Case in point, I don’t know what the seekers are, but as far as movement goes, thieves have a 1200 range pull on a 20 second cooldown via scorpion wire. If it is a matter of lowering break bars, thieves are actually really good at it. Far better than my guardian is. My thief is the only toon I have that can brute force a break bar without having to rely on stacking debuffs for long periods of time.
seekers are relatively unkillable, high-damage adds. the only way to deal with them is to keep them away from the boss. the pull might work, but that means being away from the boss itself, which cuts damage. in this case knockbacks and launches are king.
as for breakbars, the seekers don’t have them. it’s all about moving them, so thief-style CC is far less useful. true, you could spam pistol 2 or 4 to keep them in place, but that’ll drain your initiative quickly and only pause the seeker’s progress, while a simple banish will put a single skill on cooldown and actually move the enemy back – far more efficient.
I know breakbars are the big new thing, but they’re not the only use for CC, and when it comes to putting distance between them, thieves are always the one that move. so when we need to keep two enemies apart, we end up woefully unequiped.
I have a condi ranger, and on him I go down twice as often as I do when running condi daredevil. Here’s why: condi rangers have no defense. While I’m throwing down bonfires and traps, I have no protection. Condi thieves are all defense. Between Death Blossom and Lotus Training, I’m utterly invulnerable for at least half of the time. On the venomshare build I get 8k ticks of poison on top of all of my other condis. On the condi ranger, I don’t get as high of ticks, and I am wholly reliant on my opponent standing still inside of my fire fields (which they don’t. surprisingly often).
well I also have a condi ranger, and I don’t get downed on it half as much. you’ve got pets to help tank, the sort of passive defense a thief can’t hope to approach, and a number of pretty good heals (one of which got an actual buff recently, not just a patch-note buff)
and while condi thief has a lot of evades, all that you need is to be out of initiative, out of stamina once, and you’re gonna get hit. and that hit will do a kitten sight more to a thief than a ranger.
top this off with the sort of condi stacking rangers have. I’ve been able to drop 30-40 bleed stacks quite easily on ranger, and I’m lucky to drop 30 stacks total as thief, across several conditions. add in that ranger has access to burning – which puts the damage in condition damage – and there’s no real compare.
Last I checked, condi engineer numbers are completely inflated. They’re calculated using unrealistic animation times and rotations, and if I remember correctly, assume canceling every aftercast and completely stationary enemies.
I haven’t spent much time on my engi, so I can’t be 100%, but if engi wasn’t top condi damage, we’d probably have heard something by now. engineers have been kings of condition damage for as long as I can remember. they came out of the july 23rd patch rolling, and there’s a reason there was a chrono/4 engi meta for high-end fractals following HoT. if any other class could compare, we’d have seen it by now.
Well, rezzing, but I would still ague that thieves are one of the best stealth classes, because of how easy it is to use. Getting stealth on an engi requires blowing several cooldowns using damaging explosives in a smoke field, which is prone to failure. Sneak Gyro is cumbersome and eats up the elite slot. Mass Invisibility requires dropping time warp, which is never a good idea. Thief stealth is easy: you use shadow refuge and then you’ve got 15 seconds of stealth, 20 when traited. Shadow Refuge also only takes up a utility, which means that if there is some other need-to-have utility, you can still put it one one of the remaining slots.
firstly, stealth ressing is a stupid answer here. we’re talking about instanced content, which means skritt tons of AoE. funnily enough, circles don’t care about stealth.
secondly, being downed is a significant drop in damage. most of the healing should be done on living party members, usually by the healer/support. sure, people are gonna get downed, but if you’re picking a class specifically for ressing, you’re doing something wrong.
thirdly, how useful the stealth is depends on the situation. shadow refuge requires the entire group stay in one place for 4-5 seconds. that’s not always gonna beat out gyro or mass invis. try SRing mid-cannon phase against mai trin, see which stealth’s more effective.
on top of this, engi and chronomancer bring a lot of useful things to a fight besides stealth. top-teir condition damage for the engi, alacrity, boon-stripping, and high-end direct and condition damage for the mesmer. thief’s main selling point is stealth, and we really can’t top these two on the extras.
though, since stealth is no use here, which is more effective is a moot point.
Here’s the thing: every time I take an honest look at thief, I don’t come up with all of these deficiencies that everyone else has.
well for my part, I can switch from my marauder’s daredevil to my soldier’s warrior, do the same or better damage, take far more in the way of hits, and provide a lot more group support, and all this takes far less effort than thief does.
I don’t mind thief being a higher-skill class, but I’m not feeling a trade-off here. if the extra effort provided extra damage, or extra survivability, then I’d get it. as is, it feels like way more effort to just match the other classes.
The only complaint here that I actually agree with is that our boon strip is unnecessary whenever there’s a mesmer around. That happens to be true of every class not named mesmer.
Revenant also has pretty good boon-steal, I believe. and that’s fine, it’s okay for one class to be the best at something. I just wish thief was too.
