Guild Wars 2

Not sure, I just jumped on the OP bandwagon with a 0/10/30/0/30 build, but it seems to me that the thing affected is the free +50% critical rate after an Earth Shaker (which is not that long, anyway) and some reduced damage of hammer #4 and F1. That does not seem so bad, the crowd control pressure and insane healing remains. I just need to swap 10 points of critical to something that might matter? I just use F1 to be annoying and #4 to push people down/out of stealth rings. So the damage loss, I can take it.

Takato.4976:

No sense made.

Yes, I made a typo and swapped deadly arts and critical strikes. Thanks for pointing that out.

Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
Yay. See Quick Recovery patch note.

Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
Why was this changed? To keep it in line with initiative regeneration change? Steal doesn’t allow to be triggered that often, and this trait is entirely dedicated to gaining initiative. The returns were already slim and have been made even slimmer, I don’t see why anyone would use it now.

Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
Feels like a response to 30/25/0/0/15 to disallow more damage in a burst configuration.

Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.
Same point as Vigorous Recovery.

Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.
Does anyone use tricks?

TL;DR: Relevant changes to most thieves are base initiative regeneration higher, no sword return in disable, vulnerability without ICD, initiative when entering stealth (not when pulsing/re-applying), vigor traits reduced, assassin’s reward moved to grandmaster with slightly better healing, flanking strikes moved to master. Feels like the changed accommodate D/P blind spam style with new vulnerabilities/hard to catch and better base initiative regeneration while reducing effectiveness of every other style.

Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
This change is good, a higher base initiative regeneration was needed due to the fact that everyone whom did anything other than engaging in C&D/backstab combinations would run out of initiative a bit too fast without investing in the proper trait lines. Having some more initiative to play with in extended battles allows for more trait diversity.

Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
A thief using S/x can no longer escape a disable when using proper positioning. The need for more stun breakers as utilities is required as a single disable is usually more then enough for someone to kill you, so there is a pressing need to invest in Travelers Runes to free up the movement speed slot for another breaker. Even so, a non-stealth dueler will be forced to stealth often in the hope to migrate disables.

Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
Good for those who still use S/P. The delay between disable and damage was ridiculous. The skill still roots and the weapon set still leaves you otherwise completely vulnerable, so I suspect that the majority of thieves will still neglect the weapon set. There might still be the occasional skilled thief that uses it, but since the teleport in disable is gone, I’m not sure how effective it will remain (lack of everything, including stealth?).

Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
A high critical rate paired with vulnerability stacking without cooldown on a very accessible trait? This change might give us the support we needed, as regular attacks will start to stack vulnerability on everyone in a group that is hit (e.g. shortbow bombing for vulnerability). I suspect that this change might warrant the most cries due to every thief suddenly having access to vulnerability. This would also be most effective on D/P blind spamming for additional damage.

Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
ICD is too high to actually ever use now (not that it was decent before).

Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
A useless trait that became more useless.

Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
Critical haste is nice but also rather unpredictable. This change might make the bursting thieves have a more reliable access to haste without the sacrifice of a utility slot to do it. Assuming a thief with 80% critical change, you will have 20% chance to trigger the trait, so an attack consisting of Steal/C&D/Backstab/Heartseeker has an overall chance of triggering 80% of the time for a follow-up auto attack flurry. Not bad I suppose, but the trait chance should be higher to become a dependent tool.

Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
This might be a result to counter the perma-stealth D/P leaping through the blinding field, but also screws up other viable tactics such as regenerating initiative in a Shadow Refuge pulses. If this was only intended to deal with D/P leaping then it was a bit overkill to apply it on everything else as well (including healing skill giving stealth in stealth), instead a change to disallow initiative regeneration on a combo effect while in stealth would be preferred.

Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
This was an amazing trait to get a high up-time of vigor. Being the least defensive profession around, we were in dire need of tools to help us achieve migrate damage. Vigor was one of these tools and has been effectively reduced from ~53% to ~26%. A good and viable tactic to migrate damage has been reduced in effectiveness.

Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
Nobody cares.

Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
Effectiveness was moved into base initiative regeneration, so less motivation to actually take this trait over Assassin’s Reward. Oh, wait, Assassin’s Reward was moved into a Grandmaster trait. The viable remaining traits to choose from are Pain Response or Hard to Catch (being moved to Master) so this might actually migrate some pain from losing the sword shadowstep in a disable.

Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
The heal scaling change might be nice for condition thieves running a condition/healing set, but otherwise is moot. Moving this up to Grandmaster restricts access to it from a 20/30/20 trait configuration so this trait will probably see even less action then it does now (albeit 0/10/30/30 duelers might like the healing increase).

teg.1340:

Shadowstep: 900 range, 0s animation, no cooldown (up to 3x with full ini)

Shadowstep is an utility skill with 1200 range. It has a cool-down of 50 seconds. If you are referring to the shadow step mechanic, there are multiple sources for it. Infiltrator’s Arrow is the most accessible one (#5 on the shortbow) which in an ideal situation has 900 range. You can’t place it that far without it failing, plus there is a travel time for the arrow that takes time and negates all the traveled distance from the movement. On top of that you have latency which influences that as well. You can fire two of these arrows until you need to wait for initiative regeneration, which is largely dependent on whether you use traits and skills for faster regen (probably neither). Please don’t assume you know a class mechanic because you can (badly) read some wiki.

Cogbyrn.7283:

At the very least, they keep pace well. The only times I really escape a Thief are if he/she blows all of his/her initiative in getting to me from long range and I notice. Then I can bust out. Otherwise, it’s a death race. My main hope against Thieves is that they pull far enough away from their team that I can do a sudden turn and surprise Hammer combo the Thief down.

Yes, they pace well, and they blow their initiative by doing so. If you have a S/D chaser you can leap twice, turn around and smack their heads in because their teleport and evasion skills have been blown. A D/D chaser will probably leap to follow and you just need it to leep 2~3 times before you evade their C&D and kill them. The best chaser is a D/P which has an effective skill, Shadow Shot, with 900 range. If doesn’t actually travel that far due to projectile travel speed so 600 is more realistic. That last one doesn’t blow all your initiative to just keep up with something (and screwing yourself in the process) so D/P chasers are the most respectable. Note that they cannot escape using the same mechanic though, so you can chase them just fine.

teg.1340:

Nop. Thieves with Shortbow of course catch up with GS/Sw warrior.

No, no, they really do not. I recently switched to the Warrior OP bandwagon from my main, a thief, while my roaming buddy is still on his. I outrun him on my Warrior and it is not the other way around. That’s just using the sword leap versus shortbow shadowstep or heartseeker leaps, I’m not even using a greatsword for the rush and whirlwind speed…

This cannot be done on a thief. Be happy if you can fulfill one role decently.

I don’t know where you got the idea that the Ranger is good, unless it is a condition/power tank (which has been nerfed, you know, BM was too strong or something) it will go about as quickly down as a thief. The damage is slightly better yes, assuming the stupid pet will hit something. Ultimately, the Ranger is lacking almost as much as the thief (save the good condition/spirit builds…).

Neoheart.2750:

What to do lol.

The birthday rewards are account bound, you can use the level 20 scroll and the ‘gain a level’-scrolls you have obtained so far to skip the boring levels on a new profession. You don’t need to do the story, it is not relevant, but it does help to unlock story modes on the dungeons you frequent on your new profession. You don’t even need to enter Orr (the most boring area in the entire game) and level exclusively in other areas by completing hearts, events, skill points and vistas. Then the choice just comes down to, what profession are you going to play … (depends on your style)

The Game Slayer.7632:

L2P noob. Make a warrior, play around with it. Find out what a warrior does by playing one yourself.

I think that most of the thief community has moved on to other professions, and almost everyone (me included) has a warrior to test it and see what it does. It destroys, and it makes me feel a little like the Hulk (… Hulk, smash). I use the epic hulk smash edition warrior (in lack of a better name).

Warriors are OP as it is, but a bug is a bug and needs a fix. This has to be tested if this principle also applies on other professions with healing-related traits (e.g. thief vigor on heal).

The power of the sword, the mobility, boon stripping and evasion, was it’s strength. That’s too costly, reduced to not effective and again too costly. The only option for dueling is D/P with a power build, as cheesy as it is, stealth and blind work (as most players truly suck hard). Everything else doesn’t.

Unless you use a healing/toughness/condition build, you will die as soon as you make a bad move. It does get better when you can access the Shadow Trait grand-master healing-in-stealth, but you will never be able to take decent damage in a power-based build. I recommend using the cheesy D/P because blind is the only damage migation you have, apart from twirling around with dodges and evades, but you’re not doing damage like that. A S/D on the switch is pretty nice for the AoE auto attack and the utilities to dodge, strip boons (dredge…), interrupt (again dredge…) and C&D. Other than that, keep throwing in as much damage as you can with Power/Precision/Cond.Dmg.

P.S: I hope you’re waiting for it to get better to go and do WvW, because personally I believe that the thief is absolutely horrible in PvE. Anything it can do, another class can do at least 10x better. The blind spam is pretty much the only redeeming feature for dungeons and alas, you don’t really need it there either. It is really quite fun in WvW, if you manage to stay alive.

I think you misunderstand the intentions I tried to convey, Scryed.9423. I, as a complete newbie with no investment of time to build experience and skill in playing a warrior, can pick up a warrior and kick down experienced players of any class. The only classes that I have some trouble with are other warriors that have a similar build (which depends on whom lands attacks first), guardians (where each player gets bored and walks away from the fight) and necromancers (because I have to distance myself when they do their blind aura, and come back after ~30 seconds to take the kill).

I do believe that I am experienced in the profession I like most, which is the Thief, and yes it is frowned upon that ‘other professions come and cry when they lose’. Hell, my own favorite profession has been on the receiving end of that a million times over. What bothers me is the fact that all the time and skill an experienced player has in their own profession is absolutely useless when confronted with a hammer warrior of low/decent skill — imagine what happens if the player using it is good.

So, due to the lack of alternatives of dealing with a situation where these players with these builds are becoming the main stream build for both sPVP on a competitive level and for both roaming and siege warfare in WvW, I switched to the thing that owned me too. That is wrong, that is ridiculous, but it works, and I see a lot of people taking this rout. If this situation presses on, we’ll end up with Warrior Wars instead of Guild Wars, and that is what I want to convey here. Balance is where you think after a loss, “Huh, I did <insert X here> wrong or perhaps I could have tried <insert Y here>”, instead of “… I’ll grab a Warrior too.”

risenlord.2035:

There is no way a full bunker warrior can out heal a full dps thief. With blocks and invulnerable traits survivability will go up but the warrior is going to do 0 damage and eventually die.

A decently played warrior using a hammer and sword/board can without too much effort. After spending a ridiculous amount of time attempting to come up with a counter to the crowd control and health regeneration on both my thief and ranger, I gave up and equipped my warrior with berserker/hoelbrak using a mostly defense/discipline trait line. Having very little experience playing one, it was already easy to deal with anything except similar build warriors, cleric guardians and condition necromancers. I could survive easily against glass thieves, and I’ll keep running this character until it gets nerfed. It’s that unbalanced (one more to the Warrior population for a while, and up the number goes).

D/D is not hard to catch, especially so if the player was a glass cannon. Just dodge a C&D and they won’t have initiative left to deal with you. When a thief approaches, it is usually not in stealth because a thief does not have sufficient stealth access to walk across the map in it.

The first problem you have is situational awareness, even if you are focused on something else, always take care to look around you to see what’s happening. Tunnel vision is a bane to any player and actually taking the time to look around you and absorb what’s going in will help you in the long run. Don’t be a sheep following the flock, look, think and act according to the situation.

The second is your reaction time, no matter what, the best a thief can do in a small amount of time is steal+c&d+backstab. If you die from that, you need more armor in your build. You would otherwise die from a single Mesmer berserker or a barrage of engineer grenades (let alone the Warrior with a hammer bringing down the pain). If you have your situational awareness, your reaction time can be as slow as a second. You’d have predicted it would happen, and can act accordingly.

If you can give specifics on your class and build, we might be able to advice further.

Sanduskel I’m completely open to suggestions that I can try and be more successful

I changed two things that made me significantly more successful. The first change was from the dueling-orientated trait configuration 0/10/30/30 to 0/30/20/20 for the additional critical strike, critical damage and the executioner trait. As a result, I do a lot much more damage but my survivability has taken a beating. I need to think about dropping more initiative regeneration in favor of healing in stealth (so that would be 0/30/30/10 instead of the popular 10/30/30 for vigor), but this interferes with the ability to use the sword effectively for boon stripping (due to the absurd cost) and crowd control.

The second change I made was to swap out my off-hand weapon, the Shortbow, for an additional dagger so I now have D/D on off-hand (don’t do this if you’re in a Zerg or flipping camps, you want the bow there). The main point for me is not to rely on D/D as anything I consider a primary weapon, it doesn’t feel suited for it anymore. I usually engage with the S/D to wear down an opponent and deal with the boons, until I get fury and executioner kicks in, then attempt finish the job with D/D. Of course, Guardians (and some rare other builds) can burst heal so I have to repeat the process several times on those fights. The major downside of not having a Shortbow on the switch is creating gaps using clever teleportation and not being able to deal with the one-trick wonder Necromancer ability to turn into a cloud that spreads blind and conditions, or the very annoying D/P thieves.

I still use Melandru and Berserker/Knight with condition reduction food. It still bothers me that I am so much more effective on my Healaway Guardian or BM Ranger without investing any time in learning how these classes really work, but alas, thus is the life of a thief I suppose. I’ll drop for more feedback at some point if someone has something cool to try or I find something worthwhile.

I still haven’t found anyone making active use of their anti-stealth. If it would happen at some point, I’d just dance around with S/D and have no care in the world (assuming 4 second reveal from Ranger).

Here’s a break-down of my findings thus far:

- Warriors have too much crowd control, too much healing, too little counters (if any).
- Guardians are as still tough; removing protection/regeneration is too slow/costly now.
- Ranger in stealth is weird! Regular rangers are simple, Beast Master still heals too much.
- Thief is as epic as ever – if they don’t use D/P for a lame powder-stealth-repeat routine.
- Mesmer seems the same as before. Tough, annoying, but identification is their bane.
- Elementalist either die quickly, or can’t die (and do no damage either).
- Necromancer new hurting conditions, tougher than ever. Lot of utility to walk away.
- Engineer spiking is popular; avoid burst makes it simple. Condition-build impossible as ever.

Seeing as how S/D and D/D are both quite ineffective against the sheer pressure the rampant condition and cleric builds output, I don’t really see how I can come on equal terms at this point (without giving up the profession). I have a decent amount of defense and usually can avoid getting pinned/killed, but my damage output is not sufficient. If I switch some items for the best min/max damage with a little less defense, I still hit like a wet noodle while getting slaughtered only faster.

I have to ponder about my choice to use a sword..

The Warrior is too strong at this point in time. The health regeneration it can achieve is higher than the damage output of most damage-spec classes that I have. It doesn’t even require a single thought other than selecting the correct abilities and traits. That is unbalanced, and ridiculous. It’s a lot like a Guardian to be honest, but boon stripping is a viable tactic against those. I see none against Warriors as they are right now.

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll tweak around a little to see if I can make this viable again.

Hello everyone,

When I was active, I’d get the changes and updates as I was playing and looking through the patch notes. I’ve been away for a few months and I’ve returned to what appears to be a different game entirely. I run a S/D+SB build wearing a mix of Berserker/Knight with Melandru and food aimed at reduction of condition damage, and traits aimed at health regeneration and stealth abilities. I didn’t do a lot of damage before (wear-em-down over-time), but now I feel like I hit like a wet noodle.

Furthermore, conditions punch right through all the defense I build against it. It doesn’t help that seemingly I can’t even cleanse conditions without burning either my total initiative or relying on random luck the 10s counter hits while I’m in stealth (that is new…). Warriors seem to be able to auto-regenerate as much as I can deal damage, if combined with their pesky usage of blocking, and I need to keep all teleport abilities to get out of the spamming C.C they apparently now have (what changed there!? Warrior was under-powered, but now they are gods?).

So, without further ado, what the hell happened? How did ‘balance’ fall over? What is still viable?

At this moment, an Apothecary/Settler warrior with S/S and LB is much scarier than the ones chaining stun. The Healing Signet required a chance, but a full healing power build makes the passive regeneration insane, not to mention boosting other sources of healing (e.g. shout and/or regeneration boon). That, combined with a high toughness, condition damage and plenty of condition cleansing, makes for a very unpleasant enemy that has way too much healing over time with a good amount of bleed, burning, torment and way too much immobilization.

While I appreciate Karma being made account bound rather than character bound, I do wonder if the same courtesy is extended to World versus World experience? Much like Karma, earning that particular currency on a different character is a punishment towards your character in actual need of the world points. Can we get that shared across characters too?

I use stealth condition removal, stealth health regeneration, health regeneration boon upon entering stealth. I have Melandru runes, condition duration reduction food and run with 31.55% damage reduction (0/10/30/30 with Knights Helm, Leggings and Rings). This is sufficient to survive through most intense area-of-effect damage from 2-3 sources.

It may seem excessive, but a glass cannon thief as most thieves are simply die under a little pressure. I have chosen to purposely lower my damage output and rely on more damage migration to do steady damage over time, instead of spiking someone down, and this does work out extremely well for me. I do notice that the other thieves I run with cannot withstand the pressure for more than a few seconds, so you’ll have to pick between burst and taking a pressurization role.

Questions? Don’t hesitate to ask

If you can’t anticipate how your enemy works, you’ll die (and rage on forums).

Nobody is waiting for that. Teach yourself. If you aren’t open to that, why even post?

The Mesmer moves as fast as possible. Barrage is an amazing skill to throw into a PvE situation of a zerg, but it is limited in area coverage and is painfully slow. Using it is suicide against most professions. You also don’t need to kill clones, they barely do damage, and they really allow easy access to Hunters Shot stealth! Phantasms do damage, you can evade them (animations are painfully obvious) or finish them off, but it is better to focus on the Mesmer instead.

You also want to use Point Blank Shot to interrupt mass invisibilty and berserker phantasms when you get the chance, and channel Rapid Fire as often as possible (It will continue hitting someone in stealth). Like I said, the Longbow change makes it really easy to enter stealth after the Mesmer does, and being on the same timer you will always have the advantage (with 20% CD reduction, 33% uptime of stealth… it is A LOT).

Playing a Mesmer will really teach a great deal. Put some hours into that, it works better than a lot of reading and theorycrafting — experiencing it first hand does wonders.

You just need to recognize the real Mesmer. One of the Mesmers complaints is that, if the enemy knows the profession mechanics, they cannot use their profession mechanic (deception) to actually migrate damage. The skills that mimic the Mesmer in its entirety are just Illusionary Leap and Decoy (the former because the Mesmer can stand still to mimic being a clone, and the latter because of stealth). Beyond that they have a 3 second stealth of the torch (long cooldown) and Mass Invisibility as possible elite, and some minor utilities. Now that the Longbow has stealth, enter stealth on a clone after the Mesmer does and he will reappear before you do.

If you have doubts about the Mesmer mechanics, play one. They are extremely easy to figure out if you have a bit of experience. Similarly to the stealth mechanic, you can easily experience that (and possibilities of countering) by playing a Thief.

“If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous battles without jeopardy.” — The Art of War

Debate on Toughness versus Vitality? Toughness reduces all damage, except condition damage, while Vitality is utterly useless and only provides more health to soak up a larger burst. Runes of Melandru and condition reduction food are valid answers to condition damage, but Toughness is the answer to all direct damage. Throw in some Healing Power if you want to get fancy and heal more, but Vitality is never the answer.

When playing Longbow, the options are extremely similar to a Thief; dodge, stealth and kite. Of course, there is also a shield that can be used (the pet) by positioning it carefully, or letting it tank whenever possible.

It working in combat alone is not that disturbing, but I agree that you have to have highest priority, followed by party members. This is the same for other state sharing, such as using your Healing Spring and not getting a regeneration boon because other players are getting it. Similarly if I drop a Healing Banner as Warrior, it is quite possible I don’t get its benefits at all.

Like most buff sharing, even party members get no priority at all. You’ll be hitting 5 randoms (not necessarily including yourself either).

We have pets? I thought we had mobile buff stations.

I find it quite easy with S/D. Each time the Mesmer is revealed, use an Infiltrator Strike to immobilize and do damage. Once the Mesmer slips away, C&D on a phantasms and wait for the Mesmer to re-appear. If the Mesmer attempts to spawn a Berserker phantasm (Greatsword held into the air), dodge the skill to prevent the phantasm to appear at all (still goes on CD).

I use S/D + SB using a Beserker/Knight mix with 0/10/30/30/0 trait configuration for high initiative regeneration and all sources of health regeneration (regeneration on stealth, stealth heals, heal on usage of initiative). I use a knights helm, leggings and two rings (with Ruby Orb) proving me a grand total of 31.55% damage reduction. I use Melandru Runes and condition duration food for a grand total of -65% condition duration. This makes me sturdy, resistant against conditions, with a high healing potential and high dodging (semi-permanent vigor with high initiative regen does that) with as little as possible impact on the total damage output. I call it a semi-bunker, and has been fine-tuned to my style over the months leaving me in a perfect spot (for me) to roam, zerg and duel. If you die, it doesn’t feel like it was because of an overpowered enemy, but rather your own mistakes. This works for me, so I hope this provides a good starting point for your perfect thief.

There is no revealed debuff if you don’t come out of stealth with an attack. So you can permanently C&D with a single trait to reduce costs of that skill. That means one attack every 3s (or 4s when traited with +1s stealth time). Doesn’t need a specific build at all.

Rangers have a bad name. Thank the people standing egoistically in their own healing spring while shooting arrows and contributing nothing but damage to the deal. Oh and when hit, they die. A good Ranger is really powerful and amazing to have in a group, but the average Ranger (like average Thieves) are just terrible and not worth the time. “Bad” players are considered to should have rolled a Warrior instead.

In a ‘hardcore’ setting, there are many flavors of Ranger that are absurdly powerful. Apothecary or cleric beast master comes to mind. In my experience, the fatal flaw is that of every profession the pure offensive characters are taken as an indication of the profession abilities. That’s where, say, a Ranger or Mesmer really shine, as pure offense they are undoubtedly the best professions in the (PvE) game. Thieves made a name for themselves ganking in WvW, but nobody really likes them in PvE because Warriors can faceroll and not die. Rangers are similar to thieves, they would die easily if used purely offensively — but a balanced or defensive Ranger is a blessing to play and play with.

Welcome to the world of a C&D thief. At least the Ranger has range stealth.

#1: Where is the logic in stealth? Let’s not talk logic. It’s a game after all.
#2: Pets don’t reveal, attacks landing after stealth do. Stop auto attacking.
#3: Send your pet in a different direction. Tactics. If it’s dead, put more into BM.
#4: Guards even continuously face you in stealth, disallowing a Thief (Yep.) backstab.
#5: Again, same issue on C&D. Aegis, block, miss, invulnerability, etc, etc. Deal with it.

The Ranger addition is marvelous, it makes it a lot more fun. It’s not a god button tho. Learn to use it to its maximum effectiveness. Condition damage ticks do not affect stealth at all.

wish.1027:

Maybe it’s just me, but I imagine it looking more like….
(crap quality sketch, but it gets the point across)

Bwhahaha I can totally see that. I love the picture

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You want something even more hilarious?

Point Blank Shot -> Rapid Fire -> Hunter’s Shot -> reposition -> repeat

Don’t forget that PBS got a buff also.

Indeed! Sounds fun! I was (ab)using PBS in stealth to slap people around without knowing where the hit will be coming from. I’m going to give this a whirl too, keeping melee in a loop stuck forever trying to reach you sounds hilarious

As a thief player, I grabbed my Ranger as reaction to this thread and gave it a spin. I have the Ranger configured as a fairly standard BM cleric bunker and swapped out the Greatsword for a Longbow (leaving Sword/Dagger on the switch). The results were hilarious. It allowed me, a bunker, to stealth and re-position to open with a new chain of damage. Thieves have to come close to resume the fight but the Longbow 3 seconds really allow you to move to an entirely different direction causing total (long-range) confusion and allowing additional time for the target to approach. Overall, it’s not a game breaker and it was hilarious to play, but Thieves are constantly attacked for the ability to Stealth, so I’m sure that the Rangers will feel our pain in the near future.

^ Wow, really, you have that much trouble? Thieves are highly predictable.

I usually build my toons to counter condition classes (e.g. necro) as that’s much harder to deal with.

knight.4379:

Basically, I was always the killer, the tackler, the one who could kill so quickly before you could turn your head and now i dont know what to do.

Now you actually need to engage your enemies in a fight instead of killing them before having a chance to react. Aim for a better survivability through mixing Soldier/Knights gear (30%+ damage reduction) and think about how you are going to counter the increasing popular condition builds (Hint; you can reduce condition duration at the expense of some damage). Once you’ve got the build for your playing style, learn about the enemy rotations and make use of Vigor, dodge and evade skills to migate burst. At this point, you should have no trouble if you know the enemy classes.

Without going into end-game discussions that end up in flame wars:

+ Off-hand pistol has infinite blind. It works against anything non-dredge.
+ Dredge use Protection (+30% damage reduction). Steel that with sword/dagger.
+ Take out ranged attackers ASAP. You can pull 2 together with Scorpion Wire.
+ On subject of ranged, Smoke Screen blocks all projectiles for 7 seconds. Love it.
+ If initiative regeneration is too slow, Sword/Dagger can give cheap stealth.

To respond on your question regarding traits:

+ Go into Shadow arts for Shadow Protector immediately. Permanent regeneration.
+ Go into Acrobatics for Vigorous Recovery with Withdraw. Permanent vigor.
+ Now that you can blind, regenerate and dodge constantly, drop into damage.

For gear:

+ Focus on Power, Precision and Critical Damage (In that order).
+ If you feel you need more defense, mix some pieces of ‘Knights’ (Tough/Power/Pre).
+ Low level you just need to focus on Mighty gear (Power).

This should you give a fundamental begin. I hope it helps.

Using an AOE will not chain into single target auto attacks. This applies to all classes.

Besides the obvious over exaggeration, there have been players launching attacks way too quickly. I’ve received 6 death shroud auto attacks from Necromancers in < 1 second, dealing 4K per shot (I know that nobody wants to believe this, but you’re bound to run into some of those players if you WvW roam enough). So it is plausible there is something similar going on with Thieves.

The thief has been continuously been pressured into a single role, the burst-and-run role. The less viable wear-em-down condition role does work to a certain extend as well, but both these rokitten il down to the same thing — roaming. It is possible to survive on the front-line following a commander with a mix between damage and survivability (Zeker/Knight/Valkyrie), but this relies a lot on abusing the area-of-effect limit to have others getting hit, and shadow-stepping once you’re in the hit list. It’s not suitable for commander style, unless you’re not a front-line pushing commander.

The idea that was at the very foundation of this game, the ability to use any profession to fulfill any role, has been disregarded by the whack-a-mole balance philosophy and continuous shifting meta OP class and the absurd defense over offense strategy. Unless the developers finally decide to punish bad players for blobbing around by removing the area-of-effect limitation, you’ll always be expected to be a front-line pusher as commander.

PvE/dungeons? Warrior. If you manage to die, you probably went AFK.
High level fractals as well as PvE? Guardian. For all those utilities.
Super-duper easy mode but no dungeons? Ranger.

For those moaning about roaming; that’s not the game. Yeah, a burst D/D thief can roam quite effectively and pick off bad players within instants. But, a good player? No, you can’t pick them off like that and it would become a sustained fight — and thieves aren’t all that great in sustained damage. If you dare complain about you being unable to roam on your Necromancer, you really have to learn how to use its massive conditions to literally smack everything around, including stealthies.