It does not work against knocked down foes. It works on stun, so you can Earthshaker in and cause 100% critical chance havoc with a super high power without sacrificing much.
When I run dungeons with a public group, I always use the “no thieves/rangers” notice as well. I do that, even knowing that a thief and ranger can be extremely valuable (and I run them as main and alt, too). Unfortunately, however, most of the people playing these classes are so bad that the entire player becomes useless. It’s no secret that a lot of players are really bad in these groups, but other professions aren’t punished so hard for sucking, so it’s better to reduce the chance of getting these lazy and bad players from the start, isn’kitten
3000 power and hitting 3500~4500? On what? Warriors? Yeah that happens.
Try hitting a thief. It will hit for ~8000-12000. Or maybe a Ranger (the non-bunker ones).
Time = ConditionTime * (Attacker Duration – Defender Duration Reduction)
This means that Hoelbrak Runes (-20%), Food (-40%) and the Warrior’s Berserker Stance (-100%) can effectively cancel out all the possible stacking that the attacker could have, making the Warrior invulnerable to conditions while Berserker’s Stance is active. A Guardian can reach a maximum of -65% (Melandru + Food) much like each other class (AFAIK).
This topic covers the same question, posted yesterday:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-leveling-2/
Unfortunately, I would reach the same conclusion that you have reached as well. The thief requires a lot of skill management to become somewhere to be considered semi-effective. You will not need to use every weapon skill, especially on D/D where you can effectively play with 2 weapon skills (backstab/c&d), but you will need to know all classes and achieve an almost perfect sense of timing to avoid getting downed in one go. Either that, or you won’t do any real damage. You can make the thief more “friendly” through the use of Cavalier/Valkyrie and relying on Hidden Assassin for guaranteed critical, but is limited, predictable and still not quite survivable.
Unfortunately, I can’t recommend you go to the Ranger, either. While we are in almost the worst spot in terms of player-versus-player skill/effectiveness ratio, the Ranger is even worse. It melts pretty much the same way that we do, has a pet that can be considered useless, and does not even have proper access to stealth or a burst option. No, Longbow is not an effective weapon in this condition/tank meta, and no, the stealth nor damage can effectively burn through anything. The one thing that the Ranger does better, however, is build on conditions. A well played condition Ranger is truly scary and a sight to behold, while a well played condition Thief remains mediocre at best.
Good luck on your decision!
I would run S/P. The sword is there for the direct damage and teleporting to the next target, while the pistol is there for blinding and interrupting. The third skill is a stun, evade and damage flurry, and is quite powerful. Off-hand P/P to throw a flurry of attacks with unload and heal rapidly with Signet of Malice. Since this is stealth-less, focusing on stealth traits is a bit sad. Focus on the critical line for Opportunist (15 points) to have more initiative (useless after 10th of December). Use Signet of Shadow for movement speed, Signet of Infiltration for more initiative regeneration/stun break and either the Assassin’s Signet (+ power), Shadow Refuge (defense/heal) or Ambush (because it is fun).
You will be playing without stealth, but with a spammable area-of-effect blind and a flurry of area-of-effect attacks to deal direct damage and regenerate both health and initiative with. Teleport to ranged, pick them off with blind and flurries of attacks. The elite choice is probably Thieves Guild, and they are nice to have at champions to make it go a bit quicker, but aren’t necessary. Racial elites can be fun as well (e.g. summoning an Asura golem or the human hounds of balthazar).
You know majority of thieves are in wvwvw and there is where our burst shinies we burst in 2 secs same time as being extremly survibable. (10/30/30/0) D/D spec… You know what makes us able to do 1v6? Incredile burst comboed wiht great survablity.
So our damage is good because we can ‘burst’ 5K damage into a tank warrior? And we’re extremely survivable because we can survive approximately 2 seconds in the stun-chain that same tank warrior can lock us down in, and repeat almost indefinitely? I don’t know where you found those 6 that were incapable of killing you with some area-of-effect condition spam, unless they were bunnies?
I certainly hope these guys are not related to profession changes in any way.
so i ask all thieves in sheer honesty, what are you plans? try to find some adaptation? make another class? quit the game entirely?
Having to give up the mobility of S/D means that my thief will no longer be useful in GvG. I will stop playing that entirely, or run a Warrior like everyone else. That leaves me with ZvZ and roaming options; seeing how vigor is pretty much gone, the survivability for ZvZ leaves much to be desired and I expect to die often. If it is too bad, I will stop playing that, too. Seeing how we absolutely need S/D and vigor in this condition meta against competent builds/players (I’m not talking about the baddies, they will fall over regardless of choice of weapons), I expect that a win cannot be achieved anymore. We already have to work our kitten off to get decent results with condition bunkers everywhere (Condition damage is a broken stat), and seeing how many of those get stronger while we lose even more counters/evades, I suspect that roaming will become pointless as well. I tried dire P/D, but that just ends of in stalemates as nobody is capable of actually killing each other (How can anyone like fighting for 5+ minutes with no result?!). I will probably quit.
Or, you could help your server in covering more ground and getting the keeps.
D/D and D/P will remain functional to some extend. A thief dies when stunned so we need a higher degree of access to stun breakers in comparison to other classes, meaning that the semi-stun breaking S/D was a good choice for an off-hand set for that particular reason. That set has a lower overall damage, ergo proper use of evasion skills and dodges (with vigor) was required to make it work as utilize it as something to get out of stun chaining when our breakers are on cooldown. With the changes to vigor and the sword, that option is gone, meaning that we need more stun breakers to avoid death. Since that is not possible without becoming a total gimmick, the S/D off-hand set loses much of the reason to use it.
Therefore, we need to stack up to become a poor excuse for a bunker on a thief, so like everyone else that is rolling around in WvW, we need condition damage (a poorly designed mechanic around a single stat – ridiculous). This means that P/D+D/D/SB will be the most viable choice, but honestly we will be more of a troll build than anything else with that. D/D and D/P need the blinding, but something that can ignore blinds and throw down stun chains (Yes, that Warrior…) like it’s nothing leaves us no chance, therefore making it much more situational.
TL;DR: If you’re skilled and going against lesser skilled players; D/D, D/P and P/D will be decent. If the other player knows how to play, you will get beaten or end up in a stalemate regardless of your own build and skill. Advice? Roll a condition heavy alternative profession instead (e.g. Engineer, Necromancer or Warrior).
Hmm, stereoscopic 3d isn’t even enabled here. All the settings are the defaults. I have a 3.2 GHZ quad core, all of them are occupied about 50% with GW2 on. Memory fills up to 2.5GB (1GB for GW2), still having plenty there too (so no swapping).
(edited by Deathspike.1870)
Traced it to NVIDIA GPU tuning itself down when in GW2. GW2 is not detected as a 3d app. No idea how to fix this…
Hi.
I replaced Windows 7 Professional with Windows 8.1 Professional and installed the available updates through Windows Update, installed Direct-X and installed the latest NVIDIA graphical drivers for the GTX660. With these changes, the frame rate will drop dramatically whenever I turn the camera. In any other situation, even in Zerg-versus-Zerg, the frame rate will be stable.
What could be the issue? What can I try to resolve this?
P.S.: The game runs from kitten.
You can use it, but you need to learn about the unique little role that the Thief serves. And find people who want to run with you as a Thief. It’s much easier to do public group content with a face-rolling Necromancer or Warrior.
WvW roaming/zerging while not caring a tiny bit for your allies:
Extremely effective. Will be nerfed on the 10th.
My Spec is 0/30/30/10/0. Is it worth going to shortbow just to drop poison fields? Most warriors I run into must have reduced condition duration as it seems to fall off constantly, and staying in range for dagger poison (a full chain of autoattacks) is hard to keep up throughout a long fight.
If you roam on a warrior, you’ll likely have permanently -60% condition duration. Berserker’s Stance adds another -100% to that making the Warrior invulnerable to conditions for a prolonged period of time. If the warrior is decent, you cannot beat him; move on from one, or roll one.
A thief can burst a distance of 3000 units (Shadowstep, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Steal) without additional traits to increase steal distance, while leaving initiative to attack. It leaves them vulnerable as usually Shadowstep is the single stunbreaker, but your fleeing reaction must have tipped them off that it wouldn’t be a problem.
If you want a challenge, this class is definitely for you. If you actually want to do something related to player-versus-player I would suggest looking into your other option, the Mesmer, it is a lot more effective and can accomplish a lot more with equal skilled play.
Breaking this down on PvE (difficulty at begin)/Dungeons (demand)/WvW (zerg role)
Warrior: Easy, wanted, front-line melee tank (crowd control, cleanse)
Guardian: Easy, wanted, front-line melee tank (cleanse, heal, reflect)
Ranger: Easy, unwanted, rally bait unless condition tank
Thief: Medium, unwanted, behind enemy lines attacking ranged (blind)
Elementalist: Medium, wanted, back-line caster (cleanse, heal, might, move)
Engineer: Hard, wanted, back-line caster (heal, crowd control)
Mesmer: Medium, wanted, back-line caster (cleanse, reflect, stealth, portal, time-warp)
Necromancer: Easy, wanted, back-line condition nuker and support (cleanse, heal)
If you spec and play it correctly, nothing dies ‘fast’. Nothing has to be ‘squishy’. You will have to learn how to play on whatever profession you pick, so I recommend you pick a style and role that you like. Don’t like melee? Don’t pick melee! Love to be in the middle of the fight? Don’t pick a caster! I think you probably want a Mesmer for the damage (which is high, but not so much at the begin of leveling), the demand in dungeons (which is pretty good for their support and damage) and their demand on WvW (which is one of the few classes that can completely throw balance off with a few well placed skills).
If you come out of stealth without attacking, you don’t get the revealed state. Therefore, if I await to naturally come out of stealth to poke you a little and jump back into stealth, I can. It’s not extremely effective though, but highly annoying..
I run with this build at the moment. Please note that I do not have an ascended backpiece, ascended weapon, an infusion or a rune set – because it takes too much time to get them (except infusions, but I’m lazy). Switching the gear around to account for a Cavalier backpiece will turn the build into something like this. If you then add weapons of Ascended quality as well, you can turn more remaining Berserker gear into Valkyrie or Cavalier as I aim for 50% critical rate and no more (go for the WvW bonus vitality stacks first – 2.5K HP additional is massive for us!) . This build is aimed towards a prolonged fight and excels in that; it does not burst for extreme numbers, but can ‘burst’ often for a long time (~6K backstab, does sound low but being able to do it over and over really does work…).
(edited by Deathspike.1870)
Sigil of Fire for sure.
0/30/30/10/0, and i don’t see how 1k more hp can save me. Only way to survive i see – is do not take damage at all
Because it opens the possibility to recover from mistakes. Everyone will make mistakes, but the difference between other professions and a thief is that a thief is punished brutally for it (usually resulting in death). I mix Berserker/Valkyrie/Soldier to attain 50% critical rate, 102% critical damage, 16K HP and 2.5K armor. It works well for me.
1. D/D+SB with Valkyrie/Soldier mixed into the gear provides (much needed) health and toughness. I am currently at 2500 armor, 16.000HP, 50% critical rate and 102% critical damage (including food). This number changes according to the class balance and how confident I feel running with less armor or health (thus tied into experience and knowledge).
2. Condition build is not all that useful in my opinion. It is a nice build to be an annoyance to others, but you will not likely take a kill against anything that can be considered half decent. We do not have the sheer condition pressure that other classes are capable of (primarily Necromancer and Engineer). I run the build described with the gear in point 1 using a 0/30/30/10 trait configuration. I feel that, for me, this is currently the best build to engage in prolonged combat alone or in small team combat. I tend to swap out SB for S/D though.
3. Know all the professions. Unlike most of the other professions, knowing what kind of patterns to expect, predict and react upon is mandatory. For most other professions, it makes you a better player but is not strictly necessary. Pacing and positioning is most important. Personally I don’t take the approach of a do-or-die burst attack but take my time depleting the utilities of a target prior to performing the burst that I am actually capable of. This is more of a mind game, as I throw them off by not backstabbing half of the time therefore wasting precious skill cooldowns. Wearing someone down often works, unless in combat with the better players. Truthfully, you probably can’t even win those, so walk away (Yes, I’m looking at that Healing Condition Warrior that is played properly).
Don’t get me wrong; I agree on having a cooldown visible for the steal behind the stolen ability and I wouldn’t mind for a way to get rid of a stolen skill without having to use it, but changing the implementation to force users to use a second skill button to use a stolen skill is strange. I use all of the stolen skills because all of them are useful, I honestly don’t want another button for it.
Since I use D/D + SB I have no choice but to use the blind on stealth trait in my build to have a counter to the massive amount of crowd control. I tend to open with auto attacks, not paying attention to doing a high amount of damage, but instead on avoiding their initial crowd control. I then proceed to C&D and watch the reaction; a competent player will immediately attempt to remove the blind and proceed with an area crowd control (e.g. Earthshaker). If not, proceed with a backstab. Rinse and repeat this process, with the key being to keep distance and continuously observe instead of attack, and the goal to burn the utilities of the Warrior. If the Warrior is an offensive Zerker/Cavalier with defense utilities, perfect play will give you a chance (you need to be much more skilled than the Warrior, which is very sad). If the Warrior is a bunker build, then move on as you can’t kill it at all.
How does this differ from the current implementation? You state that on a subsequent steal, the F2 skill would get overridden with the new stolen skill, therefore making the change be nothing more than a visualization of the skill cooldown and another required button to use the stolen skill? I agree that a cooldown timer would be nice while holding a skill bundle, but I don’t see any real use to separate the abilities like this. Even an argument that you don’t have to spend a ~second using the stolen skill seems weird as we have sufficient time to waste it away while being forced into stealth.
(*) s/f guard outdamages s/x thief by a little
I can’t get over the fact that you apparently don’t you think that it is sad that a master of support and defense actually outdamages a single target assassin that can’t even endure a few attacks before toppling over.
i can make exactly same post about my necro….while she doesn’t have the moblity my thief has her survival, dmg, utility and CCs are absurd and easy compared to thief
You are absolutely correct. Both the Necromancer and Mesmer are beyond ridiculous in terms of damage, survivability, utilities and crowd control – while being extremely easy to play effectively. The problem, in my opinion, isn’t so much that the Thief is being nerfed in all kinds of regards of defense, if we still had some kind of damage to make up for it. However, everyone is a tank of some sort usually paired with ridiculous condition damage (It’s one stat…) that can effectively kill a thief with 1 burning should it not be removed, while being able to soak up entire bursts by pressing one button and going invulnerable. And they can spam that.
D/P is the remaining viable weapon set after the 10th of December. It’s excruciatingly boring and you won’t kill anyone that is at least half decent, but the blind spam does prevent your own death. At best, the thief profession becomes an annoying troll profession; I’m either quitting (most likely) or re-rolling to a Mesmer or Necromancer (less likely).
I’m sorry, but if you want to be remotely non-selfish then a Thief is not the class for you – all you bring are blast finishers and stealth. In group combat, the role you can fulfill is picking off the back-line when they are not really paying attention. Venoms and traps haven’t made a lot of sense for the longest period of time.
- no they do not have perma-fury
Signet of Rage and For Great Justice is quite common – and is permanent.
I think that having fun in a game is all about doing something that you like doing. I, for example, like experimentation with strategies to come up with a character that is versatile for me capable of dealing with each situation. In Skyrim, I accomplished this by setting rules for myself, such as using no gear at the highest game difficulty. In Guild Wars 2, I play WvW and attempt to duel and take on groups of skilled players with a build that is specifically designed around that. I have fun doing that, so find something you find fun too.
To elaborate further on my previous response; Of course, there are Invulnerabilities, Blocking, Reflection, Weakness, Blinding and Evades that migrate the attack partially or completely. Objects are not affected by critical chance at all, while dependencies on boons (e.g. permanent Fury is popular among Rangers/Warriors) can be stripped in combat. If you test a 100% critical chance character under circumstances that are not aforementioned, you will do a critical hit each and every time.
There has been mentioned of the weakness condition. The confusing surrounding this condition is probably related to the fact that since launch, the condition would not affect the damage of critical hits and would therefore be moot against professions depending on a high critical rate to deal damage. This was changed to promote a tactical play involving this condition, and is now 50% chance to turn an attack into a glancing blow. A glancing blow takes the base damage and halves it. If it was a critical hit, the critical multiplier is removed as well. This is painful for critical dependent professions, so make use of this knowledge and avoid/apply it as you see fit (poison field and then blast finisher is accessibly to a lot of professions).
(edited by Deathspike.1870)
Have you considered Mesmer? They are incredibly powerful at range, and have a lot of magic and illusions going on that make for extremely interesting tactical choices. However, they do not have much AoE going on, but the summoned Illusions generally hit more than one thing. The utilities are pretty interesting and allow for viable tactics such as veil, portal bombing, time warp and whatever else you can come up with. They are appreciated in PvE, hold their own in PvP and can influence a battle significantly in WvW. If something does manage to catch you, slip out with a quick teleport or stealth – or die. Sounds like something you’d appreciate?
I personally don’t see either of them as particularly useful for a group. The thief can bring stealth, blind and spammable blast finishers, whereas a Ranger brings traps for fields (e.g. fire, poison) and healing springs (water). Neither is particularly needed if you just bring a truck load of heavies/mesmers, so it should depend on what you want to play.
Tried going for 100% critical rate on a Warrior/Ranger combination. Ranger with Spotter, Warrior with banner, you get the idea, point is that 100% critical rate is actually 100% critical rate. There does not seem to be a cap (would be weird considering Hidden Killer bumps your critical rate up to 100% and then having it fail?).
Thief is fun, albeit weak, profession for open world combat. The thief fundamental problems aren’t that apparent in an open world player-versus-environment, as the environment is not competitive and there is no player relying on you for their own content clearing. Once you start doing group runs in dungeons, the limitations in terms of damage and defense start becoming apparent. To put it bluntly, relying on a Thief (or Ranger) in a group setting is just a bad influence for your team. Everything the Thief/Ranger do, other profession do much better. Don’t be surprised if you get kicked out of a team solely for the choice of your profession. That said, a thief is the most fun as a roamer/skirmisher in WvW but also does not have a good place in zerg-vs-zerg.
The exact opposite is true. Opportunity builds might see a reduction in burst but most builds will see more attacks over time. The change actually encourages pacing over burst.
Question: what other builds are we talking here? i would love to hear some examples
For example the one that I run, a Berserker/Soldier/Valkyrie D/D+S/D 0/30/30/10/0 thief build to endure prolonged fighting to counter the rampant warrior and condition meta (assuming sword will remain viable; otherwise, blind spamming D/D+D/P I suppose!). Continuously health leaching with food and is sitting at 16k HP, 2.4K armor, 102% crit damage and 50% crit chance, it is quite capable of enduring group engagements and will get only stronger across the board with the initiative regeneration change.
Condition build in WvW is great for trolling, but is not very useful otherwise.
You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.
The moment a local computer received the attack state of the target, his state will be further in time on the server. Then we have to recognize the potential threatening animation, which is not obvious until at least a quarter into the animation, and hope to have enough time left to do the shadow return.
- A human reaction time is somewhere between ~150-300ms.
- An internet connection has somewhere between 50~100ms latency (from and to)
- An average LCD screen has a 5ms refresh rate delay.
- An average computer runs at 30 FPS; the next frame can delay by 33ms.
- An average keyboard has 11ms input delay.
- The Shadow Return skill has a 360ms activation delay.
That’s 150 + (2 * 50) + 5 + 33 + 11 + 360 = 659ms delay right there, not event counting the time it takes for an attacking animation to become recognizable and making a (quick) decision based on that animation. Are you saying that enemy attacks take longer than (659ms + timeToRecognizeAttack) and allow a window of effective use of the new Shadow Return? Personally I think it is already quite difficult to avoid the dangerous ones combining all the latencies. Granted I’m not an amazing player, but I suspect the use of the skill will become limited to the best of computer hardware, internet connections, and player skill, rather than being accessible to other players.
I love the skin. SPARTANNSSS!!! But yeah; I recognize the move.
Divinity is nice, I personally use Beryl Orbs because I value vit/power/crit and not the other crap divinity gives.
If you can’t take down a Berserker Warrior/Guardian, either they are much more skilled than you are, or simply have no idea how to effectively take them out. I have most issues with condition builds (not counting Warrior with conditions), so Necromancer and Engineer mostly.
Burst, D/D and D/P is still one of the highest single target bursts in the game. You just won’t be able to spam it then recharge in complete safety. Basically you are going to have to learn how to play the class without an OP gimmick like D/D thieves have been doing since the start.
Wait, what? Contrary to popular belief, a typical 10/30/30 D/D build is going to be stronger in the next patch (based on current notes). It is the actual builds that require more skill (S/D and S/P) that demand a higher initiative regeneration, more dodging with vigor and shadow return being instant that are being screwed over.
I run a D/D+S/D thief with 50% critical rate and have the Opportunist trait, but do not have any additional initiative regeneration trait. This would mean that I have 0.75 + 0.5 * 0.3 = 0.90 initiative/second when continuously attacking. The current base initiative regeneration is 0.75 initiative/second, and will be changed up to 1.00 initiative/second. If I neglect the fact that I’m not attacking/hitting 100% of the time and if I neglect the new opportunist trait entirely, doesn’t that mean I still get a 0.1 initiative/second boost?
I also run a D/P+SB thief build occasionally with 60% critical rate and both the Opportunist and Quick Recovery trait. This means that I have 0.75 + 0.6 * 0.3 + 2 / 10 = 1.13 initiative/second when continuously attacking. With the proposed changes, I will have 1.00 + 1 / 10 = 1.10 initiative/second. Once again, in this equation I am neglecting the fact that the new Opportunist triggers at all and the fact that I cannot attack 100% of the time to trigger Opportunist as it is now. Neglecting all that, I would lose a mere 0.03 initiative/second?
For most thief builds, including a not aforementioned S/D initiative hungry build that I occasionally play, wouldn’t that mean that initiative regeneration does get quite a bit of a boost? All of those assumptions went with the idea that I will always be attacking, but I spent a good deal of time in stealth, chasing enemies, being disabled, teleporting around, stomping or even missing attacks.
If I’m wrong here, please do correct me and enlighten me as to why.
Using Inf Strike while channeling stomp…
I never said to do that. I suggest you read my post again. Carefully.
You missed these:
#1: Teleport to target with sword.
#2: Start channeling the stomp.
#3: Teleport back with return skill.
#4: Wait for channel to reach the end.
#5: Shadowstep to target with shadowstep/steal/infiltrator
Sword+Steal being a cheap and viable solution.
I agree, however, that it does not warrant this kind of silly nerf..
In case you were serious…
1. A thief is not invulnerable nor does it magically disappear. Keep attacking.
2. Stealth lasts 3~4 seconds, at which point a backstab is going to be coming (block it).
3. A thief with D/D or D/P usually runs ONE stunbreaker. Make use of that fact.
I personally use a Sword/Shield, I shield to eat the initial burst then continue with a shield stun. The thief usually breaks the stun in fear of high damage that I might do (even though I do not with a Sword/Shield) at which point it is vulnerable. Then I swap to hammer, smack the thief around and kill it in 3~4 hits, and in case it might refuge just keep #4 to push him out…
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