Guild Wars 2

As doc Phil said, the best way to learn to fight a thief is to make one and play it for a while. Play some PvP with it rather than trying it only against golems. This will give you an idea of how a thief will move to get behind you.

Crawford.4135:

DanH.5879:

but but…it does not matter, thieves are still OP even if you manage to kill them!
where is my fail/qq bandwagon when you need it most ?
guys?

http://couplesweightlosscompetition.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/bandwagon.jpg

You posted that right: Bandwagon Thieves. What are they? Any Thief that runs with a Dagger. Bad enough ArenaNet lost its creativity, but dang the players went right down with it.

You mean if use one of our 3 main hand weapons or rather 1 of our 2 melee options, you’re a bandwagon thief? It’s not as if there is a huge abundance of weapon and utility variety at our disposal.

But…..THIEF….highest burst…..OP……

@ daendur: Totally fine then. He could have simply run away since there was no commitment to a 1v1. Also, (assuming you didn’t place the trap in stealth) he had 4 seconds to interrupt you with offhand pistol.
@cyhann: if that’s your view on the thief and dueling I probably can’t convince you otherwise. Its like arguing over whether a thief is supposed to rely on evades or stealth for its survivability: entirely subjective.

If it was a duel with /bow and everything at the beginning, then yeah. If he was just following and annoying you, then no.

It would he nice if it were something like “going into stealth returns endurance” which would help with those pesky channeled attacks that can sometimes follow us during what seems like the entire duration of stealth. Or maybe if that doesn’t fit well enough,we drop a smoke field instead. That way we won’t stealth and then reveal ourselves by accident, but it would soak 1-2 hits and allow dagger mainhand to stealth off of it. To prevent stacking from an auto proc, maybe this field could last only 2 seconds.

EvilSardine.9635:

Maugetarr.6823:

Or you could shield bash to eviscerate and using the +50% crit chance on stunned foes and get a guaranteed crit taking at least a 3/4 chunk out of their health.

You can’t do this against a D/P thief who is constantly spamming blind/heart seeker/backstab the entire fight. I do this every now and then on my thief and it hurts how cheesy and effective it is. Easy mode.

Except that the axe auto-attack chain is fast enough to effectively clear blinds faster than a thief can apply them assuming you’re not sitting in the center of the BPS field (even then its fast enough that every other attack will hit). If you count the field time, clear the blind and shield bakitten around 3 seconds, you’ll most likely interrupt the heartseeker leaving the thief out 9 initiative and setting up your attack.

Dolan.3071:

Maugetarr.6823:

Velron.3729:

redslion.9675:

Fenrir.5493:

Cyhann.2609:

But, tell me one thing, how can you even block an attack you can’t see? o_O

Its called instinct, its called experience, its called sixth sense, believe it or not, but a person who has a lot of experience in battle can predict something like this.

The same way you know when a thief stealths you sense their backstab coming then you block.

It’s called: if you see the thief stealth, run the opposite direction, count to two-three nd raise the shield. You should be able to wait the thief out of stealth then, right?

You’re so clever! None of us ever thought about that!

Oh wait, no this is pretty much exactly what we do.

The problem is, just waiting out a stealth timer is MEANINGLESS.

I will explain. When the stealth timer just ends, there is no revealed debuff. So waiting out the stealth does nothing, all the thief has to do is immediately CnD or Smoke field+Leap again for instant restealth and now Backstab time with shield stance on CD.

Or you could shield bash to eviscerate and using the +50% crit chance on stunned foes and get a guaranteed crit taking at least a 3/4 chunk out of their health.

How do you Shield Bash something that’s over 900 yards away?
Also no one runs crappy Berserker MH Axe builds anymore, not to any degree of success against competent players anyway.

You don’t have to run zerker, you can run 0/15/25/0/30 in knights armor/cavalier trinkets and still achieve 7.5k+ crits on eviscerate. Also the axe auto-attack chain cuts through the blind field pretty nicely. In addition, why would the thief be 900 away? Wasn’t he just jabbing away at your shield? Unless he burns a stunbreak (for no reason) he should end up right behind you.

Since you posted this in then engi forum and came back and only mentioned the guy saying “thief op” instead of the discussion where they covered this more than a month ago, here is the link that mask posted at the time. A good step by step instructional video that counters a large portion of thief tactics and counterplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B4mbYlRiJw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Velron.3729:

redslion.9675:

Fenrir.5493:

Cyhann.2609:

But, tell me one thing, how can you even block an attack you can’t see? o_O

Its called instinct, its called experience, its called sixth sense, believe it or not, but a person who has a lot of experience in battle can predict something like this.

The same way you know when a thief stealths you sense their backstab coming then you block.

It’s called: if you see the thief stealth, run the opposite direction, count to two-three nd raise the shield. You should be able to wait the thief out of stealth then, right?

You’re so clever! None of us ever thought about that!

Oh wait, no this is pretty much exactly what we do.

The problem is, just waiting out a stealth timer is MEANINGLESS.

I will explain. When the stealth timer just ends, there is no revealed debuff. So waiting out the stealth does nothing, all the thief has to do is immediately CnD or Smoke field+Leap again for instant restealth and now Backstab time with shield stance on CD.

Or you could shield bash to eviscerate and using the +50% crit chance on stunned foes and get a guaranteed crit taking at least a 3/4 chunk out of their health.

Well its not my video so I don’t want to link it myself, but if you cruise on over to the warrior forum to the video entitled axe/gs 17-20k crits, there is still not a definitive answer to whose got the highest dps/burst in my mind.

Just to add onto Tower a bit, S/P can have its uses in dungeons/fractals where some mobs and bosses are virtually immune to blind spam, but it falls short in a PvP environment where people can walk out of pistol whip.

wish.1027:

Grimwolf.7163:

Lighter.5631:

you probably watched too much what was that called? something something online?sword art? oh kids. why don’t you just ask for all weapons available for thieves anyway, i mean there’s thieves with all weapons across all media.

You.. I don’t… Are you insulting people who watch anime, while also insinuating that you watch it yourself?

Also, two sword fighting is a real thing. It isn’t fantasy. I’m pretty sure the legendary Japanese swordsmen and author of The Book of Five Rings, Musashi, used a sword in each hand as just one example. Though the left one was a shortsword.

Japanese history lesson tiemz!!!
Miyamoto Musashi ?? ?? is the most famous Japanese Samurai to ever live, and he did in fact develop a 2 sword fighting style, Hyoho Niten Ichi-ryu. With a larger sword in his right (main) hand and a smaller sword in his left. It was developed for fighting on horse back, as he viewed that as how real samurais would fight in a war, but none of his famous duels were ever fought using 2 swords together or on horse back.In fact, in his most famous duel, he used the ore from a boat instead of a real weapon.

Are you saying we should get a greatsword? !

I think, in its current state, condition thieves are somewhat sub-par, at least when compared to a necro, engi, or even ele. Each of those classes can spam conditions while controlling the fight and contribute with a greater variety of conditions so that a single cleanse won’t wipe out all your work. I’d like to see LDB either scale better with power or have a longer evade time attached so that I don’t feel like I wasted my initiative if I accidentally press 3 in a fight with a crit/power build.

randomfightfan.4091:

wish.1027:

There was like 15 directly behind me and 30+ in front. I totally got away too.

I make fish food out of the WAR guild. Nothing but a bunch of trolls and angry kids. If I see one, griefing mode activates. I even equip scorpion wire and pull them off ledges. Only guys worse then them is everyone from Borlis Pass.

Well if I weren’t on vacation during this matchup, we might have crossed paths. Keep an eye out for the rest of TFH as WAR likes to follow us around occasionally.

Got a shortbow and a pistol for my thief. The pistol leaves a trail of smoke as you run, so I wanted to pair it with incinerator if I ever buckle down and get it. My thief is an asura so the shortbow is very hard to see, so the particle effect from the pistol is much more appealing to me. If you have alts, the rifle looks good on engineers since they fire from the hip and the shield looks great on warriors.

Well, this is what I’ve been using lately. Works pretty well is you start out with D/P then if they turn out to be a boon tank, you can swap to S/D to rip a couple, then switch back to D/P when they start to run. I found the 10% damge bump from 25 in acro was more helpful than having 20 in CS.
Build: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.1|8.1g.h2.a.1g.h1|c.1g.h2.8.1g.h1|1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1i.67.1i.67.1g.67|0.f3.u54b.p39.0|0.0|59.5c.5a.5d.0|e

Setun.4368:

Maugetarr.6823:

Fomby.4295:

I agree with your post, I just recently started to play my 80 theif in WvW because I finally broke my bank to gear it out in (mostly) the correct gear. (I still lack like ~10% crit damage)

I was expecting to just roll face with my backstabbing self, given all of the complainers about thieves in the forums/game. And I do alright, but most of the time, I’m getting 4100-4500 on my backstab crits. This is obviously a lot less than the “OMG backstab hit me for 9k” posts.

Also, CnD is hard to land several times in a row. (Which is required for infiltrating roaming groups or zergs.) But that’s the fun part of the build!

I have hit a light armor upleveled necro for 8k once. Maybe everybody from Yaks Bend and Crystal Desert is running around with max toughness…

Well that’s why the typical response from thief mains is roll one yourself and try to do it. People don’t complain when I whip out an 11k eviscerate on my 20k hp 2.8k armor warrior every 8 seconds, but when i whip out a 6k backstab on my thief with 4/6 ascended trinkets everyone freaks out.

It’s mostly because people can’t see said backstab coming (which is kinda the whole point), no matter the damage output. At least with warriors you can see a unique leaping animation flying towards you. My only qualm with stealth is that even with dropping aoe’s on the floor there’s no indication at all that the person took damage. Fights against thieves / mesmers can be exciting and fun, but the tedious guesswork of spamming 1 to see if the chain continues, or throwing down aoes where they ‘might go’ gets real old real quick. Not saying it needs to be nerfed or anything, but there’s got to be a better way of tracking an invis player rather than just flailing weapons in all directions.

Oddly enough, I usually don’t swing wildly (with my current builds) because both my engi and warrior have enough control/burst to take the thief down while visible. Setting up a shield bash/eviscerate after a chop/double chop chain is usually enough to take down a D/X thief. With an engi, it’s usually overcharged shot, net shot, jump shot, blunderbuss, grenade barrage, pry-bar. Usually if a thief isn’t down, they are running at this point and I can continue on my way. As to dodging eviscerate, most people don’t so far against me which might be due to my warrior being an asura with a harder to see animation.

Fomby.4295:

I agree with your post, I just recently started to play my 80 theif in WvW because I finally broke my bank to gear it out in (mostly) the correct gear. (I still lack like ~10% crit damage)

I was expecting to just roll face with my backstabbing self, given all of the complainers about thieves in the forums/game. And I do alright, but most of the time, I’m getting 4100-4500 on my backstab crits. This is obviously a lot less than the “OMG backstab hit me for 9k” posts.

Also, CnD is hard to land several times in a row. (Which is required for infiltrating roaming groups or zergs.) But that’s the fun part of the build!

I have hit a light armor upleveled necro for 8k once. Maybe everybody from Yaks Bend and Crystal Desert is running around with max toughness…

Well that’s why the typical response from thief mains is roll one yourself and try to do it. People don’t complain when I whip out an 11k eviscerate on my 20k hp 2.8k armor warrior every 8 seconds, but when i whip out a 6k backstab on my thief with 4/6 ascended trinkets everyone freaks out.

I would recommend also looking into engineer I’d you want a strong mid to long range fighter. In my experience, they bring a little more utility and access to good boons which you will miss on your thief if you aren’t taking advantage of stealth, especially coming from a guardian.

Back to the original question the only thing that’s odd to me is the 5 points in DA as opposed to putting it in acro to bring it up to 25. As a thief, you end up dodging a fair amount and that 10% uptick in damage seems more useful than 50 power the minor ability.

That fractal is pretty much the only place I really advocate using S/P. It’ll save you from the harpy bombs on the way up and evade the spinning attack since our blinds are 90% useless against bosses. I haven’t done fractals up super high, but at least it has worked up through 20.

Well I had a sylvari thief that I created at launch and loved the class, but it felt clunky. Eventually I made an asuran thief and my only regret was not making it sooner. They feel so much more fluid (to me), not to mention the roll on flanking strike just feels better than the spin of the other races.

bhagwad.4281:

swinsk.6410:

I can’t believe people are feeding this kitten idea. This is probably the dumbest idea ever suggested.

If thieves get punished for failing a skill then so should every other class.

So if thief gets revealed for missing bs warriors should get a 4s cool down on thier auto attack when they miss. All classes should.

Besides, the fact that thieves can spam bs until it lands in no way makes then over powered or gives them any unfair advantage.

While in stealth, our unique stealth skill becomes our auto attack.

Why are so many noobs making kitten threads like this?

Wake me up when an “autoattack” like backstab does the same damage as all other autoattacks in the game.

Don’t call backstab an autoattack just because it’s in your first slot. There’s no comparison.

Actually, hitting a backstab on the front does mediocre damage at best, while hitting a backstab on the back does roughly the same as a warrior’s tripple chop. I realize triple chop has a longer channel time, but it is also broken into multiple attacks meaning that assingle block will only stop part of the damage and it also has no positional/conditional setup.

TheGuy.3568:

Why is it in every kittening forum the best spec for pvp = OP. No matter how hard it is to pull off how much you give up. Best spec = OP. You could run DP for 4 months and one day because I gets popular its now OP. I think the thing that kitten es me off the most is that no matter what spec I play on another toon I know the counter because I play the spec. The part that gets to me is the whining on top of whining on top of whining begging for nerfs.

For kitten sake learn to play better. Why does the game keep having to get dummed down for bad players? How many people could possibly suck? I don’t ask this sarcastically or with anger I just don’t get.

I play 4 classes at 80 love em all. However thief and ele (I do not play full bunker) I really hate. You never feel like the nerfs are done. You never feel safe. I know meta is evolving and changes with time but i feel sharing good idea trying unpopular builds might be one of the biggest mistakes we make. 3 months ago DP wasn’t even on the radar and I was playing it. 4 months Ago S/D was considered bad but now the port is OP. It never ends.

Everything has a counter but no one can just force you to be good at pvp.

The fact is it is never all going to be equal.

What the hell do we do? As much as I love my thief I sometimes cringe playing it because i know it is always no matter the build on the chopping block.

I know it’s a rant I am sorry I do not usually rant but kitten.

Gotta agree with you on this one. I started playing D/P when they finally fixed the rooting on shadow shot. Loved it. When they changed revealed to 4 seconds, D/P became the most fluid feeling build, and thus became the new meta. Its not that it was suddenly OP, but people realized that it was good because offhand dagger suddenly became underwhelming. I’m hoping that they (ANet) leave it alone and see how the meta changes after the revealed debuff gets reverted.

XII.9401:

Aberrant.6749:

XII.9401:

I just get the feeling they made a huge mistake with the thief class and are unable to fix it without overhauling the whole class. Always the best defense to doing a bad class balance is to tell the customers to deal with it=l2p then working on super adventure box. That always goes down well..into pushing pvpers to other games.

The dev’s sounded like they did want to do a pretty large shift in thief gameplay in the last state of the game.

(I’m paraphrasing) Thief needs to have more ways of staying in the fight… only THEN can the damage can be lowered, but the damage will still be high (which sounds like a lot more play/fun for me and my opponent imo).

They also agreed that the thief needs to be able to reliably apply more conditions in cond specs.

I can’t wait ^^

Thief is just so very one trick pony as it is atm. Lower skilled players will keep dying to the one trick that thief is built for (and complain) and the more skilled players will easily counter it. It’s just too predictable… to the point where in a thief vs. thief fight you’ll often see one thief c&d off of the other while he’s still stealthed.

When on another class I can easily use that high predictability against them. I have SO many more options with how I wish to act/react on all my other characters and my opponent has far less of an idea to what will come next. They also have better options for team support/tactics than my thief. I hope thieves are changed to where they are more flexible with their abilities in the future as well.

Also… the people in charge of balance aren’t also the same people making events. They are two totally different teams. One team doesn’t go over to the other and say “Hey… we’re having problems with X… QUICK! Put out an event!” lol These events take a lot of time to put together and it’s not reasonable to assume they are at all related.

What one trick poney?

-Weapon skills with no cooldowns

-Multiple teleport hacks (shadowsteps) with NO range on returning or marking of where the shadowstep got anchored.
Repeated stealth.

-Being able to use abilities, Revive, finish AND attack while still remaining stealthed (pistol 5: Black powder then spam Heartseaker 3-4 times and STILL stay stealthed! Just..wow..)

-Instant group stealth. Have you ever seen a thief drop it before they die? They get downed while stealthed and keep teleporting arounf for 15 seconds. So you have to run around smacking the air for 15 seconds: whack whack whack whack whack whack -get the picture?- hoping they don’t revive without you killing them thus COMPLETELY bypassing the finishing system..nice..

-And the biggest advantage of all..completely bypassing the dodge system which is essential for the pvp. Can’t dodge what you can’t see.
As for the less skilled comment which is a veiled attempt at telling someone to L2P..have you ever played against a skilled player who utilizes the broken mechanics of a sword thief? Skill has nothing to do with it.

Next thing we will be saying a server should be able to grab the orb from a hacking player..Oh wait..they can’t and they it got removed from the game .

The fix is very simple..Thieves getting attack should be revealed. Like every other game in the multiverse. It was a grave oversight and should be corrected.

In that case, why not make all boons get removed when you get hit? Same thing right? No defense should last when you get attacked.

An interesting idea, but way too powerful. How about stealing 1 utility or maybe 1 weapon skill from the 2-5 area (similar to how stealing from a warrior already sort of does). Now that mug can’t crit so it’ll do 2k damage, it would be nice if they could reduce the cooldown on steal so the other traited abilities become better. 30 seconds seems like a nice round number that would make taking the stun on steal trait worth it since it would be on a 21 second cooldown.

Well at least we weren’t hit the hardest by the nerf bat this time. It’s not like we haven’t been warning people for months that once the thief was nerfed to an unviable state that they would be next. So they took the fact that they may have overdone it on the last patch and are now (partially) reverting it.

As for mug, it would have been better thematically I think to combine it with bountiful theft to give burst thieves a second attempt if the first try failed and give trickery a new trait like they did for warriors.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Glad it works for you! I rarely build without 30 in SA myself. One question though, why 30/30/0/10/0 and not 25/30/0/15/0? Not a criticism, just curious!

He wanted Mug, Sundering, and Dagger Training — that’s why.

Typically 25/30/x/x/x is for non-Dagger builds.

Ok, I just thought if the fight is over in a matter of seonds, the extra dodge may decide the battle over sundering strikes.

Glad it works for you! I rarely build without 30 in SA myself. One question though, why 30/30/0/10/0 and not 25/30/0/15/0? Not a criticism, just curious!

Tyler.6731:

Maugetarr.6823:

Well, I have to say that if the engineer is capable of making turrets that can auto target and fire at his enemies…

Fire at his enemies? You mean fire at seemingly random targets including yellow non-aggressive ones, mind you at a extremely slow rate.

….master of machines, not so good at coding control systems…..

Well, I have to say that if the engineer is capable of making turrets that can auto target and fire at his enemies, why wouldn’t he build micro-servos into his rifle to make the small adjustments for him as long as he points it in the general direction. He’s the master of machines, why would he need to take the time to aim manually like a common warrior if he has the ingenuity to make his devices do it for him? Hip shot makes sense to me.

BlackBeard.2873:

naphack.9346:

Well, maybe because I have lots of experience with dealing with stealth from playing DotA quite a lot, I never found stealth to be the problem in dealing with thieves. Even more than in DotA, where stealth can be anything from 6 seconds(with max movespeed) to permanent invisibility, invisible players will try to move to a spot, where they have an advantage over you. From the circumstances before they stealth, you can have a pretty good idea already of what they are gonna try to do. And try to act accordingly, learn this way by trial and error.
Granted, you’d need to have loads of experience in fighting stealth before you can think of learning to fight thieves without playing a thief yourself to learn how their skills work before. And also, I got a lev 80 thief by now, so now my knowledge of countering thieves comes from 3 sources anyway

Those are very good points about how to fight a thief, and I do have the timing down more (wait to about 3 then dodge, or put up shocking aura, or other defense), but I still have a very hard time learning without getting outside advice or playing the class. Against EVERY other class, I can learn by just playing and observing why I died. Against a thief, I am still left saying “What just happened?!” Mesmers can also be annoying b/c of the lack of observability, but it is toned down b/c they lack the burst and aren’t as fast.

That being said, I am planning on rolling a thief so that I can learn to counter, plus I really like the mobility in combat (thus why I enjoy the D/D ele play-style). Its just that I don’t have to actually play any other class to learn the best way to counter. That is the real reason why so many players who are learning hate stealth. Its really hard to learn from observation when the fights are fast (1-5 seconds often when bursted down) and the opponent is invis. Maybe a quick 5-second replay on death would help.

Kill cams might help, but that’s what I thought the obsevation mode was going be for in sPvP. You could follow higher level thieves, seeing their setup and playstyle, and watching what play counters them.

I’d like to see the Engi give you overcharged shot like you get from some PvE mobs. The you could overcharged shot>infiltrators signet for some control.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

naphack.9346:

Guys, can you stop these 100nades comparison?
There is one huge difference between these:
You can say 100 nades is more than one skill as much as you want, most players will only react the moment, they actually take damage, which is too late, as within one frame, you lose all your hp to a combo with up to no cast time(one part of the combo triggers instantly anyway, the other part takes about as much time to cast as a CnD).
Get mugged? Fine, Stun break, block, dodge out(or something similar, depends on your class).
Get immobilized/pulled? Fine. Oh. dead.
There is just a huge difference in the timing. 100 nades dealt ZERO(ok, maybe jump shot/overcharge shot) damage to you till the moment, your face kissed the ground instantly.
With the thief, you have CnD, Mug, CAST TIME, Backstab, Cast Time, Heart Seeker, (CAST TIME, Heart Seeker).
With 100 nades, you got net, jump, BOOOOOOM!
Now tell me which one is easier to respond to. Just cause he did net you, doesn’t mean, it’s an actual 100 nades build, and him walking or jumping onto you might simply be a feint to get you to blow your panic button, so he starts the fight with an advantage.

“Cast time” on BS? You mean the half second or so between the CnD and the backstab? Never mind that it takes about that long to throw the toolbelt Grenade Barrage. Same timespan for the result.
And as I said previously, if an engineer nets you and then approaches you, it doesn’t matter if he’s 100nades or not, you’re about to eat a Blunderbuss, double Jump Shot, or a Prybar. Regardless of their build you’d sure as kitten better be getting out of there.
And in fact your statement at the end counters what Robert Hrouda said earlier in the thread, about BS burst supposedly having “play” with feints and such when 100nades did not, and plainly 100nades had feints as well.
Bottom line, as long as both of them are instagib builds with little input on the defender’s end, BS should be compared to 100nades. And it should get the same treatment.

Raptured.9307:

100nades got nerfed. So did thief instagib. It isn’t exactly instant, but you get the point.

No, 100nades got deleted. And going by the standards they used for that, so should BS.

What part or the combo should be nerfed then?

If they nerf mug (which seems likely at this point) it would be great if they reduced steal recharge rate to 30 seconds so the overall mobility of the thief would go up and the other ‘on steal’ traits would be strengthened while lowering the burst but not the sustained DPS of the thief. You could get steal down to 21 seconds then so 1 stun every 21 seconds would finally be slightly better than shield bash. ANet might see a rise in support thieves without having to institute boon hate.

JakobGW.5730:

Maugetarr.6823:

…..Which is why I specifically mentioned perma-stealth in the original comment. I was trying to point out a system of counterplay to people before our next build is put up on the chopping block because people say it’s unstoppable.

It’s extremely easy to BP/HS combo three times uninterupted even when outnumbered 10 to 1. This “counterplay” may look good on paper, but fails to actually work in the game.

It works in practice too as well as against smokescreen+hs thieves (although it’s harder when they’re using smokescreen). I’ve done it and had it done to me (although I couldn’t kill the thief after I knocked it out due to my 0/15/30/25 build with no backpiece). It may not work every time, but try it out in a prolonged fight.

iNaddict.8021:

Maugetarr.6823:

On the second jump through if you nick something, you become unstealthed. That’s why I mentioned that the perma-stealth playstyle (hs through the same field multiple times) has counterplay.

That is assuming every thief uses it like that…

So i would not count that as a counter.. also even if they nick you on the second jump.. you are still blinded and inside the smoke field.

…..Which is why I specifically mentioned perma-stealth in the original comment. I was trying to point out a system of counterplay to people before our next build is put up on the chopping block because people say it’s unstoppable.

On the second jump through if you nick something, you become unstealthed. That’s why I mentioned that the perma-stealth playstyle (hs through the same field multiple times) has counterplay.

What I didn’t see people doing against him was interrupting the perma-stealth combo. I would like to point out that a player can force a D/P thief out of stealth by walking into the smoke field, all that happens us that you eat a single heartseeker which is probably minor since a thief stealthing up like that is usually on the ropes. There is already counterplay to the combo.

This could be the entire reason that they decided against the revealed everytime you exit stealth since it’s already weak against channeled skills and experienced players.

Laika.8795:

Dasorine.1964:

But seriously… a trait that you cannot choose not to take if you want a certain trait line that is outside of your control that triggers a mechanic that actively punishes you for using it is a BAD idea, it always has been and it always will be.

Mesmers have the choice to take an almost identical skill. We do not.

Please change Last Refuge to be like Desperate Decoy. In fact, Mesmer’s 5 point trait before the optional Desperate Decoy 10 point trait is 5 Seconds of Vigor on Crit! I’ll gladly accept that in it’s stead!

CHRIST!

Yes then we would acually have superior dodging compared to everyone else asuming you also traited for feline grace.

Adaneshade.2409:

Jinks.2057:

Adaneshade.2409:

Is it so odd that someone who primarily competes in tournament play would design builds focused around group synergy rather than “going cowboy”?

Mayhap u didn’t get the memo, but in tPvP you sticking with your team is only hurting your team.

There is no role in tPvP a thief does that isn’t covered significantly better by another class.

Don’t believe I ever mentioned zerging points. Simply said that I build in such a way that the benefits I provide to nearby allies cause us to be greater than the sum of our parts in combat.
No other classes can cause the amount of CC on the battlefield that a venom share thief can, not even close. Not only am I stunning, immobilizing, chilling, and poisoning foes but, all nearby allies are too. That CC prevents players from being able to fight back effectively.

Engi

Fair enough. If they would unify D/D now, it might be considered more of a skilled setup. A longer evade maybe (since it has a relatively long windup unless you’re mashing it). I think the problem with the set is that you only use 1,2 and 5 in a direct damage setup and only 1 and 3 for condition damage. If it were unified in either direction, I think the stigma about it being a less skilled setup would go away as neither would spam anymore and have more abilities to choose from while adapting to the battle conditions.

S/D is also stealth spam, but its stealth>wait to interrupt + daze instead of dumping stealth into backstab quickly. I’d say almost all of our builds revolve around some measure of stealth spam (except maybe P/P and S/P) since we lack the defensive boons that others have to make up for being visible 100% of the time. We have dodging as a lot of people point out, but there are several classes with vigor on crit traits which lead to perma vigor, which is better in a drawn out fight. Feline grace is nice, but since its only a 15% return, overall it provides 1 more upfront dodge but is slower in the long run than perma vigor.

ANet reads: “Lets increase reaveal to a 5-6 second time so it matches 2 autoattack chains.”

Devon.9061:

A-Net has a GW spvp team… Why don’t think just get advise from them about changes? I personally just killed an A-net Mesmer in WvW today that was with NSP. And I will have to say he must have been the worst Mesmer I have seen in my time of playing. You could use the excuse oh he was just watching. If you are watching then please don’t stand on the front line with a big A-Net symbol next to you. It just screamed to me “ATTACK ME.”

P.S. Be prepared for another nerf soon. I got bored of running my normal build so I went GC on him and 3 hit him once….

About the P.S…. Already preparing for this as its what I’ve been seeing lately. Sustain was affected, not burst.

Infiltrators signet is a stunbreak.

Adaneshade.2409:

Maugetarr.6823:

Adaneshade.2409:

S/D is easy? Compared to what? It has the highest skill cap of any kit we can wield.

The issue was the builds that abused stealth to crazy extents were “ez-mode”. They got nerfed, now people QQ rather than getting good at playing with slightly less access to their crutch.

I’m not sure I would say it has the highest skill cap. Looking at it, it has a built-in shadowstep + snare + stunbreak+condition remove+escape, a decent evade with decent damage (assuming it hits), a cripple, and a stealth. The auto attack is powerful and it’s unified around direct damage. Try sustained (non-condition, non-burst) D/D for a challenge. D/P can also be quite a challenge since it only has a shadowstep into combat and it costs 9 initiative to use stealth, meaning that you have to really manage your initiative to use it (reward being that you can use it to perma-stealth). This is not to knock S/D as it is powerful and takes longer to learn than burst D/D, I’m just not sure that it has the highest skill cap, but it’s all subjective anyway. My current build is 0/15/30/25/0 S/D + D/P making it non-bursty relying on both stealth and dodging for survivability.

What makes it take so much to play is the fact that it has all that. Most builds are pretty much 2 or 3 button combos, all with one goal in mind…damage. There is no decision making involved. Above 50% HP, I do X, once they are below, I do Y…that’s about as complicated as it gets.

With S/D, a player has to make on the fly decisions about which skill to use and weigh the initiative cost of each or they get into trouble fast. Should I strip that guys’s boon? Or refresh the timer on my shadow return? What about CnD and dazing to stop that revive/stomp…… At any given moment you’re faced with several decisions to make about which is the best usage of init for the current situation.

I think you’re over complicating things a bit. Open with IS. Autoattack. Enemy has protection or retaliation:strip it. Stealth. Dazelock. Get knocked down: shadow return. I would argue that D/P has as many viable choices per second due to its good unification around direct damage without the capability of dazelocking the opponent or a stunbreak, evade, or escape on the weapon. D/P doesn’t allow for boon strip either meaning if they get protection up your burst doesn’t mean much and if they get retaliation you need to back off. As I said, I am not knocking S/D as I use it and D/P, but the statement that S/D is our highest skill ca kitten ubjective.

Yeah you can move during the whole shadowshot now making it a great alternative to heartseeker. The whole weaponset feels useful now. Leap, shadowstep+blind, interrupt, blind field, and access to stealth. Give it a whirl.

Don’t forget withdraw>D/P #3 to dodge, blind and keep overall pressure up.