Guild Wars 2

Boutiful theft is not really new, but I am trying something similar to this right now for a hybrid condi/power build.

Nothing for thieves had its damage increased. Thieves have 4 or 5 gap closers, and most of the time they are all on cd, because they either used to burst, or used them defensively.

Thieves received more nerfs this patch than build diversity and anything else. I am pretty sure S/D and D/P are on the same level or trash builds now. I am sure all I need to say is this, P/P is almost at the same level kitten for teamfights, and it never received any directed changes.

If Anet did not try to fix everything by nerfing it, we would not be here. In this patch warriors and necros definitely were granted precedent in all the buffs today.

This is the cutest post ever omg. Stealth hard for players that don’t know how to play against it, that is one argument. Once you know how to beat stealth or counter it you will be fine.

Another argument is do not let him/her/them stealth. This is fine way to counter stealth, unless it is a SR from far away, not much you can do about that. But then that is more of a general game plan and they have team composition made to burst you on far point.

THE GENERAL CONSENSUS: Don’t let them stealth. Can’t even mention how many times I have died playing D/P trying to escape because I could not stealth. Mesmer stealth barely lasts longer than 4s. I wouldn’t really consider their stealth that “game breaking”.

Found a team, hopefully everything works out.

Thanks Arctu. I will PM you about the all thief team if I cannot find anything here.

Hi,

My in-game name is Kinjax. I have been looking for a solid team for quite some time. The reasons I am looking for a team; I want to play this game on a competitive side, I would like to immerse myself with the game, and its community in a competitive way. I am not looking for a friends list of people to play with, I want a team to grow and get better with. This is what I am looking for.

Schedule : I can basically play whenever at the moment. I am on a good break from my catering job. I wake up at 11am PST (12 noon) and will hop off around 3am PST. As far as days of the week go, I can be free whenever. 5 -6 days of practice or scrim against better teams.1 or 2 days to gather our thoughts and think about practice.

If my (very flexible) schedule needs to tuned so I need to wake up sooner and go to sleeper earlier. I can do this. It is not a problem. I can change my schedule very easily.

Personality: Generally a easy person to deal with. I only give criticism when there is something to criticize. Very vocal in a match, outside a match, not all the time. But still respondent to any chat that might be happening.

My qualities:

• I am a thief. I have been playing thief since the game launched and have grown to know how to play it very well. I am very confident against other thieves, even good thieves.

• Builds I play. I play D/P mostly and have tried a plethora of non-viable or builds that won’t work in a tPvP setting. D/P or, 25/30/0/0/15, is a build I have fiddled with for a while now to get the maximum potential out of. In that of; mobility, damage, and survive.

• Adaptable. I only mention this because of changes that are on the way. If I have to play S/D (for e.g) I can. I know what my role is for a team.

My ego, and how I take Criticism.

Criticism is the big thing for some teams, egos, and some people not having thick skin. I have problems with none of this. I for one do not have that big of an ego because no one knows who I am, how can I. Criticism to me means I am doing something wrong, and I just need to correct it my self, or with the team.

I don’t want to drag this on too much. I honestly want some intelligent people here, that know how to follow up, and can stick with a schedule, not necessarily my schedule, but one that would work for everyone.

You can reply here, or PM me in game.

Kinjax or In These Days.

There particular parts where it screams fake, and particular parts where it just seems like unfinished released notes.

To me I think these are fake. For example, in the notes it states Ricochet is getting buffed from 25% to 50%. Ricochet has 20% chance to bounce as of now not 25%.

Puru.4217:

Thieves will be pigeon holed into using D/P if those notes are true. Only thing that interest me is indeed the steal buff but trickery is… yeah not convinced.

With a few options on a secondary, due to the changes of the SB.

S/D might still work, but FS/LS cannot be spammed, and the best thieves would need to fight the best rotations.

P/P is still trash, and P/D are still going to be trash. With these notes, basically Anet thought nerfing SB would make those weapon sets viable.

Legacy.7360:

I bet you my pot of fools gold it’s real.

Let the QQ begi…

Wait it already has.

It’s been a good day.

These are the people that will rejoice the day that thieves are extinct in tpvp, wvw, and pve.

All the changes they made are going to do nothing.

Like these: Deadly Arts
Corrosive Traps. This trait now 5 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds, up from 5.
Sundering strikes: Vulnerability caused by this trait has been increased from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
Panic Strike: This trait’s cooldown has been reduced from 60 seconds to 30.
Lotus Poison: Increased weakness duration to 4 seconds, but it can only apply once every 20 seconds per target.

Just remove all 4 of them, they are horrible. Oh, and the Body Shot change, is what made me think this is more developer notes, than release notes.

HPLT.7132:

Its not … you wanna move out of aoe -> punished , you wanna escape from chasing enemy’s -> punished.

And you get the trait wrong: Air attunement means swiftness (and probably might+electric discharge effect).

And tbh you think someone wrote this patchnotes in 5 hours after reading the blog post? Hm kay sounds legit.

Uh, how does someone trying to move out of an aoe (e.g Big ol’ Bomb) means they should be punished because of this new conidition. If that is what it is going to do, then I guess.

Trying to escape from an enemy team equates to you being in a bad position in the first place, or some kind of over extension. The only thing I am hoping is this condition cannot be spread by epidemic.

These could be leaked, fake or what have you, or they could be leaked developer notes, as in not yet completed patch notes.

I noticed they did not show what traits for thieves were merged, but they did show the traits.

Thief changes are just so ridiculous. There are nerfs to abilities that haven’t even seen complaints. These have to be fake, or Anet think’s nerfing will make worthless builds viable.

Why would you make another thread on this? You could have just given your opinion in the other thread.

I meant that in the aspect of tpvp. Shortbow is how a D/P thief bides his time waiting until the time is right to burst or spike a target. Not doing it the entire time, just until someone is either out of position or you are in the right position.

If they actually made Cluster Bomb 900 range they might as well revert the damage nerf they did too it.

Because 1200 range on cluster bomb was so strong? R.I.P any team fight D/P might have had.

If this is true..

ensoriki.5789:

Kinjax
For sure, but if you lose target with D/D. Then you’re going to throw either Dancing daggers (not really) or jump in with heartseeker (probably). If you need to kite/escape you’re going to throw Dancing daggers (unlikely) or Heartseeker (probably). So the mobility is definitely there. Ideally Condi D/D can relax on LDB a bit more after the patch. Or who knows maybe they throw torment on LDb and make us buy new 3 buttons on our keyboard every week.

Shadow strike is a kiting/defensive skill. If you were chasing you’d use Dancing dagger as your snare (eh not really). So like a Mesmer dropping phase retreats is the kind of incombat mobility I mean. Since P/D is a ranged set in theory…. if you can Shadow strike someone and warp to 600 range than with your 900 range weapon you can continue to harass with 1,2 or 3 (though thats obviously not the case).

Like I said there is definitely something to be said about their mobility, but they certainly have it.

Alright I will agree with this. Personally I still believe P/D still has to rely way to much on stealth to put out all its conditions. So maybe, hopefully shadowstrike will have a condition on it to. And maybe DB as well, so far I am excited to see condition thieves.

But what I really want to see is condition thieves that do not rely on stealth spam. Stealth spam is not the greatest thing for tpvp.

ensoriki.5789:

I’d disagree. Shadowstrike and Heartseeker fit the bill for in-combat mobility. Though there is obviously things you can say about them in a condi spec (or shadow strike in general).

I will agree to an extent that Heartseeker in D/D build is mobility. But for a condition build, I don’t really think so, considering all you do in D/D is spam DB anyways, so you might not have or be able to spend the initiative to do so.

Shadowstrike teleports you away from a target. If you finally catch up to something you were chasing, use Shadowstrike and the target is not low enough to die from the 2nd attack? That is not a definition of mobility.

Condition built thieves are not necessarily highly mobile. They might have P/D, or even D/D. The most mobile secondary is a SB, the way this condition sounds/seems, (I have yet to see a link to it) is it will be a in combat condition. Condi thieves do not have in-combat mobility, so like a d/p thief or a s/d thief might.

Rank 30 or lower? :/ Oh well, have fun all, and good luck with your team Arctu.

I think this map does fine as a “for fun” map. Personally though, I despise the cannon on this map. If you could kill it, or something I might like it more. That is just how I feel towards it.

Zenith.7301:

You don’t need a guide to figure out D/P. The playstyle existed since beta. It just so happened that when CND could crit for 4k plus a backstab, the benefit of being immune to melee, free stomps, and unstoppable stealth were not deemed competitive with just globalling someone.

Just like S/D thieves existed in WvW prior to larcenous strike, simply because they ran a high sustained damage/stunlock build instead of a sheer burst build.

It’s just people need to be convinced by a forum post to play what they would have played earlier if they had been willing to experiment.

BM bunker rangers and dd eles existed during beta but their use only became popularized by seeing them pop more often in spvp.

You are missing the point. It is not that I or anyone had to look at a guide. D/D burst in tPvP was nerfed so it wasn’t viable. Someone (who shall be nameless) put a pistol on it. And it showed it to people.

If everyone kept their builds to themselves and forced people to learn things out themselves, this game would not be as fun. You don’t have a community for your game. You just have anti-social and selfish people that are extremely prideful in themselves and their builds and or strategies.

Goob.9752:

“A thief (Caed) made D/P very popular for thieves to fall back on for burst, and most jumped on it immediately. "

That must of came out of your kitten .. I read that and stopped reading the post

What do you want me to say? There was a meeting between thieves and they all banded together in the shadows agreeing that D/P will be the next best thing?

Caed was the first thief I heard about that switched to D/P. I looked at his guide, for D/P. Did you make one?

ronpierce.2760:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

ronpierce.2760:

The reason “Endurance Hate” doesn’t work is that those without a lot of evades just simply get hurt the worse because they have no ability evades AND get to use their little evades (dodge roll) less. Endurance hate actually hurts MORE who it’s trying to help. It’s not just dodge rolls that’s the problem, but the short cooldown(or no cooldown) evades that are spammable or happen far too frequently that make a fight near one-sided. Dodge rolling itself is not an issue, its the combination, and really the largest issue is evades on weapon skills, but also the potency of vigor. Endurance itself without those other benefits are actually almost too slow. Necromancers are almost Endurance starved as it is. If you make attacks that their Endurance away even more, we’d literally never get to dodge.

You actually think this wouldn’t hurt classes who only have two dodge rolls? If you are able to hit a class in their dodge rolls that just makes them weaker. Conditions already do this. Someone said earlier in this thread (I think), that dodging ill-timed skill shots should be rewarded with you evading them.

Why should someone get hit, by death shroud 1 (e.g) because I dodged it and I am about to die?

The difference is:
Those less reliant on dodging would less likely be effected by the (few) abilities that are evade-hate, while others would feel the hurt more often who do try to evade every attack.

This is opposed to the previous suggestion:
Endurance hate, which would effectively burn endurance. In this case, Those without evades would also never be able to dodge cause the endurance would be eaten, and the evades on weapon skills would be untouched.

Yes, this would be a better option to target the real enemy.

When I read that bold text, I can’t help but feel this is just another thread about S/D thieves. Considering rangers, warriors, and thieves are the only three classes with evade on weapon skills, and no one makes threads about rangers short bow 3 or warrior greatsword 3.

Regardless, the skill cap in this game would drop drastically if something like this actually happened. You could use your “evade hate” skill on someone whenever they try to dodge. In that case, these skills would need large CDs and would need to be utilities. If not evade, and the dodge mechanic would be better off being removed from the game.

ronpierce.2760:

The reason “Endurance Hate” doesn’t work is that those without a lot of evades just simply get hurt the worse because they have no ability evades AND get to use their little evades (dodge roll) less. Endurance hate actually hurts MORE who it’s trying to help. It’s not just dodge rolls that’s the problem, but the short cooldown(or no cooldown) evades that are spammable or happen far too frequently that make a fight near one-sided. Dodge rolling itself is not an issue, its the combination, and really the largest issue is evades on weapon skills, but also the potency of vigor. Endurance itself without those other benefits are actually almost too slow. Necromancers are almost Endurance starved as it is. If you make attacks that their Endurance away even more, we’d literally never get to dodge.

You actually think this wouldn’t hurt classes who only have two dodge rolls? If you are able to hit a class in their dodge rolls that just makes them weaker. Conditions already do this. Someone said earlier in this thread (I think), that dodging ill-timed skill shots should be rewarded with you evading them.

Why should someone get hit, by death shroud 1 (e.g) because I dodged it and I am about to die?

Isn’t the thread on “endurance hate” still going? That is a much better concept. Making weakness hurt endurance more, or something similar to the endurance regen you get with quickness on.

Have skill go through evades, that just doesn’t make any sense. Conditions (when already applied) already do that. And since this probably has something to do with S/D thieves, they are very weak to conditions.

sorrow.2364:

D/D isn’t unviable. I still use it over D/P because it has easier and cheaper access to stealth (4 ini when traited vs 5+ ini) that means easier and faster backstabs, plus the snare provided by DD.

If you want to know what unviable really mean, try Necro’s Axe MH.

As easy as it is to dodge C&D, I really don’t see how that is cheap access to stealth. Maybe hitting crates in Khylo or the treb, but C&D is 6 initiative, and you have to use on someone to access stealth. BP + HS, is an easier way to get into stealth but harder on your initiative.

Also, D/D doesn’t really bring any team utility. The least D/P can give to a team is a blind stomp. That is more viability than D/D, and a better reason to bring D/P over D/D.

Wow, I don’t know why they changed the title. Rightfully so people need to learn to play, and stop complaining about whats OP, and asking for nerfs.

sorrow.2364:

ensoriki.5789:

Not really feeling you here. While I agree with all the skills they touched being touched for a reason. That doesn’t mean it was done well. The circumstances that justified some nerfs have changed. PW nerf? Quickness has now been nerfed, Mug has been nerfed. The PW +Mug & Haste build has had all 3 aspects changed as of the previous balance patch.

Venom share is niche and it is not S/P exclusive you can run it with S/D. It’s hard to slot yourself in as a venom spec.

This is not a balanced environment, it is quite clear that it is not and if “Competitive means that the only thing which matters should be skill, not your class” then you still cannot say this. Your builds are tied to your class, and weapons are a part of that. Weapons clearly becoming niche/underpowered how can you stand by your statement that Competitive means only thing that matters is skill when it clear isn’t and underpowered specs are the flip side of the coin to overpowered specs in balance.

In addition as far as weapons themselves, skill usability should not decrease as it has. In efforts to balance dancing dagger they’ve practically taken it out of use, the skill is heavily unused, not for lack of wishing we could use it but this profession is based on opportunity cost for weapon skills and it is seldom worth it. If we had 100 initiative then sure tossing out Dancing Daggers is no problem, but we do not and throwing out Dancing dagger can literally cost you a fight.

I’ve said that I still think that this game isn’t balanced yet.

I’ve also said why I think Pistol Whip was a fair nerf.
Pistol Whip, back prior to nerf, had the same DPS of HB (keep in mind that PW takes less time to channel) while having also a stun and an evade. There was no reason that a skill with so much utilities was able to deal that damage, it’s simple.

Dancing Dagger was completely broken before the nerf, not only overpowered. It was pretty obvious.
Right now, DD has its use which is the real use it was supposed to have by design: a snare. You don’t want to use DD as your damage skill, neither to finish off a target. You would use it just to cripple a running away target and it does its job fine.

This is sort of what I was getting at. When they nerfed C&D, and DD, like they did it made the OH dagger so unlikable that thieves were forced in to going for D/P. And anyone that was using S/D for the daze build got shafted to.

Now S/D has a decent build, and people are asking for nerfs to it. What’s next P/P and traps is OP, and that has to get nerfed back?

cottage.3274:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

jportell.2197:

I don’t like how they buffed Flanking/Larcenous Strike… I know S/D needed some love but that isn’t how it should be done… Maybe they should have worked it more into steal for getting boons over a very spamamble skill…. A lot of profs have to go very deep into trait lines to get any meaningful boon up time (Mesmer protection/HGH Might) to have a thief roll along and spam 3333333333 because he has infinite ini regen while you lose all ur boons that you work hard to keep up. Is just kind of ridiculous… I think LS needs a massive initiative cost increase. They can couple this with taking more boons. But right now its too spammable.

I will agree with this. IMO, maybe implement boon striping in some utilities, Scorpion Wire anyone? Also the April 30th Patch, notes that they lowered initiative cost of FS from 4 to 3. They could increase it back, effectively making it 5 with FS/LS.

the fs/ls spam build can do 7 in a row before using roll for initiative and can do it with little time for recovery before you can do it again.
so 5 hell even 6 initiative cost wont make much of a difference they need to nerf the initiative regen from somewhere to nerf that silly build.
this is not like hs spam since ls is unblockable fs have a evede so your limited with bursting or blocking it so win win for the thief lose lose anyone else.
played it for like 4 games and i didnt know if i need to cry or laugh just so easy and chee ZZZZZ but unfortunately effective.

and btw the dmg isnt bad also 3 to 4k on a guard (air proc all crits can go up to 4k easy) with 0 might for this skill its alot (i know its like auto attack dmg but its faster have a evede cant be block strip boons so … ).

ps: buff pistols,revert pistol whip back thief is fine gg

Um, 4 initiative cost for FS/LS, you have 12 in this build. With Quick Pockets you get 3 initiative back. That makes it 4 times on weapon swap. Quick recovery gives you 2 initiative every 2 seconds, considering you get lucky you can get 5. My math is not that great, but that is not 7 in a row, and you would have to get pretty kitten lucky to get 5 in a row.

I am not going to tell you, or anyone how to play their S/D, but you should not have Air Sigils. Sigil of Energy makes the build what it is. And 3-4k crits on a guardian sounds like it was a GC guardian.

miriforst.1290:

The irony lies in that dancing dagger is useless in DD because of heartseeker. Heartseeker works more reliably as a gap closer and is also a leap finisher with eviscerating damage on low targets (which are the ones you often have to chase), and given the nature of initiative only the skill most useful in the given situation gets used. DD was used before because it could cheese bouncing damage like a boss from a safer distance. DD have fallen to D/P also because the leap combo is much harder to counter compared to a CD (with this is i do not mean the entire combo with backstab, im just comparing how easy it is to deny a X/D thief its stealth compared to a D/P).

Now the problem of “XXXXXXXX” spam i feel appears when a skill is useful in too many situations (see larcenous evade, boonsteal, hardhitter, semi gapcloser, unblockable) when the innitiative system would be more suited to “Lego” skills that are simple building blocks in themselves with single a simple purposes like “this evades, this leaps, this cripples, this deals higher damage on low targets, this applies a condition, this steals a boon, this is damage” etc. but where each skill will have to be chosen in the right moment. Spamming is not the players fault, it is the design.

You believe it is the spam capability through the initiative system? I could agree with that. It still feels like the way over did DD, and C&D. I wouldn’t want them to increase the damage just make it feel like a thief should have reason to bring OH dagger.

The only reason to have OH dagger, is for FS/LS.

jportell.2197:

I don’t like how they buffed Flanking/Larcenous Strike… I know S/D needed some love but that isn’t how it should be done… Maybe they should have worked it more into steal for getting boons over a very spamamble skill…. A lot of profs have to go very deep into trait lines to get any meaningful boon up time (Mesmer protection/HGH Might) to have a thief roll along and spam 3333333333 because he has infinite ini regen while you lose all ur boons that you work hard to keep up. Is just kind of ridiculous… I think LS needs a massive initiative cost increase. They can couple this with taking more boons. But right now its too spammable.

I will agree with this. IMO, maybe implement boon striping in some utilities, Scorpion Wire anyone? Also the April 30th Patch, notes that they lowered initiative cost of FS from 4 to 3. They could increase it back, effectively making it 5 with FS/LS.

Swim.6830:

I believe that thieves are balanced right now. They don’t need any nerfs, but they also definitely don’t need any buffs.

I do not understand the purpose of this thread as there hasn’t been much complaining about thieves lately. If the purpose is to bring back some of the nerfs, I’d like to bring back some of my healing as an Ele to be able to keep up (can get 3 shotted as it is with almost 3k armor and 15k HP). I’d also like to see some other nerfs reversed as well for all other classes if thief is brought back to the insane level it was. This kinda sounds ridiculous as you see, so there is no point in this thread…

Thieves are balanced right now because they have one build that can help a team, and one that needs to be babysat. I mean if that is what you consider balance then okay. I made this thread because balance patch is coming soon, and whether I like it or not nerf is coming most likely to S/D and probably buffs to P/X or something underused.

The title is a general statement for all classes, I am just talking about thieves. If there is something anyone thinks is overpowered, they should learn to play against it first. I said in the OP, any game cannot be balance when something is constantly buffed/nerfed.

I was not saying that all those abilities did not need to be nerfed, I was saying that during this time, only complaints and no one was saying what thief needed, and only what they needed taken away from them.

That is fine example of what this thread is about. People complain, and don’t know what they are complaining about. Anet makes balance decisions; puts thieves on sidelines.

sorrow.2364:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

There was definitely complaints about backstab, but that was not the problem. The complaints about mug outweighed the ones for backstab.

I can only think of 1 maybe 2 builds that use C&D. P/D condis and D/D burst (if it still exists). There are so many better options for a gap closer than DD, it is just a waste of initiative. 4 initiative for for 4s-6s cripple, might as well use heart seeker, or use infiltrator signet.

Caltrops is just bleed and cripple. In a tPvP setting that won’t work in the thieves favor when their team is going to have 101 ways to clear condis.

And my point with this thread was their balance philosophy is a little off. They know they should be taking feedback from players that have been playing the game for a long, but they still neglect more than half of feedback.

The recent change to mug was done to cater to beginner players, I have said this…5 times now? It had very little to do with tPvP balance. S/D was given viability to buffer. D/P still suffers from trying to be a part of team. Where does a thief fit in? I need a S/D ele to burst with (from stealth) me or a mesmer to make it look like I am doing something.

Actually DD is more useful than heartseeker. Sure, you can spam heartseeker or Infiltrator’s Signet to close the gap, but as long as you have no swiftness (or you both have swiftness), the enemy will still be out of melee range and you’re forced to use heartseeker again or another gap closer, making the initiative cost way higher compared to the DD. DD works as it is supposed to be: a snare to cripple running away targets.

Caltrops is bleed and cripple without you needing to use any attack to apply them.
Condition cleansing isn’t that prominent as you’re depicting it, otherwise I think that we wouldn’t see any HGH engineer or BM bunker ranger.

They take feedback of players, but you’d know that single players are sometimes biased. They both listen to the community and high-end players but at the end of the day, they do what they thing it is the best balance-wise, considering obviously the feedback.
If Mug didn’t really needed a nerf, we wouldn’t see it nerfed. Just look at Hundred Blades. How many complains were about it at the first months of the game? Still, Hundred Blades is untouched.

I think no profession is supposed to burst down a point holder alone that quickly, especially if it is a good one. Mesmer right now are on the very strong side of balance, I would bet they will be adjusted soon or later, because they pretty much took the role of a Thief in tPvP. As you can imagine, if the thief has no role isn’t always linked to the fact that thief is weak, but because probably someone else stronger has taken his role.
Buffing the thief will make the thief meta rise again (you know how popular were thief prior to the nerfs), which is someone none wants, just like the mesmer meta which is going on these days.

Nerfs were fair, buffs also more or less, it’s just that the game isn’t balanced yet.

I am going to put this Caltrops and DD thing to rest.

What I do know, is they said maybe in the 1st or 2nd SOTG, that they wanted to take priority of feedback, or most of it from the players that get invited, or players that are high ranked on the QP Leaderboard.

I keep bringing this and the Mug nerf up because one of the guests said, and this is a partial quote "I feel bad for beginner players that get bursted by that combo, and they don’t even know what to do. It’s so sad…”. At the time whoever said it, I agreed, because I am guilty of going in hot-joins and finding low rank players and just spiking them.

As you said, they use player feedback as something to look back on, knowing players considerations, and their feedback.

violentlycar.5267:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Again, I don’t think this is something that needs to be nerfed because they don’t know how to play against it. That would be a learn to play thing.

I disagree. Stealth, more than almost any other mechanic in any game, is extremely frustrating to play against even when you know how to deal with it, and typically makes the game less fun. This is doubly the case when you add high burst damage to the same kit. It was the case in League of Legends, Monday Night Combat, Guild Wars 2, etc. The only game I’ve ever seen that had tolerable stealth was Team Fortress 2, and it was extremely limited (until Valve started messing it up with crummy items). If a lot of the thief’s power budget is tied up in a mechanic that has a lot of gameplay/balance drawbacks, then isn’t it in thief’s best interest to have it significantly toned down so he can be stronger elsewhere?

Stealth is very annoying to play against, until you know how to play against it. The most annoying thing when you are playing a thief is when you cannot get your burst off because you are being dodged and evaded, and then your stealth wears off.

There are several ways to know when you are going to be hit, (I know you cannot see an invisible target)

1. Most stealth a thief will try to burst you from will only last 3s, wait in .5s intervals to dodge.

2. AoE your feet. Warriors might not be able to do this.

3. Try and turn you you character and strafe. Do this when you do not have the endurance to use, or if you can’t expense it. This is only in hopes that the thief will get a sidestab.

These are just tips, and they do work, I do this against other thieves and it works. The problem is I am a GC and I still get hit, hard.

I think this game would lose a lot of its uniqueness and individuality. Not really sure how many (if any) other games have something similar to a downed state.

The downed state really adds interesting plays around the downed player in sPvP. Not really sure about PvE, and WvW.

There was definitely complaints about backstab, but that was not the problem. The complaints about mug outweighed the ones for backstab.

I can only think of 1 maybe 2 builds that use C&D. P/D condis and D/D burst (if it still exists). There are so many better options for a gap closer than DD, it is just a waste of initiative. 4 initiative for for 4s-6s cripple, might as well use heart seeker, or use infiltrator signet.

Caltrops is just bleed and cripple. In a tPvP setting that won’t work in the thieves favor when their team is going to have 101 ways to clear condis.

And my point with this thread was their balance philosophy is a little off. They know they should be taking feedback from players that have been playing the game for a long, but they still neglect more than half of feedback.

The recent change to mug was done to cater to beginner players, I have said this…5 times now? It had very little to do with tPvP balance. S/D was given viability to buffer. D/P still suffers from trying to be a part of team. Where does a thief fit in? I need a S/D ele to burst with (from stealth) me or a mesmer to make it look like I am doing something.

sorrow.2364:

In my opinion, all the nerfs were right. So are the buff (excluding FS).

1. Pistol Whip: it isn’t all about damage. Pistol Whip has also two utilities. It was able to deal the DPS of Hundred Blades (obviously considering its shorter duration) while having an evade and a stun in it. That skill pretty much had anything. They decided to nerf the damage while mantaining its utility. Now the damage of Pistol Whip isn’t amazing, just average, but the utilities make the difference. An all-in-one skill isn’t healthy in any skillbar.

2. Dancing Dagger: that skill was ridiculous prior nerf. A couple of DD thrown at someone ressing another player were able to completely wipe them both. They nerfed the damage to be consistent on what the skill was supposed to be: an utility, a snare.
It is pretty useful against the one who are running away, especially when you consider that D/D lacks any form of movement impariment skills. The fact that the damage is insignificant now doesn’t mean that the skill hasn’t it’s use.

3. Cloak and Dagger: pretty much what I’ve said about DD. It is an utility and dealt also amazing damage. It was also the skill present in the backstab combo. Considering that an UTILITY SKILL was able to deal 5k+ damage prior the nerf, the damage adjusting seems fair to me.

4. Caltrops: be serious. That skill allowed to wipe an entire group of enemies while staying in stealth. It was incredibly easy to play and incredibly effective plus, when traited, any thief would be able to mantain caltrops on the floor almost 100% uptime. Adding this with the uncatchable trait, any bleed thief would wipe you while not going out of stealth a single time. The nerf was needed and thank god it came.

5. Mug: that skill dealt 5k damage instantly. Coupled with the backstab combo, any thief would be capable to deal 11k+ damage in a fraction of a second and then finish the target spamming heartseeker. That was sick. While they did not made Mug useless (2k heal is useless?), they just decreased its offensive capability (which thief surely doesn’t lack) while giving some devensive use.

Now Flanking Strike is too much effective. It completely punish the use of ANY BOON in this game and some professions completely rely on them to be effective.
An S/D thief has more boons of a Guardian, an Ele and more might stacks than an HGH engi.

Nerfs are as needed as buffs. If ArenaNet left the game as it is, we would see only the same overperforming profession in both PvP, WvWvW and PvE, killing, in fact, any form of game variety.

So stop cry about nerfs and get used to play into a balanced environment.

Okay, I was pointing out that they have constantly nerfed thieves. I know that C&D and DD were too strong for where they were at. But look at them now? In sPvP, they are practically useless.

Caltrops cannot/did not do that. Any team that had one condi clear removed them. D/D Caltrops is all bleed damage, it was not that strong. Pistol Whip was and is very linear.

S/P was used for Venom Share, and controlling a target with basi venom. Mug is instant burst damage, you are right. And again, the only players that complained about this skill were the ones who didn’t know how to play against thieves.

I am not crying, I am just stating the above. Constant nerfs/buffs does not help. Listening to a specific crowd of the community doesn’t help either. Whether that be the oldest or newest players. The worst or the best players. Everyone should feel free to express their feedback and feel like it is being heard.

Oh and S/D, to be straight-forward and honest, if this ability gets nerfed with out something to buffer, thieves will effectively have one viable build again.

violentlycar.5267:

If the goal is to make it easier for newer players to fight thieves, then they’ve been hitting in all the wrong places. The biggest issue new players have in games is dealing with stealth characters; long duration stealth in particular causes a lot of problems. Thief can gain stealth for unreasonably long amounts of time, and yet this is almost never, ever hit. They need to bring it down (especially Shadow Refuge) if they really wanna fix the cause and not just the symptoms.

That was their intent with the last “Balance” Patch. They changed mug so it did not crit to nerf burst, because newer players did not know how to deal with it. I should have made it more clear somehow that this was more aimed at tPvP. Stealth is not that big of a deal in tPvP, however you are still right new players have do not know how to deal with stealth at all.

Again, I don’t think this is something that needs to be nerfed because they don’t know how to play against it. That would be a learn to play thing.

Hi Arctu, and I wholeheartedly agree with that kind of method. To this very day, people cry OP on thieves, whether it’s 3333 spam or 2222 spam.

Anet really needs to take a step back and pick which crowd of players they want to listen to.

I only wanted to post about the faults in there balance process, with the balance patches. This is why the post is so long. There is a TL;DR.

February 26th Patch

Caltrops:
Reduced duration from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.

Now indicates its radius.
Steal skill: No longer initiates autoattacks.

Uncatchable trait:
Now displays an active combat area to both allies and enemies.
Increased effective radius by 50%

R.I.P any hopes of a condition build in tPvP. Steal not initiating auto’s was probably a bug more than anything. But I am more glad they gave us both sides of the spectrum here. They started to break a trend.

“I feel bad for beginner players that get bursted by that combo, and they don’t even know what to do. It’s so sad…”

April 30th Patch

Thief
Skills that must be performed from stealth are now labeled as “Stealth Attack.”
Vigorous Recovery: Improved accuracy of description.

Cloak and Dagger skill: Now functions with the Hidden Killer trait.
Needle Trap skill: Removed the duration skill fact as being misleading.
Shadow Shot skill: The projectile portion is now unblockable.

Choking Gas skill: Added an Unblockable skill fact to reflect functionality.

Flanking Strike skill:
Now evades and delivers one strike instead of delivering two attacks.
Removed boon removal.
Reduced initiative cost from 4 to 3.
Now toggles for 5 seconds to a second skill, Larcenous Strike, if the attack hits an enemy.
Improved reliability of flanking strike.
Larcenous Strike: Deliver a quick strike that steals up to two boons from an enemy. Costs 1 initiative.
Larcenous Strike, Stab skills: Reduced aftercast by 0.5 seconds.

Mug trait: Can no longer critically hit. Now heals the thief from a range of 1980 health
to 2700 health.

Leeching Venoms trait: Increased the damage scale from power by 33%. Increased range from 325-400 to 325-425.

Signet of Agility skill: Increased passive stat bonus by 100%.
Assassin’s Signet skill: Increased passive stat bonus by 100%.
Revealed effect: Reverted duration to 3 seconds in PvE.
Trick Shot skill: First arrow is no longer heat-seeking.
Smoke Screen skill: No longer destroys unblockable missiles.

Haste skill:
Increased duration by 1 second.
Players now regenerate endurance at 50% effectiveness (increased from 0%) when under the effects of this skill.

This is what we are all here to talk about right? How OP S/D is now? And how thief has more than one build. The thief is not a one trick pony. Meanwhile still being pigeonholed into traits, and utilities. The thief has D/P which in the April 30th patch the mug burst was brought down to cater to beginner players. I don’t know which player said that quote on SOTG, but someone did.

This basically brings us up to speed and where thieves are at now, besides the teleport changes (which effected everyone).

So now I only ask Anet, can we stop nerfing thieves and let the player base learn to play the game? This is a model that many eSport developing game studios have used. If you don’t let the metagame work/shift there won’t be one. Constant buffs/nerfs to ANY class does not help the game.

TL;DR If you are complaining about something please take the time to learn to play. Thieves or any class, have been nerfed/buffed repeatedly and if the game follows this path we will never see class balance, build diversity, or eSports.

The Assassin’s Sigent change is not in their update notes anymore/anywhere. I don’t know, but that was more of a change than a nerf anyways.

This thread is about how thieves have constantly been nerfed dating all they way back from september, and people still ask for nerfs. This or that is OP etc. And how there was a lack of buffs to “buffer” the nerfs they have constantly revieved.

Let’s go all the way back to the beginning with “2222” spam. That was great.

September 14th Patch

Thief
Heartseeker: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%. Damage thresholds changed. Old: 100%-66%, 66%-33%, 33%-0%. New: 100%-50%, 50%-25%, 25%-0%.

This to me is more of a rework and Heartseeker continued to do it’s intended job. It was reworked this way so people would not spam it (people still do).

October 7th Patch

Thief
Pistol Whip: Reduced damage by 15%.
Basilisk Venom: Increased stun duration to 1.5 seconds. Stun breakers now work on this skill.

Again another thief skill that was very strong but we are later to find out that this was only because it was hasted. With out 100% quickness, PW is very weak, and does very lack luster damage. This is the first buff that counter-parted a nerf for thieves.

During this time there were more than just S/P thieves D/D thieves were very popular.

November 15th Patch

Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.
Blinding Powder: This skill’s recharge has been reduced from 60 seconds to 40 seconds.
Smoke Screen: This skill’s height has been increased to help it absorb projectiles.

Tactical Strike: This skill’s damage has been increased by 10% in all formats. This skill’s daze duration has been reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds in PvP.
Leeching Venoms: This trait now scales based on the thief’s power.
Cluster Shot: This skill’s damage is reduced by 15% in PvP.

Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.
Scorpion Wire: This skill’s range has been increased to 1200.

Shadow Trap: This skill no longer shadowsteps the thief when the trap is triggered. This skill now has two additional abilities: The first ability becomes available when Shadow Trap is cast and will destroy the current trap. The second ability, Shadow Pursuit, becomes available when an enemy triggers the trap. The thief may choose to activate this ability and shadowstep to the enemy that triggered the trap. If this ability is not activated after 10 seconds, the ability will fade and Shadow Trap will be available.

The big one, the patch every thief dreads, /D R.I.P. This patch included some decent side buffs but were highly overlooked due to C&D and Dancing Dagger being completely killed.

A thief (Caed) made D/P very popular for thieves to fall back on for burst, and most jumped on it immediately. There was a daze build that some thieves ran that was also killed (it was not op).

In the midst of patches coming out players are still complaining about how overpowered this new thief weapon set is.

December 14th Patch

Whirling Axe: This skill can now be cancelled by other skills.
Fear (Stolen item— Skull): This skill now works like the warrior skill “Fear Me.” It will
Instinctual Response: Now triggers at 10% damage instead of 20%.

Ricochet: Increased bounce chance from 5% to 20%.
Fleet Shadow: Increased move speed from 33% to 50%.

Slowed Pulse: This can now trigger every 20 seconds instead of every 30.
Pistol Mastery: Increased damage from 5% to 10%
.
Improvisation: Now also increased damage with environment weapons by 10%.

Piercing Shot: This skill is no longer able to fire at enemies behind the player.

Whoa! Buffs? Oh, too…traits, that a thief won’t use. But seriously, improvisation was a trait that never really stuck out anyone, until as of late.

Most of these traits are in SA or Acro. And Anet gave players zero reasons for us to go into these trait lines. Playing D/P, you normally are 25/30/0/0/15, lately some take 15 into Acro for Fleet of Shadow, or Power of Intertia. Pistol mastery does nothing, as P/P and P/D is still suffering.Also they cleaned up some of the clunkiness with the stolen items.

Again in between patches players complain. “Thief spike damage too high!” “11k Backstab, look at this screen shot”

Shadow Shot: This ability now allows the player to move while executing dagger
strike portion of the ability.

Venomous Aura: Activating a venom skill with this trait equipped will now briefly display an indicator ring around the thief.
Withdraw: This ability now scales 20% better with healing power. Base healing per level has increased by 10%.

These are nice changes as being able to see the aura for venom share is very helpful. Oh and the withdraw buff made it more like-able. And using shadow shot now while moving made D/P more fluid.

One question why is it in the sPvP forums if it only applies to WvW?

Can this be moved please.

I would agree with Jumper’s quote, not so much about rerolling. I am really still holding on for this next patch for p/p reworks and traps. As well as maybe revert for mug.

They nerfed mug to cater to beginner players not knowing how to deal with the burst. Imo; I am still running D/P, BEFORE the teleport changes I was able to spike from 1500+ range and that was some utility I could bring to a team. Spike damage in a team fight, without them knowing what angle I am coming from. Now with the teleport changes It cut that in half.

I wouldn’t mind them widening the array of rewards you get at the ranks, for making them so slow. I honestly haven’t any ideas atm, but something like more armor skins and weapons to start.

You can already make dyes, but why can’t you make UNID red/blue/brown dyes like you can in PvE?

This is just off the top of my head. If anyone has anything else they can add (other than lowering the rank points) by all means.

There is already a sticky for this.

Ingame name: Kinjax

Main Class / Potential Classes (Incase team requires):Thief D/P burst roamer S/D S/D Zerker or Valkry// Necro Power Wells/Conditionmancer // Bunker Guard

Region:NA Pacific Coast

Practice Times: I literally can be on whenever. If that’s late at night, or early in the morning, I do not care. I play all day, or at least I try too. The past few days I have been on by 11am PDT, and have been going to sleep around 3am.

Experience: I have played several games at a respectable level of play. I have yet to be on a team that has pushed my limits, in this game or any. I am Rank 47 (very little relevance) and I have been playing on and off since the launch of the game.

Other (Anything else that you would like to add): I want to be with a team that wishes to be competitive in the future. I am not some egotistical kid that will get kitten when you criticize me on the smallest thing. I do main a thief and that is the class I play/know the best, I am still doing my best to learn something else that I can play like my thief.

Mrbig.8019:

I can officially say this “fix” totally broke inf strike.

Now half of the time i try to reach a player with a slight “LoS” obstruction ( it can even be the rock at bear in Spirit Watch) or in z-axis, it will fail.

It’s totally random, i’m actually afraid to use inf strike-return, because i won’t know if it will work or not.

Yeah the LoS obstruction doesn’t only effect Inf Strike however. Inf Sig, and steal were greatly effected. Trying to use Inf sig from one of the side ledges on Foefire, it won’t work. It’s as if my target was out of line of sight, even though I’m standing directly at the ledge.

As d/p it feels like it is not even worth using Inf sig anymore(I used to love it for 1800+range burst combo) I should just switch to assassin’s sig. Obviously being obstructed in plain sight is not intended and this should be fixed.

Here is one. Displays that I used Infiltrators’ Signet and then Steal. Infiltrator did not shadowstep me, and steal could not work.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/1cn8af6.jpg[/img]

And here is the second ledge that goes into mid on Foefire. Same situation.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/TaDRpWr.jpg[/img]

If anyone is interested that Infiltrators’ Sig is broken I will try to get more screen shots on more maps.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

When I did smash tournies, each team got to ban one map and losers get to pick the map after each game. You also get 2nd character pick, but that wouldn’t work so well due to hard counters in this game. If we had more maps, we could probably specialize in them and then have varying teams play a random map at first, then the losing team chooses next map from then on out.

Yeah, IMO basic rotation is kind of stale. You can predict everything or counter-predictions.

Would be better if the following maps were tuned for tournaments: Spirit Watch, Temple of the Silent Storm, and Skyhammer(when ready not released).

Tyler Chapman.1832:

We are aware of Phase Retreats z-axis issues as well. As for the bug fixes on teleports, we don’t wan’t people teleporting through walls except with skills like shadow return. If you can port through a wall, then it is most likely not intended.

And I guess they decided this 10 months after people were doing it with next no complaints.