Guild Wars 2

Because S/P is awesome? It have access to so many interrupts that you don’t need stealth. You evade while pistol whipping and are dealing a good deal of damage, so why not?

If you die to the tactic the thief was using in the video, then shame on you. But 4k heartseeker? I’ve seen numbers twice as high against bunkers, but you need to have all damage boosts up and might / bloodlust. If this was in sPvP it would be a normal number, but if this was WvW then 5k would be low damage for a glass cannon. This is not a bug, it’s damage boosts from sigils, traits and food that help, and the fact that you need to be under 25% hp, before that the skill is nearly useless.

Kwll.1468:

Retaliation never gets to 400 damage. First of all its capped at something like 329 damage but even that may be the pre pvp retal damage nerf numbers. Its been awhile since I tested it but it seemed like 220-240 with about 3000 attack power. I have two accounts and I went to custom arena and just had my one account wail around on my guardian with retal up. By the way that would make 27 hits or so to get to 6-7k damage. Im no expert on thiefs but there is no attack in the game that hits 27 times in one use I dont think. I’ll test it later but 220-240 is pretty much seared in my mind regardless of the speed of the attack is what retaliation returns per hit damage wise.

If a guardian pop retaliation in a group situation and the thief do a pistol whip (shame on the thief) and he hit three people with all the hits, that would be 9*3=27 hits. That’s a really bad situation for the thief, but nothing to worry about. We can stop the channel at any time and we can chose to not attack with that skill. I’ve never had any problems with retaliation, so I really can’t see the fuzz about it..

Really? A thief complaining about heartseeker being aoe? Chain stealthing through black powder is something you do to flee or move around the map, if you ever chain it in combat you’re doing something wrong…

Auto turning shouldn’t be in a skill based game as the OP said. Take heartseeker for example, you can just click it and you’ll be on top of your enemy..

Chase.8415:

It’s going to be full of Bunkers.

Then my bunker buster thief will have tons of fun ripping them to pieces

But on topic:
They will probably be best at making the best out of any situation. You will be grouped with several different builds, play styles and professions, so you will have to be able to judge any situation and make the best out of it.

I think that one of the reasons Anet won’t split them is because they don’t get any money from the PvP community. There’s a few custom arenas, but that doesn’t even come close to what people buy in PvE. PvPers won’t buy expensive skins, harvesting stuff and so on – they usually care about PvP and the competition, not about the awesome looking skins. :/

Funny thing though. People only complain about this in WvW. In sPvP people couldn’t care less, since it’s not that effective. In PvE people want us to chain stealth them with BP + Cluster Bomb in dungeons. Seems like it’s a hate / love scenario…

But as I said earlier, BP + HS shouldn’t stack, at least not in WvW..

pantsforbirds.9032:

Geiir.7603:

pantsforbirds.9032:

Here is my guide i recently made for the sword/pistol spec i use: http://intothemists.com/guides/294-rand_x_al_thors_swordpistol_build

Its a s/tpvp oriented guide, but the spec works well in wvw too

Great guide! Well written and thought trough
Works very well for me too in sPvP. Chain stunning people is a huge benefit in team fights!

Thanks man! I think sword/pistol is underrated and i would love to get some attention to the weaponset

I completely agree! I used it a lot before they nerfed PW and picked it up again after they gave it a small buff. It’s an amazing weapon set with nice burst and survivability. The amount of interrupts and stuns we can pull off with this is just crazy!

runeblade.7514:

I disagree with this post.

Instead, current mob ai should be scrapped and reworked from the scratch so that all skills are useful.

PvE should be more like PvP. Fast paced, action filled, full of teamwork, and unpredictable.

PvE is about noticing a set pattern on bosses and use dodge skills to prevent all attacks from happening.

It would be so awesome to get in a dungeon and have a new experience because the mobs and bosses decide what to do according to the builds/professions they’re facing. That would be, just, omg… As it is now, you just have to learn the tactics and boom, easy mode forever….

But this will never happen, maybe in GW3, so they should split sPvP and PvE. You can’t balance for both with the same formula, you just can’t…

Ezeriel.9574:

…because 80% of forum users are bored thieves, posting in between yak kills, and they’re mad, because they can’t one shot people safely while they are all blobbed up.

My thief have no problem killing people in a blob. The fact that the blob is so unorganized usually end with the downed player left behind. People are so obsessed in staying with the commander for speed buffs that they will just leave anyone behind if they die, and this make a thiefs job very easy.

pantsforbirds.9032:

Here is my guide i recently made for the sword/pistol spec i use: http://intothemists.com/guides/294-rand_x_al_thors_swordpistol_build

Its a s/tpvp oriented guide, but the spec works well in wvw too

Great guide! Well written and thought trough.

Works very well for me too in sPvP. Chain stunning people is a huge benefit in team fights!

Thrumdi.9216:

The issue really isn’t zergs, which exist in all RvR games.

The issue is that the maps are so small that zerging crowds out almost all other forms of play.

Also, mechanics like the AoE cap, the downed state, and no Trinity mean that smaller groups have far more difficulty taking out zergs by superior play than they should.

That’s really at the root of the “blobbing” complaints.

This.

There’s no skill involved with blobbing. You just run after that blue tag and hope you got the bigger blob. It should be possible for a small well coordinated group to hold a camp, tower or even defend themselves from the blob. As it is today there’s no way for five people to hold it against 50…

The best explanation so far as to why they need to separate sPvP and PvE balance. I agree on every single point you made in this post and I beg Anet to take these threads seriously.

PvE and sPvP is completely different in every single way. This alone should be a good enough reason..

First of all, thief is a profession built for burst damage and mobility. This means that glass cannon builds are what we excel at. We have no trouble getting away if things go wrong (even without stealth) and we can deliver punches that they feel in their bones. Thief has ton of survivability with blinds, evades, stealth and shadowsteps – use them all. We’re basically made with one idea in mind: quickly in and burst our enemy, retreat – repeat.

I’ve played around with sword / pistol builds lately and I gotta say that I love them! Knights/berseker trinket, lyssa runes, 0/30/0/25/15 with withdraw, shadowstep, infiltrator signet and signet of agility. Lots of survivability and nice damage. I can basically jump in the middle of it all and still survive :p

Resouled.5614:

Some combo’s you should utilize:

Precast PW into steal, infiltrators signet, shadowstep: this will teleport you to your target and land the stun so you can hit the rest of your PW. Besides that always have infiltrators return up incase you screw up and have to run. Mastering teleports and your CC is key to playing S/P well.

I precast IS into steal. That way I can cover huge distances in a blink, this often catches my enemy off-guard and usually end in an easy kill.

Positioning is everything, and every thief should know that by their first day of playing it ;p

Allie, could you please tell the persons balancing the thief to show up now and then in our forum? I have yet to see anyone working on balancing in the thief forum. Would be great to have some answers for everything the messed up :/

jmatb.6307:

Anything that blind spams from range is not terrible, but why would anyone run P/P and P/D, as an example, with Spider venom, when they can go Engi and do it from a longer range with more damage and burns?

Sure you’d have disengage but Grenade engi can put confusion, poison, burn, bleeds, chill, blinds, and do that with 15 to 20 stacks of might throughout the fight.

Does anyone use P/P in Pve or WvW by any chance?

I use it for the lulz. People doesn’t expect it, but it sucks. My sword auto attack is far more powerful. It is fun to use against ranged professions in combination with smoke screen (blocking all projectiles). They never react accordingly and I’ll end up killing them with unload spam, which is kind of embarrassing :p

I agree with you, I would choose any other ranged profession over P/P thief. It’s not exactly spamming blinds either. If we spam blinds then we are lowering our damage – a lot. I would rather have a thief dagger storming in smoke screen or black powder – not that’s AoE blind AND damage/cripple.

Dual wielding pistols is something we rarely, if ever, do. It’s just not on par with our other weapon sets, not in damage, mobility or utility. When I see thieves running dual pistols, I kind of feel sorry for them. They may do some damage, but nothing a sword or a dagger could do better, and all they do is spam one ability; Unload. It’s pretty much all we do with that set. We use Black Powder and Head Shot on rare occasions, but those are really rare… Vital Shot and Body Shot is a laugh, and nothing any thief serious about dealing damage would use. What this set really need is a buff to overall damage and some mobility.

So I were thinking, since the devs clearly have no idea how to fix this set, we should give them some help. What can we do to improve this set? Let’s get a discussion going and brainstorm together, because I really want to see this set where it should be

This should be in the thief forum, not the sPvP forum. You also fail to mention that you speak about thieves, which may confuse some people here.

Back to topic:
P/P isn’t downright horrible, but it need some work to be competitive on the same level as the other weapon sets. What P/P really need is mobility. Anet said in a SotG (long time ago) that they want to make all weapon sets more mobile, but I have yet to see that happen… I’m thinking in the direction of adding an evade/roll (like roll for initiative and withdraw) to the #2 skill. The weapon set also need some work in pure damage numbers.

I gotta say that the buff to Ricochet made it more useful, but still not there. I’ve played around with a regeneration build which worked out pretty well, but not as good as any other set would do, with much more mobility and utility…

Mesmer can have some of the highest AoE bursts in the game, while maintaining high mobility and deception, how is that not viable?

I would say it would help getting the blobs reduced. At least I hope it would..

Thieves with staff would be awesome! A melee staff weapon with nice crowd control. Imagine tripping enemies with staff before slapping their head with it ;]

I do like your idea of GS abilities though.

folly dragon.4126:

I have to admit, the new thief class called ranger is very welcoming for group wvw. Longbow, X/H, means perma stealth when paired with a thief, best blast finisher for combo starters, sprint, might, vigor + whatever the field was. 1800 range weapon, your choice of sword for evade, leap forward, backwards, axe for mid ranged debuffing. Plus a pet. Sweet.

Dont nerf the new Ranger Thieves.

And yet they cry about thieves…

When you ask Anet to fix your profession, and give them tons of ways to do so, they "fix" the complete opposite. It’s like: "Hey! Stealth is a problem and it’s a cheap mechanic as it is now. Us thieves have many good ways to fix this and increase the skill cap for thieves." And Anet responds with messing with all other weapon sets... Destroying short bow, messing with S/D #3 (it was perfectly fine!! It only needed a better pathing, not a new skill!). I mean, wtf Anet?!

Thief is popular in hot joins. Those thieves I meet in tourneys are just free kills (pistol whipper here). Thief can be really strong if played right. But that means either going for no-stealth or the zerker backstab build (which is the one build everyone hates and the reason for all QQ). If we stealth we doesn’t contest the node, therefore we need to stay out of stealth or eliminate our enemy within seconds.

Yeah, thieves haven’t been nerfed at all -_- It’s true that Anet haven’t touched the perma stealth or the backstab zerker build much, but they’ve destroyed all other viable builds. They mess with stuff that were working and leave the broken stuff alone. Backstab zerker / perma stealth is the most viable build, and that’s that. Trust me when I say we want to have other builds made viable, because we want. There’s a reason why several good thieves are in these forums learning people to counter stealth. We also drop a ton of good ideas on how to fix the profession, the only problem is that Anet never listens.

I have yet to see a single live stream with a thief. I have yet to see a dev participate in the thief community. I have yet to see a dev play a thief. The best profession? For what? Roaming WvW, killing up leveled and bad players. Yay!

I love my non-stealth thief. People really doesn’t expect a thief that doesn’t stealth, so I win most of the fights

I wouldn’t trade my thief for any other roaming profession

+1

We really need this, it just has to be good enough to compete with the other major VoIP clients out there.

I wouldn’t mind having block reveal the thief. But the best counter to backstab? Evade. It’s a nice little tool tons of people seem forget they have the second the thief stealths. We only have a few seconds to land out backstab, so if the first one is blocked we have one shot left, which 90% of the times won’t land because of evade or just moving out of the way.

Thief is a weak class in sPvP where almost every game is based on spreading boons, conditions and locking down any enemy with knockdowns, interrupts, immobilizes and stuns. As a thief you’re really vulnerable, and one knockdown is often enough time to have it bursted down… A guardian can completely lock down a thief and kill it within seconds.

Me and a friend did this the other night. Wasn’t exactly solo since we were two persons, but it took about 10-15 minutes. We followed pretty much the same tactics as you did, and that worked out pretty good ;D

I use this skill a lot in sPvP. No one expects to get drawn across the field and then get slapped by a pistol whipping thief ;D

Short bow in a zerg is pretty strong, at least if the zerg is organized. Cluster Bomb is the best blast finisher in the game, and we can spam it! You can heal or buff your zerg while weaken the enemy zerg and on top of that deal tons of damage! Just learn the combo fields and finishers and you’ll be a huge asset to the zerg

With the latest patch you get badges so fast that it should really not be a problem at all. The more strategic ways to use it would be against perma-stealthing zergs and on a rare occasion, a thief.

I actually agree with you. Upleveled players are completely useless in WvW, and I’ve been told several times by commanders to gtfo because as an upleveled person I’m just keeping a lvl 80 from joining the battlegrounds….

It’s kind of funny to say that you have to play PvE and get all your gear there before you enter the PvP area, unless you want soldier gear…

I do agree to some extent, but this game is 90% player skill and 10% profession / build, so I wouldn’t really care to get the Ascended gear. What I agree on is that Ascended gear is for the PvE players, not the one fighting a war in WvW ;p

Anet should find some way for smaller well organized groups to have a chance to defend a keep or tower against a zerg. It’s not fun following the commander all day, which is why I chose the thief ;p

Handin.4032:

AggieTechGuy.4901:

Geiir.7603:

Valin.4527:

Eh, it’s the implementation of Stealth (in this case, it’s really invisibility) that tweaks people.

Then again pretty much invisibility in ANY PvP game ends up frustrating people – that’s just a human factor. This game is no different than others in that regard.

My only gripe is the Stealth off of gate/walls to solo contest keeps.
Kinda cheap in my mind – yes.
Game breaking – no.

It looks like thieves that move on to other professions are the only one being able to kill other thieves with that profession… Stealth is so easy to counter that it isn’t even funny. Thief is the easiest class to predict, really.

Says the Asuran Thief.

Look, you can counter bad thieves pretty easily, I admit that. But even semi-good thieves are hard to fight in WvW. A semi-good thief can make you think they’re moving 1 direction, while somehow managing to go waaaaay off the other direction. A good thief will try to burst you down, and if it fails, stealth / run away to break combat, and then come back when their CD’s are done.

The thing is, in WvW, you guys can break combat so easily its not even funny. All you have to do is trick us once in the direction you’re going, and then move the other direction. You can get a full health bar, regain initiative, and then try again the next time to burst someone down. And many of you do hit that big shiny reset button, then come back to try again. Maybe you’ll get lucky the next time and get 5 crits in a row instead of 3, who knows?

I don’t propose someone nerf thieves to oblivion, though. I will admit that probably 75% of the complaints against thieves are more about the complainer being a glass cannon or not knowing how to fight one. But there is some legitimacy to the complaints in you guys being able to break combat so easily.

Just so you know, I’m not a glass cannon, and I do know how to fight thieves. Bunker d/d ele, and I can either kill bad thieves or ignore good ones.

This is basically my only gripe with them. It’s the fact they can get into combat, step away, or move away and regen really fast and come back with full health. But, it’s not game breaking. The only reason I hate thieves is it seems like a lose-lose most of the time. Either they get a few lucky crits (as a support build mesmer I sit with around 28k health), or they run off and don’t let me kill them :P

I know as a mesmer when I run with stealth (do lay portals, get through enemy lines, etc), having a 1200 range blink+decoy can get me basically past any defensive lines without the enemy even seeing me. Stealth + teleport is a very powerful tool to have.

Any good player will be a nightmare to fight against on any profession. Good warriors will rip thieves to pieces, good necros will bleed us dry before we knew what hit us – so that pretty much applies to every profession.

I really do see the frustration people have. You can’t see us and we can reset and enter fights at will. We are ridiculously strong in a 1v1 situation, but are not really any benefit to a zerg unless we want to be mobile blast finishers. So it would be natural for a decent thief to beat a decent player if he’s built for zerging.

What really destroyed the thief was all the non-thief players that want to steamroll everything in WvW and switched to theif after getting face-rolled by one. It’s very tempting to abuse our mechanics and troll people – which far too many thieves sadly do :/

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Post how to do it here so everyone know and can use it. Then in 2 months when anet have still not fixed it after everyone has complained constantly about it, those who use it can then claim that it is a genuine and legitimate “tactic” you can use seeing as Anet have not removed it, so stop moaning and use it instead, cos it’s not an exploit cos Anet have unofficially approved it by not removing or fixing it!

If you do something that’s clearly not intended (like jumping up walls) that would be exploiting. Anet have banned accounts for exploiting, so this is not something I would encourage people to do.

Dual.8953:

Geiir.7603:

And the simple fix – make it impossible for combo fields to be activated by a single finisher more than once. But that would hurt all other professions too, like mass healing, speed and retaliation, so I guess there’s no way anyone would see that as a possible solution.

An even simpler one that wouldn’t hurt everyone is make it so Smoke Leap doesn’t stack stealth. I’d still like to see, all stealth ends in revealed too.

They could make it so stealth in general doesn’t stack, which I highly support. This means that you can’t chain Blinding Powder, Hide in Shadows and Shadow Refuge. Having revealed apply each time the Thief leave stealth, wether he attack or not, would really force thieves to think twice before stealthing. This would heighten the skill level, and it’s also something I’ve supported for a long time.

Burnfall.9573:

Geiir.7603:

Burnfall.9573:

Anyone with a “brain” should know that Arena net support and promote Tyranny “The One Man Army” theory in support to their Favorite Class; Thief.

Why Tyranny?

By the countless deleted/infracted/closed and pending threads concerning Thief stealth causing choatic irony in wvw.

Promoting Tyranny

Nearing to 1 year- by the countless nerf-rewardings this class have gotten, is absurd.

Remember how they “nerfed Perma-stealth”?

Well it is still here, i never believed them, because again.. thief is the only nerf-rewarding class and Favorite class.

So why would they stripp their Idol thief from Supremacy status for the sake of any one; classes, community, wvw,spvp and pve?

As long Arena net remain, so be theif stealth and Favoritism.

The only way to remove stealth is to replace Arena net.. and that will Never happen.

Our only Savior and Hope is carry on to other Mmo’s team who doesn’t believe in Favoritism, “the one man army” theory , Tyranny and Nerf-Rewarding class and most especially, Punishing the “less advantage class” in Favor of the “Advantage” class.

So, they completely, let me say that again, completely!! ignore the thief community and its requests?!

They have nerfed us time after time, giving us so called buffs that we never wanted and just ended up destroying good weapon sets. They have given us many unjustified nerfs on things no one ever have complained about.

But yes. Anet want to have a strong duelist profession – and that’s exactly what the thief is and what it does best. Being a mobile blast finisher isn’t fun, but that’s all we can do in a zerg. And don’t even get me started on PvE….

Here is your answer, why they completely ignore Thief community?

They believe Thief class is Perfect

That’s the Consequence of being Favorite.. and them playing Favoritism.

Not only that is Devastating and Abusive to thief in the long term, any problems or concern this class have will be intentially ignore or "swept under the rug’ because it’s only a Delusion.

Believe me as a Ranger class, i know that thief have many fixes and problems within thier class that need serious attention.

Unfortunately,

Not to Arena net

Which is Sad

If they really believed the Thief was perfect, then why have I yet to see a developer play one? I have never seen any livestream of the Thief.

We have a ton of bugs (shadow step mechanics for example) that we have posted several times, yet they fail to fix these. The thief community always ask for more viable builds and more options except for the standard high burst thief, but we never get anything…

And the simple fix – make it impossible for combo fields to be activated by a single finisher more than once. But that would hurt all other professions too, like mass healing, speed and retaliation, so I guess there’s no way anyone would see that as a possible solution.

Siric.3589:

100% Yes.

It’s time thieves go through a number of changes to move them away from the hyper gimmick builds they run to more well rounded ones. This does require nerfs (like the one suggested) but also buffs in return.

I wish thief players would stop getting out thier pitch forks every time something that might hurt their class is suggested. Would you guys really not like to see your class moved to an over all better state for both thief and non thief players? … Does-not-compute.

I and several other thieves agree with this. Most thieves that freak out are those that created one because they wanted to steamroll everything after being oneshotted in WvW.

Anything that could make the toon feel the stab should reveal the thief.

Valin.4527:

Eh, it’s the implementation of Stealth (in this case, it’s really invisibility) that tweaks people.

Then again pretty much invisibility in ANY PvP game ends up frustrating people – that’s just a human factor. This game is no different than others in that regard.

My only gripe is the Stealth off of gate/walls to solo contest keeps.
Kinda cheap in my mind – yes.
Game breaking – no.

It looks like thieves that move on to other professions are the only one being able to kill other thieves with that profession… Stealth is so easy to counter that it isn’t even funny. Thief is the easiest class to predict, really.

Burnfall.9573:

Anyone with a “brain” should know that Arena net support and promote Tyranny “The One Man Army” theory in support to their Favorite Class; Thief.

Why Tyranny?

By the countless deleted/infracted/closed and pending threads concerning Thief stealth causing choatic irony in wvw.

Promoting Tyranny

Nearing to 1 year- by the countless nerf-rewardings this class have gotten, is absurd.

Remember how they “nerfed Perma-stealth”?

Well it is still here, i never believed them, because again.. thief is the only nerf-rewarding class and Favorite class.

So why would they stripp their Idol thief from Supremacy status for the sake of any one; classes, community, wvw,spvp and pve?

As long Arena net remain, so be theif stealth and Favoritism.

The only way to remove stealth is to replace Arena net.. and that will Never happen.

Our only Savior and Hope is carry on to other Mmo’s team who doesn’t believe in Favoritism, “the one man army” theory , Tyranny and Nerf-Rewarding class and most especially, Punishing the “less advantage class” in Favor of the “Advantage” class.

So, they completely, let me say that again, completely!! ignore the thief community and its requests?!

They have nerfed us time after time, giving us so called buffs that we never wanted and just ended up destroying good weapon sets. They have given us many unjustified nerfs on things no one ever have complained about.

But yes. Anet want to have a strong duelist profession – and that’s exactly what the thief is and what it does best. Being a mobile blast finisher isn’t fun, but that’s all we can do in a zerg. And don’t even get me started on PvE….

Thank you.

But on topic: Players doesn’t like the fact that their profession, that’s built for group play, is killed by the strongest 1v1 profession in the game. Or they complain because we can run away, or just because we can stealth.

Another thread where players that have professions made for group combat complains about losing to a duelist profession…

Jscull.2514:

EZ mode class- allows bad players to feel like they can compete.

Put the same player on a warrior/guardian, and see how good they are in open field without stealth. TERRIBLE.

No-stealth Thief saying hi! I’ll challenge you to make a thief and see how EZ mode it is… The most squishy class in the game – by far. We are a profession designed for one thing – eliminating our enemy, and that fast.

Guardians? I created one, and I eat thieves for breakfast… Guardian is imo the easiest profession in this game. Never have PvP, WvW and PvE been so easy -_-

I’ve been using this build lately, and I dare say that it works pretty good. People aren’t used to seeing P/P or S/P which gives me the element of surprise. This build does not use any stealth, you can’t stealth with it at all.

This must be the ultimate troll build. It have two weaknesses, and that would be conditions and retaliation. It have some minor condition control and removal, but not even close to stealth builds I’m afraid… Smoke Screen is the best ability to use against ranged opponents since it completely locks them down. Then shadow stepping and Scorpion Wire really mess with their heads. This build offers great control, nice healing, high initiative regeneration and a pretty good damage. It’s not about bursting, but having high sustained damage while avoid all the hard hitting attacks from your opponent (blinds, evade and interrupts).

Really fun and requires some skill to pull off

I’ve seen the bug where I’m still visible (looks like it’s only I who can see myself) but the stealth buff is up, so I guess it’s just a visual bug that I can see? :S