(edited by Ichishi.9613)
Anything with over 5k health remaining instalosing to bs thief = free kill for just about any build out there as well.
sorry, i had to quote this in guild.
good laugh, thanks.
Vital shot is one of the worst auto attacks in game and is actually nothing but infinitely inferior version of warrior’s auto with rifle
sure do hope that update won’t destroy p/p like everything else that was improved since launch
don’t worry guys, they are already working on january and february events
“never to be seen before” “expansion worth of new content”
If what you call aoe damage on thief sword auto and pw?
Sorry, but even cluster bomb outperforms that. And pw is totally bad because evade frame ends just as mob does first attack after stun.
it is all about gain/effort ratio.
P/P has bit more trait synergy, bit more utility, higher attack rate coupled with high crit = more procs and more stable ini regen, finishers.
And still not being tied to one spot.
Many people don’t know that its enough to press A and D once at right time for karka’s ranged every missle to miss you.
Never said about killing large karka (who will ever want to kill them alone anyway) before they reach me. But given that they two-shot glass cannons in melee i would really prefer stay as far away as possible with P/P switching to shortbow for adds/fields/occasional evade when without endurance
And sorry, I cannot think of place in 80-areas (outside maybe troll farm) where ALONE you can better farm with aoe than with single targets
P/P
Ice Fractal – you dont really need to move except the final boss aoe.
Dredge Fractal – you dont need to move except of moving with boss from one bucket to another and occasional dodge for mines
Grawl Fractal – miniboss is stand-and-spam, final boss – being at range greatly contributes to being able to move freely around lava fields. The only fight where you need to move activaly all the time as p/p
Water fractal – Inapplicable
Asura fractal – too much time spent dodging both old tom and last boss if you rely on melee.
Giant fractal – Shortbow all the way except first and last boss. Cant melee him when he spawns wells on himselfs. Stand + unload
Charr fractal – Scorpion wire first boss. Staying in melee range at last one is not manageable with glassy thief.
Swamp fractal – Mossman – auto on unload and go afk on roof. Tree – there are ranged spots that it will NEVER hit.
random people does not always mean bad people
not everything is about aoe damage. When you need aoe damage, you are most likely in a group and shortbow will be the solution.
P/P, as it is, does not give outstanding even single target damage but for example in cove – where most mobs have to much hp to be 2-hitted with bs thief – it shines with ability to kill before taking damage with practically zero effort.
I can run around with full zerk gear and 3 signets as p/p in cove/cs. Most of mobs are vital shot + 1 or 2 unloads. And you are not forced to take damage. I WAS running bs. I WAS runnning all kinds of sword builds. Nothing gave me as much mobs/time during solo play with an added benefit of actually not even needing to concern very low surviveability
If you talk general pve I don’t see what is that “killing fast” point you make.
P/P has enough damage to kill any regular open world mob without moving before it even makes to you.
And pretty much as far as soloing karkas goes its all over p/p there. As I started and popularized it in exactly that way.
P/P is not viable in spvp only because it cannot hold points well due to being forced to kite.
One-on-one proper p/p can destroy anything without extensive amounts of reflects.
edit: that WILL sounded too cheesy
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
nothing completes most of fractals as fast as 5 full zerk thieves with brain
Tweaking vital shot to what it should have been + some kind of movement buff (at least swiftness) on weapon bar.
Vital shot does less damage at less range with less bleeding than warrior rifle auto with same firing rate.
And damage of the set is not the problem, its just that in pvp it is very hard to deliver it reliably – unload is too easy to break for the ini cost that is payed even before you make first hit
surely you do more damage in a given amount of time in melee but you spend more time dodging and closing in.
With p/p you dont have that 120 range radius area you need to be in to attack. You dont need to dodge as much. You dont need defensive utilities. You can move freely.
And I find it much harder to benefit from scholar runes 6 set when every misdodge takes significantly more than 10% of hp.
People. Full zerk p/p <> sb thief with dual damage, dual crit, vuln on crit, flank crit and flank damage does insane amount of damage, crazy amount of critical food procs (i can stay alive just with one omnom pie while also adding awesome damage) with 25 stacks of perception.
On a 50% hp boss with around 90% crit rate from the back unload with all crits deals 12+k damage, up to 2k leeching from food, restores 3-4 initiative, applies 2-3 vuln and it is also a ranged attack.
On top of that, you get aoe blind (and one more mass stealth), on-demand spammable interrupt and access to shortbow gives you all the aoe and dodges you need.
And don’t forget combos
Only makes gap bigger between those who use tp for their needs and those that use it to profit.
I’d really rather chose where to sink my gold
People tend to forget to start from the beginning.
To be successful, what do you need?
You need to be able to do damage. You need to be able to increase your damage on demand to do enough of it.
You need to be able to avoid damage. You need to be able to reduce damage you cannot avoid. You need to be able to outheal the damage that gets through.
From this point of view, almost any build of any class in gw2 is perfect. Sadly, only for as long as only one person is considered.
The only things needed in pve here are damage and awareness. Well and a little knowledge about how mobs think (generally speaking, exploiting game mechanics in a legal way)
There is good amount of self-targeted control. But thats it, and real control is not just about that. If in gw1 you could take a melee destroyer build against heavy melee boss, caster hate against caster boss etc in gw2 nothing of that exists. You just come and do damage.
Bosses in dungeons are so overstatted in health and resists that most of the time sacrificing even a bit of damage for more control is just slowing yourself down. As long as you have that awareness.
As for support – in this game it is broken. It does not have a solid foundation. Instead it comes in some small pieces here and there, with almost no distinction between support and utility.
For example. A so called support-focused ele. Boons, heals, removes conditions. But, again – limited to 5 allies – makes sense there are 5 man parties. So at least one of 5 people in party is sacrificing damage for support. And lets see where is goes in game:
You need to stay together to benefit from support fully – but you need to spread from boss damage
You want to heal people – but they must stay away from damage
You want to save that guy who just misdodged and got hit for half hp – but you don’t have directs heals or boons to give him.
That is exactly what happens to support later in game, exactly what happened to me.
You come in and say – ill be support. It works wonders at start, but then people start to dodge, hide, move. Start to bring self-boons. And you turn from a pug-savior you were into a “we don’t have enough damage”.
A minor investment into utility on a more or less glassy but CANNON on every party member is by far better that one person dedicated to that.
A simple calculation – you need to be able to maintain crazy amounts of might and fury on whole party to compensate your damage loss on support oriented build. Most likely you don’t even have to be in a support build to give those boons out. Than why roll one?
Sadly, in terms of contribution, the best support for any kind of pve in almost any situation is a zero support investment engi. 24 stacks of vuln 24/7 beats everything.
Eduardo said it all.
Taking two backstabs in the back from same thief in one fight is totally unforgivable, if you talk about tournaments.
they did say they are redoing all existing dungeons.
because now, outside few fractals and some parts of coe, these dungeons are the worst I have ever been in.
its hard to make a guess with just that pic
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
I don’t get why do I get traits I did not chose in every tree.
Toughness is good for leeching venoms / venom share build (not so much after update, but still) but you will need vit still in some cases
Toughness is also good for undeath runes + crystals condititon/crit/tough build
For purely defensive purposes vitality is much better. With 10k base hp and 2k armor, every point of vit is is around 1% of a boost, while tough is about 0.5%.
Thief is mobile and with few condition removals = more important to survive single big hits between evades and lots of dots
can be countered with good initiative management and p4 – head shot use.
Even in pure glass cannon build, base ini regen is enough to make them withdraw
yeah gw1 was so bad with 100% chance of getting gold/unique items from dungeon chest or a number of them, with every single item in game not being soulbound
Drop rates were awesome in betas
Drop rates were awesome at start
Got noticably lower after halloween event
Got noticably higher during lost shores event (aka free trial event), especially in FotM
Got nerfed to the ground after event
Really. Is it some kind of cheap marketing move? During event fotm was dropping from both mobs and chests exotics all the day, not to mention the amount of rares. Getting 2 of them per chest was normal.
Now, you don’t even get greens as often in chests.
And the whole champion/veteran/boss drop is a joke.
Cmon, completing dungeon in gw1 ALWAYS yielded rare and unique rewards together with rare crafting mats.
sorrow what are you trying to say?
are you trying to say necros arent op? yes, they are not (in some cases)
are you trying to say thieves are op? yes, they are (in some cases)
are you trying to say that thieves are > necros all day long? no. Even in one-on-one, that should not exist in this game, an equally high skilled necro can and will outperform any thief.
I come here and after reading all this all over again I am starting to think topic should be renamed to “bunker builds not op enough”
Sorry, what I meant by necro’s power is not the power stat build but just the danger of the skills.
No other class can change battlefield (as in a given moment of time, not overall) as much as necros do, and surviving in a rapidly changing environment is what most of those “op” thieves cannot do.
In tPvP, a thief without a heavy investment into defense is eaten alive by almost anything.
I rolled a necro after extensive thief play. Because at equally high skill levels, necros are the hardest counter to almost anything i can bring to spvp.
With only ways for thief to deal damage is either short melee bursts or sustained condition damage necros are the only class that bring countering both to the top.
The ability of necros to punish any hostility entering a certain area (marks, wells) counters 9 out of 10 tries for melee burst while the ability to manipulate conditions and natural high health + death shroud counters the last option.
Both necros and thieves have a lot of work to be done on them, but do note: thieves have never shined in spvp with and without fixes and don’t look like they will be ever able to without really major changes. While as necros are close to being solid top-tier both in terms of skill required and raw power of builds even with ridiculous list of bugs and missing features.
Just a little addition:
As a thief, I found a biggest counter to myself to be necromancers, so I rolled one to understand thieves better from the side.
What I found out (in spvp) is that outside the dazelock build (now nerfed, still questioning why sigils/runes dont work on it) thief is practically reduced to damage dumper. Unlike almost any class I face as a necro, thief is nearly incapable of adequately contributing to any of spvp goal.
To put simply, thieves have so few options to choose from than for almost every occasion there is a solid BEST solution of build/tactic.
What was failed to be noted by a-net devs is that initiative-based skills should not be designed and balanced by the same means as cooldown ones.
I would like most of all to note – I can deal with any kind of issue eventually as a thief – but it gets stupid if there is simply nothing to choose from.
And remember – nerfing a SINGLE thief weapon skill is nerfing also WHOLE weapon set AND actually nerfing initiative system, that is already unstable enough. The 15% nerf to PW is, for example, is a nerf to whole weapon set (being main skill of it for same resource) and a nerf to initiative (as overall use/initiative ratio is lowered for ALL skills)
They are already working on it.
Race change is NOT possible due to story
I just hope it will go like in gw1 – account wide coupons to use
I’ve done this myself
Sadly, mf gear promotes the unreasonable play – tag as many mobs as you can and wait for them to die.
Not only mf gear is traded for another stat, but it also comes in a very limited combinations where good chunk of builds lose 2/3 of stats.
Mf gear contributes nothing in solo play (you simply get more drops by killing more mobs in same time with proper gear), sacrifices team for personal gain in dungeons (people die and make others die, golds spent on repairs and only the weakest link gets it back from drops)
I don’t care if it is removed or not.
I just want people to know that mf is obsolete everywhere except very specific situations (group event farms)
I am tired of dealing with people that even refuse to believe mf does not affect chests. I can’t imagine how can I explain them how bad mf is. And I am forced to play with them.
Good read.
People are talking about things here that I, thief myself, am not capable of performing.
If YOU want to be noticed and your issue to be ever considered, first thing to do is to make sure that what you are saying here is true. I am talking about those mythological abilities of legendary thieves with 300 trait points and 6 slot utility bar.
There are 3 problems with thieves:
1) Culling
2) quote: “people with situational awareness of a rock”
3) Official forums
As you see, none of the problems contains “thief” or ary name of any thief ability/trait/build
i want less ridiculous animation of running with drawn weapons. Please, ill give anything for that. I dont get why sylvari (as well as humans) have to swing their huge and heavy weapons on the run. With speed buff it looks like unreal benny hill scene.
Norn females, charr have awesome aestetic animations for that.
For what reason might one be leaving ranged mobs at range? You can come to them or ball them with los, blind them. And melee mobs will follow you anyways
Building around stealth? And what is the purpose of stealth in sPvP?
It does not protect me from ranged attacks. It makes mobs blind so their ranged attacks dont hit me.
Do note, field does not stop working if you need to move. But PW stops along with all its benefits and costs.
I would suggest full glass cannon thieves that are actully bothered by cnd nerf to play easier game.
Because you were not hit asmuch as EVERY other build that uses CnD. Except P/D condition build.
Like gun 5 providing longer, more mobile protection for same cost and auto keeping weakness and cripple on top.
80% of people I enjoyed playing with did not bother even to login after patch.
30+ online turned into 3-5 in guild. I can imagine how hard it hurts in sPvP
If only we could get some people back to gw1
But all these events and “no time to deal with gw1”.
wait. did some one in this thread say blade trail is WORSE than DD?
I’ll trade anytime. And I’ll trade my haste for your zerk anytime. Heck, I’d love to trade everything I have for even half of what warrior has. If that didn’t make me a warrior
It WAS suggested. VERY long ago
Guys, please. There are 9000 much weaker thief builds that are not backstab instagibbers. And they got hit by cnd nerf much more than backstab did.
Different options. Oceans of opportunities. Strict, intuitive rules. No uncertainties. Team play. Strategy and tactics.
This is what gw2 lacks. And until every single point will be brought live, no competitive play, no e-sports.
There is not as much original a-net there as we would like to think
You should add mug for calculations for BS. Drops the nerf to 9-10%.
And for S/D you should consider next action. As in what can D/D do after backstab. And what can S/D do after tactical strike.