Guild Wars 2

Travlane.5948:

Arganthium.5638:

Personally, if we get Mug nerfed for enhanced mobility, then I support this patch with every ounce of my un-soul.

u reallize mug is 35% of burst builds. it will destroy EVERY burst build

Thank god.

Then we can finally balance thieves without having to consider these boring kitten skills that force us into certain specs and instead try and make interesting ones viable. Thieves are borderline bad anyway in sPvP; getting worse for another patch isn’t bad if it improves thieves in the end.

Tonikor.5637:

Humorless.1573:

Something tells me you’re not capable of producing a video of half the quality.

That’s cute. I cant seem to find you or the OP on either leaderboards.

Sheep will be sheep.

I lol’d.

Still too stupid to comprehend what quality means?

Also lol at someone taking GW2 leaderboards seriously. I can reach those by sPvPing 5 hours a day, but why the hell would anyone do that? If you want to do something competitive you play a real pvp game.

Tulisin.6945:

Hexalot.8194:

Tulisin.6945:

Hexalot.8194:

iNaddict.8021:

Atherakhia.4086:

I personally love the playstyle behind sword/dagger. Playing it on my ranger was the main reason I decided to switch to Thief instead of stick to the Ranger. But I find the whole stealth mechanic with the weapon set kind of clunky. You don’t deal any real burst with it. Even with 100% crit chance from stealth, you can’t really find anything that’s worth using. It really needs a burst move of its own.

You can burst with sword dagger somewhat. moreso than dagger pistol..
of course it is not as good as dagger dagger burst.. i have switched to sword/dagger i love the playstyle and the inherent tricks that can be turned defensive or offensive. it is also not that Init hungry..

Yeah… have to agree that too many people under estimate the burst potential of S/D thieves.

S/D doesn’t have any burst potential. Popping Haste or Mug are not inherent to S/D, and it isn’t like you can spam FS to do burst damage. Sword auto damage isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have any sort of burst capability, it is permanently sustained. It is like saying that people underestimate how awesome P/P is with conditions because you can pop venom utilities.

Hmmm… but using that logic, Mug isn’t inherent to your classic D/D “burst build” either (ie… other thief builds can use it), even though it’s an integral part of the C/D > steal > back stab chain.

Correct. The difference being that D/D, as a weapon set, has burst capability. D/D + Mug + tactics and traits, as a build, also has burst capability. S/D does not have burst capability, as a weapon set. S/D + Mug + tactics and traits, as a build, has burst capability. When you’re discussing the merits of a weapon set, you need to isolate the capabilities of that weapon set.

Nobody gives a kitten. Traits are there to enhance weapon sets; S/D has burst potential with the right traits. Now get over yourself.

Teamkiller.4315:

Especially the fact that in 20 deadly arts you can recharge all utilities of the same type with steal. Seriously dude.

Why would you pick one of the most useless traits in the game in an argument about usefulness?

Hexalot.8194:

Humorless.1573:

Hexalot.8194:

Tulisin.6945:

Hexalot.8194:

iNaddict.8021:

Atherakhia.4086:

I personally love the playstyle behind sword/dagger. Playing it on my ranger was the main reason I decided to switch to Thief instead of stick to the Ranger. But I find the whole stealth mechanic with the weapon set kind of clunky. You don’t deal any real burst with it. Even with 100% crit chance from stealth, you can’t really find anything that’s worth using. It really needs a burst move of its own.

You can burst with sword dagger somewhat. moreso than dagger pistol..
of course it is not as good as dagger dagger burst.. i have switched to sword/dagger i love the playstyle and the inherent tricks that can be turned defensive or offensive. it is also not that Init hungry..

Yeah… have to agree that too many people under estimate the burst potential of S/D thieves.

S/D doesn’t have any burst potential. Popping Haste or Mug are not inherent to S/D, and it isn’t like you can spam FS to do burst damage. Sword auto damage isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have any sort of burst capability, it is permanently sustained. It is like saying that people underestimate how awesome P/P is with conditions because you can pop venom utilities.

Hmmm… but using that logic, Mug isn’t inherent to your classic D/D “burst build” either (ie… other thief builds can use it), even though it’s an integral part of the C/D > steal > back stab chain.

It doesn’t need to be specific to any build to be burst. Mug is a way to increase the burst potential of the S/D set, period. Your arguments are pointless.

Um… sounds like you are replying to the wrong guy. I was also disputing his assertion that Mug shouldn’t be included as part of a S/D burst build.

Just commenting on the discussion and yours was the last post.

Hexalot.8194:

Tulisin.6945:

Hexalot.8194:

iNaddict.8021:

Atherakhia.4086:

I personally love the playstyle behind sword/dagger. Playing it on my ranger was the main reason I decided to switch to Thief instead of stick to the Ranger. But I find the whole stealth mechanic with the weapon set kind of clunky. You don’t deal any real burst with it. Even with 100% crit chance from stealth, you can’t really find anything that’s worth using. It really needs a burst move of its own.

You can burst with sword dagger somewhat. moreso than dagger pistol..
of course it is not as good as dagger dagger burst.. i have switched to sword/dagger i love the playstyle and the inherent tricks that can be turned defensive or offensive. it is also not that Init hungry..

Yeah… have to agree that too many people under estimate the burst potential of S/D thieves.

S/D doesn’t have any burst potential. Popping Haste or Mug are not inherent to S/D, and it isn’t like you can spam FS to do burst damage. Sword auto damage isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have any sort of burst capability, it is permanently sustained. It is like saying that people underestimate how awesome P/P is with conditions because you can pop venom utilities.

Hmmm… but using that logic, Mug isn’t inherent to your classic D/D “burst build” either (ie… other thief builds can use it), even though it’s an integral part of the C/D > steal > back stab chain.

It doesn’t need to be specific to any build to be burst. Mug is a way to increase the burst potential of the S/D set, period. Your arguments are pointless.

Tonikor.5637:

Gotta love the sheep going about with the “nice video” comments.

Son, highlights of successful openers and spamming 2 equals bad. The editing was also annoying with nothing impressive about it.

Something tells me you’re not capable of producing a video of half the quality.

What did you expect when you came in here? It says GC D/D thief. There aren’t any new or interesting specs. Watching another thief play is never that interesting, backstab is kittening boring. But depending on how you present it it can be entertaining. That’s why this is a nice video.

omg OP 10k backstab thief

Nice video but the music kind of ruined it. Watching things muted isn’t much better.

I’m trying to figure out what kind of gear/rune/trait combination allows for enough tankiness to sit in front of a boss for a good amount of time in dungeons. And don’t get me wrong, I know it involves avoiding damage as much as taking it and I don’t expect to sit there until the moment the boss dies, I just want to sit there as long as I can.

I’m thinking either S/D or S/P work best thanks to built-in evasion, weakness and AOE. Sigils I’m not sure about, maybe blood/purity/generosity and accuracy/debility/paralyzation.

As for armor and jewelry, Soldier/Knight? Giver doesn’t seem worth it as the only boon we can really obtain is regen. I’ve never felt like healing power does enough for thieves either, but I don’t know exactly how much it scales for Shadow’s Rejuvenation and such. Runes… dolyak or melandru maybe?

Traits… I’m honestly not sure about. Seems obvious to dump 30 points into acrobatics and Shadow Arts, but you could pull some points out for 15 Deadly Arts for applying even more weakness with Shortbow secondary.

Anyone else has experience or tried doing the same? And I mean all-out, not attempting some build with valkyrie armor and zerk weapons.

Or you know, since we’re playing the UI now anyway, just give us the kitten option to move the icon and increase the size by at least 5 times the current size. I don’t even want to have to look at it, just seeing it in the corner of the screen would work if it was bigger.

phor.7952:

I just want to make something clear so people don’t get confused.
Cluster is better with power/precision/crit at 80 while using an Exotic weapon.

While leveling and using a blue or green weapon, the (weapon damage/armor) portion of the direct damage equation hurts direct damage enough that condition damage comes out slightly ahead vs equal level PvE mobs and quite a bit ahead vs anything that’s over your level.

So it’s only “wrong” to build shortbow for condition damage at 80 with an exotic weapon.

It’s always wrong. Use d/d instead. If you use shortbow use power.

Moira Dryade.6498:

1. Well of darkness is useless as long as I don’t see a thief comming in stealth.
Well of darkness is useless because of the epic recast and duration.
Well of darkness is useless because normaly you don’t sit there in a well and wait for thiefs (not to mention that this is impossible) but you walk over the map. Even if it’s just from the spawn whereever towards.

2. I have 30 points in vita, 20 in armor. No “glassy death shroud crit build” found.

3. Good question. Maybe because thiefs ARE JUST OP????????

LMAO

What an idiot.

Cameirus.8407:

Elmuerto.9840:

Cameirus, you rascal..I’m afraid the running away to come back and stab you in the back is a very thief thing to do. I never run away I only re-position.

Running away is fine, but beign able to always do it (unless you are a bad thief) is really annoying.
The amount of times a thief jumps me, I fend off the burst attacks, we skirmish for a bit, then they just stealth and inflitrators arrow away with impunity is annoying.
And come back again and again and again. I have to “win” each and every time for no reward, yet they have to win once for a reward.

Yes I can get lucky by aoe spamming when they stealth, but no other class relies on pure luck to be beaten.

I’m guessing you’re one of those sad people that log out during 1v1s?

Rather than thieves being able to, just stop elementalists and warriors from doing it.

Moira Dryade.6498:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

So why is this not ok but thief burst is?

Because there is play in thief burst. There is play there, and that spike isn’t a single attack that’s 150% your max HP in damage. Thieves need to execute a series of skills in a row, in which at any time the victim has the potential to mitigate or have some sort of play to save themselves or stop the thief. You just don’t see that with the 100nades stuff, or its a window so narrow that we as devs weren’t happy with the play from both sides of the equation as attacker/defender.

You Sir, don’t know what you are talking about! A thief needs only 2 skills to kill a necro in 1 or 2 seconds. An ape can do this. I can avoid 100 nades by dodging but i can’t dodge a thief in stealth. Port-damage + 1 hit and thats it. Get it! Fix that op lame class and stop searching for excuses. And next time please play against a good thief with your ranger and you’ll see (or not) that you can’t even hit him because before you can aim at him he is back in stealth. Learn to balance a game and remove bugs and such overpowerness. BTW i play a thief by myself and i definitly know it’s op. So not so much a thief-hater but someone who uses his brain to recognize it’s just op.

A thief with 2 skills will do 0 damage to any necro that isn’t mentally impaired.

I mean, it’s either Steal (mug/stealth) to Backstab or CnD to backstab, both of which are easy to avoid… especially without a third skill called Basilisk Venom. And then you’re still doing kitten damage, because you need steal, CnD, backstab and basilisk to break 10k if everything crits. Another random bad player that knows nothing about thieves.

Tip for not missing detonation: fire it somewhere not close to your character. You’ll detonate it just as fast and it’ll have the same results, but the shell will take longer to hit the ground meaning you have more time to detonate in the case of lag.

And yes condition damage needs work. Thieves just don’t have any of it. Only d/d is mildly effective and that’s because it’s AOE and the bleeds last long enough to justify dodging and avoiding damage while the damage is ticking.

phor.7952:

Karolis.4261:

Trickery is not where you want to be for condition damage, condition gear is where you want to be for that, couse bigest part of it comes from gear, not from traits.

He’s talking about pre-40 so sorry, but you’re wrong.
At that point you get just as much out of the stats from traits as you do from gear.
Sure at 80 in exotics the stats from traits don’t matter nearly as much, but in low levels they’re arguably more important than the traits themselves.

And again, at 80 you are correct that power/precision scale slightly better than conditon damage for cluster bomb, but that’s only because the (weapon damage/armor) modifier is more favorable at 80 while you’re using an exotic weapon. While you’re leveling with a blue or green weapon, that modifier hurts the direct damage portion of cluster bomb enough such that both the base damage and scaling are better with condition damage.

Not to mention condition damage also increases your damage from choking gas whereas power/crit do nothing.

At lower levels condition damage is almost useless. 10 extra damage per tick doesn’t beat doing 50 extra damage per cluster. Instant damage is worth much more in pve. Conditions work well when you’re avoiding direct combat, but if you’re standing in the middle of it then there’s no reason to want DoT.

That and trickery traits are bad for pve. Traiting a 45s cooldown skill isn’t going to speed up much and caltrops on dodge mean you have to dodge which means you’re not doing damage.

You’re probably doing it wrong. Not that you’re going to clear it as fast as a warrior, but you can clear it much faster. S/P or SB or D/D. Pistol whip, cluster bomb and death lotus can make short work of a lot of mobs and you won’t die that easily in the process.

The fact that shortbow works nicely with both direct and condition damage is one of the things that makes it the best secondary weapon(set).

Too bad condition damage builds for thieves are all garbage compared to autoattacking.

There’s one trap people use for pve… I guess they all get to stay.

They could honestly change one of the traps to doing 10k damage and it’d take me weeks or months to notice.

Sunflowers.1729:

And as for your point about WvW balance, where do you think the 4s revealed debuff came from? Certainly not because thieves are amazing at sPvP. It’s a game mode that loads of people play, even more than sPvP. Why shouldn’t it be balanced?

Because the revealed mechanic is a logical and effective way to counter abuse of the stealth mechanic and every other class is now satisfied with how stealth works.

Whatever their reason was to implement revealed; it’s kittening kitten

I used a crafted lv50 set to level my thief from 50 to 80 just because I couldn’t be assed to go back to a city whle progressing through ascalon.

Thieves -never- have a problem with dying unless the spec/weapon choice is bad.

Anyone else find it weird that the SB damage trait is in the stealth tree while it has 0 built-in stealth?

And I wish it had some way of doing single target damage. Stacking poison and cluster bombing something in the face is sadly the best damage output.

Remove the stun, triple the damage

Hundred blades isn’t OP, why would this be?

Amins.3710:

The problem is the thieves ability to get out of combat via stealth and back into combat while their opponent is still stuck in combat… giving the thief a full health bar during re-engagement.

It’s a joke. The “Revel” buff did absolutely ~nothing~ to skilled players. Rotation changed by adding in an auto attack (oh my!), but that’s it.

There is still ~zero~ downside to going full glass cannon.

More importantly, the Dev’s comment about “Just AoE” for their ‘hard counter’ is a joke: I should just walk around swinging my sword blindly to counter a stealth thief…. I mean, really? How ~LAME~ can you be?

Good job talking when you don’t have a clue how the game works. Stealthing does not remove combat… ever. You can agro a mob, use refugee and afk near the mob and you’ll never leave combat as long as the mob lives and you’re near.

randomfightfan.4091:

Humorless.1573:

randomfightfan.4091:

It’s 4 back within 3 seconds… idk what you’re talking about. Although with utilities it’d be very possible to 100-0% champions if someone was dumb enough to turn off revealed in pve. CnD to initiate then you have 3 backstabs until another CnD. You MIGHT run out of initiative doing that but not if you put down a smoke screen and hs through that bad boy 5+ times then just wait for your ini to get back up. Don’t feel like waiting? Drop refuge and have that give you 100% initiative as you’re still attacking. Attacked like an idiot? Roll for initiative. Still not dead? Smoke screen is up again.

Thank god there’s revealed in pve. If it wasn’t even the noobiest of thieves could solo lupi no problem.

I’m pretty sure he means just sitting there and hitting CnD just after stealth runs out… which means you’re losing 4 initiative every CnD every 4-5 seconds. Normal regen allows for 3 init/4 sec. With quick recovery and inf signet and maybe some dodges that allows you to kill any mob… slowly.

In that case the 3 backstabs wouldn’t work but heartseekering through smoke field for perma up-time would. Still would be a horrible idea to take it out.

It would be, but what I mention works in the current state.

P/P in WvW might amuse you actually, 6k damage on light/medium armor users with little toughness in their spec.

For the record, pistol whip damage sucks. I personally think S/D actually does more consistent damage right now because it has access to stealth (CC), immobilize and can combine that with FS for damage as well as boon removal. S/P right now is a bit weak. #1 and #2 are the same, #3 is not much better than autoattacking as people in pvp will dodge out of it anyway, #4 is only useful when you get people low enough to interrupt heals and #5 is only good for anti-melee. It doesn’t work as well with sword as it does with d/p.

randomfightfan.4091:

It’s 4 back within 3 seconds… idk what you’re talking about. Although with utilities it’d be very possible to 100-0% champions if someone was dumb enough to turn off revealed in pve. CnD to initiate then you have 3 backstabs until another CnD. You MIGHT run out of initiative doing that but not if you put down a smoke screen and hs through that bad boy 5+ times then just wait for your ini to get back up. Don’t feel like waiting? Drop refuge and have that give you 100% initiative as you’re still attacking. Attacked like an idiot? Roll for initiative. Still not dead? Smoke screen is up again.

Thank god there’s revealed in pve. If it wasn’t even the noobiest of thieves could solo lupi no problem.

I’m pretty sure he means just sitting there and hitting CnD just after stealth runs out… which means you’re losing 4 initiative every CnD every 4-5 seconds. Normal regen allows for 3 init/4 sec. With quick recovery and inf signet and maybe some dodges that allows you to kill any mob… slowly.

randomfightfan.4091:

Humorless.1573:

ski.4927:

I wish they would leave it as 4sec. 4 sec is fine.

I wish they would lessen spike damage a tad.

I play a Thief.

mmmmmm… tears

And what does 4s change instead of 3s? Other than making P/D damage even worse.

It made the whole rotation feel unwieldy. Before the CnD/invis rotation flowed perfectly with a full aa rotation or 3 pistol shots. Now it’s a full aa rotation… and a few more hits. Really takes you out of your element and since the 1st few hits (the ones that it forced you to recast) do almost do damage.

So the combo went from weak, medium, strong, medium, strong repeat. Essentially 3 good hits at the end of every rotation (3rd auto with poison, cnd, back stab)

to

weak medium strong, medium, strong, weak wait OR weak medium, medium, strong
(it’s do double strike again for crap damage and wait a half sec for cnd and get better positioning or do double strike again for crap damage then wild strike for medium but lose out on a 1/4s between every cnd cast)

Doesn’t sound like much but all those extra out of place steps really kills our dps (by 15-20% when everything is landing) and just very clumsy feeling. It also makes it so our poison upkeep time changes from 80% to about 40% if you’re going for max dps.

Yeah but in terms of pvp? Where autoattacking isn’t as big of a deal. Just makes timing it slightly more annoying. That 1 extra second isn’t going to get you killed in most cases. Most builds don’t do a whole lot less damage either. Just p/d cause it can’t keep up a decent amount of stacks.

stof.9341:

naphack.9346:

lol…
You do realize, you could probably kill a champion with the right build by wearing full zerk, stealing to them and just spam CnDCnDCnDCnDCnDCnDCnDCnD…
No need to time anything, just hammer the snot out of that ‘5’ key till he’s dead.

It would require an infinite initiative hack …

Not really, you get 2 initiative back and you can get extra initiative regen. Enough to get 4 per 5-6 seconds which is all you really need.

ski.4927:

I wish they would leave it as 4sec. 4 sec is fine.

I wish they would lessen spike damage a tad.

I play a Thief.

mmmmmm… tears

And what does 4s change instead of 3s? Other than making P/D damage even worse.

Mesmer losing to P/P thief?

1. Stand behind clones
2. Congrats, you won

Carrion/Rabid set and trinkets, whatever combination works depending on what you want to do exactly. Best runes are probably Undead or Melandru, possibly bleed duration. Sigil of earth, corruption or agony or something.

Traits I don’t really know. Are we talking about sPvP, WvW or PvE?

20/30/0/20/0 or something…

Sundering/Mug + Combined training
Side Strike + Combo Crit% + Executioner
Inertia/Vigorous + Quick recovery

I used something like this quite a long time ago. With withdraw/HiS, endurance on swap or SB 2ndary and 15 acrobatics you’re decent at staying alive. You can’t run solo, but if you’re together with someone else you’re mobile enough to punish them for trying to kill you instead of whoever you’re with. If they go for your buddy, shoot them in the back for decent damage.

Pretty much full zerker is needed, you’re relying on those 3-4 unloads. If they don’t get off their nuts a little vit/tgh won’t save you and getting too much of it ends with you doing no damage. Never shoot at people chasing you, shoot people that are occupied with something else so they can’t just dodge your burst.

It works… but doesn’t compare to what other classes can do with some of their specs, basically achieving the same result and more.

JohnnyZero.5619:

Weren’t most of the thief stealthing complaints coming from WvW? And they might be reverting it for WvW? Why do they feel it’s necessary in sPvP? Does anyone feel like thieves are overpowered and are in need of a nerf in sPvP? Or that the revealed reverting back to 3 seconds in sPvP would make us OP?

With culling “fixed” 4s revealed as opposed to 3s does absolutely nothing in WvW other than screwing with rotation and making certain builds (P/D) kitten. It doesn’t stop D/P from sitting in stealth all day or CnDing at the end of stealth for basically permanent stealth… and so on.

naphack.9346:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Both are capable of being spotted at range before they hit.

Wrong. Neither can be spotted at range actually. You see an opponent, he does “something”. You can guess, it’s a backstab thief and act accordingly, you can guess, he’s a 100 nader and act accordingly. But here is the difference: You don’t need to react to the thief at all, instantly, you just need to be ready to react. As soon, as he rips a big chunk out of you with cnd mug, you can just dodge/break and heal up. There. He won’t instagib you anymore.
If it’s an engi, you do not have this luxury. You have to waste your stunbreaks and blocks on nets, overcharge shots, mag pulls etc. Even if he doesn’t plan on using 100 nades. He can simply pound you and pound you while closing in and piling up the pressure with gap closers and immobilizes, cause he “might” be specced for 100 nades.
There is no part in the 100 nade combo which can be negated besides not letting him stand in you. THAT is the big difference, you simply can not seem to get through your head. As soon, as he stands in you, your hp drop from 100% to 0 regardless. A thief can not do that. You can break out after he CnDs and heal up, you survived the stuff. You can obsidian skin/mist form/… and survived the stuff.
Sure, with the right timing, you can invuln through a 100 nades but pray, it won’t be a fraction of a second too early(so you wasted that invuln on nothing) or too late(so you are dead already).
Why can’t you simply understand that there is a difference between three bursts which come in rapid succession, taking away ~40% of your hp each(15% if it’s a facestab or Heartseeker against >25% hp) and one huge spike which takes away 150% of your hitpoints in one hit?

Don’t bother, people are too stupid to listen and arenanet sees the difference, so there’s no problem.

FletchTalon.8320:

Keep your burst damage.
Change (not necessarily nerf) the way stealth works.
No class should have the ability to pick and choose battles the way a thief does..

Go play another game, arenanet doesn’t agree with you.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Humorless.1573:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Humorless.1573:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dual.8953:

Except the Backstab isn’t a true one shot, it’s a combo

And neither was 100nades. It was 2 skills and also all but required cc as a setup, and even when you do get cc’d there’s still time while you’re watching them walk into your character model to do something about it.

It’s also a thousand times easier to set up, you can’t anticipate it as easily as backstab and can be repeated relatively fast as well as being kittening AOE. Who do you think you’re kidding?

It’s also a thousand times easier to see since Magnet takes forever to cast and Net Shot is blatantly obvious, then the engineer still has to walk into your model, and its AoE is pathetically small, where it will only knock out a second person if they’re practically standing inside of the target as well, and if they’re that close to a player cc’d by an engy then they aren’t smart enough to live anyway.
Granted, it DOES have a shorter reload time.
If you’re going to try to shoot down comparisons at least be correct.

Magnet doesn’t need to be used. Net Shot can be used by any engineer and is not a que for 100nades, it’s on a 10 second cooldown and can basically be spammed. That doesn’t even compare to 40-45s cooldown on steal, 45s cooldown on basilisk venom, 45s cooldown on assassin’s signet. The AOE is big enough to have uses. If you down a player in a 1v2 and the other player tries to res the downed player, 100nades would basically finish the job because you’re putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on both where a GC burst backstab thief would be kittened. The video posted earlier is a perfect showcase.

Any GC would more or less destroy someone immobilized for 2.6s if they didn’t use something defensive, nothing particularly special about 100nades there. Net Shot’s short cooldown is because the attack is so slow and obvious, meaning if it’s not at short range you should easily avoid it. If it’s at point blank then it’s basically unavoidable, which Steal has except at 900 range. And if you get Net Shotted and the engineer closes in you’re already sure Blunderbuss, Pry Bar, or Jump Shot is forthcoming anyway, so even if they aren’t 100nades you’d sure as kitten better be doing something to get out of there.
And barring a GS guardian pulling a few people in, being used against someone getting rezzed is about the only circumstance you’ll ever hit more than 1 non-moronic person with it.

So, again: 100nades deleted, BS remains. Unjustifiable.

You don’t get it, do you? Backstab damage doesn’t come near 100nades in most cases. You can’t counter a oneshot. Backstab doesn’t oneshot anything in 80 exotic. It’s the combination of skills that makes it lethal and counterable at the same time.

Hide in shadows is great for anything. It doesn’t remove agro but it stops mobs from attacking you giving you more than enough time to get out. In groups it often results in a boss switching agro and it gives you a free stealth opener. Do I even need to mention pvp?

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Humorless.1573:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dual.8953:

Except the Backstab isn’t a true one shot, it’s a combo

And neither was 100nades. It was 2 skills and also all but required cc as a setup, and even when you do get cc’d there’s still time while you’re watching them walk into your character model to do something about it.

It’s also a thousand times easier to set up, you can’t anticipate it as easily as backstab and can be repeated relatively fast as well as being kittening AOE. Who do you think you’re kidding?

It’s also a thousand times easier to see since Magnet takes forever to cast and Net Shot is blatantly obvious, then the engineer still has to walk into your model, and its AoE is pathetically small, where it will only knock out a second person if they’re practically standing inside of the target as well, and if they’re that close to a player cc’d by an engy then they aren’t smart enough to live anyway.
Granted, it DOES have a shorter reload time.
If you’re going to try to shoot down comparisons at least be correct.

Magnet doesn’t need to be used. Net Shot can be used by any engineer and is not a que for 100nades, it’s on a 10 second cooldown and can basically be spammed. That doesn’t even compare to 40-45s cooldown on steal, 45s cooldown on basilisk venom, 45s cooldown on assassin’s signet. The AOE is big enough to have uses. If you down a player in a 1v2 and the other player tries to res the downed player, 100nades would basically finish the job because you’re putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on both where a GC burst backstab thief would be kittened. The video posted earlier is a perfect showcase.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dual.8953:

Except the Backstab isn’t a true one shot, it’s a combo

And neither was 100nades. It was 2 skills and also all but required cc as a setup, and even when you do get cc’d there’s still time while you’re watching them walk into your character model to do something about it.

It’s also a thousand times easier to set up, you can’t anticipate it as easily as backstab and can be repeated relatively fast as well as being kittening AOE. Who do you think you’re kidding?

globe.7238:

Are you sure you play a thief? Backstab can be used on a target in ANY position, front/back/side from stealth, though you get double damage while hitting from behind. You can also trait side strike to get an extra 7%.

And for the record, for those who say you cant take down someone instantly with steal/cnd/backstab heres a screen shot. Granted the person was a lvl 62 mesmer(he added me to party) and upleveled in wvw, this guy was done in one shot. I’m full glass cannon and really have no issue hitting 7k+ on light armors level 80s in wvw, and if I want to be a big scrub like 90% of the thiefs out there i’ll just spam HS and have my target dead in the matter of a few seconds.

lol yeah lets pretend anyone gives a kitten about 5k crit backstabs to the front from a GC thief that just blew half his cooldowns.

And thanks for proving a point. Bads with no toughness should sod off and get gear before whining about anything. 6k is not high.

10/30/30/0/0, Mug and standard traits in SA/CS. Looking at his HP I’m guessing mostly zerker with some valkyrie. Flameblast/bloodlust sigils, not sure about the remaining two, I’d guess force or accuracy.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what I assume looking at the vid. :p

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

So why is this not ok but thief burst is?

Because there is play in thief burst. There is play there, and that spike isn’t a single attack that’s 150% your max HP in damage. Thieves need to execute a series of skills in a row, in which at any time the victim has the potential to mitigate or have some sort of play to save themselves or stop the thief. You just don’t see that with the 100nades stuff, or its a window so narrow that we as devs weren’t happy with the play from both sides of the equation as attacker/defender.

And unlike backstab burst, 100nades required a setup of Net Shot or Magnet or else it would be impossible to land. Precasting CnD->Steal->Backstab can be done almost instantly. Both are instagib burst builds with very little opportunity for the defender to do anything about it, but 1 got removed while the other remains.

Are you serious? I’m 100% sure you have never played a thief. Backstab can only be used from the back while in stealth, meaning you will ALWAYS see it coming and it requires more than just steal/cnd/backstab if you want to reach that kind of damage. The only way it’ll stun is with the elite basilisk venom which means you’re using up at least 1 utility slot and the elite slot. One stun break and it’s all wasted.

On my own thief I hit blinding powder and I win the fight. That’s how “OP” the backstab spec is.

Gamblit.5041:

P/P needs 1200 Range for dungeons/world bosses. Doing Jormag as P/P is difficult.

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

So, I see the devs themselves aren’t fans of Sword/Dagger.

What’s wrong with s/d?

Hmm, #3 is kind of wonky, #4 is pretty bad if you consider the initiative cost (the damage is now terrible) and overall the damage isn’t too impressive for the utility it gives you. Even #1 is kind of meh since the damage seems balanced around the fact that it’s AOE yet it’s got a pretty small cleaving range and well… you’re in the middle of a mob and the only real survivability you have involves running or using #3 which doesn’t help AOE damage.

It’s not a bad set but it is inferior and doesn’t quite excel at what it seems to want.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Depends on the thief you fight. Some thief battles are doable (close range ones will die to any ranger who happens to have traps on usually), but others turn into utter impossible matches, such as fighting long range thieves. Close range you can do something about them, but long range…UGH. Probably also doesn’t help that the difference between 1v1ing somebody in sPvP and WvW is pretty big.

I find almost every ranger easy as thief, you suddenly have ranged single target dps w/ shortbow thanks to the pet bouncing it back or you have a stealth applying tool chasing you around. Hardly any rangers play it smart…

And the point of using agony sigils is? 25% condition duration from DA will give you one extra second (tick) of bleed. Any more is completely worthless until 50%.

Also no corruption sigils… but instead, poison?

Starbird.4029:

If you buff P/P to be a viable leveling/PvE spec (just give it some AOE, more range, reduce init costs slightly and give them a little bit more tankiness early game) I will love you forever.

AOE and range are problems the P/P set doesn’t have, what are you on about? The AOE would be pathetic compared to shortbow and the range is fine.

Please don’t suggest things that would do absolutely nothing useful for the set. It needs single target damage output and/or utility/mobility. And how do you give a weapon set tankiness in the early game? Equip toughness/vitality gear then… and compensate by increased single target damage.

P/P only works if you have the money to go balls out with zerker gear, something like 25/30/0/15/0 and a method of stacking might and even then it’s pretty bad.

If you want the easy PvE route, go P/D for bosses or D/? for questing. Signet of Malice + 15-point Deadly Arts = you just have to auto attack mobs to death and you won’t die.

Bazeleel.8219:

Suralin.3947:

Bazeleel.8219:

Never said roflwin so not sure why you think this.

What is the best WvWvW thief build right now?

No, I didn’t misread that. I’m not taking anything personal, I’m pointing out the perception you’re giving off.

Which is what?

Are you not capable of comprehending the english language?

Figure out a build yourself.