Guild Wars 2

FS is too telegraphed and easy to miss
A-net definitely lowered the skill cap of noobs facing the thief.
Btw I refuse to roll mesmer or ranger now going for the easy road, I might quit or keep playing thief till I am the last one on this class

Is it time now to get banned for huge offenses to A-Net? Seriously I will feel better later

If a trait or thief’ skill is under used or is giving thieves many troubles, then is working as intended.
If a thief’ skill is giving troubles to the other classes, then it’s clearly a bug or not working as intended and needs to be fixed

a t s e.9614:

They should remove torment from all classes by the way.

this!!

IMPOSSIBLE to play this evening!!
Horrible lag for 3 hours, then stopped and finally I could play 1tpvp in a decent manner…
but it was too late and I should quit to bed..
seriously if this lag problems don’t stop I am forced to quit this game again. Cannot play with team anymore due to lag and when finally we can play it’s too late and we are too frustrated for keep playing and enjoying the game again.
Lag and 4vs5 games are ruining all the fun!!!!

206.127.159.215:0

conditions should only be used as Crowd Control in this game.
I’d say remove all damaging sources from conditions:
-Remove “Bleeding” and “Torment” or change their purposes
-Keep and maybe raise to 50% the Poison secondary(or primary?) effect of nerfing heals, just remove the Damage over Time effect
-Keep Cripple, Chill, Immobilize, Fear, Weakness and also I’d also say Confusion like they are
-Maybe improve a bit Vulnerability

I think it could work just by “banning” 1 trait or 1 weapon or 1 utility for every class.
for exemple:
-For Warrior: a team must choose if banning longbow, cleansing ire or berserker stance
-For Thief: sword, sleight of hand or shadow refuge
and so on..

mango.9267:

My two cents:

Was this a considerable nerf to s/d? Yes.
Did s/d need to be nerfed? Yes.

At this point, just about every thief you see in PvP is playing some version of s/d acro. It’s gotten to the point that it’s hampering build diversity, which is why I think Anet chose to address it.

Why not nerf acro instead? Probably because Anet wants acro to synergize with more than just s/d. And probably because Anet didn’t want to nerf the sustain from s/d, just the damage. As it is now, s/d kinda does it all — great sustain and good damage.

Why not nerf sigils? Almost every power build in almost every class uses fire and air. No need to nerf everyone’s damage when only one build and one weapon set is the problem.

What they did to make Acrobatics to synergize with more specs than just S\D? Nothing
What they did to prevent S\D “3” skill spamming? Nothing
S\D realy needed more clueless dodges? No, good thieves never spam 3, bad thieves will keep spamming 3
Did they destroyed our best reliably combo with S\D set? Yes

this patch will destroy one of our best combo.
People that don’t realize this don’t know how to play S\D thieves.
Noob thieves won’t see any difference, they’ll keep spamming 3 all the time and will enjoy even more they’re free dodges.
GJ A-Net but what do you expect when people who should balance the game test their skills on dummies?

What brings people back is the lack of competition from other mmos

Aza.2105:

2 secs of evade with initiative huh? You forgot to add in the evade from Withdraw and dodge. Thief has a extremely high vigor uptime. So that’s a lot of evade/dodge aka not being hit by damage.

ok the Thief gets about 11 seconds of evade in 1 minute (using Withdrow and Flanking Strike), wasting all the initiative bar and with the best initiative regen traits.

Warrior in comparison gets 10 second of damage immunity in 1 minute (using Shield Stance and Endure pain), without traits that improve the duration of those skills or reduce the cooldown.
But thief is OP cos it has “perma evade” right while Warriors just have more HP and better armor and the ability to stunlock someone to death.

Seriously, not saying warrior is OP but people should understand that the only survivability power on S\D thief relies exclusively on evasion, nerf it and you’ll kill that build.
And there are not so many other build a thief may use for being able to play in this meta.

Evilek.5690:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

To continue this point, you seem to dismissed what is the crux of my point. All mechanics in game to lesser or greater extends have counter play capacity. However in a biased control situation of where I can spam evade endlessly between attacks my opponent has little to no hope of ever defeating me. This currently is balanced by the simple fact that one cannot spam evades endlessly. So if we narrow the focus to be an opponent has a lot more evades than everyone else, it cannot be denied logically that the player does a good advantage. So if we take a typical set up rotation of shadow return, larceny, shadow return back, teleport in, larceny, retreat step, steal in, larceny, roll evade back, sword teleport in, larceny, sword retreat..the counter play people seem to be suggesting to me is position myself well. What part of good positioning is countering this rotation?. All I am doing is playing defensively. I am not actually countering anything. If you fire a missile at a military boat and the boat simply sails away from that landing spot, that is defense from good positioning. If they fire an anti airborne missile to destroy the incoming missile, that is countering. There is a difference and the two play style tactics are being considered the same, when they are not. As stated above evade on skill use do not get countered by typical cripple/chill conditions. Because these skills evade on use, skills like power block are also useless because even if you did hit, thieve’s do not have cool downs on weapon skills and you can’t interrupt teleports forcing a mesmer power block. So using the logic above that one cannot down a target they cannot hit, or one will have increased difficultly countering a target they have higher percentages of not hitting and following through with the other fact established, that thieve’s have a far greater load out of teleport, instant cast, no cool downs and evade on use skills, this only underlines the obvious..the counter play to them is virtually non existent and leads to my original established situation much earlier on. Your best defense (which is not counter play) is just move, stealth, teleport and make yourself an annoying target. However this is nothing more than the naval boat just sailing in circles making itself a hard target. It is not pressuring, or countering the attack at all. When the thieve knows your dodges and evades will run out a lot sooner than theirs, this firmly establishes advantage goes to them. Why does it go back to them?..because high evade has no counter. Only limited defense. In fairness I don’t want to see this thief destroyed, just to see that mechanic laws in game apply to all professions. Currently movement kittening skills don’t impact thief play and some mesmer play the same way they do every other profession. This is not nerfing, it is just making combat mechanics apply equally to all professions. If you still can’t grasp what I man, imagine this situation. All warrior burst/movement skills evade on use. Rush>>whirlwind attack>swap>shield bash>eviserate>bull’s rush>swap>100B(the only time u can hit them now)>whirlwind..It is not impossible currently with solid play and good keybinds to create thief s/d rotations thru teleports(can’t be interrupted) evade on use skills, roll for initiative, steal, roll of recovery etc to establish longish chains of extremely high evade chains while still being able to strike your opponent at the same time.

Thief use Flanking/Larcenous strike combo max 4x in row with all initiative regen traits maybe 4.5×.Evade is only on Flaking strike(0.5sec evade and 1+sec animation), Flanking strike + LA strike has 3sec(4×3=13sec total cast time) cast time and only 0.5sec evade -> 0.5sec evade every 3sec = 2sec evade on full initiative WOW. Where is your PERMA EVADE ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC8SPipFMdk

false statements and bad knowledge of the game mechanincs vs proven evidence?
Sorry mate but you’re on the wrong forum.
90% of the people here have no clue about how the thief works
thank you for the effort anyway

Aza.2105:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

There is no L2P issue when there is no counter to evade. Conditions can be countered, physical damage can be counter. Blocks can be negated with unblockable..what about high evade? there is no counter to high evade.

This is the biggest issue that most players tend to overlook. Going by what Anet said in their recent readyup about balance. Thief has no passive defenses, they only have active sustain aka evades and dodges. This is true. But when you look at the big picture in regards to passive defenses vs active defenses:

Passive defenses has ways to obstruct its function:

• Healing is countered by poison
• High armor is countered by vulnerability
• Defense boons such as prot and regen can be removed

So passive defenses has a definite counter. But when you look at active defenses:

• Dodge has weakness
• Evade has nothing

The difference between passive defense and active defense is quite large. What players need to understand is something simple: The greatest form of mitigation one can have is not getting hit at all.

High armor soaks up damage yes, but even lich form will hit a 3400 armored character for 5k. But with evades and dodges you can avoid hits like that entirely. This is what makes evade insanely powerful.

It makes even the most squishy character tanky because they aren’t receiving damage. Thief is the most complained about when it comes to evade simply because they have the option to choose when they want to evade instead of being bound to cooldowns. So this makes thief a non rotation based class, unorthodox in that regard.

The simple solution is to introduce across all eight classes ways to bypass evade. It can be one skill that does it or it can be a temporary buff like given to signet of strength that allows ones skills to bypass evade.

A mechanic that has no counter is toxic to the game. I can guarantee you that IF Anet introduced evade counter play among the eight classes then complaints about S/D would simply vanish.

So do you want to introduce another kind of mindless skill that requires even less skill than spamming AoE around without even get a target, just because it can hit anyway, no matter if the opponent dodge or not?

Realy, let’s make this game even more easy

The counter to evade is called “good timing”, but you know what? It requires skill but people are too used to AI passive playstyles and AoE spamming thinking they are outplaying their opponents. Timing? what is it!! let’s just nerf the only active counter to this mindless button smashing that doesn’t even require a target to be effective.

Do you know yes that good thieves don’t spam evades? they use perfect timing, strike when needed and only dodge what needs to be dodged, on the other side an S\D noob thief that think to be safe just by dodging all over the map, is just counter productive to his team, he does no damage and bring no support and also will die easily to all these bunkers meta build around nowadays.

Paragon.5479:

nerf steal or put Line of sight on thiefs,that only will make difference between good and bad thiefs,mesmer and other glassy classes will be able to kite and all will be happy

and how do you suggest to nerf steal? A class ability that requires 1 full trait line and a half for being in par with all the F abilities of other classes

So do you want to nerf the only active build in this AI passive meta?
As Sizer said, you can’t win vs a thief just by spamming skill with the same rotation.
And why open a new thread on S\D thieves when there is already one in the first page? Do you think this will get more attention by Devs?
5 months ago when “Shadow Return” was an instant skill and a break stun, when F\S was stealing 2 boons instead of just 1, then the S\D thief was balanced.
Now if anything it needs a buff.
Celestial ele, Hambow and Celestial engie say hello!!

Fraelin.7409:

Kolly.9872:

then give thieves Aegis, Stability, 25k HP pool, Heavy Armor, Block, Invulnerability, Immunity to conditions, then we can agree that thief is more OP than War\Guardian

So you have combined what warrior and guardian both have DIFFERENTLY and said that s/d thief is weaker because it doesn’t have what 2 other completely different play style classes have? Nice logic.

Also:
Since when does zerker Guardian have 25k hp and immunity to conditions??
Since when do warriors have Aegis?

Your basic argument is s/d thief doesn’t have everything so it can’t be OP! Good luck with that!

Frae

Sure, and you are mixing up shadow art thieves (that are non existent in sPvP) with S\D acrobatic thieves with D\P perma blind thieves when talking about thief survivability. I agree that a thief that can perma evade\blind\stealth is OP.
Sadly warriors have stability, invulnerability, block, heavy armor and 25 hp pool all in one build, mixed with high damage

EDIT: I was just trying to show you that is easy to state a class is OP when mixing together all the things that class can do.
This topic is about S\D thieves and specifically an 2 0 0 6 6 S\D thief, so let’s just talk about them.
Can a S\D thief easily remove conditions?
-Shadowstep (50sec CD): remove 3 condition on the shadow return part but it’s mainly used as a breakstun
- Signet of agility (30sec CD): remove 1 condition for each ally nearby but since thief is a roaming class most of the time this skill will remove just 1 condition and it’s mainly used as an evasive skill than as a condition removal
-Pain Response(30sec CD): remove bleed, burn, poison when under 75% health, passive skill, it passively activates even if you don’t have such conditions on you, in my opinion a passive skill that activates even when you don’t need it, is hardly usefull and is taken only cos the alternatives are not even worth it.
- Shadow Return on Sword nr 2 skill: this is maybe the best cond removal a S\D thief can have, and it removes only 1 condition at a 5 initiative cost

Can A S\D thief easily remove\resist stuns?
-Shadow Step and Infiltrator signet are the only breakstun this build ckittene and if taken both of them, you will lose evasion since you cannot take Signet of agility, that’s why a S\D thief when caught by a stun is dead
-Stability? Of course not

Can a S\D thief perma stealth and survive and at the same time bringing something usefull to its team?
I’d say no, stealth is never a good thing in sPvP, the only time a thief should use stealth in pvp is for ressing, stomping (even if there are better classes at this role) and for a combinated stealth attack with its teammates

is a S\D thief the best roaming class and can bring support in a 2vs1 situation?
YES

For every other role but roaming and 2vs1 fights I would bring any other class than thieves in tPvP

Fraelin.7409:

Static.9841:

Fraelin.7409:

My main problem with this S/D build is the damage it can put out when it has 0 points in critical strikes.

OK, I’m going to stop you right there.

How about how warriors and guardians can both set up a tank spec in traits, then use fire + air/intelligence sigils, strength runes and zerker ammy and still live through tons of damage (unlike the thief) and still put out good damage?

How about, No?

Warriors and Guardians are meant to be tanky melee classes, that is how they are designed. However a zerker amulet Guardian surviving through “tons of damage” ? Even a zerker amulet warrior without cooldowns dies extremely fast to both direct damage and condition damage.

Warriors and Guardians have 0 access to stealth and 0 access to defensive shadowsteps. But I guess you think that doesn’t make thief hard to kill right? I guess you think immobilize having next to 0 effect vs s/d thief because of withdraw and flanking strike dodge while immobed doesn’t make s/d thief “Hard to catch” right? (Pardon the pun)

Give Warrior and Guardian stealth and blinks and I will agree with your post, until then stop trying to defend the only spec in the game with no counter.

Frae

then give thieves Aegis, Stability, 25k HP pool, Heavy Armor, Block, Invulnerability, Immunity to conditions, then we can agree that thief is more OP than War\Guardian

Dahkeus.8243:

YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE! LEAD YOUR PEOPLE INTO PVP VICTORIES!

eheh
seriously, the ranking system needs a rework, I know I don’t deserve to be at that rank.
But the real problem is that this rank will ruin my soloQ games and for the people matched with me, I know that.
Also I have more TeamQ matches done cos I like to play TeamQ even when solo and only from time to time doing a soloQ.
What if, eventually I should win again my next soloQ? I will be pushed again to rank 1 and that’s not good.
btw keep playing and have fun guys and don’t care about the leaderboard as I never did.
cya in game

Forst of all I want to apologize with all my teammates and opponents that I will face right now till I’ll go down to my proper rank.
I just came back from a 5 months break and since my old team got disbanded I started doing some soloQ.
I won 3 matches in a row and now I am first in the “leaderboard”.
I realy don’t care about the leaderboard, it was a friend of mine to inform me about my position, but even if I like to have the chance to face some of the best players for a while, I still feel I don’t belong to this rank, I would like to face people at my skill level and surely my opponents would like to not face me.
I am stuck now, because I prefer to do some “soloTEAM” where my rank is quite similar to my skill level, than soloQ and risking to ruin mine and others game.
Please A-Net put this thing in your priorities because seriously this leaderboard is embarassing right now

hey all, I am looking for a new team (don’t mind if casual at the moment)
My old team disbanded and quit for 5 months. Now I’m just came back and started pvp again, but playing everytime solo is not as fun as playing with trusted people.
I just need some dedicated players to play with everytime we are online, pm me in game and thank you for reading this.

Sagat.3285:

You’re in a dead end you refuse to go s/d eva or stealth based builds but rather have p/p?!!
Try D/P 0/6/6/2/0 with Fleet Shadow or 2/6/6/0/0 or p/d 2/0/6/0/6. You got to have one of them evade or stealth choose..

I thought we were discussing about sPvP not crappy WvW builds

Just remove Fire\Air proccing together, it’s a overall nerf, everyone is happy and stop the QQs

OP class beats OP class, sounds balanced, nothing to worry about.
I’ll trade my dodges for perma stability and Skullcracker

Insanity.5174:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01wq6bm2BM4

/enjoy

anyway,all thiefs are cancer to the game no matter how good/bad you are and what build u’re using.

if A-Net can survive to this I am sure they will nerf it.
This video shows very well why thieves need to be nerfed to oblivion. Well done m8

Applied on the website, hope to hear about you guys very soon.
None of you is online at the moment It’s late indeed

Pixels.6532:

Volrath.1473:

Signet of Agility only removes 1 condi and although I agree that it might look op with this specific build, it is not for every other so they should not touch the signet but nerf the spec, just not to much or it will join the other specs in the “useless spec bin”.

It removes 1 for each nearby ally. Unless the tool tip is completely wrong… but I feel like I’ve seen it remove more than one in team fights…

the tooltip is correct, it removes 1 for each nearby ally, maybe this is the only thief utility that worked fine since the beginning

Volrath.1473:

Kolly.9872:

Volrath.1473:

333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333

dead thief

fixed for you

I play exclusively thief and am rank 63 atm i know what i’m talking about here.

D/D and D/P 222222222222222 spam is annoying but extremely easy to deal with. S/D 333333333333333 spam is not. not fun to play with and not fun to play against.

rank 63 and you cannot beat a “spamming thief”
this proves only how the rank means nothing at all

I agree with Pixels, it’s not the S\D (2 0 0 6 6) thief OP but the synergy between that spec and some utilities\trait that makes that build annoying to fight with.
There are many more OP builds around, easier to play and requiring a much less active playstyle to be succesfull with.

Volrath.1473:

333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333

dead thief

fixed for you

thechamp.3092:

For the record, if you’re going to call me a random no name or whatsoever, I main thief with 4.5k tournament games on it and yeah I’m playing competitively. I honestly don’t care about what the nerfs will be as long as they’re nerfs, I just put some obvious suggestions there and yea s/d thief is op because of the survivability BUT with only this it wouldnt be op, right? obv insanely high dmg+insanely high survivability together are op. So I’m suggesting to nerf only one of these aspects (preferably survivability since thief shouldn’t have this). And yeah you can’t really nerf trickery because all of the other thief builds will become unviable.

Shad I respect you as a player and consider you as one of the best thief around nowadays..
But what you’re asking by saying “nerf something but don’t nerf trickery please”, for an S\D thief would be “nerf mobility, aka nerf acrobatic line”, and guess what? I think you are asking in a smart way to not touch in any way your S\P build

On the topic I think that the core design of the thief, in every thief build, is to deal damage and try to avoid damage, every thief weapon has some sort of evade\blind for avoiding damage, just because if the thief fails once, he’s dead.

And no, not everyone is running S\D 2 0 0 6 6 build, you are an exemple of what an S\P thief can do if played correctly

FeelsAlright.5860:

Without fire + air there’d be no damage.

without damage there’d be no thief

A topic that starts with “S\D thieves require no skill” doesn’t need to be taken seriously
Only people that don’t know how to play a thief can think that there is no skill\timing in playing this class.
And Sizer, surely a good player, doesn’t seem OP at all when playing S\D. He just knows when and when not engage a duel cos he knows well what he can do and other classes can do as well, and the synergy with his team is quite perfect.
But a lot of people keep thinking they are to good at this game and when they lose is never their fault.
It has been this way since the start of the game and will always be like this.

I would like to see the OP carrying his team using a thief
I would like to see him trying to contest a node vs a turret engi or hambow war
Thieves are masters of roaming, freecap and support teammates in 2 vs 1 situations, nothing more and that is their role.

How do you play thief with high PING?

Short Answer:
With a crazy skill lag

Bhawb.7408:

Lets do a second test. Have a thief stand behind you and backstab you 11 times in a row like you apparently let this Necromancer do to you, and we’ll see which one kills you faster.

mmm 11 backstab let’s see…
considering 3 seconds of revealed, it will take 33 seconds for the thief, I guess the power necro kills faster

Chaotic.9742:

#thievesguildOP

#nerf every thief in a guild

Chilli.2976:

Hi,

NERF INC ASAP!

So I’m a pretty good Guardian I must admit, I can 1v1 without any class dying for a good duration. Though when it comes to me facing a POWER spec Necro its a different story, I get POPPED very quickly, which obviously means there is something wrong or in other words OVERPOWERED.

See my picture attached and tell me what you THINK!

So do you survive vs any class but 1 Power Necro and suddenly you ask for a nerf? That make sense!!!
I’d say Guardian is OP and you just got outskilled by another player.
Also don’t put Thieves in a situation that doesn’t involve a thief please, there are still too many people crying for thieves when they die

Remove Hotjoin…

FIXED

looking at your active buffs could be a simple and the best solution

no thanks!
Another no brain skill no.
There are already too many passive skills in the game

Spathis.7540:

This is the greatest thread I have ever read. Truth.

What: Ninja outfit
Why: Because it makes thieves look good!

Lol I was going to write the same

You did the right thing reporting him
You did the wrong thing posting it here

I don’t know if it’s working as intended but now if I am in line sight with my opponent but on a different height scale I can no longer teleport to him. Not sure if it was working like this before but if I remember well, I could always teleport to my opponent when I was no obstructed by something else

Dakota.4591:

Hoelbrak is worth looking into. Now has the same might duration as Strength runes. You lose the 5% damage buff, but get a nice duration reduction on conditions hitting you, which is probably more valueable in wvw/pvp.

I don’t think it’s worth getting them for WvW.
With all those condition duration food, you will barely notice any reduction

Emi.4152:

waow Oo

1. negate the entire purpose of stealth by adding footfalls. (don’t get the point, it would take God’s most holy decree to land a backstab, you realize that right? you probably do… oh…)

2. nerf weapon evade killing the last viable thief weaponset in pvp…

3. nerf damage by half…

4. nerf the already nerfed vigor resulting in even less survivablity and buff swiftness “because we need it more”

5. give thieves more traps.

okay… so basically, make sure thieves do not have burst, nor sustain, nor survivablity in the name of “raising the skill cap”. in return thieves should be massively buffed with a new trap skill.

I agree with this and hope they implement just so people like… this… would stop posting. and i will still kill you with my mines

(2 months later) nerf mines!!! blehhh!!!!!!?!?!

Sadly this is like A-Net has made changes for the thief from the release of this game:
- Listen to non sense complaints
- Release crappy interviews saying “new good changes incoming for the thief” promoting build diversity
- Showing bad Devs gameplay videos doing pve vs dummies with crappy thief’s builds
- Then release patch notes where everything is nerfed to the ground and only some useless skill that no one uses is buffed a bit
- After a couple of hours from the patch release, the complain start again

ps: from someone that is playing from beta

This explains how low is the pvp level in this game

1) What is the meaning of Stealth (3 seconds with 3 seconds of reveal), if anyone can see where the thief actually is moving? The thief in those 3 seconds of invisiblity needs to position himself and actually hit in the back, with all the AoE in the game, no other class needs good timing and position for actually hit a thief.

2) As mentioned before, if the dodge in heavily reduced then remove from the game all these crap AoE that doesn’t even require a target to succesfully hit

3) The overall damage was already nerfed. There is already too much sustain on every class. First re-balance the high sustain builds, then the crit damage.

4) The Thief is already one of the best classes at roaming, we have already many ways to get swiftness or just incresed movement speed. And Vigor was already nerfed and only one build can realy benefit from it. Dodge, Blind and in a minor way Stealth are our ways to survive. Other classes can get Block, Invulnerability, High regeneration with better HP pool and Thoughness. I think it’s a good deal.

5) Mines belong to Engineers. We already have traps, but for the most part they suck. A trap rework is realy needed on the thief but I’m sure this will lead to “thief trap is OP, pls nerf it”

Thanks for your suggestion but no thanks

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

It might be easy to abuse for lots of rewards if you’re not careful (entire teams just giving up at the start for instant rewards, for example.)

not necessarily it should be usable at the start of the match.
I think after 5 mins from the start could be good

JustARTificial.3175:

People won’t leave to play TESO. The game is riddled with more fundamental problems than GW believe it or not.

Are you realy sure about that ?
The only thing that is keeping GW2 population alive is the F2P model with NO p2w item shop model, otherwise this game would be already dead.
Anyway TESO is going to hit GW2 population much harder than you think.
The main reason?
Too few and too slow changes over almost 2 years since the game release and for the most part in the wrong direction.
Listening to the community too much is wrong but also is don’t listening at all.
Zenimax is already showing that they are listening more to their customers’ needs, with facts not empty words.
Ok I am an unhappy GW2 customer but for a reason, I was promised things since the first beta that still have to happens 2 years later.

What about quitting the game all together?
When no one else is left, the game will be balanced after all

RedSpectrum.1975:

So I’ve been looking at the forums and it seems people want to know exactly what build it is that the thief has that’s supposedly killing everybody. After a ton of theory crafting I believe I have found it. Can you guys correct me or give any critiques as to what should be changed?

Okay, so this build is 30/30/30/30/30.
For Deadly arts, I believed people were facing thieves using Mug for starters.
Dagger training was also a popular for that extra burst. Also, Improvisation for the increase when wielding a bundle. So for the first tree, we have
DA: III, VII, IX

With me so far? Okay the critical strikes tree needed to be used since, coupled with Deadly Arts, gives insane amounts of burst.
The traits for this one weren’t hard your tree should look something like this:
CS: I, VI, XI however Hidden Killer is a nice alternative

Shadow Arts is essential for the amount of stealth we’ve been doing so once again let’s set this up:
SA: IV, VI, XI for the regen in stealth and condi cleansing as well as blinds. This gives the classic “Left and came back with full health” sch-peel

The Acrobatics tree is arguably just as important kitten since this is how we get hp and also how us stealth thieves simultaneously have a ton of evasions to boot making us near impossible to hit. This took some thinking but I’ve settled on
AC: I,VII,XI I chose I for WvW builds, otherwise power of inertia is preferred. Once again this will give your thief much health and even more condi removal with a bit more evades to boot.

Ah Trickery, the forbidden fruit.
Trickery:V, VII, XII this will give us even more power, reduce our steal and give us even more boon stealing with a daze, regardless of aegis or stability.

Gear: All Zerk until nerf happens then I’ll need to change but all Zerk for now with runes of scholar, though, Lyssa may be better. Traveleres as well and Divinity’s may help with the well rounded-ness

Weapons: You should have DD/DP/SD/SB
I chose four wepaons since we need to be able to use all of our gimmicks in the same fight. DP will allow us to stealth easier and set up more blinds. DD will allow us to burst even better than DP with the addition of CnD, while SD will give us the evades we need to continuously evade if the event comes that we don’t feel like stealthing during the fight anymore. SP can be an alternative if you desire. SB is pretty basic.

Utility: Withdraw works well here but Hide in Shadows is another good one. Im going to go with HiS for now though. Shadow Step, Shadow Refuge, Infiltrator’s signet/blinding powder: pretty basic set up

Elite: Basilisk Venom duh, we always use this. Any thief that doesn’t use this isn’t a thief. But if you are a thief and still don’t use this, use TG or DS depending on the day of the week, I have a chart that follows through with this:
Monday-DS
Tuesday-TG
Wednesday-TG
Thursday-DS
Friday-DS
Saturday-TG
Sunday-N/A

Thanks in advance for the help guys

Even this build is UP compared to Warriors …