@OP:
It probably has to do with you being on a glassy build that imho doesn’t work for WvW because sPvP gives everyone more defensive stats, especially the thief, than normally in PvE/WvW, and far too much outgoing damage reduced compared to WvW. sPvP simply isn’t comparable because what normally will not kill you there may end up one-shotting you in WvW depending on the build.
1v1 solo roaming can be done respectably without SA, although most solo roamers have gone condi dire in recent months because conditions are just so much stronger for small scale than direct damage in WvW. 2 in SA for Shadow’s Embrace is something a lot of people do to remove conditions, especially with D/P allowing for so much stealth access.
Frankly, I think the sPvP meta build is awful in WvW in most cases, because you can’t get carried by sPvP amulet’s inherent durability and lack the burst damage needed to really kill enemies quickly enough.
6 points Shadow Arts and P/D thieves are using crutches. 4 is tolerable, 2 is reasonable due to the roaming “meta” being conditions, and none garners respect as a player. If you’re not vastly out-numbered (I.E. 1v5+), you will be scoffed at for using it, basically. Ultimately, I’d just pick another build or class for solo roaming. The thief does so much better in small groups these days with how the roaming strategies are.
Other than speculating and exposing our wishes, there’s nothing we can really do with the informations we have now.
I don’t know if you discussed about all this here, (sorry couldn’t read everything) but what I am waiting for, since they made the trait respec free last year, is more about build diversity and easily switch between different kind of builds in different situations :
1 – Templates like in GW1
I guess everybody agrees with that, and I really think it may be coming soon !
It makes sense since specializations are not permanent.2 – Detach Traits and Stats
I want to be able to chose my traits without having to select specific stats for that. The idea wasn’t really bad at first (although not particularly interesting), but it is so poorly executed that I just want to get rid of this system that doesn’t make sense anymore. It is important to keep the trait lines, but I don’t want to have stats tied to them.
Once traits and stats are separated they could totally create/eliminate/rebalance some stats to put an end to the zerker meta and create dependencies between characters to bring back teamplay and roles in a party without having to go back to a pure trinity system. (also reworking healing skills and dodging will be important for that)Then we should be able to select our stats otherwise, and NEVER have two of them tied together ! (currently we have 2 stats per trait line) It cripples build diversity and participates into making characters autonomous which is one of the things that lead to the zerker meta. (you know, different roles in a party=group coordination=dependencies between characters != autonomous characters)
So trait points and stat points would be two different things.Sadly, as we saw the Revenant’s trait page in the PoI of this week, everything seems to have stayed the same. But there is a chance they just didn’t want to show us some of the changes they made before they announce them. I still have hope !
3 – Skill points to buy Traits
We have TONS of skillpoints that we are not using. We should be able to buy traits with them. It would be cool if it was one possibility among others (those which already exist could be kept).
Detaching traits from stats ultimately just creates an even narrow build path for players to follow down, because some lines have inherently better and more useful traits while providing “weaker” stats. Often these synergize with each other, anyways, kind of defeating the purpose in a lot of regards, too.
Skill points are no longer going to be granted at level 80 per the mastery system. Skill points are already the most gating issue for new players to buy traits as well, for many of them just unlock their utilities first and end up not having any left over to buy their actual traits. I’m hoping we see this dependency actually removed more so than the gold one as I know of many new players who have quit the game because they ran out of skill points and didn’t invest any in traits and didn’t feel like grinding them out. With the acquisition of SP removed, too, it begs the question as to what’s going to happen to the mystic forge on release of HoT after a long period of time when the skill point supply begins to drain.
I think there are a lot of system changes incoming that will help resolve these issues, but I don’t think the above two suggestions will be compatible with them.
A trinity solves nothing, because the entire concept of a trinity is but a pre-defined optimization strategy given as a framework to make it easier for new players to adapt to the game and to make it easier for the developers to balance the game around.
There is in all seriousness zero reason to require or set up around a pre-defined optimization strategy as a game developer unless it proves too challenging or impossible to do otherwise. GW2 has done so with a fair amount of success, and its major selling point was to have no trinity.
This thread is another PvE/Berserker “meta” thread in its essence, so I’ll dump this response I wrote on a previous thread:
DeceiverX.8361:The mythical “berserker meta” ONLY exists in dungeon PvE. ONLY. Conditions are so wildly OP in the other formats natively that the only reason they’re not as widely used is because of the fact that so many builds are used on the basis that they need to dedicate a huge quantity of resources to conditions just to be able to deal with them. With conditions being a binary form of fighting, either you have solid cleansing and you hard-counter conditions, or you don’t, and often times you just straight up lose. If conditions weren’t so potent and so spammable, we’d actually see a RWEN meta in WvW – yes, rangers – instead of GWEN, seeing as guards would have almost no use aside from some stability and general group support to cover a few eles.
Why not sPvP? Again, huge cleansing emphasis due to the potency of controlling conditions, and that a lot of condition builds just don’t really work at all for the format for various other reasons.
Open-world PvE? I mean it really doesn’t make much of a difference…
Trinities solve nothing but create new metas and move the toxicity to alternative demands, and implementing new things to buff the rest would have adverse effects on the rest of the game where berserker gear already is considered to be sub-optimal and very far away from the meta. Again, it just moves the toxicity around.
Dungeons designed around utilizing strengths and weaknesses of characters and players are what make things equally viable. Consider the Asura fractal level – some builds can facetank right across the poison gas and make the whole thing go by WAY faster. More of these types of designs focusing on tanks and supportive builds need to be intentionally implemented such that tanks and support builds can have a definitive purpose in dungeons.
Forcing a trinity, or any attempts to try and move the game to do so are not only futile in terms of their relative goals but will ultimately cause a larger outgoing player migration than incoming one; most GW2 players prefer the system as it is or do not care because they’re still playing the game. If they didn’t, they’d be playing something else. If a majority of players felt this way, then the game wouldn’t be so incredibly successful, would it?
Pretty much just improve situational awareness to not be caught off guard, and evade. S/D 3 can be repeated as long as it doesn’t hit anything.
Not running full berserker gear will also help considerably.
Because:
- Critical Damage scaling is capped in sPvP to much lower values than WvW/PvE.
- Aggressive build skills have been nerfed to the point where they do not deal enough damage to make burst/aggressive builds work well for the thief.
- Baseline higher toughness and HP values on all classes and builds versus WvW/PvE.
- Tankier builds are frequently used to hold points better/for sustained periods anyways because of the format.
- Similar to the above, most viable builds in sPvP are hard-counters to thief burst methods.
- It’s mostly do-or-die with little variation for most players, making the movements predictable when facing the same foes multiple times, unlike WvW/PvE where your player count is substantially higher.
Nobody knows how many stacks skills will grant, or if more skills and abilties will grant stability.
For all we know, every utility in the game could be changed to grant at least one stack of stability, or all of the current ones could give 25. Do not reach conclusions yet.
According to the forum every new change will be the deah of thief. :P And yet somehow this is the only profession that never left meta if my memory serves me well.
Ehhh… I wouldn’t say this is true currently. Thieves are seen largely as sPvP liabilities, P/D dire conditions is the real contender in WvW roaming atm because it’s just blatantly overpowered (D/P and D/D are long gone from competitive small scale outside of killing low-skill players for the most part) because we’re facing a slow transgression into a condition-based roaming meta, and thieves were really never part of the speed-clear PvE scene before RT, and even then, it’s only for some encounters as generally speaking other classes deal more DPS through boon distribution capabilities.
The only role the class as a whole has done will with for an extended period of time is WvW small-scale/roaming, but that’s now changing quite a bit.
They’ve never really been part of an optimization strategy so much as they’ve been usable throughout formats because generally speaking the class is fairly balanced. Optimal or a metagame dependency, though? Not forever, no.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Nobody has any idea of the following:
- How many stacks existing skills will apply.
- How long the cooldowns for the existing skills will be. They may be reduced.
- How many skills in general will yield stability – thus making it possibly given by more skills.
Honestly, this is a direction which if done remotely correctly could make the game way better. Proper stab timing and maintenance makes playing guard/war more difficult in a group environment but have way more devastating effects. Do recall that the hammertrain atm is pretty stupid seeing as most blobs will have stability, anyways, making the hard CC roles kind of useless. A lot of groups are recognizing this by running extra periph and more necromancers at the moment.
This can also help nullify the GWEN meta problem forcing other classes out of relevance, and also helps prevent instances where whole blobs are ignoring well-placed and well-timed CC fields and/or cannot do anything about it.
If anything, guardians will probably be even more in demand because groups of LoW’s will be able to make an entire zerg fall down instantly.
The short side of things is that stability in its current state creates an environment at the moment that inhibits of a lot of build and class success. I won’t sing praises about the changes yet since we know no specifics, but it has the potential to really help inhibit the toxicity the meta has created in WvW as a whole and allow for more creative thinking strategies to flourish.
Stealth itself isn’t OP.
A lot of the direct utility that comes with going into stealth is, and this is not limited to the thief class. PU mes arguably has better gains.
Yea, you’re comparing two different trait setups and builds. You need to run something like my 5/6/0/0/3 on the thief with signets to beat the damage of a RF from a 6/6/2/0/0 ranger, which makes sense seeing as the ranger has an inherent +200 power advantage and better damage scaling on RF itself.
It’s that the thief has way better damage modifiers and a massive power advantage when playing for damage without the might from other players.
Yet you have zero survivability on that thief compared to a ranger.
Who needs survivability in PvE anyway?
But if you want survivability, 6/6/2/0/0 will give you that just fine. While you lose 5% damage on your backstab, you gain a blind on stealth, 50 extra power from deadly arts, and 200 more power from revealed training for your auto attacks. You really don’t need anything more than that.
Between mug and withdraw/signet of malice, and a blind every 3 seconds, you’re not going to die in pve. If you do, it’s a learn to play issue.
You’ll lose an additional 10% from First Strikes not going into effect on the stab. This may also pertain to WvW.
Ranger durability comes in the form of SoS if used, and Healing Spring. Stealth and SoS are similar in terms of physical/targeted damage mitigation and HiS burst heals better while spring has better condition removal/sustained healing. Both builds in regards to ones which deal comparable burst damage should be equally identical in terms of health and toughness.
Playing a ranger/bursting as one is easy. Playing a ranger well is no less difficult than any other class.
Permanently contesting objectives only further reinforces blob strategies because then a blobby offense will be more effective than it is now seeing as it increases the likelihood of taking major objectives.
Sucks to get trampled by a huge group of people while trying to flip small objectives alone or with a small group, but in most cases strong havoc is what wins in the end. You can have a 100 man blob but if you have no camps and nobody to fight it doesn’t matter.
I’m just not sure what it is. The past few weeks have been miserable for seemingly no reason.
Yea, you’re comparing two different trait setups and builds. You need to run something like my 5/6/0/0/3 on the thief with signets to beat the damage of a RF from a 6/6/2/0/0 ranger, which makes sense seeing as the ranger has an inherent +200 power advantage and better damage scaling on RF itself.
It’s that the thief has way better damage modifiers and a massive power advantage when playing for damage without the might from other players.
Shatter is probably the hardest to pull off just because the clones are finnicky.
Outside of sPvP, backstab has the highest damage potential.
Without a huge re-balancing effort I’ll probably end up shelving the thief. Condition weakness on the class and general over-effectiveness of conditions is just too prominent and without huge ways to mitigate these new effects, there will be little purpose in trying to risk playing the class or anything not sitting on 6 in Shadow arts/gimmick builds.
Give me my mobile archer with no gimmicky perma-stealthstealth/blindspam crap. I don’t care on what class. It just fits the bill best on thief since it lacks 1200 range and only has one option for stealth-less play, but S/P PW is pretty bad.
I’d imagine so, which is why the issue is so perplexing. We seem to be having large-scale problems only affecting us, and even then it’s not everyone on DB. There are some users that don’t experience this issue at all, but many others do.
Sadly no. I’m also a huge archer guy as well, and simply GW2 doesn’t offer precisely that. Th shortbow itself on the thief is a pretty sub-par MH weapon as it is very predictable to avoid its primary damage source – cluster bomb. Due to the bomb’s crazy slow projectile speed, it’s actually best used at point blank and spammed for the AoE, which is a shame, but how it’s designed. It’s one of the best utility weapons in the game from its spammable blast finisher, evades, mobility, and spammable AoE poison field and defaulted AOE for tagging, however, so it is almost always used as the alternate set of choice. It is not, however, a very viable DPS/main weapon unless you’re looking for very long and drawn out 1v1 fights with building tank in mind.
Ultimately, I’d suggest just looking into the ranger, or just wait and see what happens with the HoT expansion (but that’s probably a long time away). I imagine more classes will end up with the longbow by then.
Longbow ranger is decent as a power build without too much use of the pet. The utility the pet provides is good, but the flavor is rather annoying, I’ll give you that, but it’s definitely the best archer the game has to offer at the moment.
Here’s hoping with specializations they either give the thief the longbow and/or remove the pet dependency from the ranger to help remove it’s druid-ness. Originally the ranger class was supposed to be three different classes – an archer, druid, and warden, but I guess those were too specific so they merged them all together. We’ll see if they take those splits into consideration down the road.
It works better than you might think.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa6Yl8MpopdPx8J8PNBNBxdNyxM0KAdfk+2EA-TZxGwAAOBAMLDo4JAQ4gAwZ/BA
That’s pretty much every class, though. Get into a larger fight without access to stability, which not all classes have access to, and you’re pretty much dead on the ground. Wurm on 2k+ range would be OP, as thieves need to blow more than one skill to get that kind of range. Necros are supposed to be on the clunkier side in terms of mobility since they get so much damage reduction and staying power by such good condi removal and Life Force paired with the highest hp pool. Ultimately if you give necros that kind of gap closing, the thief as an entire class would not be played at all in sPvP. They’re played solely for boon stripping and mobility, which then necros would be arguably better at both with better innate durability with similar or better damage output at a lower risk with better matchups against other meta builds. If anything, all I can see being really necessary for the class is a utility which would stunbreak and grant a small amount of life force to keep the necromancer able to better sustain once CC’ed.
Necros are focused first because they’re so good in team fights. Let the necro live and you’ve pretty much killed yourself/team.
Are you on DB or another one of the servers? I understand the issue has been occurring for a lot of people on DB.
Do know that the other thread you posted in was over two years old ._.
There should be no need for PC specs aside from internet speeds and latency, and I have an extremely good feeling this issue lies in a server bug where allocated hardware isn’t being utilized to its potential.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Anyone else having problems in T2 with lag? I’m getting 300mbps up/down on a fiber-optic network and am pinging ANet’s main website servers at 6ms. No problems anywhere else or with other games.
PvE and sPvP are fine and have no problems. I go to WvW and there’s ~2-3s delay on all skills, movement, effects, etc., and pretty much everything rubber-bands. I had this problem last week, but it went away with the reset on Friday, and it seems to be back after last night.
I’d like to see if others are having issues and perhaps this could be something we could raise awareness for. It’s completely locked out some builds/classes dependent on movement and teleports and has made a ton of people stop playing WvW altogether because it’s unbearable.
Hopefully this can get some attention and be resolved. The problem started after the most recent patch around a week ago.
Thanks.
Doesn’t opportunist have an ICD?
No screenshots, but I calculated that an 8k lifeblast on a 3k armor target was quite possible, and for that matter, even on the lower end of some circumstances. Haven’t double-checked since the Might nerf, but I suspect it is still quite possible.
It absolutely is. Granted, it’s either coming from a pretty bad build overall or might from other sources, but I think people genuinely underestimate how much damage this class can deal in PvP environments relative to the rest of the classes.
Frankly, if LF was maintainable in boss PvE, the necro would probably be taken over thieves.
Why would that be the case if dagger auto is actually our highest dps?
Only if you’re stacking 25 might and permanent fury off of other people. Otherwise it isn’t, and even then, it’s debatable on bosses.
No screenshots, but I calculated that an 8k lifeblast on a 3k armor target was quite possible, and for that matter, even on the lower end of some circumstances. Haven’t double-checked since the Might nerf, but I suspect it is still quite possible.
It absolutely is. Granted, it’s either coming from a pretty bad build overall or might from other sources, but I think people genuinely underestimate how much damage this class can deal in PvP environments relative to the rest of the classes.
Frankly, if LF was maintainable in boss PvE, the necro would probably be taken over thieves.
Or, to put it in other words: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win
Nailed it.
I would listen if people could demonstrate that a build other than condi pays off more in the end. For example, if P/D was merely a crutch which could only get so good, and D/P was harder to play, but could be more effective with skillful gaming, then I would listen.
But in my experience with every form of thief, P/D when played correctly, gives the most “bang for buck” so to speak.
And that’s exactly it.
Dire P/D offers the lowest skill floor by an astronomical margin with the best reward with basically the same skill ceiling as every other build. The sad part is that the floor is so low and the reward so high that the ceiling is almost indiscernible from the floor because the results provided are always there.
After playing an undead rogue in WoW for too long, I’m checking out GW2 on the advise of a friend. I’m just a casual player who likes to sneak around and backstab, but I can’t seem to find a way to go into stealth “on demand”. There’s so much to learn here, but I’m frustrated because I can’t sneak. Please help me!
Stealth is achieved through skills such as Cloak and Dagger (offhand Dagger 5), through the use of utility skills like Shadow Refuge and Blinding Powder, or through combo fields and finishers such as blasting or leaping trough a smoke field (Using shortbow 2 or dagger mainhand 2 through Black Powder or smoke screen.
The closest thing to a “sneak button” is through the use of the Dagger/Pistol weapon combination and using the skill combo 5 → 2 to create a smoke field from Black Powder and leap through it via Heartseeker. All stealth effects are temporary in GW2, and aside from staying within a Shadow Refuge during its pulses and blasting/leaping through multiple fields, all effects are limited to short durations primarily focused on using them again while in combat. to disorient the enemy and repeatedly use the stealth skill which your #1 skill will turn into while stealthed for extra damage/utility effects.
Pretty much it’s just restricted to getting more people to burst it down.
Run. Pretty much if they have even a single brain cell the build will carry them to beating you. Even SE will not remove the conditions fast enough in most cases.
The P/D-Build people are talking about: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_P/D_Condi_roamer
Easy and fun to play. You’ll find some other good builds there, too.
And yes, they hate us cause they ain’t us.
No… I’m pretty sure everyone just hates dire P/D because it’s just disgustingly OP with no required skill to play successfully making most people’s efforts playing anything else well feel wasted and dejected.
If you’re using that gear setup I’d probably run something like this:
I think it draws a decent mixture as a beginner between durability and damage, although I’d probably go bloodlust/fire on the shortbow to stack power on kills.
Granted, I hate using fire/air or recommending their use, but it is ultimately the best possible choice hands down.
Dire P/D is the easiest, cheesiest, most disgustingly overpowered and self-disgracingly skill-less build currently in WvW small-scale.
I hate fire/air procs from RF more than RF itself.
Actually, I just hate fire/air procs in general. I think with those removed there’d be less hate against a lot of burst in general because it wouldn’t be so random. Evading damage perfectly but taking a random extra 4k damage from fire/air is just annoying. The fact that multi-hit effects like RF can proc both so quickly is a real pain.
Pretty simple one: Escaping by using swoop and wolf fear behind you while in the air to force anyone chasing you to turn the opposite direction from the fear effect, letting you OOC to safety while keeping them in combat.
Thief vs engi? You run away and better hope you don’t get reeled in.
It’s that simple. If you don’t vastly out-play the engineer (i.e., the engineer is just straight up bad), you WILL lose the fight. Especially so as anything D/x.
I’ve actually had better luck fighting medi guards because at least you can disengage a lot easier and force them on long cooldowns.
Would probably need to be tested. I don’t think it’d really break anything, but not really sure if it’d fix much, either.
20k backstabs only happen if you’re up against builds running zero available utility skills and either a weapon swap cooldown or a heal on cooldown as well as steal on cooldown on engage. I’d call that a pretty fair trade-off seeing as necro lich form autos for 12k+ or 6k Life Blasts, warriors eviscerate for 10-15k, eles BS for 10k/combo for 40k, rangers RF for 10-15k, mesmers shatter for 10-15k, engineers murder pretty much anything with excessive conditions, guards whirl/ZD for 10-15k, etc.
Condition food aside, the format arguably is more balanced with more viable builds than sPvP. It’s just a hell of a lot faster-paced.
WvW with some berserker/valkyrie gear optimization with might from BiP which gets cleansed instantly through generosity. The numbers are a bit lower in sPvP, but each hit resembles that of a tankier thief. The power scaling is absolutely insane on DS’s autos compared to most other classes/builds. I’m no meta-runner, but the damage cababilities on a power build are way higher than I think a lot of people give it credit for. I understand that my guild is re-evaluating hammertrain atm because more necromancers in theory provides more damage and an earlier engage with almost identical support and in general better disabling effects with more durability.
Skelk is probably better off at 30-40s as a leech venom thief would be able to heal for like 10k every 16s which is crazy :P
As for that substantial of cooldown reductions… I’m not sure if it’s practical. The utility spots are pretty important for effects like SS and for many people, refuge, so I’m unsure if they’d get used or would really contribute to the builds themselves since poison is currently readily available on D/x and shortbow, devourer is overall way better, and P/D already has torment stacking which still begs the question as to why not play P/D at that point?
That’s kind of just my view on it, though. It would be a crazy buff to vshare, which I’m not sure needs it as it has such binary representations of effectiveness (either incredibly good or useless).
I’d like to ask how you arrived at that 70% number seeing as stealth is not a class mechanic for any of the classes in GW2. Access for the thief is just higher than the rest.
SA works with any build aside from P/W and always offers a benefit. The cost in terms of damage output is relatively low overall (I can still stab 12k’s 6 deep in SA), and the defensive benefits are absolutely monstrous to the point where while playing skillfully SA thieves should never die except when wildly out-numbered. I ran an unkillable P/P healing power build in sPvP for a long time because SR and BP were enough to carry my healing and sustain needs alone because the defense is so ridiculous.
You’re comparing SA’s absolutely bonkers utility to… Sleight of Hand? Seriously? I’m sorry, but SoH is used almost exclusively for denying heal skill use because it’s instant. Durability from trickery lies almost exclusively in boon theft, and with Acrobatics the case is pretty much just feline grace paired with S/D evasion.
It took 14 to kill me because the line offered me the ability to have infinite-duration healing effects, constant AoE blinds, constant condition removal, innate toughness, and sustained damage potential from HA. It was honestly press 5 a few times, drop their glass over a bit of time, whittle down the mid-range, press 1, disengage, heal, commit to their durable targets, repeat. Eventually I kept bumping into them with more and more numbers until it finally got to a point where the auto-attack coverage/CC was just too much to handle to keep up with. I want to point out you can achieve permanent stealth uptime on CnD alone and never get revealed.
Lol Nephrite, you’re telling me to play the class. Now THAT’s funny. I don’t mean to boast, but I invented the highest-hitting [thief] build in GW2 and have spent thousands of hours perfecting it and tweaking it. I receive PM’s daily from forum-goers and people in-game (mostly enemy thieves in WvW astonished at the damage numbers when they see a 20k+ figure land to get instantly slain) asking for advice and tips while using the build. I was contracted into a guild to teach their thieves how to run such a build to be more effective periphery and the necessary nuances of proper re-positioning while using a build that does not have any freebies.
@Jana, recall that I offered insight on how to play thief when you were on these boards some months ago asking for advice, no? Well, my genuine advice is to stray away from SA if possible – even if temporarily – because not using it just makes you such a better player. Cool if you use it, for the day it gets nerfed and thief gets some small buffs across the board will be the day the class actually becomes useful in sPvP beyond ganking because SA is bad for capture and hold/the class is too crappy without it to fight 1v1 in that format, and when SA players will wonder why they’re sucking in WvW because their crutches got ripped from under them. Those who learned will just find themselves better off.
I can’t force anyone to play without SA, but it’s genuine advice to avoid doing so on the basis that it teaches bad habits. It’s necessary in some instances, like when you need to carry a party through Mai Trin’s fractal just because of the thief’s incapability of soloing that without support from other players otherwise, but otherwise, it’s almost totally not needed and with practice outside of using it will make one a much better thief.
Moreso WvW than PvP. In sPvP, thieves are arguably the weakest class. A big thing with thieves is that they’re heavily-dependent on their traits for their damage, and the durability just isn’t there without extensive traiting/gearing towards defense which obviously cuts down immensely on the damage. Thief success throughout most content is directly related to player skill, and admittedly with the trait level requirements being pushed back to 80 for the grandmaster tier, is one of the most difficult/frustrating to level up from a lack of power early on. That said, they’re a very strong class in terms of late-game DPS in both PvE and WvW, and can be very desirable in highly-organized sPvP groups.
Open-world PvE, the ranger is probably the strongest class as the pets are SO durable, and mob AI is relatively poor such that it will attack the pet until it dies and the mobs don’t really do anything but that. Rangers have medium-tier base health, whereas thieves have low, so yes, they can be considered as more robust in terms of raw numbers, but again, traits and skilled play paired with stealth can make the thief fairly resilient later on. A tank/healing ranger, however, will be significantly more durable, granted it will deal less damage.
The ranger is probably more new-player friendly, especially if you’re not used to the squishy assassin role, and with the recent buff to Rapid Fire, can deal very large numbers in PvP and WvW. Rangers using bows are on the very weak side of dungeon-based PvE content, though, as their pets are liabilities for their damage dealt, and the dependency of staying at range keeps them away from party buffs/buffing the party. The thief will definitely out-DPS the ranger in group dungeon content.
It’s really about your preferred styles of play and how long you’re willing to stick with it/learn the game. Thieves take a lot of work to learn and level, but ultimately will be pretty much as effective. Not saying rangers don’t require skill, but I think the thief, especially during the leveling areas of the game, requires a lot more effort.
Be sure that if you’re playing the thief to not use the dagger as a mainhand weapon until 80, basically. You’re going to be totally dependent on the Hidden Killer grandmaster trait, which isn’t unlocked until then, and the sword/x builds are overall much safer with almost identical damage outputs before getting HK and dagger-based traits. I’d ask for some help in the thief subsection for more info on leveling up as a new thief.
Simply, if you’re not enjoying the thief in terms of its style, you probably won’t continue to. If you prefer the long range style, then by all means try out a ranger. You don’t have a ton to lose since you’re not very high level yet on the thief, either.
I still prefer RtW, but I normally focus their periph or backline depending which causes my angles to get all weird and not very effective against the front-liners. That consistency is key and while I’ve tried dropping Eagle Eye before, I simply found myself getting awkwardly close too often. Being able to not get side-stepped is huge, and barrage itself is often enough to deal substantial damage to the front-line (I’ve been referred to as the walking AC :P), as my ticks are usually in the 2-3k range with that as well.
It’s probably very dependent on the groups you run with, though, and what exactly your role is to do. I imagine that those who do in fact use Piercing get a lot more bags from all of the tagging, though :P
Not really sure where you’re coming from, honestly.
Necros are one of the strongest classes in the game in PvP formats. 6k autos in DS on a 100% crit chance with an EHP of around 40k really makes me wonder what kind of traits you’re using, not to mention all that CC and debuffing U.U They’re not mobile, but I mean is the decrepit dude with a zombie horde really supposed to be ninja-ing his way around the battlefield?
My gripes with necromancers is the dependency on DS and their rather meh elite skills. DS is absolutely stupidly strong, but there’s no way to build outside of it. Even rangers with the recent buffs have viable alternatives/capabilities while not building solely around their class mechanic. With the elites, I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place seeing as LF, while it pumps out ridiculous damage, is not very useful outside of WvW blobs and some PvE content, the minion itself is only so-so (or worse) if you’re not building MM, and plague suffers the same issues as Lich Form.
We’ll see what GS and specializations bring in regards to building outside of DS and the elite skill issue.
Because before I played without SA, I’d still only be able to take on around two people. That was mostly a means of indicating that the people I went up against weren’t just bad players/uplevels that didn’t have the capacity to actually kill me. I fairly frequently 1v2/1v3 with decent success. Imho, anything above a 1v2/1v3 scenario where a victor is determined in terms of the outnumbering side losing is either a demonstration of low-skill opponents or a really overpowered build, and even then it’s questionable. The skill ceiling is only truly so high to the extent that players in these scenarios should genuinely lose without a favorable matchup determined by build. Playing without SA teaches one how to be better at the thief because it requires the player to be better to survive in more difficult scenarios; ones which often a thief with SA will be dependent on SA’s ridiculous benefits to survive in and not through skilled play. Taking away the training wheels forces the player either to get better or die, and through death and learning, get better at playing overall. Simply put, you can’t get better at something without failing. Most established thieves will agree the SA line acts as a crutch despite the necessity of SE in many regards, and will openly mention that using SA, like playing P/D, will teach bad habits.
If one wants to play a sniper, just go play rifle war.
I’d really prefer to see an emphasis on the long-range and highly mobile sustained DPS model (longbow) in that it would actually work and create a play style that does not exist currently in the game. Rangers had a failed sustained damage model on the longbow because of a lack of mobility with it and dependencies on the pet/absolutely no burst whatsoever before RF got changed into the meganuke that it is (RF before the buff had lower DPS than the longbow auto-attack including the vuln).
I’m pretty sure the weapon will end up being the rifle seeing that so many people want to be “snipers” being all cool shooting people from invisibility and whatnot… but frankly, that’s just less exciting than a stab build and it can’t be as effective from initiative + ranged making it overall less risky, especially when paired with stealth skills and utilities like SR and BP.
The rifle’s just too weird to be a mobile set, too, imho, and the competition with blinds from pistols would render that set useless as well.
Would like to see something more unique happen to the class, but I have a feeling we’ll just end up with a killshot war rehash because a lot of people seem to want it.
Anything beyond SE is a crutch and is why the professon has been nerfed countless times as compensation. SE alone is basic class functionality not accessible anywhere else. Simply, the SA line itself has way too many overly-strong abilities which the thief as a profession lacks elsewhere in entirety. The last time I played SA, it took fourteen people to kill me because of how much the traits carried me, versus after immediately reverting back, it took two from the same group.
As far as fighting stealth builds goes, it’s pretty much just learning common patterns and timing on the thief’s skills/when most people use them, and bursting them down from 100-0 while they end up revealed. Rejuv is so stupidly overpowered that most attrition tactics/defensive tactics that work against pretty much all of the other builds fails, and playing aggressively often just burns cooldowns for no real reason/rejuv carries them out of being hit while stealthed unless bursted. Aside from hard CC effects that can deny SR or other abilities, there’s not really much out there in regards to countermeasures from SA stealth.
Sorry, but I need SA to stay alive with my D/D build – it might be “OP” for D/P which I haven’t played in a long while but taking that away would kill my D/D thief.
But since the game is unplayable for me again thanks to positioning bugs and lags my thief is pretty much dead anyway. Hey, even noob rangers/warriors and everybody else can kill me because the one thing I really need as a (D/D) thief (precision) has been taken away.
I play D/D exclusively and have few issues without SA aside from really big condition overload scenarios. I used to use it when I first started playing the game, but have since moved on and am happy I have; that kind of dependence ultimately hindered my growth as a thief substantially, and I’ve found that most thieves using it are just plain annoying to fight more than anything. Playing without SA improves one’s skill level immensely and frankly, some of its capabilities should be defaulted on the thief in weaker forms better-dispersed with some of the extremely forgiving abilities like rejuv just not available seeing as stealth already fulfills a huge purpose of damage avoidance. The server lag in WvW has been an issue lately, as I was finding even mobs rubber-banding, but since this past reset Friday I haven’t had any issues.
Signet of Stone and swapping into Sic ‘Em if you need to before the fight begins pretty much guarantees a win. GS+LB is a really effective set against most glassy thieves since GS4 + GS5 + GS2 pretty much instantly kills them after they try to engage by preventing BV/CC’ing them, and even if you get GS4 baited, SoS can stunbreak the BV and you can just swap longbow and kill them in one skill use. Using GS auo-chain lets for free evades and can force them to either back off from incoming damage or whiff their stabs easily while you troll around and often force a front-stab.
SA/stealth thieves are harder to deal with without Sic ‘Em, but the thief SA trait line is overpowered in itself defensively but forces a lot of damage cuts for them. A few hits first and then using RF should be enough to burst them down as Rejuv won’t be able to keep up with the damage. Again, SoS is your friend here.
With P/D condi builds… there’s really no advice to give. The build is just stupidly strong for how easy and simple it is to play (coming from a thief/ranger main). In most of these cases it’s just good use of your heal’s cleansing and just out-playing them by a huge margin.
It’s extremely good.
Hyper-longrange CnD paired with the ability to swap into GS for a swoop backwards way beyond range while the enemy flails around where you just were trying to hit you, blowing cooldowns? I’d take it twice over PBS in all honesty.
Anything beyond SE is a crutch and is why the professon has been nerfed countless times as compensation. SE alone is basic class functionality not accessible anywhere else. Simply, the SA line itself has way too many overly-strong abilities which the thief as a profession lacks elsewhere in entirety. The last time I played SA, it took fourteen people to kill me because of how much the traits carried me, versus after immediately reverting back, it took two from the same group.
As far as fighting stealth builds goes, it’s pretty much just learning common patterns and timing on the thief’s skills/when most people use them, and bursting them down from 100-0 while they end up revealed. Rejuv is so stupidly overpowered that most attrition tactics/defensive tactics that work against pretty much all of the other builds fails, and playing aggressively often just burns cooldowns for no real reason/rejuv carries them out of being hit while stealthed unless bursted. Aside from hard CC effects that can deny SR or other abilities, there’s not really much out there in regards to countermeasures from SA stealth.
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