Guild Wars 2

On the plus side, at least we can run away better than any class still -.-

No worries, I won’t bother with traveler for this build then. I actually forgot that the move speed signet will get much more useful post patch, kitten . Thanks for the replies all ^^

It took me a year before I managed to keep an alt long enough to get it to Lv80, and I still barely play them. I’ve been playing and enjoying my ranger a lot recently, maybe it’s because things will actually try to fight me in WvW rather than just running away.

I love my thief to bits, but it is getting harder and harder to play it effectively when the other classes keep getting new stuff and we’re stuck with the same options we had a year ago. If it ever gets too much trouble, at least my ranger can use his ascended gear.

Torment is normally only an issue for me on sword offhand warriors and scepter mesmers. At present both are fairly easily avoided, but the warrior one in particular can kill you by itself if you don’t have a cleanse up which is stupid. The warrior’s version is being nerfed, and mesmers… I now have even less reason to fight scepter sword PU mesmers. Daggerstorm and other projectile reflect should be funny against them now though.

@FlamingFoxx; I only have the 13" macbook, so it’s the integrated graphics only I’m afraid.

It sounds like it’s worth a look, so I shall look into it. Thanks all! ^^

I’m considering swapping to traveler runes when the patch comes out, as then I can drop SotH and have Quickening Zephyr or Sic ’em without losing move speed. Is that worth the loss of ranger runes?

I don’t go full glass, and I don’t know if the damage increase post patch will make up for the loss of dps from changing runes basically. I’m playing around with a lot of power builds atm as I’m still working out what I like, so what would be the better choice for a range of builds?

This is my current build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNMQJATRnEqQtgWwCusANcGYPoWHAFwZ3uHehdw1BXyKiC-TFTDwAH3f4xhAYm6PCVil4CA8U5RljAAINBLUCCXHAATcDeAABAQAYiTcihMAFbB-w

Thanks in advance for any replies ^-^

Speaking as an evasion based thief: The rangers that give me grief are the ones that can tank or evade my burst, that waste my initiative and force me to use utilities to survive, and that go on the offensive as soon as I move in. If you play too defensively, I will kite your attacks with my sword 2 and wear you down. You either need to be able to tank well, or if you’re glassy you NEED to get the first attack in, as if you do neither of those things you’re going to find it very difficult.

There’s two main damage skills to avoid with S/D thieves; larcenous strike and cloak and dagger. If you can deny those two skills you will waste a lot of the thief’s initiative and leave him with basically only auto attacks to damage you with, and force him to start playing defensively which is what you want. Remember that S/D burst isn’t as heavy as a dagger build, so if you can tank a few hits to get a CC off it can be worth it.

If you’re using S/D, try to time your evade skills as you see the thief use flanking strike, or use whatever damaging moves or CC you have mid animation; in the first case you’ll dodge the flanking strike itself (which post patch will cost 4 initiative and deny the thief access to larcenous strike, he can’t afford to do that too often), in the second case you’ll be more likely to hit the thief with your important skill as he’s vulnerable immediately after using the skill. This takes some practice, so you might want to find a thief who’s willing to duel you (always a great way to learn).

The thief has likely used sword 2 to engage; this means there’s a little white circle on the ground where he ported from which he will port back to after his burst. A little icon shows up on his buff bar when he’s got this ready. I like to chain sword 2 with steal against longbow rangers as it’s then a 1500 range shadowstep that snares the ranger, and I can port 1200 units back out of your longbow range when I’m done. So, find the little circle and stand as close to it as possible to make it harder for me to get out of range. It also removes one condition and I can’t dodge whilst using it, so consider throwing a trap on the circle as I won’t dodge it that way.

Hide in plain sight is a surprisingly annoying trait trait to use against trickery thieves due to the fact that a traited steal will daze you and trigger the stealth. I also like to daze lock glassier rangers by combining the sword sneak attack with basilisk venom and steal, so if you’re not confident about dodging every cloak and dagger it can help a lot. Stability is of limited use as I will steal it from you, so don’t use rampage as one unless you want the thief to be on steroids.

People like to mention traps as a good way to get the thief; with D/P thieves I’d agree with you, but with evasion S/D thieves you’re going to need to hold me in those traps somehow, as unless you’re placing them in stealth I can use flanking strike to just evade through them. Also, try not to move backwards out of your traps when I port into them, the amount of rangers that do this is silly, you’re just making it easy for me to keep attacking you without getting hurt by the trap. Tank the damage and hit me with some CC if you’re going to throw them at your feet.

Sorry about the uber long post, but hopefully some of this is useful. For what it’s worth, I struggle with S/D thieves when playing my ranger and I main one, so don’t feel bad if it’s not easy. And if it makes you feel better when one kills you, remember that every time that happens, another thief got owned by an engineer somewhere. Good luck! ^^

I was talking to a friend about this last night, when trying to help him deal with other thieves. We have very few options for dealing with torment and confusion. Burning, poison, bleed, cripple, chill and immobilize are removed specifically by a number of skills/traits as well as by non-specific cleanses, but because torment and confusion are not it means we have to use one of our non-specific condi cleanses to get rid of it.

That means stealth (if traited), shadowstep, sword 2 or signet of agility. Most thieves will have 2 of those at a maximum, the two most effective options require you to trait differently or burn a stunbreak, and the last two (which are the only two in the S/D meta build) only remove one condi so need perfect timing.

I wouldn’t have a problem with hide in shadows cleaning torment, as long as pain response did the same. I agree with the poster above though, I’d love withdraw and RfI to remove torment but that might be too strong for balance reasons. I also don’t want them to mess with what they already remove, I get snared enough already :P

Someone else on the forums (I can’t remember who) was talking a while ago that you don’t tend to see merely ‘good’ thieves, you either see people who are fairly new to the class and make fairly simple mistakes or veterans who steal your face and use it as a mask. That, plus thief being the go to roaming class and their being squishy enough for a quick kill, probably influences the number of thieves in these videos.

Also, if the video was made by a thief it likely has a lot of thief kills in it. Thieves tend to have egos, I killed a thief on my ranger last night and he hunted me for hours after that ^^

So, I was asked to run with a small roaming guild with the tag [DUCK] on their Monday night session on Sunday, work ran over so I couldn’t join the raid but like a muggins I completely forgot to add them to my friends list.

You found me fighting a DPS Guardian outside the Gandara side of SM at around 8-9pm GMT, and proceeded to invite your guild to roam with us. We ninja’d SM before you logged off at 10pm. I’m a S/D Thief with jormag’s breath, and I remember one of your guildies having a name that involved potatoes because it made me laugh.

Sound like you? Message me in game, you seemed like a fun guild ^^

Hey all ^^

I’ve been playing the game since a month after release, and I’m beginning to think that competitively I can’t really get too much better when I have to run character detail in lowest settings to get reasonable frame rates in WvW. It’s hard to intelligently dodge certain attacks when the animations all look the same. I understand that a large part of the problem is the mac client being a cider port, so it not being native software means I get less bang for my buck in terms of CPU.

Getting a new (windows) computer is out of the question atm, and if a native port hasn’t appeared after 2 years I’m doubtful it ever will, so I’m asking what people’s experience with bootcamp is. I hear you can get much better performance with less stress on the mac: what kind of numbers are we talking here? I normally get 20-25fps when roaming in an almost empty map, around 8fps in zergs. What would bootcamp do to those numbers?

I have a late 2011 macbook pro, 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 memory, Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB. I hope those numbers mean more to you than to me.

TLDR: would you recommend bootcamp? Or would you rather wait and buy a new windows computer on the cheap?

I have alts simply for when the lag in WvW is bad, thief is a very responsive class with generally low defences so lag will get you killed. Condi thief is easier as you’re naturally more tanky, but get used to people complaining if you go that route.

For PvE, as long as you know the encounter well you can avoid most of the damage no problem, so it’s less of an issue. The best advice I can give you is try it, and don’t get frustrated if you die easily, it happens to everyone when they learn thief regardless of lag. Good luck! ^^

nacario.9417:

Could u guys be so kind to link the meta S/D build? Thanks

Are you thinking WvW or PvP?

For PvP, it’s something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0MpwpdPxyJ8PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdHl+eEA-TZBFwACOFAl2fYxRAoaZAAPAAA

For WvW, I personally use this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAsYVl0Mp0plPx3J8PRBNBxVN8OMfpMaFgOjSfB-T1CBABVqqyZKBl4UAglyLvUiAwDAwS1KyTTQR7PkieAGOCABAQACJOxADdiDdiDdiNxJOxJOxJWKgn2CA-w

It’s more personal preference than anything though, I find that this gives me more options for a range of situations than the signet build whilst still being able to kill stuff, and refuge more often than not just gets me killed. There’s no reason you can’t use the PvP meta build and just go full zerk if you know what you’re doing, and a thief using dual signets has a distinct advantage over a thief that uses shadowstep in a 1v1, so its up to you what you consider more important.

oxtred.7658:

Yeah, I know what OP wants. But it would be far too overpowered.

It wouldn’t be any more overpowered than a warrior swapping every 5 seconds, if done right. For the sake of balance I’d like to see a similar approach actually, so we trait for a reduction/difference/whatever rather than having that bonus across the board.

Here’s a random idea for an effect: we still have the 10 second cooldown, but we can swap early if we pay the remaining number of seconds on the cooldown in initiative. Can only be done after 5 seconds, so it works out the same as a traited warrior swap. Would probably work best in the trickery tree both thematically and because of the extra base initiative, but I think it could be fun to put it in deadly arts instead since the master traits there are a little lackluster.

I figure something like this would have to be an optional trait too, since it could easily screw over new players if it were baseline. Thoughts?

Teshtestyes.5419:

Ha! You just want to use the new katana greatsword skin!

Guilty as charged, that thing would look amazing on my thief. Frankly, I don’t understand why we can’t have it considering that the emblazoned armour is the closest stylistically to samurai armour, but oh well. Samurai rangers will be pleased.

What kind of skills would people like to see for a two handed sword for thief? The problem as I see it is that it would have to fit a niche as a weapon set that no other set does, which is difficult for a melee weapon on thief.

I’m thinking it would have to be stealthless with a block or two (no evades) and a focus on high damage and mobility (only towards the enemy though) so it’s distinct from S/D. With that logic though, it sounds a lot like ranger greatsword, which may or may not be a good thing. It could be a purely defensive weapon too, although I’d rather have a staff with that sort of skill set. Having a stealth skill like impale your enemy that inflicts conditions could also be interesting. Just spitballing here though.

Pretty much what mompen said. I use 0/6/6/2/0 when playing D/P as I like the extra move speed, but that’s just personal preference. I use shadowstep, refuge and roll for initiative as utilities as RfI means I can recover easily if I blow all my initiative like an idiot. The extra snare/stun break is also very welcome.

Other than that it’s just a matter of getting used to the flow of the set, and remember that while we can just spam skills it’s rarely a good idea, take your time

Mayama.1854:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Mayama.1854:

AikijinX.6258:

Black Powder- This will stop nothing

It seriously nerfs the ability to automaticaly stomp people in a blindfield.

Who uses blind to stomp when anybody and their mom can stop you because you’re out in the open? Use stealth stomp and completely prevent anybody from stopping you. It won’t end the complaints sir, it won’t.

Stealth stomp is countered by aoe cc like reaper’s mark or one of the engi pushbacks, black powder isnt.

Yes, but that CC from a 3rd party will still hit you unless the other guy is dumb enough to run into the blind field before trying to CC you. Black powder only really helps you against the downed skills of whatever you’re trying to stomp, like a guardian’s knockback for example.

If you’re in a group fight, a combination of stealth and shadowstep stomps are still the best way to go.

On topic: Yup, pretty much what the OP said, most of the changes weren’t needed. I’m still confused about the flanking strike change in particular, since it will solve zero problems with the set and people will still QQ about it, but hey. I’ll take being able to dodge ridiculously through multiple arrow cart fields if that’s what they give me.

Well, this feature pack business explains the lack of communication from ANet at least.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the LS2 content thus far, so I’m really hoping that this patch is going to be all kinds of awesome. Given how long we’ve already waited with no updates etc I’m ok with waiting a little longer to see what they’ve been doing for so long, but it had better be worth the wait.

Screw it, when the patch comes in I’m making a troll P/D build with perma stability. Let’s see how they like them apples.

Pack runes atm, mainly because they work well with just about any power build and I’m not up for crafting more ascended armor. Cheap too.

I use 2/0/2/4/6 S/D with shortbow in WvW, it works pretty well. I’ve also used 2/0/0/6/6, 5/0/0/3/6 and 2/6/6/0/0, they all work provided you know your limits. You can’t get away with fighting as outnumbered as a shadow arts build can, but as others have said the days of 7v1’s on a power build are likely behind us. Warriors can be a pain to down without CS, oddly enough just kiting them through poison fields with shortbow seems to work wonders. This is my build, if it helps:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAsYVl0Mp0plPx3J8PRBNBxVN8OMfpMaFgOjSfB-T1CBABVqqyZKBl4UAglyLvUiAwDAwS1KyTTQR7PkieAGOCABAQACJOxADdiDdiDdiNxJOxJOxJWKgn2CA-w

Ah, thank you everyone, I must’ve missed that SotH is changing to a timed thing in the ready up ^^

@ Zenos: Thanks for that tip, I will give that a look when it’s not 3am and I’m unable to sleep :P

Amonatory.2453:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

The thing is, S/D thief right now has almost zero counterplay. I don’t mind that the skill cap is getting higher, as it really needed to not be so easy to play. Now that it has counterplay and you can actually play against it, s/d can maybe finally be balanced and fun to fight against.

First off S/D actually takes skill in general, second legit like everything the blocks/invulns will counter it how is that fair counterplay? Once again S/D is balanced Acro is not this is what I made the post for….. S/D does not need a nerf its kittening acrobatics.

^ This.

I doubt it, even if greatsword does become part of the PvP meta again it simply doesn’t have the vertical mobility and the ability to cut corners that shortbow thieves have. It’s not just speed in a straight line that matters in PvP.

alchemyst.2165:

Stop overreacting because of whatever bullkitten reason. Aka: Ugh my precious S/D now requires me to think and be smarter. Now I cant spam my boonsteal

In what way does making it harder to chain moves together to burst, making our unblockable attack unusable if the enemy is blocking, and making it easier to spam dodges, require me to think and play smarter? Please, enlighten me.

And if you’re spamming 3 to steal 1 boon per 5 ini spent, you’re an idiot.

Elitist.8701:

I completely agree with Amonatory. The S/D weaponset isnt OP, Acro is OP and S/D synergized the best with Acro which makes it “OP”. They dont need to nerf S/D any more. Furthermore they are literally changing the playstyle of S/D thief. THIS IS NOT OK. They cant change the playstyle that many thieves have spent hard work and time mastering. I know for sure that there are no Anet people that play S/D at a high level, their making blind changes. This doesn’t even fix the issue because it makes MORE EVADE SPAM.

-Teef Teef Teef Teef, soon to be Ele Ele Ele Ele Ele because the most skillful Thief build is dead.

Yeah, I’m really not liking the loss of the precast larcenous strike → mug combo as an opener, and having an unblockable attack that you can’t gain access to if your opponent is blocking is beyond stupid. Not to mention they responded to people saying the set is too dodge spammy by adding the potential for more dodges. The rest of the changes are ok, but this one really confuses me.

BobbyT.7192:

Panic Strike: Reduced immobilize from 5 seconds to 2.5 second, reduced CD from 30 to 20 seconds.

This makes sense.

BobbyT.7192:

Invigorating Precision: Increase healing % based on damage from 5 to 8%

People still won’t take this trait over the other grandmasters in CS.

BobbyT.7192:

Ricochet: Now also increases range to 1050, along with a few bug fixes to make it hit more reliably.

This I like a lot, making pistol the only thief weapon to have more than 900 range is actually a nice way of buffing it.

BobbyT.7192:

Assassin’s Equilibrium: Increase stability from 1 to 1.5 seconds

This could actually be interesting now, as remember you’ll already have 30% boon duration from the 30 points in acro, making this give nearly 2 seconds of stability on a 3 second reveal timer. It’s a shame that the stealth builds that could benefit from this don’t invest in acrobatics though.

BobbyT.7192:

Venomous Aura, Allies will now use the thief’s condi damage and healing when applying the venoms.

I actually thought this is how it worked before.

BobbyT.7192:

Dagger 1 Combo will now hit max 2 targets, Posion will stack, but not the endurance gain.

Potentially nice.

BobbyT.7192:

Pistol 5 Black Powder: will now pulse every 2 seconds for 4 seconds instead of 1 second for 4, and the aoe blind has been reduced from 3 seconds to 2 seconds per pulse.

Makes sense for nerfing shadow arts D/P, apart from the fact you’re making a change to a weapon skill that negatively affects 3 weapon sets to nerf one build. As people have said, taking the blind off the projectile would have been a better way of doing it, but hey.

BobbyT.7192:

P/P Unload: cast time as been reduced from 1 3/4 seconds to 1 1/2, also applies to your summon thieves as well.

Not even sure the people who play P/P will even notice this one, given the black powder change above.

BobbyT.7192:

Short-bow 4 Choking gas: now delivers a strike when it lands.

I see why this was nerfed, although I wonder why it was a problem really.

BobbyT.7192:

S/D Flanking strike: initiative cost increase from 3 to 4, and now requires to hit before it can combo into Larcenous Strike,

So, now we have a situation where we can’t use an unblockable attack if the enemy is blocking. Genius. If you were trying to address the dodges on S/D you failed miserably on that one, as without a target we will have more dodges than before.

BobbyT.7192:

S/D Larcenous Strike: Initiative cost reduced from 2 to 1

Kinda redundant what with the previous change.

I didn’t expect a lot from these changes, there’s some nice things in here though. I really don’t understand the S/D changes, it’ll make it harder to burst by restricting access to larcenous strike but give us more dodges when we kite. If anything you just lowered the skill cap of S/D and made it more dodge spammy than it was before, which makes no sense at all.

Just a quick question about Signet of the Hunt: If you trait for the active effect to also affect you, and then use rapid fire, does it increase the damage of the first arrow or of all of them?

My understanding was that as it’s the next attack, it would be the first arrow. I get the impression from people talking about the patch notes that it affects the whole attack though, just a bit confused.

I’m still levelling my engi atm, so can’t speak for how they perform in zergs. I’m more wondering if all classes SHOULD perform equally well in large groups.

Take guardians and thieves for example. Guardians are fantastic for groups, sure they can run solo but they’re clearly designed to support other players without a huge amount of effort, and have a great amount of choice in how they can do that without sacrificing that much overall. Thieves are the opposite: very self reliant with loads of options in that regard, but you have to build completely to get good group support.

I actually like the variety between the classes and the fact they have their own strengths, and unfortunately that means that there will always be a statistical best choice for X. Does that mean you can’t zerg on your thief or engi? Or roam on your guardian or necro? No, and as long as you enjoy doing it then it doesn’t much matter.

TLDR: Zerging might not be your thing when compared to other classes, but it’s not the end of the world. Just play to your strengths instead; if you can’t facetank the frontliners, go kill the squishy stuff at the back.

I was saying this to my guild when the megaservers came in, and I was on a lower server at the time. Megaservers were great for the PvE community but they kinda did a number on the WvW community by making things far more complicated than they should be.

How are you supposed to recruit/rally for WvW in Lion’s arch when you don’t even know what server you’re talking to?

How can you be social and invite new players to the server TS, without getting a bunch of people from other servers trolling it?

Please think about this, even if server chat is too hard to implement and you only remove Lion’s Arch from the megaserver system we could roll with that.

Jake.1430:

Thank you all for your help.
Seems what I need to do it be faster with burst, have more control over the fights, more stun breaks or daze/stuns. And overall more skill, seeing as the fight is in the theives favor.

Thank you for taking the time to ask for help, rather than just calling for nerfs like most non-thieves on this forum do. It’s quite refreshing ^^

+1 for vashury’s videos, I found them useful in learning to deal with shatter mesmers as a thief, so I’m sure they’ll help you too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3fUhFuUP-E

The mesmers that I have trouble with are generally the ones that time their stuns/dazes with phantasm attacks, immob as they shatter, or who generally just chain stun me as these things will make it much harder for me to avoid the burst. You’ve got the pistol stun, sword immob, signet stun/daze, and greatsword knockback, these will all be a royal pain if you can get them off.

It’s all about gaining the initiative really. You need to be controlling the fight so I’m always on the back foot, and that’s what I’ll be trying to do to you. It’s normally a bit easier for the thief because of the greater mobility, once I get some damage in I can still stay on top of you, so you need to get that burst in quick and don’t let up.

Sevans.4619:

That’s only a problem if you’re not paying much attention.

I never said I was a good ranger :P

Think of D/P as an assassin/WTF-burst style and S/D as a bruiser/annoying-mosquito-dodge-monkey and you won’t go too far wrong. Good people to watch are Caed for D/P, and Sizer for S/D, you should be able to find their videos on twitch. Watching those guys play will help you see the difference in playstyle more than me explaining it.

With both sets you want to choose your moment to burst, use LoS and stealth/ports to disengage when appropriate, and use your shortbow well to support the team. You can duel, but often you’re better off using your mobility to create unfair fights in your team’s favour. That’s the other reason you pack shortbow.

PvE actually has it’s own meta, the builds you mentioned are the PvP meta really. Tbh, Unless you’re speed clearing dungeons it doesn’t matter as much what you use in PvE provided you don’t die.

Tbh, after the Dec 10th CDI debacle I’m positive that no matter how concerned we get about the changes they will do their own thing regardless, so there’s no point stressing about it until we know what they’re planning.

And even then, it’s gonna happen whether we like it or not shrugs

Deniara Devious.3948:

The OP must play on Gandara. The Gandara I knew doesn’t seem the same any more. It was called Gank Dara for a reason. Lots of decent sized guilds and tons of roamers, ambusers and gankers. Fighting like a terrier, sometimes stubbornly instead of going for the easy PPT. Then came the free transfer and massive influx of bandwagoners and the karma train blobs (yes, Gandara does them as well).

Very possibly. Like I said before, I’m one of the aforementioned bandwagoners (the prospect of the then silver league server which seemed to be fairly consistent score wise for zero transfer cost was very attractive) so I wouldn’t know what it used to be like. I do roam primarily though, so hopefully I don’t give the place a bad name :P

That being said, it’s pretty good here, I’ve had more fun here than I did on the lower servers. As you said, coverage vs servers like Desolation is a problem sometimes, but that’s to be expected really, and it’s not like we’re being steamrolled every week. And honestly I’d rather come second or third and have a good week’s fighting than win by 400k, that’s just boring for everyone.

Sure, fighting a zerg with small numbers isn’t always fun, but at least on Gandara there’s always someone willing to go on a suicide mission with me ^^

Eggyokeo.9705:

Heibi.4251:

Now the only real question is – when the heck is ANeT going to implement the changes? I had really been hoping it was going to happen last week when the new content was released. Let’s hope it is soon.

just of the top of my head i don’t think these changes we be seen before sometime in October.

Reason 1: they are doing 2 classes a fortnight so:
ranger-engi 25/7;
x-x 8/8;
x-x 22/8; and
x-x 5/9;
Add about a month for the dust to settle and the forums to calm down abit your in October.

Reason 2: October is 6 months after the 15th of April patch, i think that i read somewhere that they plan on doing major updates twice a year.

On another note, do you think that each class is going to be given a reveal buff? i hope so, as it hopfully will mean people will bring other classes in to wvw roaming and i wont be fighting thief’s and mez’s all the time and the ones that i do fight my be less dependent on stealth

Honestly I hope all classes do end up with a reveal skill, as that might shake things up a bit (from a thief’s perspective too, I’m bored of SA being so necessary in WvW). I do hope thieves get something shiny too though, otherwise you’re going to be seeing a LOT of S/D thieves :P

Genuinely excited for the ranger changes tho ^^

Don’t forget that if the enemy reflects hunter’s shot, it stealths them. Either that or warriors learn to stealth when I play ranger shrugs

Domey.9804:

You can Run s/d and d/p at the Same time. D/p for blinds and safety, escapes and s/d for Its control. You will See when you should switch from one Set to the other.
If you Run both Sets you are harder to predict and can deal with every proffession.

This too.

Lifestealer.4910:

While im sure there alot of senseless complaining. There are some complaints that a valid against thieves, for instance steal has little to no counterplay. Top players would agree that this spell is the main reason why thieves continues to push other classes who tries to run dps spec out of meta for pvp. An instant gap closer that has no LOS, does massive damage and also CC’s and poisons + get a stolen ability.

Tbh it generally only does good damage it you have fire & air sigils, mug and you chain it with larcenous strike or heartseeker. You’re right about the lack of counterplay with it being instant cast, but IMO there’s far more dangerous instant cast skills out there.

Unfortunately, that’s the way it is atm. I moved from Whiteside Ridge to Ruins of Surmia last year, and from there to Gandara before WvW season 2, because I too often found myself in the position you described, worse sometimes as some days I was the only person from my server in a borderland. The lower servers are really unstable, I might not like T2 for the size of the groups sometimes but at least it’s easy to consistently find people to fight with.

Tbh I still love playing my thief for roaming, and my ranger for zerging (I’ll roam on it when I L2P a bit more), and I vary which I play depending on the matchup. I’m here for the skirmish fights more than the strategic defence though. If you play another class with less mobility, being constantly outnumbered sucks balls.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Stuff

Totally agree with you, OP=/=class specific strength. Nice to see another thief player playing ranger too, I love the class even if I suck at it :P

I don’t really have a problem with the WvW stuff that has come in, some of it has been pretty good. I just find the response from the devs a little insulting tbh. Sure, the necro posts might not have been the most constructive way to raise the issue, but the question on ‘what are you doing about x a year on’ was a pretty reasonable one.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there was regular contact from devs, but when we have to do something like that to get a response and that response is ‘shtap it or else’, it’s hard not to take that badly, ya’know?

And the forums are always going to be a little toxic. Blaming that for the lack of dev posts when the lack of communication from you is a major factor in the toxicity of these forums is like blaming water for being wet, what did you expect exactly?

I don’t tend to /laugh at people unless they accidentally walk off a cliff or something really stupid, and I /bow/salute if I think it was a good fight regardless of who won. I do /wave goodbye if they’re losing and decide to run off though. Considering how much grief we thieves get for that, it’s fun to point out just how often other classes do it ^^

A lot of the time I find it’s underleveled characters that are laughing at me. I tend to leave them alone unless they really ask for it, but if you’re just gonna laugh when I show you a little compassion then you’re fair game as far as I’m concerned.

I’d just be happy to see the shadowstep bugs be dealt with, as it’s happened to me with the shadowstep utility as well as with steal (green reticule, get ‘out of range’ message but it still puts the return point down and wastes a cooldown). Makes surviving with minimal stealth rather challenging when you can’t rely on your ports. If you could do something about P/P as well that would be a bonus, I’d love to have a use for that set.

I’m still one of the few thieves that likes hard to catch apparently. I didn’t realise how good it was until I fought a thief who used it, every time I chained steal with infiltrators to hold him down the daze would make him port, same with basilisk, it was infuriating. In groups it’s a liability, but 1v1 it’s amazing. I still wouldn’t use it on a stealth build though.

As for fears? I fear that ANet will make us even more dependant on stealth for condi clean etc, and that more and more classes will get ways of directly countering it. I’m all for counterplay to stealth, I just don’t like how it’s the best option we have so people are almost expected to run it.

Scholar works pretty well, I think Shad was running those runes in one of the recent ESL weekly cups on a 6/0/2/0/6 D/P panic strike build (not that you really need his endorsement, but it probably means it’s a solid choice). I know Caed used Ogre for a long time too. I like pack runes myself for the extra crit chance, but tbh as long as the rune has power on it it’s really just personal preference after that.

As for might stacks for strength, I’m assuming they use the might on signet use trait for that set (critical strikes II) with infiltrator’s signet? With the cooldown on steal with 2/6/0/0/6 (which is what I assume you’re running) being 22 secs, with 45% might duration you’d have 14.5 secs of might on steal plus whatever duration you got from the signet, which should be more than enough to reliably get the extra damage from the runes.

It kinda depends on what you’re fighting too. I find warriors harder to deal with on S/D than D/P, as you get a lot more leeway from blinds instead of having to avoid every big hit. On the other hand, engineers and necros seem to be easier when using S/D, as you have a much easier time getting close without being nailed by all that AoE, and you have a way out with sword 2.

As Sizzle hint said, play around with all the sets to work out where they perform best and what you prefer, and make sure to carry them all so you can swap if needed.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Prysin.8542:

Azawrath.7304:

Prysin.8542:

make it 5 seconds all over. Boost damage on stealth attacks by 3% – DONE.

An additional 2 seconds forced out of stealth is enough time for a good player to destroy a thief, no thanks. And if it was going to be 5 seconds I think a bigger damage boost than 3% would need to even it out. 10-15%??

people want thief nerfs and to balance stealth. This would offset it. Seriously though. Unless you burn ini like a madman, you should have enough ini for a blind and 2-3 evades (DD 3 or SD 3 or SB 3). That SHOULD be enough to keep you going “until next stealth”.

3% may be a bit low, i was thinking DD damage (which is the set most affected by this “nerf”) however, i would say 10% is a bit too much. 5%?

I think, longer revealed time and a trait (adept minor?) granting 3-4 seconds of protection upon revealed would offset and make it fair. It would also balance out the “unfairness” of others being able to force you to be revealed (rangers and soon also engineers).

Give me protection in revealed, make me a god.
Tho I’d love this change.

Change the (currently useless) acro XIII grandmaster to give a second of protection instead of stability, and then we can talk about longer revealed time.

While a minor trait for protection when revealed would be all kinds of awesome, I seriously doubt we’d get something that good unless we trait heavily for it :/

Prysin.8542:

make it 5 seconds all over. Boost damage on stealth attacks by 3% – DONE.

People will then complain that the backstab does more damage, and then the nerf-cycle begins anew.

It always throws me, revealed being 4 seconds in PvP. Considering the meta builds aren’t heavily stealth based (by which I mean they don’t use 30 SA) and a D/P thief trying to backstab as soon as he can every time is usually a dead thief, it wouldn’t hurt to have it as 3 secs all around.

Maugetarr.6823:

Can we wait and see how the upcoming balance changes are going to affect this weapon set? I mean it has already been announced that utility goggles on engi (which currently makes them immune to blind and breaks stun) is going to get 6s of reveal on analyze. Let’s see what shakes out before we start proposing nerfs to an average/good single-target set.

+1

It’s the most forgiving set when used with SA that’s for sure, but with the changes we’ve seen so far that may not be true come October. Best to wait and see, for the moment.

The main thing that makes me laugh is that I started learning D/P when I made my thief 16 months ago, and not much has really changed about D/P or the QQ it causes in all that time. Sure, it’s strong, but you’d have thought people would be able to deal with it by now.