but I am not sure that’s an objective that would be good to pursue. In that sort of instance, it’s probably better to let the blowout happen and then let matchmaking place the servers against more similarly populated opponents.

I’m more working under producing more accurate scoring where matchmaking has happened to produce matchups where population differences are already reasonable. In other words, the servers truly belong together in a tier, but the scoring system still ends up producing arguably unreasonable overall scores and suppresses server moral for one or two of the involved servers. You might get some of that with your system too, although the premises are a bit different.

For me, if people are participating, points deserve to flow regardless of outcome and regardless of a side being outmanned or not. Yours seemed more based on trying to give the outmanned a helping hand.

My issue is just trying to align scores closer to actual player effort, and that includes showing up to fight in numbers. Right now, low effort time periods (very few active players) sometimes dominate the scoreboard and make high effort time periods (lots of active players) effectively inconsequential to actual outcome. However if a server is consistently outmanned regardless of time period, they should get blown out and placed into a more competitive matchup.

Manipulating the score to help out outmanned servers just hamstrings the matchmaking system (makes it slower at producing correct matchups.)

Something else I want to be clear on…the system I suggested would not actually change placement (finish #1, #2, or #3) between servers except on likely very rare occasion – unless moral and turnout were truly affected significantly due to tighter scores. Mainly, it would just allow closely matched servers to actually produce closely matched scores more often. It wouldn’t deter a legitimate blowout in the slightest.

I apologize if I misinterpreted some of your information; I haven’t had time to go through it carefully or in detail yet.

Catisa.6507:

fixing the scoring is only attempting to put a band-aid on the bigger issue anyway. Anet fouled up by dividing Europe from the rest of the world, we’d have far less gaps if this global game was played on global servers.
Oceanic manages to do just fine with higher pings, EU could have also.

Forcing the whole world onto NA located servers would smooth out a lot of coverage issues in WvW to some degree for sure, but I doubt it would be better for the game as a whole.

If anything I would put some servers in east Asia somewhere too, just so that more people globally would have the opportunity to play the game with high performance. (At least have the choice.) Especially people who particularly like sPvP or Dungeons would benefit a lot.

Regardless, it’s already water under the bridge.