here’s one with a s/d thief that throws himself into a 1v2 for 9 minutes before dying. it’shief, pretty entertaining. skip ahead 6 mins for it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Siqrr3YBVY
If you don’t skip ahead, you also see the guy take down quite a number of other thieves including HS + haste spammers with a simple daze and autoattack. Had the poster not been a S/D thief with copious amounts of stunbreakers, he would have died much earlier in the 9 minute fight.
Surely, but in a 1v1 matchup (assuming 1v2 too), S/D thiefs are way more powerful than D/D thiefs. The daze is so broken in this kind of matchups, especially in a thiefs duel. However, D/D has such a good nuke in teamfights (zergs fights) that is more valuable to play D/D in WvW even if you’re not such a good duelist than S/D.
As you can see in this video, even the title says about duels, and not zergs fights. Just the firts few minutes are sufficient to see with that kind of build, you can’t burst someone down quickly, finishing him and moving away from the fight to recover CDs if needed.
As I said, and as you can see, it’s not a bad build, you really can enjoy with that spec, but in my mind, duels in WvW are nearly inexistant (the first fight in the video is enough to understand why) and because D/D is better assuming is more than 2 opponents. You clearly can say this build is better in sPvP than in WvW
Both weapon sets have their place and merit. I used S/D for quite a while and it was a lot of fun, but lately I have been using D/D more. Was was trying to point out that S/* builds are the foil for control builds whereas the hammer warrior would have probably downed a D/D thief in the first 15 seconds of that 9 minute fight. It certainly isn’t a bad build and I did not intend for my comments to be interpreted as such.
Don’t forget about near perma-vigor. That would be something nice to have on a tier 1 trait like my ele (renewing stamina, not to mention zephyr’s focus) or on guardians (vigorous precision minor trait). I would gladly throw 5-10 points into a traitline to keep up instead of the minimum of 15 into acrobatics. They could have easily given us vigor on a crit trait called it flashing blades and thrown it in the crit strikes or acrobatics line.
Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.
How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground. The other icebroods have long enough windups that you can dodge, but you’re (I am) still forced to dodge with the thief as opposed to the guardian and warrior on our team that can take several bursts in a row before having to worry about it. I’m saying overall, it’s a lot more effort to run the thief in dungeons than it is another class.
On anything but the Champion, I rarely have to dodge. In fact, I run ahead of the group and force aggro on myself from the wolves so that they use their pounce, and then dodge it. This puts it on a temporary cooldown for the rest of the team to wail on them, and I stealth to wipe aggro from myself and proceed as normal. Blind on stealth and constant dazing keeps them under control at all times, and I always have a dodge on hand for the pounce if my blind isn’t in effect. At full health, which is usually the case against the Champion when he’s alone, I can take a full hit from the ice/earth AoE attack that he uses with 2-3k HP left. If I have to be completely honest, I last longer than most Warriors and Guardians I’ve played with while in melee. Even when Thieves are dodging the big hits in non-boss, standard play, what’s wrong with that? Thieves are meant to do that. They have a higher skill threshold, and it’s only natural for a class that prefers to avoid damage rather than sponge or systematically mitigate it eg. protection, aegis. This means you get more bad players in the Thief profession, sure, but it doesn’t somehow devalue Thieves in any way.
To answer your question, I have close to 2800 armor.
That was my point, though is there is a slightly higher floor and ceiling to the thief which requires more attention. And 2800 armor!!! Holy crap!!! I have 2,595 or lower depending on what armor set I’m wearing so sometimes I can absorb the hit with ~1k left over, sometimes I can’t. Ill conceed that thieves are valuable when played to their potential, but you have to work a fair amount harder to get them there.
I chose to alternate between a thief that would be waiting 3 seconds in stealth for a benefit and 1 second to keep pressure up with backstab, which gives a total time 4 seconds in stealth and 6 seconds out of stealth assuming no slop (precasting C&D so it hits as soon as the revealed debuff ends) then you arrive at 4/10 seconds or 40% of stealth uptime. There are situation both ways that could skew this higher or lower, but its an average starting point. A thief that dodges around in shadow refuge risks dodging out and revealing themselves so most I have played against do not dodge inside of it. Basilisk venom is a fancy looking 1.5 second stun at this point, much easier to deal with than a warrior’s mace burst attack which can be used every 8-10 seconds (depending on traits).
Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.
How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground.
every attack/aoe has its own animation, and if you learn them, you can dodge everything.
+ if someone in your group is tanky and melee, you shouldnt aggro monsters anyway.
yes, guardians can tank like a boss, but guardians also deal zero damage compared to a full berserker thief.
I’m talking specifically about the little AoE leap thing that the wolf does. It seems to have ~1/4 second cast time denoted by a little hop. It doesn’t matter if you’ve pulled aggro against it at that point as its PBAoE. The rest are fine once you learn the cast animations, but that’s the thing, you need to be proactive and twitchy while running the thief in dungeons rather than being able to roll through it like a warrior or guardian. The effort put into running a full zerk thief though and reading all the animations while making sure you’re not running low on endurance or that you have shadowstep or shadow return up in case you do run out of endurance is a lot greater than running a shout GS / mace +shield warrior which still deals a lot of damage, has 400 more armor and 7k more health (base) than you who can use a couple of shouts and heal the whole group for about 1. 2k for each one. I’m not saying there’s no upside to learning to run a thief in dungeons, but it is a lot more intense for an almost equal payout (until you really learn all of you strengths and weaknesses). Even at that, if you miss time a crucial dodge out of a mistake of your own (or perhaps a mesmer dropped time warp on you shortening your dodge), you can be sat down in 1 attack.
Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.
How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground. The other icebroods have long enough windups that you can dodge, but you’re (I am) still forced to dodge with the thief as opposed to the guardian and warrior on our team that can take several bursts in a row before having to worry about it. I’m saying overall, it’s a lot more effort to run the thief in dungeons than it is another class.
the reputation you have as a thief hater will never go away
what you said is a lie, and you know it.
How is it a lie? Other thieves do fine in pve. I’ve seen them do fine in dungeons, even though I dislike dungeons. What’s the problem exactly?
You are overstating the effectiveness of thieves in PvE. Leveling a thief is much more difficult than most of the other classes (leveled a warrior, in the process of leveling a guardian, engineer, ele, mes). As for dungeons, good luck in CoE with the frost wolves in close combat (where the thief is supposed to excell). A guardian or warrior can easily tank them while the thief has to contantly dodge and evade in hope that they won’t be one shot. All the blinds, dazes, or any sort of limited CC become garbage with the defiant mechanic. So yeah, you may be able to do fine if you are experienced in dungeon runs and pretty skilled with reading animations and timing dodging, but it certainly is much more difficult than running with my warrior (which I haven’t even had to put in full exos yet due to the ease of use).
When it comes to the burst thief, let’s just ignore the fact that stunbreaker’s don’t get you out of basilisk venom (lol?).
When it comes to the stealth thief, they are the stealth thief because they have taken those 30 points to get those traits.
You thieves can talk about how your class is “fine” all day, but until other classes can zerg surf, reset fights, etc. even half as well as the Thief, you’re just blowing hot air.
We can continue to pretend that all classes are “equal” or we can be honest. Heck, anyone notice the comments about Rangers being easy targets not being disputed? There’s a reason for this … just like there are reasons why specific Thief builds are a bit out of control in WvW.
I don’t mind that a Thief can do great damage. I don’t mind that a Thief can stealth. What I mind is that a Thief can fight me for 30 seconds and spend a majority of that time stealth while still doing damage to me. I mind that a Thief can kill a person without that person even seeing the Thief. Those are not right in a game that is supposed to be visual with its combat. In both those instances I’m provided with no visuals … instead I have to blindly swing at where I guess he is.
I hope the basilisk venom comment is a joke…..
If a thief is actually attacking you (tactical strike, backstab, sneak attack) they could, at best, spend only 57% of the time in stealth assuming they had everything timed down to the millisecond. Realistically, they are probably spending only 40% of their time in stealth. If they are chaining C&D, they are going to have a very specific time interval in between which you should be able to block or dodge. I watched last night as my guardian friend got me up from down-state literally letting his passive abilities take care of the thief allowing him to completely ignore it. As for swinging blindly to find the thief, it is a very effective tactic. When fighting another thief last night, he popped shadow refuge at about 40% health. Walking into it and swinging let me go through 2 autoattack chains against him. When SR disappeared, I started missing him. 12 ish seconds later he appeared in down-state off to the side at 50% health. There are a ton or visual and auditory cues in the game that you can use to fight thieves. Roll a thief, not to make it your new main, but to learn its strengths, weaknesses, loadouts, and tactics and take that knowledge back to your main. Most of the thief community is willing to help if you need it.
Vigor on heal- I think is good if you don’t have 15 points in acro but why not just take the extra 5 points to get feline grace?
Because it requires giving up major trait elsewhere. Shadow Arts has many good major traits that are hard to leave out, Embrace, Rejuvenation, Infusion, Cloak and Protector, to name a few. Critical Strikes only obviously good major traits is are the GM traits Executioner and Hidden Killer
0/20/30/20/0 in knights/zerker is a lot of fun and doesn’t require HK or executioner.
Initiative and our skills need rework, in current state it’s press to win. Every skill is just click and profit, there is no thought in it.
When we first learned about the Thief and the iniative system we all shouted: strategy! Iniative management! Use skills wisely!
This all faded once we learned how to heart seeker and how to CnD or DB spam. It’s the lack of build up-> follow up that makes classes that use systems like this unique and exciting.
I was going to put down the suggestion to have something along the lines of the GW1 Assassin combo’s again but haven’t been able to work it out.
I really want to build up to things and then unleash the force, but now it’s 2-2-2 or 5-1 5-1 5-1 or 3-3-3.
I hope that a dev leaves a response because it’s been so long, and Thieves have serious issues across the board, both strong and weak!
So we go back to 12345 or in the case if mobius strike, 123454545? If you miss with that you run, if you hit you win. Sounds exactly like how you’re claiming thief gameplay is now.
Vigor on heal- I think is good if you don’t have 15 points in acro but why not just take the extra 5 points to get feline grace?
You could take both, really. If you pair it with withdraw, which is itself a dodge, the chain dodging is exceptional, and you have nearly 2/3rds uptime on vigor from your heal alone.
Exactly what I’ve been doing lately. Makes thief pretty survivable in dungeon runs.
No, I’m saying it’s both my server and the ones we’re fighting this week.
The past 2 days the various people I roam with have noticed it as well because the number of fights we get into that don’t involve 2+ thieves is becoming less and less.
So the meta is changing to realize that thieves can be helpful in the context of coordinated team play. I hope it spreads to our servers as well.
Acrobatics line can be very helpful at low levels. If you want to be a little less reliant on stealth, you can use withdraw combined with vigorous healing, heartseeker back into the crowd and then Deathblossom over it. Combined with caltrops, you can kite pretty effectively like this, switch out to shortbow and use your initiative for 2&3 to evade while damaging them. D/D + SB also sets you up with a great number of combo finishers for running in groups or doing events.
Where is this large influx of thieves? On anvil rock EB I’d say the split is pretty even with all the classes, but if I had to order them in the number I run across, it would be guardian, ele, mesmer then thief tied with or slightly below warrior. People tend to remember what they have a hard time dealing with, and not the others that they run through.
here’s one with a s/d thief that throws himself into a 1v2 for 9 minutes before dying. it’shief, pretty entertaining. skip ahead 6 mins for it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Siqrr3YBVY
If you don’t skip ahead, you also see the guy take down quite a number of other thieves including HS + haste spammers with a simple daze and autoattack. Had the poster not been a S/D thief with copious amounts of stunbreakers, he would have died much earlier in the 9 minute fight.
Wait. The guy is explaining that he’s purposefully choosing the squishiest targets, including other thieves which he downs easily. Against what is considered the most underpowered by a lot of players (rangers) he actually has the most trouble. It shows him being interrupted while stealth stomping on a number of occasions which should be impossible if you believe a lot of the please-nerf posts on this thread. He always gets into the most trouble when someone CCs him which is what thieves have been saying all along on this thread. His best/farthest away escape by the way…..is when he’s turned into a moa….. People keep thinking that this is a base line of the thief , but this guy is a good thief with commentary on how to play the thief carefully. Thieves keep getting painted with a broad brush because there are a wide variety of viable builds so what works against one is the completely wrong way to play against another. This leads to the idea that thieves somehow have access to 30/30/30/30/30 builds that do everything. All their experiences against the thief have homogenized it in their minds into one super-class. Thieves on the otherhand know what their build is capable of and know that a nerf to a small part that wouldn’t seriously affect another build would be extremely limiting to theirs. It is partly a l2p issue. The people in my guild used to have a lot of trouble with thieves. After a couple of months of playing alongside them and sparring in sPvP with them, they eat most thieves alive now (using necros and guardians). Thieves already have conditional, positional, and time constraints on them and the majority of the nerf comments here want to tighten those constraints even further while reducing the payoff, meanwhile we literally bounce off of some classes right now which is why there have been small buffs to our mobility to replace what the damage nerfs have taken away.
Something costing a certain amount and then receiving a refund is different from a lower initial cost. At that point too, the thief wouldn’t be closing gaps or attacking, they would be focusing on maintaining stealth.
It doesn’t make sense that tiny changes to stealth would break the entire class. WHat’s so special about thieves that they should be immune from nerfs? I thought stealth wasn’t the main skill for this class anyway.
Thieves have already received numerous nerfs to the point where the devs have started giving small buffs to mobility to compensate. If steath weren’t a main feature if the thief, the devs wouldn’t keep stating that it is in their balancing philosophy and furthermore there wouldn’t be an entire traitline almost dedicated to entering/maintaining stealth which is tied to the toughness and healing power traits as well.
Necros need a buff, like more grab/control skills. Right now they seem to have a lack of build diversity. Eles can down more than 1 person easily. Guardians may not be able to kill people in a 1 v 3, but add in a teammate and they provide more than enough support to really turn the tide on a 2v3 or a 2v4.
We’re talking about one person soloing multiple people here, which should never happen unless you’re fighting a bunch of up leveled players. Adding a teammate changes things significantly and is not what we’re discussing.
A bunker ele does not down people “easily”. It requires effort on their part. Bunker builds lack damage output.
Only do max damage after a person is below 10%? That’s just ridiculous. So an average person with 20k health at 10% would have 2,000 health. So your saying heartseekers max damage should never really exceed 2k based on a 20k health pool.
Can’t put a cooldown on a wep ability for thieves, we go off initiative. One or the other, not both.
If someone lets a thief heartseeker them to death then they should die.
Is it spammable? Yes
Is it a cheap way to fight? Yes
Is it avoidable? Yes
Can it be evaded? Yes
Can you stun, immobilize, CC? Probably Yes
I disagree with all of these points. The balancing is seriously out of whack with this class. I don’t say this as someone who fights against thieves. I say this AS a thief. I should not be able to do what we can do against multiple foes. There is a reason so many people are complaining about us.
Heartseeker was designed to be a sort of execute skill. Everyone should be familiar with what Execute did in the game that should not be mentioned. Imagine if that skill worked at 25% instead of 10%. Now imagine it being spammable. Now also imagine that every time you used it, it automatically jumped you next to your target regardless of positioning. Now imagine that ability in the hands of that games thief class. Now imagine the outcry. Would be a lot like it is in this game, don’t you think?
Heartseeker is just way to easy to spam to victory with. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. Denying it doesn’t change the fact its so ridiculously effective. It needs its damaged towned down or a cool down added. As it is right now, its OP as all hell. It simply does to much. Especially for a paltry 3 initiative.
this guy knows the truth. I agree with you 100% and I’ve played thieves.
He knows what he’s experienced, and I’ve experienced the opposite. A thief can last against 5 decent people or can fall to 1 who knows what they’re doing.
Necros need a buff, like more grab/control skills. Right now they seem to have a lack of build diversity. Eles can down more than 1 person easily. Guardians may not be able to kill people in a 1 v 3, but add in a teammate and they provide more than enough support to really turn the tide on a 2v3 or a 2v4.
That’s not minor change, its just not as big as you want. As for being able to take on 1v3, bunker guardians, eles, and engis can do it too. As for escaping, AN said the thief is a class that’s supposed to be hard to catch.
If they brought up the base damage so that a balanced to burst could hit for 2k-3k on crits (in total, not each hit) I think it would be useful as a condition build would still hit for a relatively little amount.
On d/d? Cause you would still ignore other 3 skills, which is broken aswell :\
Well the autoattack chain has its place in a condition build with D/D, but 2 & 4 are pretty unhelpful in a condi D/D build. Its not like a warrior S/S where 4/5 abilities are unified around condition builds. They tried to split the weaponset, but it seems like it emphasizes direct damage more.
Maybe a stealth attack should remove stealth at the beginning of the attack
I’m just trying to be constructive at finding a reasonable compromise
This assume that culling for WvW players will be fix
This, with a 1/2sec (or3/4) cast time backstab maybe?
In your opinion how bad/good it would be?
i think that this is a good compromise. seems reasonable.
A random attack, not anywhere close to an enemy, would then break stealth.
If they brought up the base damage so that a balanced to burst could hit for 2k-3k on crits (in total, not each hit) I think it would be useful as a condition build would still hit for a relatively little amount.
Agreed on both counts. Death blossom for a burst build is really only useful against 4+ targets, and then really just for tagging all of them or dodging of you’re getting swarmed (in PvE where attack rates are predictable). After the nerf, DD is only situationally useful on S/D when you’ve used infiltrators strike already and are trying to chase someone down. With D/D you might as well heartseeker as it will hit harder and close the gap for 1 less iinitiative
yeah i have a 670 ftw 2 gig video card, 16gigs ram, SSD and I have culling issues. culling is on their end not ours. I can’t explain how some thieves get perma stealth AND high dps. i can only explain it with culling.
Well with roughly equivalent computers, connection is the only thing I can think would be the difference.
Leaving assassins behind enemy lines with a little trail of evidence actually sounds like legitimate tactical strategy to me, but that’s just my opinion on it. Besides you can knock someone out of the permanent stealth by having a person walk up to the smoke cloud. If the heartseeker nicks someone, the thief will be revealed. You need a fair amount of room to pull that off.
agreed, but with culling unfortunately, that reveal doesn’t happen as it should. this is why thieves aren’t getting complaints from spvp. rather the myriad complaints in this thread alone are from wvwvw.
Well, I can say that I’ve never had issues with culling fighting with other thieves. I have much bigger problems with enemy zergs appearing on top of me. It could be your computer or internet at this point. I play with an AMD 990fx, 16 gigs of ram, and a 550 graphics card on a 25up/25down connection. I also use closest target when fighting most enemies unless I’m picking out specific people, in which case I use the mouse targeting.
Leaving assassins behind enemy lines with a little trail of evidence actually sounds like legitimate tactical strategy to me, but that’s just my opinion on it. Besides you can knock someone out of the permanent stealth by having a person walk up to the smoke cloud. If the heartseeker nicks someone, the thief will be revealed. You need a fair amount of room to pull that off.
D/D is viable for bosses or a fight with a few enemies that are spread out where the 3 target hit on the sword wouldn’t make a difference. S/D can be invaluable in Arah as you can lock down the inquest technicians and deadeyes while your teamates burn the rest of the mobs. D/P can be a little bit of a liability for getting into stealth if you run with a caster heavy group. Sometimes another combo field will take priority and you’ll end up with chaos armor or a fire aura instead. Running D/D and SB, you have access to every combo finisher out there in spamable form. Got a bow warrior or ele in your party? How’s 12 to 15 stacks of area might sound? Area retaliation with your guardian too. Just make sure you put a good amount of toughness and/or vitality so you can soak the occasional big hit (darn those frost wolves in CoE with the short animation massive damage PBAoE…..).
Who cares about design, when the weapons deal plenty of damage. It’s a Thief, not an Assassin. The point is to deal consistent damage, with some burst in between, while evading attacks from your foe. Stealth skills are just a way to keep the pressure on your opponent consistent, to make up for the damage you lose while you’re in stealth. The Thief was never meant to be totally dependent on stealth, but I can see how someone could think that. The Thief is designed to rely on movement, with stealth being a tool to further improve mobility and survivability.
Well I suggest you learn to play without relying on them, of curse. Just like all other professions, the Thief has different weapon sets, for different situations. It’s mostly in the third skill. Unload is the classic burst skill, that pairs well with the vulnerability from Body Shot. But if you put in an off-hand dagger instead, you suddenly get a much more defensive weapon set, that’s meant to keep the distance to a foe. Say, if someone want’s to attack you with a melee weapon, it’s probably a good idea to have a weapon that prevents him from coming close to you. But if he has a ranged weapon instead, you have your burst weapon set to bring him down. Luckily, you can have two weapon sets, meaning you can use both options.
First of all, can we stop this argument about how the thief is not supposed to be an assassin? The included picture shows an assassin that uses both thief and ranger skills and stealths. I doubt it was the intention of the game designers to make the thief at the exclusion of the assassin. The thief is a catch all term used to include a variety of different builds and playstyles.
Secondly, for the most part, P/D and P/P do not harmonize particularly well. One emphasizes condition damage and one emphasizes direct damage and would require and odd combination of traits and armor yielding a character that specializes in nothing. Furthermore, unless you are running in a group that deals a lot of direct damage, you would be better off saving the initiative of body shot for another use of unload.
Offe top of my head, sorrows embrace and Arah are the only 2 with knight’s armor (I don’t care for the looks of SE or the time spent in Arah to get the tokens) . You might do better getting crafted armor if you need it right now. If you like the SE armor, that’s a lot easier to run. I run zerker weapons too as I have enough toughness so I don’t need the larger health pool. Powe vs precision line is a toss up for me. CS give more crit damage but DA gives you more base damage. I really like the extra initiative on a crit though, especially when you’re using attacks that can bounce or hit with AoE. Might is also more easily accessable in the groups I run in, so it makes more sense for me to up my crit chances/damage. You may find though that lotus poison helps your group put more overall and go that way. If you really want a powerhouse with sword though, 30 in CS for executioner is amazing as you autoattack can go from 1.5k>1.5k>2k (on crits) to 2k>2k>3.5k (including first strikes since S/D is pretty initiative friendly). Right now I’m also using “signet use” in the CS line.
Finally, I went with zerk accessories/knights armor instead of the other way around so I can get ascended trinkets to further up my attack without sacrificing defense in the future.
I have an 80 sylvari thief and am currently leveling an asura one. The reason is that sylvari dialogue got annoying and the animations (for sword especially) seem….static (non fluid, wood-like you may say). Asura feel more energetic to me. If you like sylvari, I would go that way because they are pretty cool looking with the glow. I guess I have sort of the opposite feeling on it that Harbinger does. If you go syvari, make sure you’re prepared for a semi-half English accent (if you haven’t already played one). You might make one of reach as tests and take them to sPvP to see if everything looks good to you (animations, clipping, random dialogue when you gain a buff or condition). Everyone has different preferences.
Right now I am really enjoying D/D + SB or P/P in a 0/20/30/20/0 build (which could be changed to a 0/15/30/25/0 build for almost a continual 10% damage uptime). Knights armor with ruby orbs (they’re cheap) all zerker accessories gives a nice statline that can deal decent damage while being able to soak a big hit still.
Crit strikes: III (VIII)
SA: IV V XI
Acro: III IX
Utilities: withdraw, infiltrator’s signet, blinding powder, shadowstep (switching out shadow refuge as needed). Almost 2600 armor with over 1900 power(no ascended gear). If you do dungeon runs with a staff guardian, the slightly low power is not a major loss as the might from empower + hidden assasin more than make up for it. The reason to run D/D in combination with SB is access to all the combo finishers. If you aren’t interested in that, S/D may be a better choice for you. I usually run with a mesmer, guardian, necro, and ele, so there us always a field up to combo with. The only problem with that team setup is that it makes it very difficult to run D/P since instead of stealthing hen using heartseeker you might end up with fire aura, chaos armor, retaliation, etc…. Try it out. So much dodge its not even funny and subject alpha’s imprisonment crystals mean almost nothing.
Well, if using an offhand dagger, he could have been waiting around in stealth for it to wear off and then hitting you again right when he popped out as fade mentioned, but against 5 that would be a pretty long fight assuming it even took only 3 C&Ds to down each person (very generous with the C&D damage here) as it would have stretched the fight out to at least a full minute assuming everything hits perfectly and no one heals and he doesn’t take the time to stomp anyone. If you guys were getting consistenly blinded (before the stealth not on the stealth) he was probably using BPS and heartseeking through it. If you are patient with this type of build and use infiltrators signet, infusion of shadow, and quick recovery, you can keep up initiative pretty well. If he wasn’t using any attacks from stealth (backstab or sneak attack) in both scenarios the fight would have been drawn out pretty well. Another possibility is S/D which combined with infiltraitors strike would have allowed for powerful autoattack chains upon leaving stealth combined with a high mobility, daze and snare for consistent stealthing via C&D.
Taril’s math and assumption about +dmg% are in the ballpark for a couple of different glass cannon setups so you can plug in at least 1800 armor against non upleveled players and somewhere in the range of 2200 for a balanced light armor player if you want to see the typical damage you would put out.
Played a lot of 1v1 matches last night against a S/P with my D/P and I’d have to say they are roughly equivalent. I think I won more matches against him, but not by a huge margin and they lasted quite a while with one of us having to make a mistake for the other to kill us. He played it very well though, often interrupting the leaps through the BPS with headshot, effectively stopping the stealth. What made it harder to deal with was when he traded out shadowstep for blinding powder. The 1-1/2 second daze was an excellent starter with TS>autoattack>IS>(haste) PW>PW>headshot (to stop any retaliation/blinding/evasion). The only way I was able to deal with that setup was multiple stunbreaks. A hard setup to counter especially if the person knows what they’re doing.
Last I recall, all the golems in HOTM have higher armor than glass cannon players by a decent margin. I always get higher numbers for every class on actual players.
I have had the opposite experience. Guess it just depends on who you face off against. The NPCs to test builds on though seem to have higher armor values.
lol. guys, did you read the past posts from the op?
yep, figured the best way to show him that it wasn’t OP was to have him bounce off the first guardian he saw when he tried it then get two shot right back
Occasionally with a 60% crit chance you might hit more than 3/5 attacks as crits, but you will also hit fewer than that too. In the long run, you should average about 60%.
I can point out that the sky is blue or that it’s chilly outside, but that doesn’t have any relevant impact on the discussion.
I was pointing out that while possible, it is very unlikely that all the attacks would crit upon using the signet, dismissing your conjecture that there are no guaranteed non-crits. Occasionally with a 60% crit chance you might hit more than 3/5 attacks as crits, but you will also hit fewer than that too. In the long run, you should average about 60%.
Yeah I’ve never seen those numbers in actual fights either but assuming all the above with full bloodlust and maxed out might perhaps there were some stacks of vulnerability on the Mesmer?
I think the OP is going to be disappointed – not only are the numbers highly unlikely under almost any circumstance but there is also a lot of button pushing (which is counter to the popular belief that big numbers come from 2 buttons).
I haven’t tried daggers for absolutely ages though and all this talk has made me nostalgic
Well when testing it against the NPCs, the warrior turned around and hit me for 6.5k with backbreaker…. With no defensive skills to get the might stacks required for it, I wouldn’t use it against actual people. It’s an all or nothing setup. And you’re right, its actually 6 skills and only a window of opportunity of 5 seconds every 45 seconds, not to mention a “look at me!” signet target above your head.
That will in fact work. This was with no bloodlust, and runes of the eagle. I would suggest trying it against the NPCs though as its a better representation of what you can expect.
Let me try it out tomorrow and see if I can land a 14k backstab.
Well I’m betting that the light armor golem has a little over 2200 armor. That is probably making up for the 3.5k difference in damage as it represents about a 17% decrease in damage output over the 1800ish you had. The highest I can get to is 11,640 using a 25/30/0/0/15 build and blowing all 3 utilities on active signets for the 15 stacks of might. Accounting for that difference, it gives me right at 14k. I believe this is your mystery build.
