It’s a pretty sub-optimal venom share build that you’ve given a very tasteless name to. =/
Ehh imo DH > herald. 50% boon duration is unnecessary to keep buffs up, druid can provide fury combined with guardian and chrono boon copying and assassin’s presence is such a minor boost that DHs personal dps makes up for it. All these variables of standing still, cripple, quickness, druid, etc etc is very easily achieved at sabetha, no-draft gors and the first 2 phazes of VG.
That 50% boon duration is HUUUUGE for chronomancers and it plays a large role on how much quickness your group has.
Only it’s not. When we tested it this sunday just adding FMW meant the chronos could keep up perma quickness with just the 30% boon duration coming from food. So no, the only thing the 50% does is make sure they can afk more.
Chronos? Well, yea, if you’re running 2, that wouldn’t surprise me.
Ehh imo DH > herald. 50% boon duration is unnecessary to keep buffs up, druid can provide fury combined with guardian and chrono boon copying and assassin’s presence is such a minor boost that DHs personal dps makes up for it. All these variables of standing still, cripple, quickness, druid, etc etc is very easily achieved at sabetha, no-draft gors and the first 2 phazes of VG.
That 50% boon duration is HUUUUGE for chronomancers and it plays a large role on how much quickness your group has.
There’s Assassin’s Equilibrium, but that’s not on dodge effect, but striking from stealth and that’s from Sept Feature Pack of 2014.
Ahhh thats what it was !. Well sheesh. Now i kinda feel like we need that for DH.
I just don’t understand why DH TRAPS, are not FULLY dodgeable, like all traps, and necro wells are. It’s kind of ludicrous. None the less I still fair well against a DH, but for people who don’t have much experience, It’s outrageous.
Nerfing a profession/build just because there’s a learning curve to understanding them is a terrible idea. If you follow that logic, you might as well nerf thieves since people get owned by thieves until they understand the basics of how stealth and evades work.
DH are really in the same boat as thieves in a lot of ways. They can steamroll less experienced/knowledgeable players easily, but stronger players will understand all the counter play they need to have a fair fight.
Yea, the burst potential of a thief is really high when you use some things like bound in a combo…
…but that doesn’t mean that it’s imbalanced.
I mean, honestly, dash is better in any sort of competitive environment and while bound is viable, the opportunity cost of picking it up is high enough to offset the benefits.
And even if the bound combo was taken away by removing leap, you could still do just as much burst by using Impairing Daggers as part of the combo or by just bounding with steal → backstab while already stealthed.
Nice job soloing. =)
Yea…if raids just needed at least reflects, you could justify a guardian since chronos already have their bars full of wells (and maybe Sig of Insp). Or, if they needed someone with high personal mobility, thieves could excel (cuz engis now beat us in PvE stealth since Scrapper, lol).
Ok I did some math on the Guardian Hammer and here my result.
You can reach up to 23k, even near 24K with this build. BUT and it’s a big but. You need everything to reach that point.
You need ALL of your dps modifier to be up all the time. This include Seaweed Salad, cripple on target, the taget always on your symbol, max F1 teather, Scholar, etc. Not too bad, probably won’t happen in reality.
You also need all max buff. This include Grace of Land, Perma Quickness, Alacrity (affect only the trap, but still), Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit, Assassin’s Presence, Spotter, EA, etc. So basically, it’s true only if you are in 1 party.
PS Warrior, Druids, Chronomancer, Herald and DH.
If for exemple, you drop the Druid only and everything else is maxed, then your dps drop to 19k. If you remove the Chronomancer then you drop to about 15K, which was pretty much what we used to assign to the DH Hammer before since we usually didn’t took into consideration a Chronomancer and Druids into the party.
So far I have a really hard time to get onboard with DH is the 3rd best dps of the game. What about the Engineer, which could reach about 20K without chrono or grace of the land pre HoT? How much dps would he reach with both of those thing, even with a hard to achieve rotation? How about Reaper? Here in that video he reached 25k at about 1min16sec with all buffs.
I’m can see Guardian having a better dps than Ranger, Chronomancer and Warrior (but I would be curious to see the actual dps of the Burnzerker or a DPS Warrior). I can also understand the Guardian having a better dps than Herald, which as far as I know does around 21k dps right now. But that place Guardian 5th behind engineer, thief, tempest and Reaper, not 3rd.
I agree that it’s not likely to always be in that ideal state of all necessary buffs/boons/etc., but that’s pretty much the same situation for any other class. Compared to other professions, such as engi, it’s a lot easier to keep up ideal circumstances since it’s mostly autoattacking.
So when thief finally has any place in raids you want to get rid of them? So when they get in line with the other classes dps, why on earth would you still bring one? Thief has 1 function now. If you want to kill the class off again, seriously just go find another game and do damage there instead of trying to ruin thiefs here…
Who are you talking to? No one here is suggesting that, rofl.
Ehm the OP? The person demanding them to be nerfed?
Not overpowered doesn’t mean underpowered…
There’s Assassin’s Equilibrium, but that’s not on dodge effect, but striking from stealth and that’s from Sept Feature Pack of 2014.
^ Yup, that’s the one. Revs are the only ones to ever have stab on dodge, I believe.
They probably took it out because it was so rarely used. If it was stab on dodge, it would have been much more popular.
So when thief finally has any place in raids you want to get rid of them? So when they get in line with the other classes dps, why on earth would you still bring one? Thief has 1 function now. If you want to kill the class off again, seriously just go find another game and do damage there instead of trying to ruin thiefs here…
Who are you talking to? No one here is suggesting that, rofl.
Since the buff to AA damage thief is one of the best direct damage classes in game at the moment.
If you would make a case to increase thieves group support in some way i think that would be valid but the damage doen’t need a buff atm. For condi thief to be competitive there needs to be some rework of venoms and a strong condie set.
Yes, but having thieves as best dps via a build where you pretty much just AA the entire time (unless you don’t have perma-quickness) is really just terrible.
I agree that having some support would be ideal and that’s part of the Leeching Venom suggestion. Venoms have come a long way and they’re viable, but they’re still something that a group tolerates and not something a group wants.
I’m sure there will be some pugs that bring you in, but this will likely be in spite of you playing a guardian rather than because of it.
I mean, I doubt that this is as high DPS as it says it is (everyone claims their build does amazing DPS), but even if it is, you’ll still be overwriting all the fire fields with your light fields. Not only does this hinder might stacking, but it also means that projectile and whirl finishers won’t apply burning, so it will hinder the DPS of others.
Honestly, I think that even if a group wanted 100% protection, they’d be better off with a revenant.
Sorry Guardians. =/
I don’t know Dahkeus. I stopped playing pvp since the end of the first league. Mostly because a bug preventing me from completing HOPE was fixed so i rushed to finish it. But Thief wasn’t in a really nice place in PvP pre 26th.
I can’t believe that a buff to backstab would have made them OP. IMO backstab is already hard to achieve and since HOT so much profession have huge active defense, sustain healing that backstab is not even a treat anymore like it used to.
To me it seem that backstab should receive a buff to compete in PvP. They could have improve the AA a little less and boost the back stab a bit.
But I can agree with your CS damage modifier. It could do a similar job.
For Leeching Venom giving condi damage. Are you talking about something that stack in intensity like Grace of the Land? Or something that doesn’t stack like Arcane Lightning? Or are you talking about a permanent buff like EA or Spotter?
One idea for condi thief would also to give a trait that make weakness made damage. Thief have a lot of it, especially in a condi build. It would be similar to chill for the reaper.
The patch on the 26th did a lot for thieves, primarily by nerfing the bunker-heavy meta and toning down other classes. Personally, I never thought thief was in as bad of a state as a lot of people thought and without bunker mesmers, +1s on fights would actually result in your dead enemies instead of a downed enemy that gets quickly rezzed back up.
But, to stay on topic…
I don’t know that it matters much whether it stacks in intensity or not, but it would probably be easier to balance if it was just something that stacked in duration each time you popped a venom. This would encourage a full venom build and would allow them to change adjust the duration so that you couldn’t have a 100% up time without this. However, the amount of condi dps boost would probably matter most.
And I think the weakness idea sounds good too. However, this may be a bit too similar to to Chill with Reapers and from a developer perspective, it would likely be a bit more complicated to implement and would have a larger scope of implications to consider.
If you stay with a power build, I’d say to go with staff. Even if you edge out slightly more DPS using D/D in any situation, the cleave and blinds from staff can make up for it.
Even if there was any slight advantage to D/D in some cases, there’s still plenty of vids showing thieves doing no glide Gorseval kills using staff, so I’d say you’ll be fine without D/D.
…without breaking them in PvP.
I posted these suggestions in another thread within the raid section, but I figure that it would be worthwhile to share them here as well to get feedback from the thief community.
The goal of the proposed changes – Allow thieves to do competitive DPS in raids without affecting PvP balance and without incentivizing a pure auto-attack rotation, even when under the effects of quickness.
- Change the quickness speed scaling of backstab, Weakening Strike, Cloak and Dagger and/or other weapon skills with quickness. Thieves don’t really benefit from alacrity (especially with power DPS builds), so increasing the scaling with quickness can help them stay competitive when a chrono is in the group while also preventing thieves from being incentivized to just AA when quickness is up.
– Increase the DPS modifiers in the Critical Strikes trait line. This trait line already has a ton of DPS modifiers, but since it doesn’t really fit into any PvP builds, this could help PvE without affecting PvP.
– Add bleeding to Ice Drake Venom. PvP condi thieves can’t fit 3 venoms on to their bar due to lack of a stun break and condi thief overall is still arguably not great for PvP compared to D/P power. A bleed on Ice Drake would allow a venom share thief to run with 3 venoms and do competitive condi DPS.
– Change Leeching Venoms to grant a condi damage or duration boost instead of might. This is my #1 suggestion. Doing this would give thieves a unique boost that would make them useful beyond just having high DPS. This would also be a boost that’s not so good that it’s necessary for all groups (since it doesn’t help power builds), which would reinforce a rigid group meta in raids, but it would still be beneficial enough to make them worth considering.
And if any of the changes above were implemented, AA DPS could potentially be decreased again since it’s not needed for PvP and could keep thief DPS in PvE from being out of control.
@ Thaddeus: Great examples of the comparison of profession DPS. Also, agreed with your perspective on Daredevil, except I don’t think they could have boosted the dps of backstab or any other weapon skill without causing imbalance in PvP.
If there’s a dev out there listening, here’s my suggestions for boosting non-AA dps on thieves with either a minimal or no effect to thieves in PvP:
- Change the quickness speed scaling of backstab, Weakening Strike, Cloak and Dagger and/or other weapon skills with quickness. Thieves don’t really benefit from alacrity (especially with power DPS builds), so increasing the scaling with quickness can help them stay competitive when a chrono is in the group while also preventing thieves from being incentivized to just AA when quickness is up.
– Increase the DPS modifiers in the Critical Strikes trait line. This trait line already has a ton of DPS modifiers, but since it doesn’t really fit into any PvP builds, this could help PvE without affecting PvP.
– Add bleeding to Ice Drake Venom. PvP condi thieves can’t fit 3 venoms on to their bar due to lack of a stun break and condi thief overall is still arguably not great for PvP compared to D/P power. A bleed on Ice Drake would allow a venom share thief to run with 3 venoms and do competitive condi DPS.
– Change Leeching Venoms to grant a condi damage or duration boost instead of might. This is my #1 suggestion. Doing this would give thieves a unique boost that would make them useful beyond just having high DPS. This would also be a boost that’s not so good that it’s necessary for all groups (since it doesn’t help power builds), which would reinforce a rigid group meta in raids, but it would still be beneficial enough to make them worth considering.
edit Oh, and if any of the above changes were made, AA dps could then be reduced to some extent so that thief DPS wasn’t out of control.
(edited by Dahkeus.8243)
ITT: people that don’t know how to take a joke
ITT: A “joke” that clearly just wasn’t funny. Although the OP clearly thought he was hilarious…
Personally, I find his rage against everyone here more comical.
I love the playstyle, especially in PvP. The mobility, active defense, burst damage, and the mind games that you can play with people using stealth are all tremendously enjoyable for me.
However, in PvE, I really have trouble enjoying any profession that’s just not the best of what I can bring to the table, so I’m a lot more likely to bring an alt when thief is under-tuned due to balance patches. I’ve thought about playing with thief in raids since the patch, but there still doesn’t seem to be a ton of reason to do this since the dps is still less than an ele and we don’t bring anything else unique to the group to make up for that.
Sad…feels like the idea of guild halls has so far been ruined by too many decorations being gated behind ridiculous grind or just not being available at all.
I would have thought we’d just get trophies for hitting certain achievements, like downing a tough boss, completing an event etc.
Totally agreed. Making it easy to alt is one of the best things ANet has done.
Also, your characters look pretty awesome.
The guy that made that build is an kitten -hole
Yea, he was supposed to make a bad build, but he screwed that up and made something viable! What the hell?!?! He can’t even do a good job of making a bad build???
power creep 10k dmg is not cancer and 10k dmg over 15 sec is?
what am i missing here?be able to put you in 15 bleed, 10 poison 5 confusion and cover them with 3 other condition need less skill than just going stealth and bs and bound all over…. weird
i dont play this build but familiar with it (unicorn old build if 4 years players remember it)
i wish we would see full condi team versus full power team . than we would have nice match up and not all over same build same composition – boring
Yea, it’s a lot like the old unicorn build, except that it can’t be done in perma-stealth. However, just like that build, it looks super OP to some people, but it’s also still weak in any sort of competitive environment. A good D/P thief with Dash will rotate and decap faster than a condi thief and can quickly jump into a fight to burst and stomp an enemy.
Condi is pretty legit for Stronghold since AoE poison spam is a decent counter to heal spam, but that game type in general still needs some tuning of course…
If he’s spamming 4 and you keep using abilities the problem is obviously you, just bait it out and let him waste initiative.
I wont say what the build is, but recently a youtuber released a build that allows thiefs to spam 4 and a utility and basically win every fight. It only works because of how a certain trait and new set of sigils work. It is really cheesy.
Well then unless you link the build I have no idea what you’re talking about, never seen any thief doing that. The ability does no damage, you can counter it with either stability or just stare at the thief spamming 200 damage.
This is what he’s talking about. The damage is from Pulmonary Impact and Runes of Perplexity. It’s not quite that cheesy, but you will get some easy wins against people that don’t understand PI and/or are just low skill and don’t know how to counter head shot spam. =P
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43p6dy/bootts_bad_builds_the_kanye_daredevil/
Lots of good points from Cyninja. Totally agreed.
Also, I’m not really sold on thief being good enough to consider FotM anyways. Thieves now do competitive dps, but there’s other classes that seem to do just as much if not more while providing useful raid utility.
Babazhook, you’re talking about a whole ‘nuther ballgame if you’re going to discuss PvP.
Condi duration doesn’t really matter much there due to cleanses, but in PvE, it’s generally the biggest dps boost you can get per stat point.
He said vanilla d/p and old meta. Nor the daredevil version :p. At least for me, I played both versions different.
Yea, he runs DD, but it’s pretty much the same gameplay aside from a different stomp. I mean, the rotations are the core skill of any glassy, burst thief build in PvP anyways.
Excellent, thanks for all the responses guys. I’ve been running S/D for so long that I’m finally ready to try the old D/P meta in PvP. It will be a big adjustment, but hell I’ve got time on my hands.
If you’d like to see some good gameplay of D/P, check out Sindrener’s stream. He was Legendary X3 last I checked and even though he often plays other classes in tournaments, he tends to play D/P thief on his stream.
Bring back hambow. We need something like this to keep the necros in check.
Scrappers need a bit more shaving.
Eles still seem relatively solid. I’m not sold on the doom and gloom over this class quite yet. Whatever changes they get should be pretty minor and should probably be more damage focused than sustain focused.
Some of the mesmer nerfs could honestly just be reverted.
Why does he just keep running straight into the middle of AoE condi spam? And why the hell does he do the same thing over and over again? Have you never played a condi thief before?
It’s like someone walk into a poison ivy bush, then doing it again…and again…and again…and then raging about it.
Wanna fight a condi thief? Don’t stand right next to him and let him drop his damage on top of you. Move.
This guy in general would do well to just take a second and look to see who is where and what is actually going on instead of just YOLOing straight to onto the point and trying to tank everything. But I guess people are kinda spoiled after the last bunker meta where they just mindless expected to tank everything.
What are eggplants used for?
/Forrest Gump Voice
Eggplant parmasan
Eggplant sandwiches
Eggplant Croquettes
Eggplant tomato bake
Eggplant lasagna
Eggplant delight
Eggplant pizza
http://allrecipes.com/recipes/1084/fruits-and-vegetables/vegetables/eggplant/
I’m sorry if this comes across as harsh, but that build is terrible and you’ll need a really good group to carry your dps, especially if you are in all exotics as your template suggests. You’re stacking venoms on a build with no condition damage. Pistol offhand also serves almost no purpose. You waste a ton of ini trying to stealth for backstab compared to D/D and the tiny daze does very little to break bars. The SA trait line does next to nothing to increase your damage aside from venom share, which is weak due to not condi damage being taken. You’re also using Rune of Rage and Sigil of Strength in a setting where might and fury should already be stacked to capacity on you. I could go on, but you get the picture.
If you are insistent on running a build that doesn’t use DD, this will perform much better.
Hmm, very interesting! Thanks for sharing.
However, I suppose the awkward part of this is that you easily cap poison duration, but have a much lower duration for bleeds/torment.
On the gear Brazil suggested, there was a 66% base duration, which would have overcapped poison, but got bleeds up to 86% with an agony sigil. Torment, however, still stayed at 66%.
If you just went for a straight 50% duration, this would leave Bleeding/Torment even farther behind the cap.
And I guess that leaves the question: Do you get more DPS by sitting at 50% or does the extra dps from increased bleed/torment duration outweigh the cost of going with a higher base condi duration? If the latter is true, what is the sweet spot for maximizing that dps?
After playing with the build editor, it looks like you can gain go from 66% duration to 50% by swapping out helm, legs, and feet to Sinister and swapping the Malice sigil for Bursting. This gives 6% more condition damage, 29 less power, 50 more precision, and 127 more condition damage.
Well, here’s another option. It’s a build that came from a sort of joke build video series…but it looks like it turned out to be pretty legit for WvW and it’s definitely not reliant on AAs.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Downside-of-thief-buffs-in-WvW
You need a stunbreak in there at the very least.
Bleh, Sigil of Energy isn’t worth taking in PvP since the nerf.
Also, I realized that I had a Carrion sigil instead of Rabid. I updated the link at the top. With Rabid, the crit is 55%, which makes the torment worth taking, but otherwise I would agree.
Another update I made was switching to Rune of the Nightmare. Rune of Thorns is great for the extra damage since poison ticks so hard on this build, but the overall condition increase just seems to help more since it will also help weakness, cripple, immob, etc.
If you do want more endurance, you could consider Rune of the Adventurer. The power isn’t a great stats for the build, but 50% endurance on heal is pretty strong. I haven’t tested to see if this gives 1.5 dodges to Daredevils or if it’s just 1 dodge that’s returned, but either way, it’s not bad when you have an 18 sec heal cd.
Made it to Diamond running that build and probably could have kept going if I had the time to play more games. I pretty much ran the same thing that you see on MetaBattle (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Dagger/Pistol).
The build’s just gotten better since the patch.
What build are you using?
And honestly, baiting the traps is the main success. If they drop several at once, double dodge through. Save your stun break for when the elite with the warding is dropped. Run away and LOS until traps are triggered and stop dealing damage. After that, come back and own face. Just don’t blow big damage cooldowns when they have blocks up.
Really, just take your time and don’t get in a hurry. If you try to super rush burst them down, you’ll fail every time.
Impvvavrivg daggers, I can see, but Distracting Daggers is still a terribly designed skill. It’s a utility slot taken up for the equivalent of 3 head shots that you have to predict and pre-cast with a cooldown.
Even if it wasn’t so bad, it’s not worth taking a whole trait line just to get something out of it. There’s just way too much sacrificed for it:
– Weakness on poison
– Poison on dagger skills (the whole reason daggers shines above P/D on codi)
– Panic Strike
– 33% more damage from poison
And really the poison is the heart of what makes DA so strong. It boosts poison to be better than bleeds and almost as good as torment on a moving enemy while adding a lot of extra poison and weakness overall.
I find impairing daggers works better then Spider venom.
It is on a lower cooldown and if you trait brawlers better yet (you can use it every 20 seconds with brawlers). It has half the stacks of spider venom but overall not much damage loss because it more readily available. Most importantly that Immob is invaluable as it allows you to stack on some DBS and play catchup if he runs. Further to that since I use SOM Impairing will provide heals where spider venom will not (unless you go leechiing in SA) On top of all that it has Slow and slow is quite powerful.
The combos of the panic strike immob , the one on impairing (every 20 seconds) and BV can help you immensely.
Yea, I considered Impairing and I even ran it for a while, but here’s why I ended up with Spider Venom:
You get twice the poison, which is the highest dps condi on this build after Potent Poison, so your damage spike after popping the venom is much higher. Impairing may end up dropping about the same amount of poison over time due to the cooldown, but it’s significantly less burst.
Also, Spider Venom allows you to use the poison in an AoE application, which is particularly helpful for downed enemy cleave.
Finally, Impairing would rely on Brawler’s Tenacity, which means you lose 10% damage reduction for a trait that only affects one skills and gives less than half a dodge back every 20 seconds max.
The immob and slow are nice, but they’re still a short duration and considering the amount of cripple applied by this build, it’s not as big of a loss missing it as it could otherwise be.
All that being said, I would say that Impairing Daggers is a good alternative, even though it’s not what I ended up choosing here.
So, now that we’re in between seasons and just got a new balance patch, I decided to experiment around with builds. While I’m still pretty devoted to the meta D/P build, after trying out condi, I found a build that works pretty well.
Link to build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVl0MhSnYhTwoJw/ELtE2cJcF+C1CAHgFQ3i5JsFA-TJxBABfVGAr9HA4JAc9pAAA
The strengths of this build is that it plays well in team fights and the role is actually a lot like the S/D days of old. There’s a ton of evades and condi cleanse, which along with the rabid amulet, allow you to survive in the middle of a team fight. The AoE and heavy poison damage also make this a great build for cleave on downed enemies.
With the changes to Basi Venom, you can jump in on targets pretty reliably and drop down some heavy condis with venoms up then Steal -> Death Blossom -> Dodge.
Admittedly this is a pretty spammy build, but you do still want to spread out your dodges so that you keep up the condi damage buff from Lotus Training as much as possible. Even if you drop some condis and leave a fight, you’ll want to dodge occasionally to keep the ticking condis buffed.
Oh, and this is particularly good for Stronghold.
(edited by Dahkeus.8243)
Evan, the last night of League play, I saw lots of people swapping classes during the 90 seconds wait period before the match started, and I was playing in the Legendary division against many of the top players. And I did see a surprising number of people who queued as thief or warrior and then switched to something meta.
I fully expect higher-skilled players to swap more, but that is a much smaller portion of the player-base.
An important question i: Would all high-skilled players be OK with profession locking if we could ensure no stacking?
Yes, I would be very happy with that!
Not sure where your marker is for “high skilled”, but I made diamond playing primarily thief in the league and have been playing since beta. The only times I profession swapped was in response to profession stacking (another thief on my team), so this would make it so that I didn’t have to play on a profession I didn’t want to play, which would be great!
Just looked at Sigil of Draining. Was that added to PvP? If so, then kitten , I’m going to have to switch to that, even on D/P. That’s some pretty good damage that would even work on your normal steal + backstab burst.
And as a side note, I can’t wait for GW2Skills.net to get updated with the changes from the patch. =P
@ Crimson: Good point. S/P is pretty ini hungry since the last nerf it received.
Just checked and yea, of course Sigil of Draining isn’t available in PvP. That would have been OP as hell…
…which, of course, if why you can use it in WvW, lol.
Absolutely stupid. Thiefs are now Steal then auto attack and win. How is this balanced? FIX your FIX ANET. Pathetic.
Lol, not laughing at you, just imagined the “real” BATMAN saying this xD
Poor Batman having trouble with lowly thieves. I’m sure the Joker would get a real laugh out of that one.
Now I’m picturing some thief running away after he stole Batman’s utility belt.
So, I guess that’s where we got Scorpion Wire!
What is working for you and how things have changed in your play style?
Still running the meta D/P. I recently switched to Bound over Dash (unrelated to patch), but I’m still on the fence between the two dodges. Playstyle-wise, nothing’s changed, except I maybe use AA a bit more for damage and conserve ini for defense/CC/burst.
How are you dealing with the condi spam?
Just avoid it or shut down the condi spammer with CC. Same as always. =P
Shadow Step and Sig of Agi are still more than enough for dealing with condis. Heavy condi removal is for builds/professions that have no choice other than to tank damage rather than avoiding it all.
Anyone have any success with the new Acro line?
Haven’t touched it, but I’ve been considering running a S/P build with Acro. Will try that out tonight, most likely.
Honestly, even as someone who is still mostly a thief main in most aspects of the game, I still don’t see it as worthwhile to bring a thief to raids above any other profession (assuming equal skill of the player). The dps is more competitive, but it doesn’t seem to blow the competition out of the water or anything and when so many other high dps classes can also bring things like fire fields (not just good for might stacking, but also more condi dps from proj finishers), banners, boons, etc., there’s just no real advantage to a thief.
Unless someone is able to prove unequivocally that thief DPS is far ahead of other professions, you can only argue to bring a thief on the grounds of it not being a liability anymore, rather than it being of any particular benefit.
I hate to say this because I love my thief and would love to bring him in raids, but facts are facts and if I bring my thief to a raid, I want it to be because it’s the most useful profession I can bring and not simply because 9 other people will put up with me not bringing my warrior/engi/mesmer/etc. instead.
Just looked at Sigil of Draining. Was that added to PvP? If so, then kitten , I’m going to have to switch to that, even on D/P. That’s some pretty good damage that would even work on your normal steal + backstab burst.
And as a side note, I can’t wait for GW2Skills.net to get updated with the changes from the patch. =P
@ Crimson: Good point. S/P is pretty ini hungry since the last nerf it received.
Yes, it’s viable. There hasn’t really been any solid comparison of how it performs vs other dps specs though and people are advocating all sorts of combinations for ‘best dps’. Some people are arguing staff with WS. Some people say to use vault. Some say that you should pick up Trickery over DA and just AA instead. Some people argue dagger over staff and some have argued to go base thief with D/D using DA/CS/Tr for a straight AA rotation.
Honestly, I’d love to see some decent proof to back up some of these claims. Hell, I just wish it was possible to get full raid buffs in the mists so that I could compare them myself.