Guild Wars 2

SoulSin.5682:

KytsuNe.4357:

Thanks everyone!! I will give some tries on the builds! They sound pretty powerful, tho sacrificing mobility. And again, thanks!

More like they sacrifice everything.

This is why I choose not to run SoM. The cleansing heal + stealth is huge and too good to pass up against heavies or tankier/condition-based builds imho.

They win largely from fire/air procs.

Again, more issues with fire/air procs giving some builds more, unpredictable damage than what they should have.

Mythos.8196:

DeceiverX.8361:

2 (4)+ points in Shadow Arts is all you need. Usually people like to run SE, though.

4 sec duration with a 4 init cost from a reduction from IoS means permanent uptime from chaining CnD’s as soon as you’d be losing stealth with some timing, init gain resources from D/P with this means you’re at a 7 init. This leaves you at a total expense of around 3 init per cycle, which when paired with smoke screen to avoid the 6-init dump for BP allows for a very easy permanent stealth uptime. Steal may also be used without a target for extra with Kleptomaniac, IS increases the regen rate, and SR covers any other woes one may have, while one may also build Hastened Replenishment as an initiative source with withdraw and not need SR on a rotation.

don’t understand a single thing.. LOL need to talk newbie language

For some clarifications:

SE = Shadow’s Embrace; Thief’s main condition cleanse (Located in the Shadow Arts trait line). This is widely considered the best possible investment in Shadow Arts aside from Shadow’s Rejuvenation. Thus 4 Points “needed” to also get the trait for Infusion of Shadow for the initiative cost reduction on gaining stealth (which I seemed to neglect mentioning specifically despite running calculations with it in mind). The duration for 4 secs of stealth per use of a steal effect also comes from a +1 second increment off of the Meld in Shadows trait (3pts) in SA to break even for initiative spent for its duration (as it will regen while stealthed).

BP = Black Powder, offhand pistol skill #5, which creates a smoke field to use Heartseeker t leap through as a finisher for stealth. This uses 6 + 3 initiative base, but with Infusion of Shadow, brings the combo down to 7 initiative per 4 seconds

CnD = Cloak and Dagger, offhand dagger skill #5 used to gain stealth while striking a nearby target.

Smoke screen is a utility skill, again for the use of a smoke field to leap through if using D/P as it cuts down on the need to expend 6 initiative for BP.

Kleptomaniac is the 1 pt trait in Trickery which grants 2 initiative for using steal.

IS, or as I was referring to Infiltrator’s Signet, increases initiative regen by +1 per 10 seconds.

Hastened Replenishment is a 6pt trait in Trickery which gives 4 initiative for using a heal skill. This allows low-cooldown heals (I.E., withdraw) to be used for initiative.

SR = Shadow Refuge, another utility skills which grants a pulsing, long-duration stealth effect.

Cufufalating.8479:

As far as being a LB sniper in a zerg goes, you’re probably right.

The problem is most people on the forums judge what is good and what is not based of what top end guilds do, and trying to snipe off players from top guilds is not an easy task. They are good players and they will protect eachother, making us not all that effective.

The truth is though that the vast majority of fights in WvW are made up largely of pugs, less skilled guilds or just people not taking it 100% seriously because it’s not a GvG, and in that situation it’s surprisingly easy to take down 3-4 people in a single fight, making you actually pretty effective.

The final point is though that regardless of how useful you may or may not be, the zerg could survive just fine without any Rangers. It couldnt’ possibly survive without Guardians, Warriors and Elementalists, so looking at it that way we are redundant.

The top end guilds are using a LB power ranger or two now as commander killers since nothing else can deal so much damage so quickly to a driver while not getting facerolled either in melee or needing to provide AoE damage support like necros and eles.

But I mean “one or two” when I say it. Anything else will cost the blob too much.

2 (4)+ points in Shadow Arts is all you need. Usually people like to run SE, though.

4 sec duration with a 4 init cost from a reduction from IoS means permanent uptime from chaining CnD’s as soon as you’d be losing stealth with some timing, init gain resources from D/P with this means you’re at a 7 init. This leaves you at a total expense of around 3 init per cycle, which when paired with smoke screen to avoid the 6-init dump for BP allows for a very easy permanent stealth uptime. Steal may also be used without a target for extra with Kleptomaniac, IS increases the regen rate, and SR covers any other woes one may have, while one may also build Hastened Replenishment as an initiative source with withdraw and not need SR on a rotation.

The wolf fear can be very unreliable, as often times SE will cleanse it before the thief leaves the radius of SR. Any P/D thief not using SE is simply building poorly or is doing it to troll with how overpowered the rest of the kit is (I’m looking at you, shadow strike).

The only way you’re resetting so constantly in WvW is by building 6 into Shadow Arts and using a permanent stealth uptime build. Otherwise, the reset potential is over-stated since most other classes have similar if not better engage potential and much better potential at keeping the thief engaged in combat while at a weakness if outplayed first.

Lol.

Just gonna necro staff all day long for permanent condi immunity and permanent unblockable AOE fear.

Burst usually fails in sPvP since players have inherently higher HP/armor and the damage and modifiers are inherently lower than in WvW before even considering the array of thief skill damage reductions in sPvP-only.

Some of the more standard builds are pretty much the best you get, paired with fire + air sigils (which are cheesy as all hell). Anything really building to one-shot people in sPvP will normally just fail to do so because of the higher innate durability of all builds and the format favoring more durable/resilient styles of play as well.

As far as “best burst attainable” goes, something like my build here will pretty much hit the theoretical maximum. That said, it won’t exactly be very good in general, and not much more effective than most standard builds at +1’ing fights as the thief must resort to doing due to general inadequacies in the current sPvP format. I imagine in the near future it will also only get worse.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Post-Your-Build-Thread/page/4#post4647153

Not much you can really do about fighting this spec as anything, really. Too tanky, too much condition spam, too much gap-opening, combined with a ton of innate sustain.

The refuge may have been that player’s saving grace, but Sic Em is honestly the only reliable way I’ve found to shut P/D down enough such that it will shut down their SA line and make their damage and sustain almost non-existent.

Bursting them down is just not possible if they’re half-decent. Dire gear and the SA line give so much durability that nothing in the game will spike one – even my thief build is incapable of taking out most condi dire thief builds.

Hate to say it this way, but you simply need to get better. No melee build on the thief is meant to sit in the fray, either. It’s very much about getting in and out of the fight to recover from potential losses.

D/D is the best PvE set in the game in many cases, and skilled thieves will not have problems with the evasion frames in any content. It’s not bad design but in the case of crowded events, other people’s particles and bodies getting in the way and obstructig your vision.

As far as smaller encounters go, it sounds to me like you’re trying to stay back and not react to incoming damage at all but instead wish to simply not die when being hit. You’re going to have to time your evades properly to prevent any incoming damage, or you’ll need to re-gear into PTV with shadow arts as a form of training wheels so that you don’t die instantly when you do so that you at least can learn to time your evades better to get you on track to avoid all of it or avoid the necessary spikes. PvE is quite predictable and is one of the easiest aspects of playing the thief at 80, especially D/D.

If you’re front-lining WBT or a blob on a single mob, you’re probably playing the wrong class, as the thief just isn’t designed to do this kind of mindless play pattern or bring the negation/forgiveness to the table to be able to maintain monster aggro/AOE attacks without other people’s sprites/particles/bodies obstructing view to prevent necessary and in the case of soloing, very easy dodges.

After what appears to have been a report in more detail about the stability and shadowstep/teleport effect changes:

Thief by far and large becomes the worst class in GW2 PvP environments. Absolutely no contest. S/x builds and multiple utilities go from staples to trash tier.

…if it holds. I’m really hoping this aspect of the changes went either incorrectly reported or there are more details.

If Infil Signet/ Strike can only be used within its range, goodbye, thief, and goodbye GW2 until fixed. That is my most useful, important skill, and my build pretty much hinges on it for functionality.

Puck.9612:

Aomine.5012:

Also, I do have to apologize about underestimate other tiers, but I looked at many you-tube streamers and find their opponents are often very new, low rank, or just plain incompetent. My knowledge of tier strength are only from T2 and T1. In comparison I do find T1 alot harder to win a duel. (Also T1 tends to roam in 3~5, so it’s an entire different story against those guild group..)

You see a lot of low rank players in those youtube videos because they are free bags. It looks good to be able to 1v5 a group, never mind the fact 2 are uplevels and the rest are invaders.
It’s been about a year since I’ve played on a T1 server but since then I have played in every tier except for T2 and I have found the skill level of solo roamers actually increases as you go down in tiers. There are always going to be a handful of exceptional roamers in every tier but the average skill level in bronze tends to be higher.

On the other hand group fighting skills tend to increase as you move up.

Very much this. I’ve found that the best roamers are often on the lowest tiers because there is usually no blob support and thus it is their only play option.

T2 is awkward atm because it’s both blob-centric but also lacks skilled roamers/suffers from population problems which prevents them from ascending. If anything I’d argue the roaming is the worst here, as there are rarely good havoc groups and the blobs are still usually big enough to bulldoze objectives uncontested or with limited resistance due to population imbalances and lack of multiple skilled guild groups.

mompen.7952:

You can achieve backstappphs that scare people today if you spec right, but that affects your survivability by heaps.
I tried DecieverX’ yolo assassin build a few nights ago, and I had to double take a look at the damage log. I did 10k cloak and dagger, and 17k backstabs on crits (on squishies tho). That was fun :-) not a serious setup, but instagibs is still a possibility.

Thanks for the reference ^^

There’s definitely a lot less durability there, but it can be manageable for the most part. The build only really finds itself truly overwhelmed by condi bombs and P/D thieves (but everything does) with enough practice. Actually, most condi dire specs give it trouble, but as is the usual for basically everyone playing in the PvP formats.

I agree in that I don’t think stab needs more damage so much as the utility in SA and Acro needs to make its way more towards Deadly Arts and Crit Strikes or be more universal to all builds so stealth-less options also see some increased viability. The healing critical strike thing just isn’t as effective as ANet seems to want to make it, especially when the weakness at hand is really just condition cleansing.

It is quite fun to play, though :P

Risen.1360:

I personally would love a rifle, with weapon skills to imitate a sniper rifle. Sniper rifles, although a heavy weapon, are silent and deadly. I think Thieves fit the description of ‘silent and deadly’ too. I’d expect a 800-1000 range on most of the rifle skills. The auto attack dealing moderate damage (850-1200), a cc (possibly a knockback) or immobilize, a shoot-and-stealth skill similar to the ranger’s, aoe poison or blind is an option as well.

Ever shoot a .50 cal?

Without high-end ear protection, you will not hear for around 12-15 hours because they are so loud. Silent or even remotely quiet “sniper” rifles by concept are made up by the media; most “sniper rifles” seen in this light are just low-caliber hunting rifles.

This is why they’re so un-fitting to thieves. The weapons make quite literally no sense whatsoever for them to have, seeing as their use at such long ranges would also inhibit any kind of stealing/burglary.

SoulSin.5682:

If I give two cents, Rifle for theif would be the same as Hammer for Warriors. Prolly a CC set.

- Shoot the Legs for cripple, Shoot Eyes for blind, Shoot Arms for Weaken. Etc.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Body_Shot
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Headshot
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Powder

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Serpent%27s_Touch
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lotus_Poison

So what you’re saying is, P/P thief with some traits in Deadly Arts.

Nothing new can come out of the rifle aside from 1200 range that doesn’t already exist in P/P or be overpowered or overshadow P/P because of its initiative problems.

The rifle isn’t suitable not only for lore reasons but because it actually just has no place in the way the current gear sets work aside from a 1200 range auto… which the longbow fulfills and makes sense with existing shortbow proficiency; one for single-target damage and skirmishing mobility with no steal or blinds, one for all general utility.

Butch.4957:

Maugetarr.6823:

Butch.4957:

Gamblit.5041:

Butch.4957:

Gamblit.5041:

BFMV.3198:

After watching the revenant and how kitten cool it looks, I will be making one, I reakon we should get either offhand sword, focus or a staff, that has cool kitten like displacement and all that.

post some ideas

In the trailer they have shown a Thief with a Rifle. So there you have it.

The interesting thing about that Rifle is that it has a knife attached to it. They could have picked any other normal Rifle, but they didn’t. Perhapes it’s a hint that the Rifle will be a melee weapon.

Dude, there is no garuntee that was a thief with a rifle. Remember that all medium armor classes have the same armor. It looks the same on just about everyone (Charr and Asura excluded). The trailer was not showing what each class would have, just a teaser at some of the things available with HoT.

You must have missed it. They have showned 9 Character in the trailer, one for each proffesion.
Engineer was showned with the Hammer.
Ranger was shown with the Staff.
The third Leather wearing character was shown with the Rifle = Thief.

Then the Devs confirmed on the forums that Each class will only get 1 new weapon. So Thief = Rifle.

So, did they show elementalist with their new weapon? Did they specify which heavy armor character was guardian or warrior and of them show one using a different weapon? As far as I saw, no. Just because we saw engi (fairly obvious I grant) and confirmed ranger, does not mean the other leather armor character was thief. I am sorry, but I will refuse to believe that was a thief with rifle untill dev’s tell us so in writing. Besides, the rifle just does not fit with the core design concepts of the character. The longbow would be a much better fit and if that were announced, I could happily get behind that. Yet everyone thinks we will be getting a LOUD, NON-STEALTHY rifle. In the main page for the thief on the wiki it says,
“Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.”

That just does not sound like a rifle to me.

….. but pistols fit?

no, they do not fit either but they are a lesser evil than a rifle. I rarely use a pistol myself (this part is my own opinion here, no need for flame wars) and almost exclusively for dungeons or fractals. I primarily use D/D & SB because I personally do not like the idea of the pistols on the Rogue type character of GW2. Also, if you take real world physics into example, a pistol is generally a small caliber weapon that is meant for quick movement when wielding. A rifle on the other hand is at it’s most effective when sitting still so that you can brace it and have good accuracy.

I have practiced with both before (military brat) so I have a little bit of experience with this topic.

A lot of people fail to realize how unwieldy, loud, difficult to use, slow, and generally cumbersome rifles are, especially with ones that resemble those in GW2. Last I knew, most cutthroats and pickpockets prefer light and quiet weapons, or ones that don’t even kill people at all.

The thief doesn’t need a bunker/nuke sniper setup anyways since that’s what Killshot rifle war is already for.

But that’s border-line impossible. As long as the healer isn’t required, the fight will ALWAYS be optimized around DPS and clearing faster as long as the encounters are designed the way they are.

You do realize dungeon speed clears are measured in milliseconds, and some of the competitive times are within fractions of a second, right? We have a very competitive speed clear community here. Support and tanks are always viable, but it’s the speed clear composition that’s near impossible to balance around and will remain binary forever as long as a strategy is optimal, which there will always be one to due to the fact perfect balance is impossible.

That’s why I don’t understand complaints about party compositions. It’s actually just dungeon design being made this way and has nothing to do with mythical balancing issues pertaining to a set of gear or complaints about trinities or whatever it is.

Trinities exist on the basis that the game must be designed around that strategy as optimal and required to an extent, otherwise the entire concept of a trinity wouldn’t exist. It doesn’t solve anything because it still makes people do things one way or another that they don’t like to do – only that it makes the content harder if not impossible to do without compliance, whereas in GW2, tanks and suport make things easier but ultimately just slower.

Sure it’s a flaw in dungeon and AI design, but the issues currently have nothing to do with the classes or builds.

Linken.6345:

DeceiverX.8361:

I always run full damage/burst and any game that prevents me from achieving this successfully will be a game I no longer play or fund.

Yes you will still be able to run full damage but why should everyone in your team have to be full damage?

That is at their discretion. I always join “all welcome” parties or parties without requirements and they are very easily found just because I’d rather play with people who aren’t snobs about speedrun optimization when they’re pugging in the first place. Usually these players know their class and the nuances of their builds more deeply, anyways.

If a trinity is forced, DPS no longer becomes a successful style of play because it’s too-often played by most people without enough healers and tanks.

I don’t care what other people play. I want to play my way and not have to give a kitten about what other people are playing. That’s why I’m playing this game to begin with.

This “issue” lies in that people mostly just like playing DPS paired with it being a more time-efficient way to play if the players possess a decent individual level of skill. The rudeness of the community will always be there no matter what the necessary requirements are. To me this “problem” just stems from people who wants to play the tank/support role in speed runs and simply aren’t able to because of optimization and the lack of need. News flash, but this is how DPS players feel in most other games.

The problem regarding a lack of diversity comes from ANet designing dungeons around draining health bars and draining health bars only. There is little a tanky or supportive player can bring to the table in these situations.

Hard trinities, soft trinities… it doesn’t matter. The dominant style of play will always be the one enforced this way, diverse or not. If content requires a healer or support, they will become mandatory, and others will be kicked. In GW2, it’s just the opposite is occurring because some theory-crafters and speed-runners are using gear sets based around DPS since it’s the optimal way to play in terms of time spent per unit of reward.

I always run full damage/burst and any game that prevents me from achieving this successfully will be a game I no longer play or fund.

Practice :P

Eventually you’ll get a better feel for the default controls unless you’d prefer to keybind them elsewhere. Some people prefer to put some of their primary weapon skills on their mouse buttons. Pretty much just get creative and figure it out as you go and keep tweaking it until it feels right. Give it a chance first, though, unless you know how you’d like to set up otherwise.

Gloominess can be rather lame for an MMO environment. And depending on climate, the time ratio is fairly accurate.

Darker nights might leave some people with vision issues. It’s probably just a way to keep everything visible for peoples’ differences in display brightness and just being able to showcase the world.

I was expecting this thread to be about Sigil of Night, honestly,

JohnnyZero.5619:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I have an experiment for you guys. I suspect that a large part of what people have an issue with is the fire and air procs. Honestly, I can handle rapid fire. It’s easy to see, it’s obvious when they do it. But the auto attacks. WOW they hurt.

So try playing power ranger (6/6/2/0/0) without using fire and air. If you try it, tell me if you feel a difference. I might try that tonight and see what happens.

Fire and air procs are not exclusive to longbow rangers though. Every zerker build uses them, and they still play second fiddle to the celestial, sustain meta. Are you insinuating that fire/air sigils might be a problem?

This thread as been about the discrepancy between the advertised 1500 range of longbow Rangers and the actual range. This post seems a bit out of left field.

Actually, yes.

Multi-hit combos get the most from fire/air since in a very short amount of time the procs are basically guaranteed to happen. One can run PTV and still proc fire/air in most cases from RF. Fire + air also accounts for about 40% or more of RF’s overall damage dealt without any dodges, and accounts for almost all of the burst when a double dodge is used from the attacks before and after it, almost negating the effects of dodging RF in general.

I have made a separate thread for fire/air discussion being unhealthy for the competitive aspect of GW2 under general discussion, but it appears most people prefer their gimmicky burst specs. Fire/Air is taken by DPS/berserker/burst builds on the sheer basis that no matter how you run the numbers, these sigils are actually just the best unless compared against force/impact with bloodlust and 25 stacks of might on an 80%+ critical chance on high-scaling attacks. Of course sigil of impact is never going to see permanent uptime, either, making any other damage-based composition sub-optimal in every regard for damage output.

LB ranger can be changed to 1500 if and only if all of the other projectile skills affected this way also get changed and the range of castable/ground-targeted AOE skills maxes out of the opposite point of the circle rather than its center. Otherwise, dodge roll forward and use a long-range option as well, use terrain to dis-engage, or force your way forward towards them and avoid essential damaging skills. Then again, an auto on fire+air can kill someone who may be able to survive the base attack/crit as it may turn from a 2k hit to a 6k one.

Dhemize.8649:

Michael Henninger.7451:

Timelord.8190:

Ahka.6705:

Thanks Gus for dealing with our siege griefer that was following our group around yesterday. It was a most welcome sight to see them dealt with. You rock!!

What did he do with the griefer?

Gus suspended the account. I believe it was for two weeks. They were caught placing irrelevant siege to block placement of legitimate siege. We also saw their placement of 50 or so siege as well as ‘stacking’ interact objects (plates of food, for example).

If they violate again the accounts held by them will be terminated.

By “accounts held by them” do you mean all troll accounts purchased along with their main account gets banned? How is the linking of accounts verified? I do like the sound of this idea as it would give second thought to those who buy “throw away troll accounts” that feel no consequence to their main account. If they invested in trolling, they likely have more than one troll account.

Biggest cash grab: have a troll sale weekend, then ban them all when they think they’re being sneaky. lmao

Usually this is how bans work when the justification of the ban is detrimental to a lot of players/abusing a game system or that of botting and hacking.

You won’t convince anyone to stop if you only ban the single account.

Moral of the story? Don’t do it, and don’t share your account with anyone else under the pretense that they might do it on your account and get all of yours banned as well.

I’d imagine massive clipping problems happening, or it just looking silly.

Imagine the clipping of the bottom of the shaft through one’s body during say, a HB.

The destroyer scythe is an option for the hammer(?) IIRC.

That highly depends on the class matchup. 5-7 seconds is a very reasonable death speed and in some cases quite long. My combo of mug + CnD + stab takes approximately .8 seconds to execute in full.

I already do and continue to one-shot people. And I do not use fire/air. I run glassy by the terms of valkyrie armor, but again, I know exactly what to expect for skill coefficients and when as incoming damage and when to dodge to avoid being nuked. Dodging randomly might work sometimes, but knowing when to get hit is part of playing DPS properly. Anyone who claims that the strategy of playing DPS is to never take damage is completely clueless on how to play DPS because they’ll end up dealing more damage as an off-tank and face-tanking some of it being more durable.

If this proc’ed fire/air, the total damage dealt from the stab alone would be over 27k. I have gone higher, but usually I fight periph and am unable to screenshot the damage logs until way after the fight where normally they are way out of range to see. I really beg to differ about the whole “nobody can one-shot anyone” claim you seem insistent on making. Bear in mind the CnD also failed to crit.

We’ll probably not see an engine update up until the next iteration of the franchise. That’s a lot of work to do for something that probably won’t increase profits by much.

If they’re just verbally harassing/trash-talking/cussing you out, I normally just agree with them, block them, and report them for behaving in such a way.

I’ve pretty much left sPvP because of the community, though. GW2 might have one of the friendliest communities as a whole, but the sPvP segment is worse than most other PvP-based games I’ve played.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

…

Your response to learning about countering air/fire only occurs after you’ve been hit by air/fire (and possibly being killed), and even then, it doesn’t say much. A way to counter your opponent should not be based on dying to them the first time from RNG despite playing well to then predict some RNG and be scared of it. If I build air/fire on my thief, I can one-shot any build in the game aside from a Nomad’s warrior from the extra damage. Don’t you think that’s a little bit silly to be shortening a fight by such a margin, when without the sigils, I would not be able to do so?

Great players, perhaps on your League “example” will know if they can stay in lane at 200 hp and secure a kill by examining their opponents’ cooldowns and map placement and calculating how much damage their rotations will deal as opposed to their enemies, and if they will be able to survive. If it means getting assist gold without risk of lane pushing and marginal gains to the enemy, it can be worth it for itemization purposes to further advance the game or push killgold into your more-deserving carries/allies in the near future if they can cover the lane, finish the kill, etc.

What you’re really saying is that because there’s a chance, you should be prepared for it. That’s basically like saying that because you buy a lotto ticket, you should be prepared to win by getting into contact with an accountant and financial adviser to help you handle your “future potential earnings.”

Back to League, they’ve re-written their critical chance algorithms at least twice on the basis that the previous algorithms were based too heavily on RNG and creating odd discrepancies with critical attacks either firing off multiple times in a row and/or not firing off for a period of time. They’ve re-written these algorithms to create a better distribution of damage to increase stability because both as and against ADC’s the damage was too unpredictable and created an unstable and imbalanced playing environment because kills were being garnered more by luck than skill from predicting a realistic damage rating range per unit of time. The critical hit chance/damage output was unable to be reliably predicted. Sound familiar? Oh right, that’s the point of this thread. This is a principle of game design. This was something the pro players wanted because some people can do these calculations on the fly and can react to incoming damage quickly enough. In the case of fire/air, there actually is no reaction time, unlike these so-called “fast” kills that take 3-5 seconds that exist in League. There is reacting to those skills. Shields, ults, immunity, CC, or straight-up out-damaging the target can prevent death here. There is no tell on air/fire to know, not even such a “small” amount of time.

That’s why I made this thread. The damage sources are too unstable with no tell and frankly create a PvP environment that it less competitive than it actually should be and will continue to be held back in this way. I’m not saying there aren’t other problems, but this is a very easy fix that will not actually affect much.

I did. I also responded indirectly towards it by mentioning expected damage ranges, expected incoming damage, etc. Did you read my post? But here; we can perform some basic analysis since it seems so desired.

Air/fire sigils do a monstrous amount of damage. In fact, backstab only does around 22% more damage from power scaling. The damage component of force is applied after all other modifiers, and if we say, on a berserker build, fire/air procs for around a reasonable 3500 combined damage on a low-power build per 3 seconds, we can compare under ideal circumstances the necessary damage outputs of force/night to compete.

So on that 3500 damage per 3 seconds (mind you, these have scaling and we won’t look into scaling modifiers/might etc.), we can best assume that the effective damage increase is approximately 1167 per second on an all-crit build. We’ll take into account an 80% critical strike chance per most DPS berserker builds, and suggest that approximately 1 in 5 attacks will not crit, making the damage per second increase closer to .8 * 1166 = 933 rounded down.

We’ll now look at force/night, which nets a 15% increase in total damage dealt. In order to achieve the 933 damage per second benchmark, 6220 damage per second must be reached baseline before these modifiers. This is a very high number in PvP environments and of course, compared with no might stacking. Ultimately, the effects of force/night only start really pulling ahead in PvP environments under the effects of 25 might and a higher-scaling damage coefficient than the combined 1.95 / 3 * .8 = .52 damage coefficient of fire + air. It then only slightly under-performs most auto-chains.

What does this mean? You only get better sustained DPS when under ideal circumstances of force/night and land all attacks while under the effects of high might (and frankly, force is not the heavy lifter here; night is). This implies that fire/air is almost quantitatively better in every regard in the PvP environment in both burst damage AND sustained DPS. We also know the sustained DPS model doesn’t work; LB rangers are the prime example here, where their previous DPS was still overall fairly high and designed around sustained damage, but they were never viable in the PvP formats because of a distinct lack of burst. Now all of a sudden we have seen an explosion of use because of a channel time reduction which rewarded burst damage. Burst damage in general is how you in win PvP. It’s why good teams are good, and why so many of the current metagame strategies are emplored to counteract it while also dealing it themselves. Conditions are not comparable here because they ignore toughness values and overall have much more depth and difficulty regarding removal on a class to class basis with distinct builds. The investment I spoke of is so low on the sheer basis that there is arguably nothing better at achieving this result than fire/air itself, and fire/air provides a large sum of damage with no effective counter-play opportunity.

It was meant primarily for cost reduction during periods before large-scale consumer energy existed primarily for farming and business practices during periods where light came from oil lamps and candles. Changing the clock hour to better sync with the daylight changes of the seasons led to lower energy costs and made farming days easier through the temperature differences between early morning and midday, and midday and afternoon/evening.

It’s only really noticeable in colder-climate northern regions where without it, the sun would rise too late in the morning in winter and set too early in the summer. Even now it has some relevance in winter because of how late sunrise is and how early the sun sets; it would waste a lot of energy to provide light on a global level because of the darkness of the season.

Victory.2879:

I find it amusing that someone relying on crit hits (ie rng) on a zerk build is saying that fire proc on a sigil is OP and should be toned down.

Here comes a zerk warrior, 50% crit chance (just as an example). Total non-crit damage from HB let’s say 4k. total crit damage from HB 12k. Should I dodge as he might crit everything, or should I save a dodge and eat the damage?

So your argument is that the rng on a sigil with a cooldown is OP, but that your rng on your 12sec cooldown (whatever it is, not got it in front of me atm) monster damage skill is Ok?

By your argument cit chance and indeed any other ‘chance’ should be removed (how about ‘chance of proc’ on say a water field, etc?) to ‘level the playing field’…imagine how stale the already restricted build choice in pvp would become then!

That’s the thing, though. A war goes to HB you, and you dodge or reposition through a majority of the damage. Eating a HB is stupid in any form. It’s always going to deal a very large sum of damage, and the individual critical strikes are fairly low-damage hits; you can expect any given one to hit for 1.5-2k.

What you can’t expect is for the third strike to proc fir/air and deal an extra 4-5k damage. Yes, crits are RNG, but almost every mainstream build using berserker gear has high fury uptime or uses intelligence sigils, traits to increase critical chance, etc. Usually this means something along the lines of a 70-80% critical strike chance at a given point in time.

This means that after taking one or two attacks and dealing one or two attacks, when examining the opponent’s weapon set, one can easily derive their overall gear and trait distribution. This is what inspires counter-play as one can examine the opponent’s gimmicks, strengths, and weaknesses without actually having to fight them extensively if they are knowledgeable about the class and what too expect and when.

Air/Fire on the other hand… you can dodge the 10k eviscerate knowing the animation and gear after the war uses HB and endure pain, but then assume you have a few seconds to retaliate. Unfortunately the next strike the war does ends up being a fire/air proc and deals almost as much damage from the eviscerate itself. You may have believed to have been safe with a few thousand health and an ability ready to finish off the war before he could finish you and heal, but ultimately fire/air decides the fight prematurely from RNG. A critical strike alone would not under any circumstances have killed you.

There is nothing wrong with critical damage as RNG because it establishes a range of predictable damage and can be fairly-easily determined by previous knowledge. Fire/Air cannot be and can turn any auto-attack into a very high-hitting nuke with no tell or way to predict.

A thief gets ready to backstab you and you expect around 8-10k. At 25k HP, you think you’re fine to absorb it. A 3k mug and 6k CnD nets 9k, and the high range of a 10k backstab will still leave you with 6k left over to break and recover from with an immunity. Turns out that thief decides to use fire/air, and deals an extra 4k damage and slips in a 2k auto as soon as you’re activating the immunity. Shame you’re now dead on the ground.

I dual main a backstab thief and a berserker LB ranger. I understand people don’t like losing their damage, and these are some of the classes that get the most out of fire/air sigils. It’s not at all any hate towards the classes themselves; actually I think it’s wildly on the contrary to the point where I know almost exactly how much damage I will be taking based upon the utilities (or lack of icons) I see being run and what weapons are being used in what settings. I know exactly when to heal and memorize the opponent’s cooldown timers, likely initiative regen and current resource ranges as I’ve always done in PvP games to be able to wildly out-play my enemies.

Fire/air cannot be predicted and cannot be out-played. Every competitive game out there attempts to remove this aspect as much as possible from their games because they know it removes the competitive and skill-based nature of things and does not reward those enough who attempt to master what they do. Critical strikes are only truly random when they cannot be predicted to a reasonable extent and the reward for doing so is massive; as in, let’s just say the default modifier was inversely proportional to the chance you have (so more crit chance = less crit damage) and in an instance of one fight in a million, the enemy war with 1% crit chance (thus much higher modifier) crits on his entire HB, or gets the lucky eviscerate crit on a huge modifier. Would it be reasonable to lose a fight this way? I don’t think so. The damage doesn’t matter; it can be avoided and is on a cooldown on use, not on hit, whereas the effects from fire/air are not.

Andred.1087:

There are other non-RNG-based options for DPS-increasing sigils, arguably on par with these, if not better. I don’t see why this is a problem.

Such as?

Only bloodlust will yield similar outputs. Force is worse in all regards outside of PvE.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Carighan.6758:

Andred.1087:

There are other non-RNG-based options for DPS-increasing sigils, arguably on par with these, if not better. I don’t see why this is a problem.

Also, risk management (as in, planning around all potential proc chances) is a very real skill a player should have to master to be good at a game. If everything was reliable, a game would be too easy to learn in many cases as outcomes would be too predictable.

This. And burst is a specific playstyle too. If people want to be glass cannon let them. If they’re not a powerhouse, the dmg isn’t as effective or bursty. That’s the whole point of being a zerker is to do high armounts of dmg fast.

It’s just 2 different playstyles.

Some builds revolve around rotating cds (aka burst).

Others revolve around steady dps(aka what you;re suggesting)

The two are not the same, and should never be.

Its not a design flaw. It’s EXACTLY how it should be. Other mmo’s have way worse versions that this. And they’re still balanced.

Yes, they rotate cooldowns. They don’t and shouldn’t depend on RNG.
Berserker players play in berserker gear bcause it nets the highest damage output of all of the specs. If “burst” damage was dependent on another set, this argument may have some merit. Unfortunately in GW2 the gearing scenario is one and the same.

Burst shouldn’t be unpredictable beyond the scope of the skill or effect causing it. Fire and air combined deal damage similar to skills which are designed around having a large risk for a big payout. Sigils should not account for burst because there is no tell or way to react to it. It’s why various skills over time have been nerfed since the beta and given tells; without them they were just too strong with no way to truly counterplay.

Skill in a PvP environment comes from unpredictability and one’s ability to out-predict the opponent paired with reflex speed and team cohesion. Building for burst damage is absolutely a style of play, but if always comes at a very large risk and some degree of predictability; thief has to set up for backstab, ranger has to stand around shooting for RF, warrior needs to have a massive windup on killshot or a big lunging jump for eviscerate. Guards need to be extremely fragile, elementalists must stand idle to AoE or be extremely fragile to burs single targets. Necros and mesmers must skip out on a lot of utility. The list goes on.

Being dependent on unpredictability from a third party is not healthy from a game design perspective. It removes active engagement and thought while the actions are performed for you by the system and takes away the component of self-made unpredictability which nets success in any competitive environment when game players face each other. This is apparent in many games, and why the observed competitive scene often aligns itself to games with little RNG and where new strategies and famous wins come from.

Hello folks.

I’d like to raise a proposal about what I believe is a major design flaw in regards to some of the sigils we have available for use, notably fire and air.

Now I understand that fire/air are basically necessities for optimizing DPS. I also understand the pre-requisite effects of critical strikes needing to occur in order to proc.

The thing is, these sigils are designed poorly. It’s strictly unpredictable RNG burst on a very short cooldown that may or may not happen. It defeats the purpose of a lot of evasion against major skills, and simply, these sigils do absolutely monstrous amounts of damage for how little the investment cost is.

Why is this bad? Because it demotes the rest of the sigils and makes PvP very unstable. A fire/air proc at the right time can cause someone to die who’s playing well and avoiding major bombs, or simply having no effect at all when paired against effects like damage immunity. GW2’s PvP formats are already considered very lack-luster by many enthusiasts for the sake of imbalances and finnicky, gimmicky mechanics surrounding gear and builds with burst damage, and I do believe these sigils are major contributors as to why burst damage builds are so binary in their representation; either they absolutely demolish something through a massive spike of damage with no tell and no prevention mechanism, or simply are wasted for a period which can cause the user to die.

I’m proposing a suggestion to change these sigils to make counter-play and strategic damage absorption a part of the GW2 PvP experience, be it WvW or sPvP by removing the RNG element of the sigils and instead replacing their effects with a more constant and reasonable alternative.

Reworked Sigil of Fire and Air:
(100 base damage) + .15 damage coefficient (fire)
(100 base damage) + .2 damage coefficient (air)
Deal extra damage whenever you perform a critical strike (.75s ICD) Single/AOE effect remains.

So I know what you’re thinking – “That’s a huge nerf to scaling!”
Yes, you’re right to an extent, but do recall that the losses are not that big because of the lower cooldown. The thing is, the scaling and damage output as they are is currently too high. The fact that these sigils grant an extra 40%-300% damage increase on a given critical strike is enormous and makes it very difficult to predict exactly how much damage may be incoming. I play a berserker build, so I get it, but it’s genuinely absurd to believe that one can evade a major bomb like backstab, rapid fire, or Eviscerate, and then on the next attack still take 3-4k extra damage from nowhere. If we all had infinite dodges it wouldn’t be so bad, but we don’t. The thing is, as it currently stands, these sigils account for way too much damage with no real way of shutting them down.

Why the ICD?
Because without it, multi-hit effects like rapid fire end up doing more damage. It’d be the same as taking two of each effect on such multi-hit effects. With the ICD, the damage faces a slight nerf over a few attacks, but the shorter ICD keeps the overall damage fairly similar. This is to keep it close in-line with sigil of force and night.

I get that people don’t want to net a DPS loss, but I think this is a necessary movement to keep the sigils still valuable but not accounting for huge chunks of overall damage and absolutely absurd burst damage potential while putting a bit of emphasis on the need for precision to make these sigils worthwhile, helping bring into balance the DPS from berserker and assassin’s builds while solidifying PvP and making damage more predictable and playable both for and against. It also bumps the value of sigil of force, and can allow expand-ability on improvements to precision/ferocity burst builds without making the burst damage too crazy.

Jana.6831:

Multiple mechanics to avoid backstab: count to three and dodge; the backstab is wasted, CnD gives 5 secs stealth, I can waste as many as five backstabs during that time (my game is lagging, so I usually run after enemies and try to stab them) but if someone uses a dodge they’re pretty far away from me, also stealth does have a cooldown, it’s “revealed” and all mechanics gaining stealth cost a lot of initative. A blinding powder heartseeker combo is 3 secs of stealth and you’re not really close to your enemy anyway, so good luck getting behind them in time, especially if they run around and/or dodge. More tips to avoid backstabs: use basilisk venom (when thief) and your auto attack, stealth yourself (when thief) make yourself invulnerable (every other class but thief), apply heavy AoE. You can’t really wait out every invulnerability there is as a thief, problem is that stealth doesn’t last indefinitely – my friend uses all kinds of that when we’re duelling and I have a hard time getting my backstabs in.

Favourite fight against a thief was when he was spawn camping and I just died and was umm less than pleased – so he pops his basilisk venom and tries to steal while I dodge: All of his stuff is wasted and he was dead less than 5 secs after that.

Well what you can do is see them; they usually don’t run around stealthed – if they run in groups you’ll have a hard time fighting thieves, yes as the group members no matter the classes are distracting/dealing enough damage without that backstabbing thief.

Btw: I saw someone saying the SA line is rubbish the other day, someone who wanted advise with thief, I think. Was that you? If not; try going full SA to get some healing while stealthed. See it as a training wheel if you like or whatever.

Oh and I use blinding power for when a thief surprises me – they don’t get their backstab in.

CnD gives 3 seconds of stealth. 4 if traited in SA. There is also no “waste” on backstab unless you hit something other than the target.

@OP
Daze and blinds are very powerful tools against stab thieves. Headshot at 900 range could interrupt a steal → CnD chain and give you a chance to evade properly.

As a thief, it’s usually preferable to strike second against another thief. If you see them, buff BV AFTER them unless they enter stealth, and get ready on a stun break. Make them engage you with theirs and break from BV and evade before they can land their own backstab while attacking them while they’re stunned.

Stealth lasts indefinitely with decent initiative management and the right utilities. This is especially so with shadow arts. Playing the thief and learning patterns/common placement techniques will make you able to predict the opponent’s movements better. Do not be afraid to auto-attack the air. If you hit them, the chain will continue, meaning that last strike hit them while stealthed and you can keep on them in that area.

Learning steal range will let you evade better as well. At around 900 range a dodge roll will often force other thieves to blow their steal benefits, mug damage/effects and BV. Learning where and when most thieves will engage from will help you beat them easily.

If they do stealth close to you, dodge on 2-2.5 seconds. Most thieves will not wait on the latter fraction of stealth to stab as unpredictable CC/cripples can cause it to be wasted otherwise. If they’re D/P, wait closer to 2.5.

I’d not run more than 2 points in SA. If you’re dying, use tankier gear and work your way closer to DPS as time progresses. Extensive use of SA/rejuv will create bad habits and promote poor play in the long run.

Venoms work excellently with pistols. I’d argue that P/P is venom’s best weapon set. Do recall with the Leeching Venoms trait that the damage only occurs once per hit regardless of the number of venoms currently active. Aside from BV, all venoms are instant-cast, and P/P just happens to have an 8-part attack (Unload). With some practice, you can use something like Ice Drake Venom, cast Unload, and then as soon as you’re halfway through Unload, cast Skale Venom on the remaining strikes, proccing all instances of leeching venom in one unload. With Lingering venoms on a proper time, you’re dealing an additional 4k damage from unload this way and healing for a substantial amount as well – nothing to sneeze at.

Force/Impact, Force/Accuracy, Force/Impact, and Impact/Intelligence. It varies depending on my mood for traits. The screenshot there was Force/Accuracy. You can check a brief description of my intelligence sigil build in the “post your thief build” thread near the most recent page.

Kousetsu.1627:

Where are the days of 8k steal crits, 14 ~ 18k backstabs and 7k cloak and daggers? screw you balancing!

They’re still here (aside from mug crits). Note that CnD didn’t crit on the second one as the mug dealt basically the same damage.

OP’s build just isn’t built for fully optimizing stabs. An extremely disproportionate amount of the damage is coming from fire/air procs, which I refuse to use.

I’ve gone higher but just have not been able to screenshot them .

Well folks, you demanded an expansion and got one.

Shame, as the features look promising. Sad that such a big, “living” world will succumb to the same fate as most pre-expansion areas of most other games.

The expansion in regards to the base game and future features should never be neglected. Especially so for a living world.

Or they could just give them the longbow and make petless rangers happy with a 1200 range stealth-less, blind-less mobility-based weapon. The thief doesn’t need more burst damage/“sniping.” It needs a tool to at the least hit people over WvW keep walls (and what will be stronghold presumably) with a little bit of sustained pressure and emphasis on mobility. Shortbow almost provides this, but its damage is just sub-par and has too much necessary utility to buff it back to the way it was.

I don’t really get the purpose of the weapon, either, should it be what we end up with. Rifles are slow and clunky and the only fitting theme is a long-ranged burst damage dealer, which would just be over-powered it held any reasonable amount of damage or be wildly under-powered if it couldn’t kill quickly enough.

It will never be a useful source of damage in the format. Before CnD’s nerf D/D was somewhat reasonable as it netted overall a large sum of damage.

Anything too bursty would make them overpowered by design (the perfect decap/roamer).

Critical damage and power values are way too low relative to PvE/WvW to make the skill worthwhile, and all classes and builds have inherently higher toughness and vitality on even the glassiest builds relative to PvE and WvW as well – sometimes up to 50% more.

For as long as thief remains so mobile with the stealth access it has, damage-based backstab will never be a viable way of playing in sPvP. Perhaps specializations can change this, but I would not expect much.

Zero Day.2594:

Stuff

This debate is literally on whether or not Shadow Shot is a teleport. By the game definition it is (See below).

Shadow Show blinds and teleports you to a target enemy. This enemy can be another player in the opposite direction or one simply on the fringes of a fight. A ranger from 1500 starts using RF, and a hammer warrior is using earthshaker on an ally behind you. You can Shadow Shot the war during earthshaker to blind him to prevent the CC/damage, and escape the range of RF because now the ranger is too far away. Obviously this is even better when the target hitting you is a melee user. It can be used on ambients, other creatures, structures, and so on. It has amazing escape potenial when used properly. Teleports ignore collision. Ground targeted != teleport. The definition of teleport according to the GW2 wiki:

:

Teleport (alternatively, flash) is a mechanic that causes the user or target(s) to instantly move from one location to another.

IA and IStrike can be used while immobilized because immob isn’t a stun. Stun breakers work only on fear, knockback, pull, sink, float, “petrified” via BV (see stun) knockdowns, dazes, and stuns. Immobilizes do not disable skills and thus allow for their use. These skills still prevent the target from moving normally after their use except for IStrike, because it removes conditions.

Most builds either run minimum 3 deep in trickery or deep stealth investment in SA and thus use (or if not should be using) infusion of shadow. You’re looking at 5-6 initiative minimum on these builds before considering the regen of one gained just from the casting time of BP + HS, two for any kind of movement or reposition, before further examining the regen effect bonuses from say, Infil Signet’s passive, steal, etc.

The reset potential is associated with cooldowns and the effects of many thieves using Shadow Rejuv in WvW. Full healing and removing conditions allows a faster/better reset than most classes can boast. Doing this blinds, and the lack of dependency on getting close to the target to stealth is why D/P is the preferred choice for permastealth builds and stealth builds in general as it avoids the potential of CC effects or massive spikes at melee range. It’s simply cutting down on the risk element of D/D. Does trying to CnD off of a medi guard or terrormancer sound like a good idea to you, especially without the teleport from Shadow Shot? I certainly do not think so.

A fight can reset for the thief before its opponent when using conditions, too. Applying long-lasting poison or another condition can lead the thief to resetting OOC by not taking damage while still forcing their opponent to deal with incoming damage or conditions. Personally, if I’m sitting at 70% health, I’ll rarely blow cleanses for a poison ticking for nothing when these skills are usually doubling as both stun breaks and mass cleanses for the real condition builds out there. OOC is determined by proximity and time spent not taking damage. You do not need to be a mile away to OOC.

ISignet is one of the best escapes in WvW, which is what the conversation was about, because IS teleports the user to maximum range even if the target is beyond maximum range. You can click a creature, another player, or even a targetable structure like an enemy gate or wall and use IS from say, 3k range, and it will teleport you 900 towards it.

Correct, which is why I’d like to see improved scaling sigils versus just auto-damage ones based off of RNG, or even have fire/air/blood apply every strike but deal small scaling-based damage and be able to critically hit to keep the DPS similar.

You’re right in that in PvP power/precision is an underperformer and thus game-balance wise on a broader level it’s fitting these exist. I still believe they break PvP formats though because of the unpredictability.

For example, I just came from fighting a ranger on my thief, did evades perfectly and whatnot, got him to around ~1000 hp left, and just as I was about to finish him off while having 5k HP, I took an auto-attack for 2k + 4k from the fire/air and fell over dead. I knew I had him but RNG won him the fight on that particular attack. I’d already taken a 4k fire/air previously from those few remaining hits on RF landing and proccing both.

I’m hoping we see some improvements in time, but I’m not expecting much to become of it.

Its effectively guaranteed multi-hit gives a massive number of proc chances very quickly. You can evade most of RF, but between beginning and end and the next auto, about three strikes will land on blowing two evades followed by a LRS. This is enough to basically guarantee fire + air as it is expected of these four shots, two will crit, and thus fire + air will be procced.

As I said, fire+air being too strong isn’t unique to the ranger so much as it is emphasized on the ranger; evading multi-hits is much easier on other classes since either the attacks do not track, do not deal as much damage, or have a shorter duration which allows for a double dodge especially to negate the procs from occurring within such a small time frame from such relative safety.

Is the matchup of thief and ranger a fair one? I’d say so for the most part, yes – at the very least for LB. S/T+Shortbow conditions is a whole other beast which destroys thieves, but that’s a whole other issue. In the case of LB berserker vs thief, it’s pretty much whoever gets the jump on who. I’ve definitely been killed by rangers before from RF alone at 20k HP on my thief (again solely because of fire/air procs as it’s mathematically impossible to RF me for my maximum HP without 25 might and all criticals), but I’ve also killed them instantly with just mug and cloak and dagger alone.

I’m much an advocate for the removal of fire/air and the implementation of better sigils for damage which allow for more predictable and reliable damage patterns for counter-play, but I know I’m in a small minority as it seems everyone likes their burst without actually needing to trait for what I believe is a real damage investment build.

Whether or not it is being used as an escape does not change the fact that the skill is a teleport. It also allows for faster re-engages instead of steal, allows you to get past denial to finish off a weak foe, and so on.

Necros, eles, and even medi guards should not be problems with your build. You play SA and should be able to sustain easily against them. Medi guards die to shortbow and quick follow-through punishing. Only in sPvP is the matchup inequality pronounced because the thief class as a whole in sPvP lacks the damage it needs from repeated skill nerfs and inherently lower power/ferocity values than WvW with more inherent durability across all classes in sPvP. Consequently, the thief cannot use SA to sustain as an equal because SA is not effective for taking points and is thus not used and considered bad practice/bad play.

Eles and Necros die to shadow shot and head shot alone. The blind and repeated in-out capabilities paired with clutch interrupts on their important channel skills will force them to either aggressively kill you with everything they have as quickly as possible, or die. It’s very easy to prevent that with D/P’s stealth access not requiring the thief to get close.

The nerf reduced the potency of blind spam builds mashing 5 from giving invincibility. As much as people try to argue it can be attacked through from melee by 10 units, a non-braindead thief could kite inside of it and not take damage for BP’s duration. I deliberately ran a P/P blindspam sustain cleric’s build as a joke to a sPvP dueling tournament and came in second place by spamming 5 and kiting inside. I got out-played by miles in many of the fights, but still won because the effects were way too strong when used, stacked, and timed properly. Taking into WvW was just as hilarious because it actually dealt damage.

Great if you personally lost playing soldier’s. I continue to troll with it sometimes and win a lot more than I should because of it. I also doubt you’ve seen very many tanky thieves with a reasonable level of skill seeing as soldier’s is recommended for new players as training wheels. The build isn’t fun, but it’s a lot more effective than people give it credit. Meta D/P soldier’s would be a failure, but for obvious reasons in that the set is already a complete one without it.

I have no problems running in the blob. I actually do better there than solo roaming because the condition removal is better than what my thief has on its own. Maybe bad blobs won’t help much, but any finishers off a light field and I’m better off than I normally am.

Learn to survive well enough without depending on SA for its utility and doors open. I’ve been contracted a few times for my frontline ganks and commander killing speed. You won’t be of any use to the blob if you can’t down a high-profile target instantly and still suffer from low hp and lack of skill to escape or keep killing more people.

Shadow shot and steal are teleports behaviorally. They ignore denial effects, leap effects, ground-targeted effects, and so on.

D/P is honestly the powerful set that it is because of the fact that it can spam 3 for a high damage coefficient teleporting blind, has access to permanent stealth uptime, access to a near-infinite amount of blinds if managed correctly, and repeated heal/skill interrupts from range while recovering.

D/P is strong, especially when paired with SA, because it gets all of the utility the class does not have elsewhere which many other classes do (and in this case more), on effectively no cooldowns where a multitude of strategies can be employed to exploit your opponent’s weaknesses.

Soldier’s thief works a lot better than people might expect. The critical damage loss since the nerf to critical damage has promoted tankier play even more in WvW seeing as the gains end up almost negligible and power ends up substantially higher when fueled off of food items. I’ve run soldier’s thief and still manage around 8k backstabs with absolutely silly durability relative to berserker/valkyrie.

As a thief/ranger dual main I’ll state this:

Good thieves won’t die as soon as they leave stealth. I’ve said investing more than 2 points in SA is a crutch that doesn’t teach thieves how to play well before, and I’ll say it again. Conversely, WvW LB ranger deals far too much damage along with some other builds not because of the inherent damage it deals but because it pretty much guarantees repeated fire/air procs. You can be very good on evades but still take 7k damage to the face from RF because 4k came from fire/air.

Imho, I’d rather see barrage replace the damage output from RF as I think the skill itself is a bit too strong, and barrage’s damage too weak overall (an evade or just some strafing can avoid the damage and an interrupt can just stop it cold), and the retal punishment in larger groups is often overbearing. A lower cooldown with perhaps slightly less damage dealt but more damage dealt per hit/few damage pulses paired with a smaller casting animation or one which allowed movement would probably bring the skill in line and allow for a tweak to RF.

Generally speaking, I’d like to see more options for glass builds in PvP environments as simply put, fire/air is overwhelmingly strong to the point where nothing else can come even close to competing; only at around the 20k damage per second mark would Sigil of Force prove equivalent, and even then, the RNG burst makes your damage more difficult to avoid and impossible to properly react to.