Guild Wars 2

Azura.4172:

The point is not to define or redefine what QQ is, the point is to set up a definite line to separate those who just whine and QQ and those who honestly believe certain class needs a nerf.

I believe that the Culling issue certainly contributed to Nerfing thief as we intentionally or unintentionally exploited this mechanic. However, after so many nerf patches, people are still crying nerf with their pitchforks. […]

Oh yeah, They nerfed LBD, pistol auto, sword auto, pistol whip’s base speed, Tactical Strike’s daze duration, and quickness speed boost all because of Culling? A-net was nerfing thief prior to the culling because as soon a player developed a mediocre amount of timing and skill, the thief could weave in and out of battles similar to dnd’s rogue.

Every non-cheese thief build got smacked by the nerf-bat until it’s head leaked meat, and the build later awoke as an illiterate due to said beating. If you paid attention you could even notice smaller “tweaks” and adjustments where damage was down-scaled so that tool-tip damage fluctuated despite no change in character level or build or a notice put out to player base. I’m not referring to level scaling between zones either.

One of the reasons why I loved the original thief (before nerf craze) was because of how the class did not need to rely on stealth to be viable, even in spite of half the builds and utilities being broken. This is because every other mmo and now most rpg’s (not GW2) give thief/scout/rogue/scoundrel true no holds barred perma-stealth. It gets boring. Also makes me wonder how people mistake this “cloaking” for true perma-stealth, excluding exploits.

Now stealth is thief’s last “strong” build. So I have a “great” idea, let’s smack guardians with a 50% nerf too, since they can do practically everything and possess a class perk too(cough virtues cough). Warrior 100b should do as much damage as their auto-attack and eviscerate should hit for about 11k in pve with fury, food, and 25 stacks of might and vulnerability not 16k plus. Perma-fury is too strong, lets give it a max stacked duration of 30 sec. Necromancers should have a take reduced damage in Death Shroud and not have a second health bar.

“But those are all class mechanics!”, you cry? Exactly. Stealth is a thief class mechanic.

Reason why 90% of thieves roll stealth is not because stealth is op; it’s because the rest of the class mechanics have either very niche uses or are clearly inferior. (Tautological, I know.) Ability to clear a dungeon does not mean a build is pve viable if it significantly slows the progress of a group.

Erithus.1649:

Hello thieves
[…] Last night, myself and a guardian found a p/p thief, he kept going invisible all the time and his health kept going up. […]

Hello. First I suggest you look at a gw2 website. P/P does not have a stealth skill, nor does it have a leap finisher to combo into stealth using a smoke field.

Second, All of the thief stealth abilities add 3 seconds base stealth. The lowest stealth cd we can get while traited is about 35 seconds (either blinding powder or steal via hidden thief).

Third. When I read p/p thief was perma-stealthing, You encountered a loss of credibility casualty. You seem polite so I won’t torch this post, but please l2p. There’s a p/p thief bot in the mists that has “un-nerfed” thief skills. Train on that after looking up the thief skills & utilities. The next time you roll into wvw (if this issue is from wvw), make sure to wear exotic lv 80 gear and have some food.

You should do fine as long as you don’t let him go melee (if it’s in his weapon swap) and dodge his unloads.

Leeto.1570:

Strayhand.8216:

Leeto.1570:

Ah good to hear that he can beat bad thief on ranger in 1v1, thief`s must be really fine or our dev just is not completely handicapped. Good news either way.

So if a ranger beat a thief, then the thief must be bad, but if a thief beats bads in videos, he must be OP. The double standards again, welcome to MMO forums.

Ye cause ranger can totally log into wvwvw and kill group of 5 people and then escape any zerg… everybody is annoyed by thief in wvwvw not in sPVP environment. You may say wvwvw doesnt matter or whatever but theres no reason why 7 professions should play wvwvw one way and then thief just walks wherever he wants in god mode.

“Mundo goes where Mundo pleases.” (mundo is not a thief). Wrong game, I know, but that is what the thief does (ever since dnd). What you’re talking about is not a class mechanic but a class concept! Therefore, the meaning you intend is there should not be a thief class: literally or effectively.

Also, thief is probably the farthest from God mode. Thief takes planning and good execution to simply be average and predictable. Playing my warrior after running as a thief is like taking off the weight vest after owning a 2 on 1 match in a sports drink commercial. If you want God mode, roll Guardian. I walked through packs of hyenas that killed my warrior without a single down on my guardian. Guardian buffs, traits, and aegis can mitigate huge amounts of damage, while the guardian still is a significant dps and hps source. Roll a thief, get to lv 40 without any sort of crafting or wvw leveling, and then come tell me how OP they are.

Lastly, if you think thief wvw vids are grisly, go watch the warrior ones. I found one gs+axe shield war take down three waves of people then heal himself and type “lol” to a bystander calling him pro. It was ludicrous. Trust me, if all the people manning the “op” thief gods walked out and played guardian, warrior, mesmer, elementalist, ranger, engineer, necromancer. You would not like this alternative. I have a hammer warrior with 4 theads of regen, 4k of crit, and enough inherent defence you wouldn’t guess she’s in berserker. I got a planned critmancer, tested in the mists, with free enfeebling blood/spectral armor/and lifesteal to make you want to switch forums and start crying op elsewhere. In addition to those fact, this necro sits in ds so much you wouldn’t believe its a blood build. If I start discussing hammer guardian, this wall of text will turn into a tower of missives. I’m not even the best strategist or player. Trust me cub (char ref!), The devil you know here is much, much better than the devil you’re begging for.

I’d have to say guardian, hands down. Did a tpvp daily with guildies last Saturday. We split into two groups: 1) the warrior and I (guardian) and 2) the other three as a group. Let’s just say that RoW + 100b wrecks people.

Is the warrior OVERPOWERED? No. GW2’s warrior is delightfully complex and requires a lot of build planning and a bit of skill to play right.

Edit: don’t base your class perceptions off of wvw pugstomp music vids.

Just FYI: Infiltrator Shot does not break stuns. It only moves the thief to the target area. Therefore, rooted thief uses infil shot. Rooted thief is still rooted thief, but now thief is over there.

Ruggan.4102:

Zenith.7301:

Ruggan.4102:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d ele or engineer arrives.

Thieves can both chase and disengage the best of any class, and people resent that despite the fact that thieves are not great in larger team fights, so they mainly roam.

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight… oh yea keep in mind… in WvW there are no “white” animals, they are all red and agro… so umm yea.

Infiltrator Arrow will get a thief out of root… yup you are correct. It is one of the FEW abilities that do allow for some kind of condition removal for thieves. Other classes have condition removal, transfer, and stability. Find a thief ability that gives stability… oops it isn’t there.

So let me get this last part straight… because a thief can run away, the thief is OP? If a thief is so OP… then why does the thief need to reset the fight? Doesn’t make sense.

LOL Dagger Storm. And if you complain it’s an elite, the same is the case for ranger and necro, and engineers don’t even get stability unless it;s a 50% chance fromtossed elixir S.

Condi removal costs a slot — your condi removal is bundled into your heal. And from stealthing with traits, which you can use frequently.

P.S. Thief resets the fight for the reason anyone else tries to as well. They mess up, get a key skill dodged, etc. Thieves can just reset far more reliably than other classes, with only ele and mesmer having close to the ability to reset.

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

Necro hp pool is on par with warriors. Thief, guardian, and elementalist have the tiny hp pools.

If you want to be a gunslinger, try the engineer.

D/d should not see any further nerf. It’s barely viable in pve as is.

reduce the sword damage and Lbd damage nerfs to 25% instead of 50%. (im refering to the flat damage cuts from way back when). Reduce dancing dagger’s initiative costs. Revert damage nerf on pistol whip since quickness was nerfed.
Additionally add passive bonus to venoms, make trap activation areas on par with rangers, allow stealth perks(auto-crits, regen, et merda) to be transferred to other players when stealthed by a thief, debug scorpion wire and drop its CD, give summoned thieves a dodge mechanic, unkitten flanking strike, buff shortow’s trick shot damage and poison damage so its viable for ranged damage, rescale pistol damage, and we’re still waiting on your supposed mobility buff.
Lastly, backstab damage should be on par with a warrior’s eviscerate, considering they take similar amounts of time to execute.

You need grandmaster in critical hits and points in shadow arts. Deception utilities are also very vital to stealth builds. For leveling, Backstab is a good choice but you’ll need the infusion of shadow trait so CnD only costs 4 initiative.

Scorpion wire is Situational.

Chokolata.1870:

Stealth mechanic is broken and badly designed . It makes thieves a nightmare in WvWvW , but useless in PvE . Classes that can easily escape a zerg like that are broken , and only elementalits and thieves can do it .

Lack of build diversity is noticable as well .

Stealth is only useful for two things in pve: reviving the dead and access to stealth attacks.

Stealth in wvw isn’t as horrible as people make it out to be. There really are a LOT of newbs who’ve run hundreds of hours in a zerg but fail to realize they don’t know how to handle smaller scale fights. One of the enjoyments I get from wvw is playing against ele’s who spam there attacks like I dont know how dodge, backpedal, or position my thief and then facetank my onslaught without any kind of damage reduction. No wonder they die?

Dagger of the Dragon’s Deep, Orrian Dagger, Adamant dagger, CoF dagger, Fused Dagger, Destroyer Dagger, Claws of the Desert, and Moonshank all look nice imo.
This is all in addition to previous suggestions above, of course.

Rainbow.3496:

Aberrant.6749:

Svarty.8019:

Aberrant.6749:

See… I took that more as them all thinking “they just need to l2p against these classes then… why would we balance for such low skill level gameplay?”

To which I would reply that they should balance for such low skill level gameplay because the thieves themselves can be more effective than most other classes with less skill.

EDIT: In fact, the devs say as much right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0togRMEc_o#t=41m06s

What you’re complaining about is basically that not all classes have the same initial learning curve.

This is actually done on purpose to help new players feel like they can hop in a game and have a chance. Complaining about this is like some one complaining about how e-hondas 100h slap or an auto-shotgun in CS just owned them. They are just FOO tatics. Once you learn how to counter these tatics they are easy to deal with.

The guy even says something akin to as a vet this isn’t a problem for me… it’s only new players that have this problem. I also don’t have problems with thieves ganking me from spawn in PvP on any of my classes… because I know how to counter it easily. It didn’t take me long to figure out how either. I could explain the tatics used to counter the thief on the classes I play to the noob to help the person he’s talking about and the noob could pratice with those.

Many other classes have better higher skill gameplay potential than the thief. That’s the downside of foos. That’s why it’s rare you see a thief in a pro team. Same with why you don’t see a vet playing with e-honda or an auto-shotty… there are more powerful tactics available if you choose to practice and learn them.

So the solution? L2P better with your class and you’ll be just fine.

I hope you’ve learned a little bit about game design basics as well ^^

Amen…. I think we can all remember starting out the game and trying to get our legendaries by doing the WvW puzzles. And then your whole party is wiped by one thief. The easiest response , “THIEVES OP”…. The obvious problem with the thief is the argument of “L2P”. I actually recall the same discussion over my class (warrior) and the whole hundred blades issue. Everyone QQs over something because they always die by it and deem it “Op”. After playing for several hundred hours, I’ve realized that thief isn’t OP. it really isn’t even a problem for people that know what they are doing .Anet shouldn’t nerf and dumb down a class just because people whine. Learn to fight the class and then you’ll be fine. If you think thief is SO hard to play against. Go duel your thief friends, take tips, get better. It’s an obvious solution. Don’t ruin the game for all our thief friends just cause you can’t handle it. New players get smashed by thieves , and the vets have no issue and can handle and dismiss it quickly. I wish everyone would understand this.

Thief class is already smashed. Don’t know where you’re going with this.

@ op: Hs is supposed to hit hard on targets less than 25% hp. If you are claiming that hs is hitting hard on someone who’s >75% hp, lv 80, and in exotics, then post screens or it didn’t happen. Oh yes, it better be 1v1 and not boosted by assassin’s signet.
Thief experts have brought proof against this, there’s another thread on the thief forums where a non-thief is saying the class is not op, and I’m having difficulty believing your post is not troll simply by necroing an argument that has been defeated. Let’s make some meaningful progress in thought, por favor.

Geiir.7603:

SubjectZero.6497:

Leticron.7945:

Anyway… the stealth change made PvE terribly awkward… really terrible playstyle wise.
And I’m not even talking about our hampered damage (that if anything was too low already for the supposed kings and queens of single target dps) but about the clumsyness that came for free with revealed “interrupting” auto attack chains.
Simply put – awfull playstyle change!

This is really the main problem I have with the reveal change. There was absolutely no effect on stealth abuse it just made the D/D, P/D, and S/D sets very awkward to play (especially in PvE). What was wrong with making 3s reveal on any stealth exit? It would’ve actually served a legitimate purpose.

Getting a three second de-buff each time we stealth would really force thieves to think more before stealthing. As it is know it looks like this:

I’m stealthing, positioning for backstab, target dodges out of the way. But hey! I just stealth again and go for another backstab.

If they would have applied the de-buff when I missed and exited stealth my opponent would have been “rewarded” for actually out playing me by dodging right before my backstab landed. My opponent would then have me out in the open for three seconds (which is a lot for the profession with the smallest health pool and toughness). This would force me to be a better player and actually land every backstab. Now it’s just rinse and repeat or get the kitten out.

Please just fix this. Give us three seconds of stealth each time I leave stealth and make it three seconds instead of four. Those four seconds just made all rotations seem awkward. Most of our auto-attack chains take three seconds, so now it just doesn’t feel right.

So this player is skilled enough to dodge the backstab he can’t see coming but can’t dodge/block the CnD? Dodge the CnD and watch the thief get punished with what’s essentially a global cd on all his weapon skills.

Lol HS is only useful as a finisher and thief is only a wvw class.
@OP: ideally balancing is done to balance skilled endgame. Saying hs needs a nerf b/c its so good at lv 10 is simply troll or Anet.

Even if bugged, I was in wvw last night and found it to be still useful. To those saying the bug makes it broken —-> remove (or fix). Allow me to remind you of Anet’s recent genius attempts at balancing the thief: repeated cnd in PvP is too powerful, therefore we’re nerfing all pve sustained damage rotations with a revealed time increase, Halving all thief sword and condition damage, and the quickness reduction (by which pistol whip used to be semi viable), et merda; in light of this history, i’ll restate the old adage: the devil you know is better than the devil don’t. 

If you want high burst, don’t use sword. If you’re in pve and want high sustain, I suggest you use a backstab, might stacking build. If you want an easy, cripple with weakness, lots of crit procs, or more condition removal, sword is your choice.

Yes, as immrsion breaking as this is, sword is a wet noodle in gw2.

Edit: if you can believe me, all sword damage was actually nerfed to 50% of what it once was due to PvP burst. Quickness used to also be double attack speed in that version of the game.

A lot of the legendary weapon skins seem corny to me. Quip. Moot. Kudzu. To name a few. However that is my opinion. I also think they should simply stop at exotic gear, so players do not have to grind fractals or dailies for armor sets. This way both devs and players can focus on quality content.

As a compromise, maybe new stat combos for exotics can introduced: ie a lv 80 exotic Rabid gear.

Warrior, Guardian, and some Necromancer builds. (singet of undeath).

Or we can all thief troll wvw with the 10/30/30/0/0 all valkyrie build. Actions speak much louder than words, so Anet OBVIOUSLY wants this. Especially judging from the facts, now that other facets of gameplay aren’t fun (the purpose of gw2: “fun”) or viable. Anet clearly doesnt want us to sPvP since ele is the thief and warriors are the assassins. PvE is no longer fun. Anet intentionally forced us to use the auto-attack chains with revealed debuff and nerfing non-stealth builds. Now the auto-attack is clunky and more awkward than any form of unrequited love. Thief support is cruel April Fools joke exacted on us all year round. ANet is clearly saying with their actions that thief is a WvW skirmishing class. As soon as we adapt the thief to anything else, Anet changes the class to push us more in that direction. So I say we agree with the devs and just mass troll wvw with mug/bs builds. We can even all use Facebook or some other sites to coordinate the flood.

The counter is this: use dodge right after the thief mugs you. Wastes a third of his initiative and stops the three or four hit kill combo. A LOT of WvW players know this. It isn’t hard at all.

If this is inspiration, then C&D spam is a legitimate part of the game.

Lol. CnD affects mob behavior. Just give the mob some behavior mechanics, so people can tell its standing still and aggro’d to a stealth user. Also, if people don’t have the ability to click an npc and inspect a health bar, you might be defending the pc illiterate who also get lost in the trap hallway of AC explorable: this is a learn to play issue not a class balance problem.

Culling has been fixed. The wall/gate cnd hit bug has been fixed. Complaining about mug doing damage is like complaining about warrior berserker might giving him adrenaline or guardian Save Yourselves giving Aegis. Mug is doing its function.
In my opinion, thieves are clinging to stealth so much because out of stealth damage was beaten like the Searing Cauldron Effigy in p1 of Cof explorable. Most every other class has 2k hit #1 rotation but thief roation tinks for half that. Sword is a wet noodle. Even a lv 60 Warrior provides more condition damage. On top of that, poison and trap utilities are still in need of rework to be useful in pve and even while leveling. Poison is just a gimmick thieves decide to take or forced to take underwater. God forbid poisons be useful like soldier shouts, oh no. There’s still the issue that we are the shadow artists but we cannot make stealth benefit other party members outside some petty regen. Stealth should transfer boons and trait buffs the thief recieves to party members,1 initiative returned should be1 sec cd off allies skills on cooldown.

Not to mention us doing less damage than Guardians, mesmers, and rangers who can keep their pet up. And don’t get me started on thief range damage. Thieves maining shortbow? They’re labeled as newbs for a reason. P/P thieves usually wake up sooner or later as well: your animation is awesome, but our ranger “unloads” for 3k a hit 24/7. What good are you?

The best way to get thieves out of stealth is to make GOOD builds that don’t require stealth: like a trap, trixster, ambush thief who bleeds his foes or a Poison specialist or maybe a duelist who specializes in swords (R.I.P. pistol whip). You attract more bears with honey, per se. Right now players are punished for not taking stealth.

Lastly, thieves being the most mobile is said w/out much comparison. Warriors and rangers get perma-swiftness and signet of the hunt or banner charges with little impact on combat readiness, yet thieves have to expend dodges, heals, utilities, initiative, or rune slots (usually 4 of these 5) just to map travel faster than mesmer speed. We enter fights with major utilites on cooldown, which punishes us more than other professions.

edit:

1.

[…] Now the extra second on the Reveal debuff – that’s a whole different ballgame. They clearly didn’t stop to think about the ripple effects. I have to be honest, I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in their competence at this point.

This sums up my thought on Anet handling thief, and why I already switched my main to a warrior. Kinda sad, as I was a 95% PvE thief until they started perma-nerfing the class.

2. The reason why a 4 second revealed after each stealth would be horrible is that it would kill all defensive aspects of the shadow arts line and make the hidden threat trait useless. A 1 sec revealed debuff (or even 0.5 second revealed since CnD has a 0.5 cast time) for exiting stealth without an attack would fix perma-stealth and leave the class mechanic in tact. The 3 second revealed debuff for sneak attacking should be reimplemented in this situation.

3.

Even if clipping is removed, 3 seconds was way too short. […]

Mesmers, Warriors, and Elementalists do not give you three seconds to react to their next attack. I think pve mobs like Dredge might give you that kind of time while they charge up an attack or apply a buff. Warrior knockdown + Eviscerate, Mesmer Chain Shatters, and Ele combos all leave you with less time to react. Necro Signet of Spite slaps you with all conditions instantly! If you don’t catch it fast, your health pool is watering daisies. For the love of mike, The DMV won’t give you a driver’s license if your reaction time takes more than 0.5 sec. I don’t pvp or wvw a lot and I know there are a lot of things besides Cnd, walk behind a target, and backstab that hit hard and fast. One. ONE-THOUSAND. Two. ONE-THOUSAND. Three. ONE-THOUSAND. Poof. 3 seconds of non-stealth not being long enough to immobilize and pummel a squishy is a concept error.

Rampager gear has more precision than zerker if all you want is crit chance.

@OP: Use a Trickery/SA/Acrobatics Leaping Death Blossom + Sigil of Corruption Thief Build to AoE level. Or if you prefer crit damage, I’d suggest sword main hand + Sigil of Bloodlust. Sword #1 cleaves (hits 3 targets), does decent damage for this class, and adds weakness (all non-crits become glancing blows). Note that pistol whip was not worth using unless you have Haste; it is less useful now due to Anet hammering quickness down to 150% speed boost.

Also, You wrote:

[…] This isn’t the Blizzard official forums; smarten up. If your thread can be summed up with someone mashing their q key, refrain from hitting that post button, for the sake of the very health and reputation of this forum. […]

In response, I actually suggest you move to the guildwars2guru.com thief forums, if you haven’t heard about them already. Fact: They do a better job of managing their thief forums. And GW2Guru’s forums are chock-full of build catalogs, discussions, and thief guides. Thus, Much more helpful than this QQ Inferno.

Lastly: If you’re making a thief for endgame PvE, Re-roll to Warrior or Guardian. I almost quit this game when nerfs converted thief gameplay into melee ranged drudgery. But Warrior and Guardian gameplay stand so vastly superior to thief that I literally fell in love with GW2 again: who says first love doesn’t happen twice?

Anet is blatantly butchering thief mechanics and stat tables to appease QQ’ers while using rogue-like promises heralding a granduer of class balance to keep the thief players hopeful and subscribed to the game. (I wonder if their PA crew wears Swindler Masks).

My intention is simply to benevolently warn you. Thieves used to take planning and execution to play well. Now end-game thief builds are adjusted to present only high-risk/negligible rewards. Prepare to work hard and master the game as a thief only to be decidedly sub-average.

I think stealth not resetting aggro tables is a wonderful fix. Kills don’t reset when I’m roaming on my backstab thief fighting vets or during Dungeons. No one likes to see a boss refill their health.

Here’s my thief as of 20Mar13.

swinsk.6410:

Quit your thief and make a warrior. Thieves suck at PVE. I have a thief and a warrior. I will never pve on the thief unless I have to now. Warrior hitting bosses for 30k on just last hit of HB.

If you are going for PVE only I would probably do P/D condition build. Thieves DPS sucks.

This sums up my thoughts exactly, except a 20/30/10/0/10 d/d backstab build can also bring some damage. The only reason I bring my thief to pve anymore is for tokens from dungeons.

I’m valkyrie armor with berserker rings, accessories, and amulet. One berserker dagger and one valkyrie dagger with a rampager shortbow (so I can switch to condition build without needing a second bow).
The idea is that after you have a comfortable amount of precision, you may want more damage without being so very squishy. Valkyrie still offers power and crit damage with added vitality.

My opinion: Anet should get a team together and have them all play thieves. This way they can experience the class first hand. They should also go incognito and join group exp runs so they can hear other players question your class choice, try to get you kicked, et merda for simply being a thief. Making game changes based on forum feedback and stat logs alone, without playing the game in its current state today is simply flawed development.

Backstab only does double damage from behind, not the sides or front, from behind. Also thieves get 3 seconds of stealth and a 3 sec revealed debuff if they attack. On top of that, cnd cost six initiative, base cost ofc. And before you start some nonsense that thief can teleport in stealth, shadowstep removes stealth.
Therefore, find a rock or tree and put your back to it. Then spam something. Also, when thief goes stealth it’s rather obvious so ride the lightning away, and keep running. When his 3 sec are up, mash the 14k hp out of him. Lastly, whittle the thief down using ranged. I’m pretty sure cnd range is around 130 not 900.
Lastly, if you’re complaining b/c you’re a glass build that went squish b/c you strolled down the middle of an open road in wvw and got ganked, plz stop trolling Anet. Or at least go complain about mesmers or something. Or better yet, don’t make such an easy target of yourself. Or travel with a group of friends like a pack of females headed to the loo (a suggestion, not an insult). WvW and sPvP are team events anyway, and thieves in Gw2 already had the group utility half nerfed out of them anyway.
Please learn from this and tell your friends too. Or you can keep QQ’ing and say a thief ganked you on the forums.

Switch some of the zerker pieces for valkyrie. Thief has medium armor but could always stand for a little more hp. Additionally, don’t forget that all shadow returns remove conditions.

Daecollo.9578:

“When you stealth, you gain swiftness for 10 seconds.”

I actually love this trait as is. It stacks % speed increase on top of swiftness, instead of merely increasing duration by combining with other swiftness buffs.

I love ruunning this in my hidden killer builds b/c I can stealth + dodge roll for >150%
speed increase. As a thief, being the fastest is one of our fortes, and I consider it an invaluable utility.