Guild Wars 2

Arheundel.6451:

Mrbig.8019:

ensoriki.5789:

^ That’s because they decided to throw the boon steal from the FS evade which does Near no damage to LS which does the bulk of the damage. Hence LS is incredibly rewarding to hit, disproportionately so and lets you see a warrior at 6k health in shield block and say screw it and poke him death with LS anyways. Where as prior since FS did crap damage You’d have to blow 8-12 ini by no exaggeration to drop a warrior in Shield block dead, which may allow him to survive. Lulzy now that it happens for 4.
S/D needs boosts, LS is too rewarding.
Inb4Iamwrong.

dat bolded part

This is the main issue, LS is too rewarding while S/D is kinda bad on its own.

S/D thieves use FS -> LS because there’s actually nothing else worth in the set, aside few random C&D + Tactical strike uses against classes weak against CCs.

S/D also has no way to protect himself from opponents ( unlike /P thieves) and needs the eveasiveness to stay alive ( same reason why Pistol whip evades for the full duration).

Killing an S/D thief is EASY , all you need is to time your CC/damage after FS as soon as the thief pulls the sword to himself (BIG SIGNAL: Larcenous strike is coming).

This game is about conquest and if the thief runs away, without capping-decapping, you’ve won.

it would be cool if people started to understand this simple thing.

Dude seriously…do you really think people need you to realize that CC can be used after FS? Do you really think to be that smart and the rest really stupid?

Thank you @MrBig! Nobody ever tried to CC s/d thieves after FS…wish I’d tried it before, what a revelation!

So guys make sure to insta-kill the thief before he press return and kitten the hell out at 1200 range away followed by shadow refuge

…..waste of time..it’s like talking to a wall

While all of this happens, your point is not being decapped , the timer slowly ticks and you gained points.

You’ve won.

GW2 gamemode is conquest, so you need to cap points in order to win.

You learned something new today, you should be happy.

tac.2167:

Mrbig.8019:

dancing dagger

5 secs cripple+ 5 secs poison

bring the damage down, leave ini cost as it is

C&D

remove vulnerability, reaplace it with cripple+weakness ( 5 secs each)

the reasoning is that since /D thieves usually have no gap closers ( aside S/D, but that’s another story, mostly due to sword being hipster) , /D thieves would have more chance to close the gap thanks to costant cripple and thanks to costant weakness.

Imo they should totally rework DD, but well, who knows.

I like the idea of adding more utility to both of these skills, but cripple+weakness on CnD wouldn’t be balanced. When a thief CnD’s me, the first thing I do is dodge, and then use whatever I can to get farther away to prevent the backstab (or other stealth attack). If I’m crippled and weakened, then I’m not going anywhere, and thus lose my ability to counter the attempted backstab.

You can still dodge even while crippled and weakened.

D/D thief is terrible 1vs1, he should NEVER be able to pull more than 1 in its current state.

i believe that even after these changes, D/D thief would still be terrible, but not as it is now.

Archer Henchman.2534:

Why would I use dancing dagger for poison when I can use headshot to counter the heal entirely?

If you want /D to be relevant again, revert the change to trickshot, to allow thieves a viable damage option at range. If you’re not running /P, you don’t have the ability to reset at range with triple or quadra self-stealth applications, nor do you have the ability to stay in melee range due to the lack of mitigation coming off black powder.

This means when you go in for your combo, your targets have to be lower hp, and you’re severely penalized if you don’t capitalize on the weapon switch. The changes to trickshot and mug lowered both:

1) The rate at which a thief could attrition someone down into a range where spikes were possible (to the extent that a stutter stepping opponent cannot be hit), and

2) Narrowed the window wherein spikes were successful by removing 2k damage off the combo.

Since d/d’s weapon set cannot survive in melee vs most classes, and since the spike that it sets up has to put the thief’s team in a hugely advantageous position for it to secure a stomp (without powder blinding for stomps is much more difficult, and without headshot, preventing resses is far more difficult), switching into D/D from sb is a huge risk.

D/D meant that your ability to gap close and spike was higher than D/P, but your ability to stay in melee was far diminished.

As for dancing dagger itself, the cripple duration is low enough to give it negligible gap closing utility, and the initiative cost is too high to reapply it during a chase. Because of its bouncing nature, dancing dagger loses half of its effectiveness while being used to chase down a lone straggler. An alternative solution is to drop its initiative cost to 2 or 3, which would allow it to be used for combo-field projectile finisher application. Its damage would need to be lowered 33% if it was changed to 2, though.

D/P cannon power has always been superior than D/D.

D/P has always been superior than D/D in every aspect ( costant gap closing, more burst, istant interrupt, blind field).

The only way to bring /D back is to make it an utility weapon.

A /D thief needs to be kinda like a chill necro, OH dagger needs more control via conditions.

Poison-weakness-cripple are very good for this purpose.

Iceflame.5024:

So here I am playing a necro. I’ve been playing sPVP for about 3 weeks or so and I only know how the necro class works. My understanding of other classes is very limited and for now I’m learning from experience when I play.

Here’s my current build that I’m feeling very comfortable with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRLevdzXjePBIp45rjUE8yUPKPd2B-ToAgyERpiyFlJKZU2oGes8YjA

Here’s a video of the thief build that I’m talking about. Since I surely know that you will find a lot of mistakes by my part, please remember that I am relatively new to the game and have no proper knowledge of other classes builds. So here’s the video:

http://ru.twitch.tv/iceflame1988/c/2373401

Would appreciate people to point out what I did wrong and tell me how I’m supposed to deal with this.

Also please bare in mind that being a necro I am supposed to be a class that is immensely difficult to disengage from.

He was a 10-30-30 thief, which basically hard counters any condi build ( shadow’s embrace remove 2 condi in 3 secs while stealthed, and 1 every 3 secs).

They need high stealth uptime and are overall kinda useless in serious tPvP, altough very annoying to fight against.

With your build i would use rabid amulet ( since carrion gives power you rarely use, since you have no points in spite and no wells) and OH dagger, for more condi power.

With these kind of thieves you need to rely on your fear more than your condi damage.

Use Death shroud only when you’re sure you can pull a fear.

And , moreover, apply pressure to its Shadow return location, so that he needs to close the gap before using it again, and you’ll easily control the fight: as long as its SR point is far, he’s in control of the fight.

ensoriki.5789:

Build Diversity
Brb P/D stops using 5-1 and can now include 4 to become a 3 button spec.
Brb bringing D/D back into limelight.
Brb S/D harass to make up for low damage and something to work with Trickery.
Brb wicked condition coverage with 15 DA. Maybe P/D can be a more credible secondary set against the almighty shortbow.

When is Dancing Daggers going to be more than a 80% of the time unfavorable niche skill in spvp? November? Do something to this skill. Not worth the initiative, and if isn’t worth the initiative than it’s not being used. If it’s not being used other skills get spammed more since there is excess initiative and nowhere to spend it. The mechanic doesn’t work properly if there are unused skills that aren’t worth the opportunity cost.

inb4suggestionforums (A.K.A slightly more read than thief forum)
inb4thiefforums (A.K.A unread)
inb4whocaresaboutthiefproblems

dancing dagger

5 secs cripple+ 5 secs poison

bring the damage down, leave ini cost as it is

C&D

remove vulnerability, reaplace it with cripple+weakness ( 5 secs each)

the reasoning is that since /D thieves usually have no gap closers ( aside S/D, but that’s another story, mostly due to sword being hipster) , /D thieves would have more chance to close the gap thanks to costant cripple and thanks to costant weakness.

Imo they should totally rework DD, but well, who knows.

ensoriki.5789:

^ That’s because they decided to throw the boon steal from the FS evade which does Near no damage to LS which does the bulk of the damage. Hence LS is incredibly rewarding to hit, disproportionately so and lets you see a warrior at 6k health in shield block and say screw it and poke him death with LS anyways. Where as prior since FS did crap damage You’d have to blow 8-12 ini by no exaggeration to drop a warrior in Shield block dead, which may allow him to survive. Lulzy now that it happens for 4.
S/D needs boosts, LS is too rewarding.
Inb4Iamwrong.

dat bolded part

This is the main issue, LS is too rewarding while S/D is kinda bad on its own.

S/D thieves use FS -> LS because there’s actually nothing else worth in the set, aside few random C&D + Tactical strike uses against classes weak against CCs.

S/D also has no way to protect himself from opponents ( unlike /P thieves) and needs the eveasiveness to stay alive ( same reason why Pistol whip evades for the full duration).

Killing an S/D thief is EASY , all you need is to time your CC/damage after FS as soon as the thief pulls the sword to himself (BIG SIGNAL: Larcenous strike is coming).

This game is about conquest and if the thief runs away, without capping-decapping, you’ve won.

it would be cool if people started to understand this simple thing.

Arheundel.6451:

@Mrbig
Rather than call use noobs…why don’t you PRO player, show us a video of you as ele against a s/d thief ?

I can bet 20g right now that the video will never come and you will keep calling people noobs while playing as “PRO” on the thief.

In all your awesomess you still mix valkrye ele, triple cantrip cleric ele, double arcana ele..all in the same spec, pls I’m looking forward to see you playing this awesome 30/30/30/30/30 spec with 6 utility slots.

you can see top S/D eles fighting against thieves on twitch anytime you want.

Take a look at phantaram, zoose, ultima and all other eles.

Regarding me, i occasionally fight against very good eles giving me hard fights while also occasionally run into very bad eles who don’t know what to dodge and miss their burst.

It’s all about the player.

kostbabis.8791:

^ it will never gonna happen.Thief sharing the stolen boons when stealing those is so easy and spamable will never happen.
Tbh a lot of things you said never happened.Like s/d thief never been used at top level while jumper yesterday was showing it in its full glory.Anyway this is pointless..

Lol then i believe Jon is totally clueless and says stupid things, because he said it and you can easily listen to him saying it.

And i never said “S/D will never be used at the top”, i simply said D/P is still superior in a coordinated team.

S/D is more selfish and stronger in 1vs1 situations, reason why it can be used easily in unorganized teams while doing good.

Jumper build is an absolute gimmick which has to totally sacrifice mobility and AoEs ( aka: shortbow) in order to be so strong 1vs1.

It’s EXTREMELY niche and has lot of drawbacks, something forum QQers tend to ignore most of the time.

“oh, that double S/D thief just killed me, now i’ll go to the other point, smash a couple of button and stack boons like crazy while forcing people out of the point with mad AoEs, HURR DURR”.

Just think for a second at what your class is capable of, instead of QQing on forums.

Arheundel.6451:

Mrbig.8019:

dagger dps is FAR higher than sword’s.

Under 50% health ( where HS becomes also more rewarding) the difference is esponential.

People simply like to to cry on forums when something is annoying to fight against ( like mesmers, phantasm mesmers or P/D condi thieves) when actually they might even need some buffs.

OH dagger is terribad. Sword may even need some damage buff, and a thief seriously needs to be able to share stolen boons.

Actually S/D STILL NEEDS BUFFS TO BE ON PAR WITH A+ TIER PROFESSIONS like guardian, mesmer, ranger and engi ( with ele following closely).

Currently the thief ( D/P and S/D) is slightly superior than necro, which is slightly superior than war. The thief NEEDS BUFFS.

Stop complaining and l2p, seriously. All these whinings on forums are getting old and unnecessary.

LOL! kitten right MrBig, people cry on the forum when they lose to something…WAIT!

You’re the same MrBig who cried for months on this forum against D/D eles , cried so much until both auras got nerfed, RTL got nerfed and traits got nerfed!
But thief…not matter how many thieves we find in sPvP, WvWvW..thief will be always UP because he can die in zerker gear to 3 opponents in tPvP spamming aoe on a point?!
GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK!

A weapon set with basically perma vigor, signet of energy, spammable evasion,teleport, daze, blind,cripple, immobilize is..UP?That must be why every thief, and his dog, cat, hamster, barber etc etc…run S/D

Ladies and Gentleman welcome to GW2, the most balanced and fun game of 2013…hold on do you play thief and mesmer right? No?..KK then I give you 2 options:

A) Uninstall and wait for ESO or some other game
B) Delete your profession and switch to thief or mesmer, because devs play them ( therefore you’ll never get nerfed…like never a serious nerf..NEVER) and because you automatically become a PRO

P.S I’ll prob get an infraction for this post…but I don’t care..at all!

Already stopped playing, got bored in the end to have to fight every day against hordes of mesmers and thieves, you don’t get a single sPvP match without thieves and mesmers in it, not a single tPvP without double mesmer or triple thief

You can’t leave base in WvWvW without getting ambushed by 2-3 thieves moving in group spamming that kittening flanking strike like the PRO they are or spamming blinding powder and HS for even more awesomess

But in the end..thieves are UP…:(

This is PvP forum. WvW forum is that way.

In tPvP the thief is by far inferior to top tier classes, but still is playable.

There’s a reason why those classes are up ahead, there’s a reason why S/D ele is still superior than the thief ( even D/D is superior, altough inferior to S/D) even after all the nerfs the ele received, and do you know what these reasons are ?

Because they offer more group utility. Because this is a team game and is based around a team.
The only worthwhile thing a thief brings on the table is shadow refuge.

You can cry all you want, ele nerfs were warranted and needed ( altough i may disagree with some of them) because ele was OP as kitten and even top ele players were laughing like crazy when they could facetank 3 people at far arriving there even before their opponents and simply leaving the fight to go contesting anywhere else when things were going bad, without getting punished for overextending.

I was crying about the ele and the ele got nerfed, and most top players were happy, just like i was.

Don’t you think that probably i was right ?

kostbabis.8791:

Mrbig i think you need to come down to earth…
Thief sharing stolen boons?So your teammates can run with 10 sec of prot and stability and 25 stack of might cause a poor guy activated an elite or you came across hgh or a staff guard?
Thief needs damage increase in sword????With those kittening boon stealing and evasion you need to hit more?It already hits WAY TOO MUCH for what else it can do.
Dagger offhand has 1 bad skill and that is number 4.They can do whatever they want with it after they balance the other skills.
I cant stop loling at the idea of a thief sharing boons..

Than you’ll lol even more when these things will happen. Jon Sharp and the balance team said 2 SOTG ago they’re goin not only to think about traits to share stolen boons, but also to rise thief base damage because it’s too low and it’s impossible to build a thief without going full squishy.

All these noob eles crying on the forum because S/D thief stole their boons are going to have bad days in the future i believe.

Remember, skilled S/D eles are one of the toughest fights for a S/D thief.

Sadly , ONLY SKILLED eles.

Med.6150:

Stealth is definitely overpowered. It’s not invincibility, but it allows you to potentially be anywhere on the map seen from the perspective of your opponent.

Stealth allows you to regroup after a lost team fight and negate the other team the ability to scout and intercept, slow you down or apply pressure to you. Stealth also gives you the ability to initiate a fight and thus gain the upper hand, because your opponent can not guard both of their nodes with equal numbers.

For many this is accepted counterplay to a very strong position the winner of a team fight will usually find themselves in (being able to scout and react to an attack immediately or slow the enemy down from elevated positions while they are moving towards a node is very strong on many maps quite frankly).

However, being able to totally subtract yourself from the map and coordinate a full burst out of stealth is just beyond strong. We have a ton of abilities that deal instant damage and can be executed within half a second by multiple people. Mathematically right now 3 DPS classes can kill any target in GW2 before they can react (2 is usually enough for any target we see in tournaments). That’s why we are seeing more and more groups using stealth openers.

Now in my opinion stealth is important for some classes. For thieves and mesmers (less so imo) it is a defensive mechanic, that should not simply be taken away, especially in tpvp. Stealth becomes overpowered when it can be maintained for long periods of time (Shadow Refuge) or even permanently (smoke field + blast finishers). Stealth is also overpowered as an out of combat mechanic.

I would welcome two changes to stealth, but I’d already be grateful for one of them to be implemented, as I am not greedy:

1. Stealth can not be stacked

2. Stealth only works, if you’re in combat

PS: I play thief mainly.

the only really OP skill a thief has regarding stealth is shadow refuge.

Remove it and we’ll be happy.

My main is a thief and i agree SR is really OP, and one of the main reason why thieves are brought in high end tPvP: stealth assaults from the whole team are OP as kitten.

Med.6150:

Stof.9584:

Don’t forget to factor in:

S/D steals boons, so not only do you hit harder, the opponent just lost his protection and regen.
Besides, Backstab is burst/spike damage, while Sword has incredible sustain. It generally does way higher DPS in a longer fight.

Sword dealing more sustained damage than Dagger is a myth, which is based on the fact that autoattacks are slower and numbers are bigger. In terms of dps they are pretty much equal. Dagger Training will actually put Daggers ahead, that’s how close it is.

The main advantage of the sword is the cleave on the autoattack. Daggers on the other hand will leave your target permanently poisoned, which is quite strong.

dagger dps is FAR higher than sword’s.

Under 50% health ( where HS becomes also more rewarding) the difference is esponential.

People simply like to to cry on forums when something is annoying to fight against ( like mesmers, phantasm mesmers or P/D condi thieves) when actually they might even need some buffs.

OH dagger is terribad. Sword may even need some damage buff, and a thief seriously needs to be able to share stolen boons.

Actually S/D STILL NEEDS BUFFS TO BE ON PAR WITH A+ TIER PROFESSIONS like guardian, mesmer, ranger and engi ( with ele following closely).

Currently the thief ( D/P and S/D) is slightly superior than necro, which is slightly superior than war. The thief NEEDS BUFFS.

Stop complaining and l2p, seriously. All these whinings on forums are getting old and unnecessary.

Jumper.9482:

Arganthium.5638:

Enmity.3428:

I only managed to watch 4 minutes 45 seconds of that 9+ minute video.

In that 4 minutes 45 seconds all I saw was auto-attack and Larcenous Strike spam. Literally, that was all you did, wasn’t it? 111111-333333-111111-333333…

Amazing, bro.

You’re sh*ttin’ yourself at the thought of ArenaNet nerfing your over-powered, cheesy, spammable, unblockable, evasive, boon-stealing, carry-me-to-victory chain-skill, aren’t you?

Please, teach me how to play as good as you do, o Holy One.

I’m sure using Dancing Dagger, Cloak, and Infiltrators work extremely well as dps ini sinks.
Just no one has figured it out yet…
Guys, we’re all playing S/D wrong…

didn’t you know ? just ignore revelead and spam C&D to own everyone. I heard Dancing dagger spam is also imba as kitten.
OH dagger OP, PLZ ANET NERF.

ah, let’s not forget CRAZY OP TACTICAL STRIKE.

And i was coming here to say S/D thieves are still in bad shape. LOL.

Amaterasu.6280:

Shadowshot isn’t all that amazing in my opinion. It could be better – the problem I find with it is that the enemy can’t be in dodge animation AT ALL (even if the animation is near it’s end), or you won’t shadowstep to them…if the shadowstep worked as a gap closer even if they dodge, as long as they are in range, then it’d be amazing. But I guess that could be perceived as OP.

That’s really the only reason to use heartseekers to chase people when utils are on CD, because you will travel regardless. Shadowshot isn’t as reliable. Not to mention shadowshot has very little forgiveness when it comes to elevation + LoS.

Now that mug can’t crit anymore, I just want to see what they have in mind for thieves…revamping p/p would be awesome. If p/p had a ability like SB #5, then it’d be money.

you would still lose the AoE.

that is the main issue i find with the thief: shortbow is the only AoE weapon we have, and has one of the most powerful ( seriously) skills in game;

choking gas

They’ve almost fixed S/D ( OH dagger screams for buffs) but now that Mug has been nerfed, burst thieves need something else to compensate.

They said they’re going to buff weapons’ base damage, but i believe that in order to fix what is broken about the thief, we need:

1. better trait selection

2. poison spread around other weapon sets

3. buff to utilities ( this goes along with 1)

4. something needs to be done to Steal as a mechanic, now that mug has been nerfed, 45 secs CD for Steal is too much ( it was even before, but Mug was holding it)

5. some skills / weapon sets /traits need a total rehaul ( MH pistol, Pistol whip, dancing dagger, traps, venomous strenght, potent poison, dual skills traits, sundering strikes, improvisation and all the other crap)

The thief is the class with the least amount of viable traits in the whole game : in each line, there are only 3-4 worthy of picking, not even the elementalist is in such a horrible state.

This, along with horribly designed U-skills ( aside few ones that everybody picks) and terribad trait sinergy, kills build diversity and efficiency.

moved to bug forums so the thread will slowly die.

Thanks moderators.

Seriously, i can’t believe this.

When a projectile/charge is launched and you teleport at 1200 range behind the opponent who launched /charget it , turning by 180 degrees, THEY DO A BACKFLIP AND FOLLOW YOU , THIS IS AGAINST PHYSICS LAW.

And fix godkitten dodge queue, it’s getting really, REALLY annoying.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=30108/unstable-affliction

or something similar.

In current meta it could be quite overkill, but the overall idea is to punish people from cleansing, and maybe something able to scale well with power, too ( in order to help power necros in teamfights).

Nettle.9025:

It’s really not an issue against average competition. If you were both solo queue groups, guy probably was just being dumb. However, it’s a valid complaint if you’re playing good players.

They offer the things you listed, but if have you more than 1 you will struggle in your team fights. They have to sit back and shortbow, and if they try to brawl in a big fight they will drop very fast to aoe or focus damage. If you lose the team fight, you’re gonna fall behind in the match. It doesn’t do your team any good if you have to bail to live but the rest of them get wiped.

Good players know how to mitigate burst, so it’s harder to pull it off. You need a team to help set it up. S/D doesn’t have that problem, but they have the same issues with eating damage in a big fight.

You only need 1 or 2 true roamers, which is what the thief’s role usually comes down to.

Also, thieves aren’t good at holding points. What thief build are you going to hold a point with? You can’t use stealth. D/D evasion? That falls apart against competent players past a 1v1. S/D evasion? That needs room to work with and won’t be able to hold on to a small point for too long. If you are building a thief to hold a point, you could be playing a class that does it better.

Guy also probably said that cause a lot of thieves he sees are bad. As a solo roamer you need great individual decision making, and as a thief you need better positioning and setup than some of the other classes. Many thieves don’t have that, and just want to Rambo in bursting people whenever they want. Doesn’t work against good people.

Pretty much this.

A single thief is a quite good choice in a comp ( altough currently i believe there are better options, like S/D eles, and other roles can be easily filled by other professions), but having two, no matters the build, is redundant.

bomber.1540:

@mrbig, nobody here is bagging dp, it’s one of our best sets, no question .. Again tho, your selling sd short. Fs/ls combo hits for around 10% less than backstab, plus it steals two boons, evades, and is spammable.. Throw in a power hitting auto chain, insane mobility and evasivness from inf strike, and a 1.5 s daze when you need it, and you have a pretty darn good weapon set

Is sd better than dp? Prob not, but it’s not too far behind

What is bolded, basically.

D/P burst is absolutely not OP ( i woild even say it’s underperforming in current meta) so if S/D is not on par with D/P, it means it is a weaker choice for competitive PvP.

S/D needs a couple of dqmage buffs, better trait sinergies (boon sharing and similar stuff) and a good rehaul of OH dagger and the set will be highly competitive.

currently, it is not.

@jim

D/p burst combo hits with HS, steal and backstab almost instantly if you time it well.

if your opponent is not paying attention, you can cast BV after using BP so that the whole stuff will be istant (I use BV mostly to fake the burst, anyway).

S/D has in no way more damage than D/P, not sustained neither burst, it’s a fact.

the only thing S/D offers is boon stealing and cleave damage,last one which can’t be done in a teamfight since you’re gonna implode, so you’re better off with the shortbow and can be done with any other set.

D/P offers burst, interrupts and blind fields (while having more damage)
S/d offers boon stealing and teleports.

the trade off is no good

ensoriki.5789:

Big dismissed the exact same trait investment when I suggested it earlier this month, Imo it was the best trait spec for S/D pre-patch and remains one of the best afterwards though Mug’s damage has been essentially halved.
It’s completely fine.
The dps of Dagger and Sword auto is essentially the same on a single target with Sword doing a hell of a lot more once cleave comes in to play. the Whole out damage FS the auto is nonsense. LS itself can certainly do 7k damage if you get bloodlust stacks up and much more consistently with the new Sins signet. Toss in Mug, Flame sigils and it’s a wrap.
The posted build can easily put out 9k+ in a flash while removing 2 boons and having Shadow return up for escape route purposes. Though I’m not a fan of Back-fighting it’s fully capable I assure you. The only thing missing is evade chaining :P.

this is also valid for @ Destiny

but even in that case, why shouldn’t i swithc 5 traits from DA to trickery in order to pick preparedness ?

the whole point, anyways, is that although S/D is a completely different playstyle (by far the one I prefer), without spamming evades you give your opponent too much window of opportunity to destroy you ( if you take a look at jumper vs caed video, you’ll understand what I mean).

sword sustained damage is not on par with dagger damage, because your sustained pretty much comes from autos/flanking strike that are overall slow (while the set is pretty ini expansive).

I don’t want to dismiss the set, I LOVE how S/D plays, the point is that it’s still not on par, and the issues are

lack oc damage when compared to D/P (both burst and sustained)

lack of team utility (no interrupts, no burst)

just make the sword able to dish out more sustained damage than daggers and gives us some sword specific traits (along with the “share stolen boons” traits anet already mentioned in the sotg) and this set will be a very good alternative to D/P.

personally I’m eagerly waiting for it, but currently the set is simply not there.

Jumper.9482:

My role as sustained S/D is basically a duelist and zoner.
I try to zone someone on the edge of the teamfight and pressure him to the point he can’t retaliate. Extremely effective vs necro/hgh engies.
I feel a burst/dps S/D role would be playing more on the defensive side and punishing any ele that over extends and tries to have a go at your hgh/necro/etc.

The roles are far too different to be comparable.

actually what you do with your S/D thief ( pressuring the guy at the edge spamming AoEs) can be done ( and is effectively done, especially in open areas) with a D/P thief.

The point is that while a S/D thief relies on evades, a D/P thief relies on blinds, while having even more sustained damage ( altough single target).

Sword auto is slow and flanking strike animation is also slow to the point that a D/P thief spamming autos deals more damage than a S/D thief spamming flanking strike, with the added benefits of having HS when your opponent is low on HP and while also bringing burst + interrupts.

Moreover in your build you have no shortbow, so your effectiveness in team fights is equal to zero ( and your mobility is seriously hampered), mostly due to the fact you’re forced to pick the “ini on swap” trait since S/D is very ini expansive.

Overall the trade off is simply not there. S/D may be a good duelist build, but that’s about it ( bring an ele or a mesmer if you want a duelist, they bring so much more to the team).

and i would add:

if i’m playing a thief as a burst build ( finish weak opponents), wouldn’t i be better off with D/P rather than S/D ?

long story short:

S/D thieves are still not strong enough to be worthy: you’re not bringing anything to the table you wouldn’t bring with D/P or that couldn’t be brought ( with better results) by other classes.

They should buff sword sustained damage ( they’re actually going to do this in next patches, or at least they said they’re going to buff thief base damage) and create better sinergies within traits ( espcially sword ones, that are totally ABSENT), even more since S/D is pretty ini extensive, so you need tons of ini regen .

can’t believe this has been buried.

Empa, please, change the thread title into something more doomy.

Eurantien.4632:

Blackhat.4016:

What Mrbig.8019 said. +1

I only thought about that back in beta.

“Wait. Why am I not able to change my skills like in GW? Oh right. This makes it easier to balance but in the end we will have a lot of good builds!”

They made balancing pretty easy for them but in the end they still failed. Currently the best builds are kind of balanced but all the other builds are close to useless in comparison.

This is just sad.

Is this because of balance or because of the meta which determines the viability of builds?

If you take a look at ele fire traitline, you can easily find the answer.

There’s so little sinergy between some traitlines and weaponsets ( usually these are the most unused ones), or sometimes they’re not even that bad but the trade off for giving up other, better designed, weapon sets is so big, there’s really no reason to pick them up.

Again, the thief ( one of the worse designed classes out there) is a good example.

Currently S/D is not THAT bad for competitive play, but lacks team utility, has even less sustained damage than D/P and far less burst, simply for bringing moar teleports and a boon stealing ( something you don’t need when you can coordinate spikes and kill a target in less than a sec, somethign extremely doable with a burst thief).

The trade off is poor.

Another example are traitlines: shadow arts rely on heavy stelath uptime, something totally uselessin a conquest type game; yet they focused all these traits AROUND THE THIEF instead of making it a huge “boons and buffs” traitline like ele is capable of with water and air. Moreover, this traitline has no sinergy with other traitlines, unlike Critical Strike and Deadly Arts.

The only half decent support build for that tree is venom share, a niche build with “odd” sinergies ( scaling with healing and power, pushing you toward valk or cleric amulet in order to maximize it, but leaving you with 10 k health since you need to spend 30 in DA and 30 in SA in order to make that build somehow effective; so you’re forced to pick soldier/berserk, losing the heal from venoms which, anyway, scales extremely poorly) which can be easily replaced by combining an engi+ ele with more efficacy.

Another example is regarding u-skills: WHY WOULD I EVER CHOOSE THESE TERRIBAD TRAPS ?

No persistent AoE.
NO AOE IN GENERAL ( lol traps for a single target)
No traits in order to improve them
Extremely poor trade off when compared with other utilities ( stunbreak is needed, Shadow refuge is too stronk since it allows for team stealth ambushes).
Clunkyness in some cases ( Shadow trap could be good if you could simply use it like mesmer portal: LOLWUT, enemy needs to step in it, screw its efficacy. Sometimes a single, too high, stone can block the teleport, with the skill actually doing nothin).

Why would i ever choose ROLL FOR INITIATIVE when Shadowstep gives me a double stunbreak+ juke possibility+ 3 condi removal ?!?!?!? IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE.

aNet needs to think about 2 solutions:

1) nerf to the ground OP stuff ( related to other stuff classes can offer) , stuff like cantrips, shadow refuge, shadowstep and similar

2) buff GREATLY underused stuff ( like they did with ranger signets, still with no real impact but it was a good step in the right direction).

And they should start doing it NOW that inter-class balance is in a good state, because we have been playing the same, OLD stuff for months with the only change being that currently it’s BALANCED while before it was IMBA ( super cheese like the double ranger-double ele meta with broken empathetic bond).

Game is pretty balanced around top builds, but this is NOT balance.

This is very bad game design, in a game were it should be pretty easy to balance ( few skills, trait tiers, fixed amulets etc etc).

Balance in GW2 is a total failure if you see it from this perspective: a game that was DESIGNED to have good build diversity from its core thanks to strong restrictions ( aforementioned trait tiers, few skills etc ) fails in delivering said build diversity.

a good example is the thief: it has a good build ( that has become quite underperforming due to nerfs when compared to other classes) in D/P burst + shadow refuge-shadowstep-sin signet while EVERYTHING ELSE ( traits, other U-skills, weapons) are utterly trash.

I would never call this crap “balance”.

Arheundel.6451:

Mrbig.8019:

Archaon.6245:

Flanking strikes everywhere…too bad the only one playing it at a very good level i’ve seen till now is suldaris…others just spam it randomly, well timed cc + aoe and they’re gone…as usual good builds (And i don’t really think flanking strike is really as good as many think..but that’s just a personal opinion) don’t turn you into a good player…aswell as good players can make “not so good” builds working better than many “op” ones..

I spent 3 weeks trying to re-learn S/D thief simply to understand it was not effective, went back to D/P and spent 2 weeks AGAIN to RE-LEARN it, since it’s still the only way to be useful in a team ( since we’re definitely bottom tier currently) and i was too used teleporting everywhere.

S/D brings nothing to the table when compared to D/P : less burst, less DPS ( dagger 1 spam has more DPS than the whole sword set), no interrupts, no support ( no blind field).

You can steal boons. WOOOO.

OH dagger sucks ball, you bring nothing to your team : why stealing ele boons when i can simply oneshot him after calling for a blowout ? ( read: unbreakable stun).

Suldaris is simply skilled, he could even play D/D condi 33333 spam and make it look effective: as soon as he realizes S/D is not good, he wil come back to D/P, like all of us who still want to play a thief in tPvP.

Zenith.7301:

Even Phantaram complained that flanking strike thief wasn’t balanced. They are just dumb, with pretty big spike and boon removal in addition to being much harder to peel unlike their D/P variants.

Flanking Strike is hitting ridiculously hard on players. It’s fine in PvE, but it does too much damage in PvP for just 4 initiative.

Shadow Return from infiltrator’s strike should have a larger initiative cost. You can’t CC them much at the current state.

Tell me again about the ele who complained about his boons being stolen.

What’s next ? a HGH engi complaining about its 25 might stacks being stolen and asking for nerfs ?

S/D thieves are ineffective in high end play: saying they’re OP is kinda like saying phantasm mesmers are OP.

There is a serious L2 kitten ue in this thread, and i’m not referring to the OP( who simply said thieves are getting more popular since everybody want to try the new S/D build) but to those bandwagoners immediatly calling for nerfs when S/D thief needs SERIOUS BUFFS ( like any other thief build, aside D/P MAYBE, and i still wouldn’t be so sure) in order to be competitive.

I believe for thief players anything below 4k dmg for hit is considered “UP”, do pls tell us how a thief can be considered UP when he deals 2-3k dmg with that sword and without using a burst build, you’ve been living in lala land for too long, so long that you lost sight of what real numbers are.
I can’t fathom how a build with constant dodging + teleports , immobilize,blind, poisons, chill, boon stealing and 2-3k average dmg ( every 3-4s) can be considered UP.

But now..you even go and say a high tier ele need to l2p?! Are you for real dude?

Can you pls show us a single video of you playing ele and owning left and right without ever die? Now you can’t even use anymore the ‘old’ “bunker S tier” crap as your excuse, so really pls come with your videos and teach us ele how to play, because apparently when we win is because we’re OP and when we lose it’s because we need to l2P

What kind of argument is that ?

Do you know this is a team game ?

It’s obvious that an ele will complain about S/D thieves, since eles rely on boons and S/D thieves will steal them, just like a HGH engi relies on might stacks and S/D thief will steal them as well: this doesn’t make that build “strong”.

S/D thieves lack team utility, have less sustained damage than equivalent dagger builds and bring NOTHING to a team, nothing that a D/P build wouldn’t bring while also bringing interrupts, blind fields and burst.

There’s a reason why mesmers run shatter instead of phantasm, there’s a reason why necros run condi instead of minions, there’s a reason why mesmers bring IoL and portal instead of double stunbreaker + signet of inspiration etc etc etc.

THIS IS A TEAM GAME.

An ele can make a sustain build because it brings damage, heals, condi removal, AoE boons and CCs: a thief can’t because it brings nothing more than damage, so you would be far better off with D/P ( which also brings CCs and damage mitigations via blinds, something S/D doesn’t.).

The trade off is poor.

Simply because a build is annoying ( and S/D is nothing more than annoying) it doesn’t mean that build is also effective ( read: let’s also complain about P/D condi thief “LOL THEY NEVER DIE, ALWAYS IN STEALTH I CAN DO NO DAMAGE PLS ANET NERF”).

Archaon.6245:

Flanking strikes everywhere…too bad the only one playing it at a very good level i’ve seen till now is suldaris…others just spam it randomly, well timed cc + aoe and they’re gone…as usual good builds (And i don’t really think flanking strike is really as good as many think..but that’s just a personal opinion) don’t turn you into a good player…aswell as good players can make “not so good” builds working better than many “op” ones..

I spent 3 weeks trying to re-learn S/D thief simply to understand it was not effective, went back to D/P and spent 2 weeks AGAIN to RE-LEARN it, since it’s still the only way to be useful in a team ( since we’re definitely bottom tier currently) and i was too used teleporting everywhere.

S/D brings nothing to the table when compared to D/P : less burst, less DPS ( dagger 1 spam has more DPS than the whole sword set), no interrupts, no support ( no blind field).

You can steal boons. WOOOO.

OH dagger sucks ball, you bring nothing to your team : why stealing ele boons when i can simply oneshot him after calling for a blowout ? ( read: unbreakable stun).

Suldaris is simply skilled, he could even play D/D condi 33333 spam and make it look effective: as soon as he realizes S/D is not good, he wil come back to D/P, like all of us who still want to play a thief in tPvP.

Zenith.7301:

Even Phantaram complained that flanking strike thief wasn’t balanced. They are just dumb, with pretty big spike and boon removal in addition to being much harder to peel unlike their D/P variants.

Flanking Strike is hitting ridiculously hard on players. It’s fine in PvE, but it does too much damage in PvP for just 4 initiative.

Shadow Return from infiltrator’s strike should have a larger initiative cost. You can’t CC them much at the current state.

Tell me again about the ele who complained about his boons being stolen.

What’s next ? a HGH engi complaining about its 25 might stacks being stolen and asking for nerfs ?

S/D thieves are ineffective in high end play: saying they’re OP is kinda like saying phantasm mesmers are OP.

There is a serious L2 kitten ue in this thread, and i’m not referring to the OP( who simply said thieves are getting more popular since everybody want to try the new S/D build) but to those bandwagoners immediatly calling for nerfs when S/D thief needs SERIOUS BUFFS ( like any other thief build, aside D/P MAYBE, and i still wouldn’t be so sure) in order to be competitive.

@OP

Please re-edit your thread title, because these ones are GAMEBREAKING issues ( especially root, right click targeting and skill queue, ESPECIALLY skill queue).

At least you will get more attention.

“yolo queue” is the perfect term.

For me now it will always be YOLO QUEUE

#swag

bump because this can’t be unnoticed, it’s really too important, especially the skill queue crap.

Xom.9264:

Travlane.5948:

Xom.9264:

Only a bad thief loses to a necro no matter how good the necro is. Thief is a faceroll easy to play class like Mesmer they should beat you and if they dont they are truly bad. The best you can do against a good thief with that build is delay the death that’s coming.

Its a bad matchup necro marks just dont have what it takes to drop a thief thats not pure glass, it would help if Anet puts greater marks with faster recharge in one triat.

Dont stress it you bring more to small scale fights. Yes i agree its a pain fighting a thief same with mesmer its not about skill its about the amount of fighting with the GUI you have to do constantly, you fight the GUI more then the class.

Stupid design.

thieves and d/d eles are the hardest to play…..play well at that. mesmers are easy. tell u what. give me 3 choices of class to pick. ill play it and beat you one on one atleast half thetime. all i have truly mastered is thief. so u will ahve the advantage. then tell me how easy it is.

Thieves are easy to play have a very low skill cap, I would put mesmer a little above them on taking skill to play but not by much.

You would never beat me on a thief, you might take a node but drop me never, unless I chose to let you kill me, the class has a million reset/leave the area skills. The topic of the thread as i understood it was not really about power level but about stupid design, at least that’s the way i took it.

So who cares about thief power level, let’s nerf even the most useless build out there ?

i can play the same game, won’t you see ?

I’m annoyed by guardians who never die
I’m annoyed by eles who never die and spam AoE crap on the point
I’m annoted by rangers who never die yet have mini warrior pets
I’m annoyed by necros with all dem conditions and fears and AoE crap
I’m annoyed by engies adn dem granades

I’m not annoyed by wars, i like them.

ensoriki.5789:

you’re underplaying Sword damage.
Dagger is very single target heavy vs Sword cleave, and reality is people have to clear away from a sword because they’re all getting smashed and if not Swords damage output shoots past Daggers, very quickly. On a node based mode like this outside of Graveyard, Sword certainly helps to (S/P more than S/D) discourage being on the node and otherwise deals out heavy damage and at the same time does have strong single-target damage itself though like HB it wants to be set-up.

If you look at D/D vs S/P and S/D there’s really not much of note. D/D has single-target damage but again is atm the most shallow set of the three. LDB as a cleave doesn’t even really compare to Sword auto, inf strike gives you more for you buck and cleaves, and PW outclasses it completely and can outclasses Backstab in a couple of situations. Auto wise Sword is comparable and outclasses given cleave opportunities. Single-target wise, FS is only 7% weaker and has always given more util than backstab at the same time doesn’t require stealth.

D/P is overbearing in that it grants stealth without contact requirements conflicting with the point of taking /D anyways. While retaining all benefits of /P, all the main damage skills of D/D. So it gets all the pie and none of the cheese though it could still use benefits in certain areas, the HS+BP combo is toxic.

in fact i’m accounting the issue about D/P + shortbow > everything else.

Surely Sword has more cleave damage , but when you’re on a point against multiple opponents, Cluster bomb spam > Sword cleave ( of course you should not be focused, but the issue is still there even with sword, unless you’re playing S/P that is pretty much hardcountered by retaliation and can be avoided by simply dodging).

D/P + shortbow covers all situations, and other sets become redundant.

Even more since as a thief your role is to be in small skirmishes and 1vs1, 2vs1 and 2v2.

The point is that you can cover dagger weakness ( single target) with the shortbow, making sword redundant.

Sword should have higher dps by default, but it has not, it’s slow ( lowering dps pressure and giving the opponent more time to react) and easy to dodge.

Moreover, /D skills are underwhelming and underperforming.

Of course i won’t go into details regarding double pistols, since we all know it’s really bad.

The change to flanking strike was nice, but D/ kitten till way superior. Devs said they’re going to buff base damage in next patches, but the problem relies also in traits, since we have no trait benefitting the sword in any way ( that sword trait in beta giving vigor on crits was great, and it’s just a simple example).

That’s why there’re only a couple of optimized builds.

NevirSayDie.6235:

And people wonder why the assassin class always gets nerfed.

lol the good part is this build is not even viable in tPvP.

Even when pushed at max damage, S/D is mediocre at best, even with flanking strike fixed.

Sword is slow and has bad dps ( good cleave, but it’s so slow you’re going to get more damage than you deal) and OH dagger is terribad.

It also is very ini consuming, and 80% of times you would be better with a D/P build.

But i have to say that no matters what you do with your thief, you’ll always get people hate ( and this one is not even the rudest whisper i got lol )

fishybill.6908:

Stop blowing your own trumpet and stick this in the Thief forum where it belongs please…

Enough hero worship already.

what’s your point

this is a good tPvP thief guide.

tPvP

PvP

*looks up at the subforum, then down, then up again, i’m on a horse *

Because it pushes people towards reactions like this one.

Now please aNet buff OH dagger and make S/D viable for tPvP,
plskthx

ensoriki.5789:

P/P pistol main hand period is dumb. As well as D/D. These 3 sets basically revolve around 3 buttons at most out of there 5.
They’re shallow weapon sets and can’t stay in favor unless the 3 buttons they use are simply outrageous.
You can boost the greatness of IA if you want but its something that can be played without but if you don’t take SB you don’t exactly have great options for ranged damage or defense. Since nothing on em compares to distracting shot in defense unless you shadow art trait P/D. P/D’s offensive power is in shadow strike and sneak attack both which are basically melee attacks in application and all the melee seta have good defenses so given you are in that range might as well gtfo. Oddly enough they needed shadow strike warping heavily but IA and His remain spam able for escapes leaving P/D a shadow of its mobility and pushing it further out of the limelight.

You end up ignoring both P/ because they’re disfunctional so you then take either an extra melee or SB
The only exception is if your trying to be senseless with a condi build.

There are significant cons to inf strike being ground target ted to the set itself which would be why not to do it. In terms of escaping it is quite negligible and already situationally available. From Shadow return to inf strike in the distance like you would inf signet or Steal except unlike steal the two infs don’t fail as they out of rangr already. You can do ezpz pokes with inf strike simply because its nature doesn’t need ground tar getting but simply tar getting and at the coat of flexibility it allows phenomenal defense through abuse of terrain that would otherwise hinder you if ground targetted.

p/D, P,/P, D/D all need some considerable work. S/P is a really complete set that needs small tweaks. Everything is useful on S/P and fits with the system.

I would like to point out there are also major issues regarding damage.

D/P damage/utility is superior in every aspect, and i’m talking about sustain.

Sword damage is sub-par and it’s ridicolous how a DAGGER is more damaging than a SWORD ( in fact it does really make little sense): DPS wise the sword should have more sustain, while dagger should have more burst.

Currently D/P has burst, mobility (shadow shot) and sustain, along with utility and CC ( BP, headshot).

I’ve tried S/D with the most damaging build possible ( 15-30-0-25 is the build offering the best trade off, unless you want to go with soldier amulet) and this set DPS is HEAVILY sub-par to dagger ( of course S/P is not in a better position).

I mean, boon stealing is fun and Flanking strike does good damage, but you’re simply prolonging a fight you would end sooner with D/P.

With D/P you can bypass eles boons and simply kill him with a well timed burst, with D/P you can 2 shot an HGH engie without even caring about its 25 stacks of might ( even more now they can’t even heal in mist-form /elixir S) .

S/D is indeed more fun and it’s how the thief was really meant to be ( porting everywhere, stealing stuff etc etc) but there are serious performances/trade off issues with it.

Till they fix these rather obvious issue, D/P will rule supreme.

Frellin.6318:

Mrbig.8019:

The point is you need the shortbow to roam and to be somehow useful in teamfights.

SB is TOO IMPORTANT for a thief due to how easy is to travel in z-axis.

It also brings huge AoE damage with cluster bomb and AoE poison ( + weakness) with choking gas, great utility for a class that has little to no access to it.

in theory an S/D -D/P thief is the most complete fighter the thief profession could create, but we need shortbow too bad: nerfing trick shot only hampered the thief, and we were already strugglin.

Shortbow being so good is only part of the problem. It’s also about pistol/pistol being a thieves worst weapon set.

- One has great mobility while the other is slow.

- One does moderate AoE damage while the other does moderate single target damage.

- One is a weapon where all 5 skills are useful while the other has a worthless #2 skill and a blind field that doesn’t gain much through projectile finishers.

- One weapon can create some nice combo blast finishers. The other has projectile finishers that either aren’t as effective as a blast finisher or only have a 20% chance of happening.

And none of the above is taking into account that the pistol/pistol #3 skill unload is really not that good or that the only good thing going for pistol/pistol is the #4 skill 1/4 second daze.

It’s more of a problems with AoEs.

Thief does no AoE damage aside pistol whip ( which does quite bad damage) and shortbow ( a single cluster bomb deals as much damage as a pistol whip) and they add the smart idea to put the most useful thief skill ( inf arrow) on the shortbow and make it a must have weapon.

I really tried to avoid the shortbow, i just can’t: i simply feel useless.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Kryshade, thanks.

I’ve tried all of those things – AFAIK, a 0/30/20/20 SD thief has a kittenload of condition removal, and I can’t keep them bleeding (let alone chilled) long enough to do anything.

I use my AoEs extensively. I use my marks, I spread them out and I cast them early then dodge between them to minimise the CD, forcing the thief to come to me and trigger them.

I don’t stand still.

I do use DS extensively. I’ve been a necro since BWE1. I know the AoE hits them, but do remember condi necros don’t do much damage with lifetransfer.

daydream – the thieves I’m having difficulty with are NOT the ones who got their burst nerfed. I’m talking SD, 0/30/20/20, heavy on the port, stealth and autoattack damage.

0-30-20-20 thieves have no damage and bring little to nothing in a team.

they may be strong 1vs1 but useless in everything else ( they’re not even that strong 1vs1 tbh).

I don’t see the point, a good necro is ALWAYS a hard fight for a thief, no matter what build he’s playing.

Adaneshade.2409:

Mrbig.8019:

Frenk.5917:

I still use my 0 10 30 30 0 build. I still kill. I know that this is not viable for a burst class, but due to the recent nerfs we can’t play our class like we did before. We have to adapt and change our role in tpvp. We are no longer able to burst someone down in few seconds, not even whit full glass cannon traits and gears.

You don’t suddenly “change” your role in tPvP.

Your role in tPvP is given by what you bring to the table.

The thief offered great burst and good ranged AoE sustained damage ( if not focused).

Now we still have good burst but no longer ranged AoE sustained damage.

Without compensation, there’s no way a thief will eve be useful again in a team ( yes, shortbow nerf is really THAT bad).

Now S/D thieves have a chance to rise, but the set is still heavily subpar when compared to D/P and it’s mostly due to OH dagger skills being utterly crap.

And due to trait sinergy being horrible for sword thieves.

It’s not that a simple buff to a skill ( unless it sinergies good with traits, like Shadow arts tree and tactical strike pre-nerf were) suddenly makes the set good, at least with the thief class.

There at aNet should start to understand this.

This is why the S/D + D/P setup works so well….
VS, say an HgH engi, or a bunker ele, S/D is now faceroll for victory. However, vs a build that doesn’t rely on boons it’s a little short, that’s where you simply swap to D/P. Theory-crafting without considering weapon swaps doesn’t portray an accurate picture.

The point is you need the shortbow to roam and to be somehow useful in teamfights.

SB is TOO IMPORTANT for a thief due to how easy is to travel in z-axis.

It also brings huge AoE damage with cluster bomb and AoE poison ( + weakness) with choking gas, great utility for a class that has little to no access to it.

in theory an S/D -D/P thief is the most complete fighter the thief profession could create, but we need shortbow too bad: nerfing trick shot only hampered the thief, and we were already strugglin.

ensoriki.5789:

Dancing dagger is the main failure of all /D and arguably worse than body shot.
Sword 2 is beast, 3 is great outside of no evade cancel. 5 is definitely helpful though the 3% vul isn’t much of a steroid. 1 is a great way to re-engage after stealth and can help stop stomps/predicted heals. 4 is 80% useless and I’m being generous.
The only other significant flaw is a lack of dots to synergize with trickery.
Everything else is minor.

I suggested before making all infiltration skills ground targetted will pick away at the short bow naturally at the cost of making sword play harder.

I don’t think make all teleports grounf-targeted is the solution, at least currently.

Making inf strike ground targeted when you don’t have a target selected would make sword ludicrolously OP ad disangaging ( baddding up ? shadow return and inf strike away, GG) with a very little cost ( you can potentially travel 1800 range for 5 ini).

Making it ground targeted without a target would SURELY increase inf strike/return cost, something that will surely break the set.

Another solution, as i said plenty of time, could be to increase ini regen BY A LOT, increase ini costs across the board and make all these worthless skills powerful .

It would increase thief pacing, and make stuff like having inf strike ground targeted as balanced.

They could also make stuff like dancing dagger and C&D good ( dancing dagger could
deal great damage when bouncing + some condition, making it basically like trick shot on a OH dagger set) and with some new traits and sinergy ( devs already said they’re going to make better thief traits and fuse togheter unworthy ones) could seriously create more builds.

Anyway, C&D in its current state also needs some help. It’s clearly subpar to BP+HS and needs something else.

Stealth surely needs to stay, but damage/vuln need serious buff, just like Dancing Dagger and Pistol Whip.

Archaon.6245:

lvis.3824:

Archaon.6245:

lvis.3824:

well, according to the combatlog he just did the following:

BP
steal
HS
Backstab

And this is totally okay.
If you stand in the BP there is really nothing unusual.

Actually is bp>hs>steal (while mid air with hs)>backstab…you go stealth and hs hits target but you don’t break stealth landing it and you can still go backstab even if any direct dmg skill should break stealth giving you revealed debuff on hit, it’s just a..well let’s call that “trick”…pretty straightforward too once you get the right timing..

Say’s who ?

As long as you do not provide any evidence we must take what the combat logs tells us.
And this could also be that you stood in the blinding powder, and he first used steal and then
attacked you with HS.

Also, i think someone mentioned it before, you can precast BP and then steal so the BP is right where you are.
Then just HS -> backstab.

This can also result in the same combatlog messages, comes down to the timing / lag.

This is really nothing special and definitly not a bug or macro … !

You probably can’t read…others already explained how he did that stealing through hs on bp field…and already tested it with thief (And i’m not new to thief, just left it before dps went d/p) and worked.

I repeat: If you cast bp then go hs (Even if you’re not in hs range) and steal while mid air during hs you’ll land both steal and hs while stealthed and you can go backstab.

Try it yourself or just stop trolling…or maybe you already play d/p and you just don’t want someone explaining your “triks” ……am i wrong? I’m not even asking for nerf qq or something, i just asked how does it work and others explained it clearly, nothing more than that.

tbh this kind of rotation has been there for ages ( every D/P thief knew it).

Personally i left D/P for D/D since shadow shot was not fully functional ( it rooted you in place) and it was ( and still is) a good part of the build .

Since shadow shot fix, D/P has been superior in any shape or form.

Recent changes only made it better ( Sin signet active now is basically the same as if you keep it passive) and there at aNet still fail to understand there’s some serious lack in traits and other weapons ( especially OH dagger and MH pistol), reason why fixing Flanking strike really didn’t change anything.

It’s not only dancing dagger.

If they want to nerf the shortbow, REMOVE INF ARROW and reahul the skill to do somethign else, don’t make it so borken you can’t even land an auto-attack.

I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: till inf arrow is there, NOBODY will ever take anything else as a secondary weapon set.

Even in that situations, other sets are ust plainly horrible.

Frenk.5917:

I still use my 0 10 30 30 0 build. I still kill. I know that this is not viable for a burst class, but due to the recent nerfs we can’t play our class like we did before. We have to adapt and change our role in tpvp. We are no longer able to burst someone down in few seconds, not even whit full glass cannon traits and gears.

You don’t suddenly “change” your role in tPvP.

Your role in tPvP is given by what you bring to the table.

The thief offered great burst and good ranged AoE sustained damage ( if not focused).

Now we still have good burst but no longer ranged AoE sustained damage.

Without compensation, there’s no way a thief will eve be useful again in a team ( yes, shortbow nerf is really THAT bad).

Now S/D thieves have a chance to rise, but the set is still heavily subpar when compared to D/P and it’s mostly due to OH dagger skills being utterly crap.

And due to trait sinergy being horrible for sword thieves.

It’s not that a simple buff to a skill ( unless it sinergies good with traits, like Shadow arts tree and tactical strike pre-nerf were) suddenly makes the set good, at least with the thief class.

There at aNet should start to understand this.

ensoriki.5789:

Don’t know what you talking about Big with sins signet being too good. New signet of agility is straight up delicious. Just what the doctor ordered.I’ll have to test it but leeching venom buff makes venoms a bit stronger for thief and allies so that’s a good benefit too.

Haste should def get a change to lose all endurance. They got to start bringing the stun breaks in line with each other so they are credible as stand alone then compliments to Shadow step.

Hopefully dancing daggers and P/D get some good buffs. Maybe they’ll divide shadow strike like flanking strike.

i have yet to try valk builds with signet of agility, but if you build for damage you don’t really need more crit chance but more power instead. and 180 power is really A LOT : flat 10% damage increase, no need to activate it, just keep it passive and profit.

what os currently killing venom share builds is the fact you need to sacrifice other utilities (like refuge, or even the stunbreak) in order to make them worthy: moreover they’ in built in 2 traitlines with little to no sinergy in stats (SA/DA), scaling with power, with strange results in order to make a sinergyzed builds (like S/P venom share, with no real use in battle aside buffing allies).

no matters how you look at thief traits-u-skills and weapons, it’s really all a mess.

ensoriki.5789:

Don’t know what you talking about Big. New signet of agility is straight up delicious.

if you go for power you don’t really need more crit chance.

I’ve yet to try a common build with valkyrie (or soldier) with agility signet and see how it fares, but 180 power is really too good to pass out. you have a passive +10% damage always up, really too good.

Volrath.1473:

I saw BS thieves criting for 10k in sPvP so yeah, if you are asking for assassin’s signet to be change, do not expect a dmg burst utility cuz it will surely be something else.

Also, saying that GC is the only way to go its just diminishing… I have not played as a GC for months…

As for S/D yes it has improved and it is a viable weapon set now. If you ask me if it could be better, yes it could and should since it is now the “counter to bunkers” it should have a bit higher dps but last night I played around with it and after a couple of hours I was killing everything as fast as a D/P thief would.

If you are wondering what my build is, it’s 10/30/30/0/0. Normally I’d have the 10 in Acro but I wanted to test out mug that’s why the 10 are in Deadly arts.

The only point I fully agree with the o kitten ort bow…the nerf was not needed and I’m still trying to understand the reasons behind the nerf… Unfortunately it is the ONLY “must have” weapon making us have to chose 1 single weapon set to use mainly.

Maybe that was the reason… Nerf it so ppl would start using 2 different weapon sets in combat leaving SB shelved. Anyway… Bad idea imo. As long as SB is the only weapon set with the shadowstep in the z axis. No one will drop it.

/start rant
Also in wvwvw it is the ONLY weapon that actually contributes for the team/raid…

As for reveled rollback in pve… It was needed but will be a mess in ppl’s heads… After 1h in pve when you enter pvp you will be “use to” the pve timer and we all know how that was wen they first changed it to 4sec…

IMO this is one of thoughts things that should be the same for all aspects of the game… Splitting dmg is one thing splitting core mechanic timers, imo, bad idea… Ppl have to get use to they’re abilities every time they what to do something different…
Anet constantly encourages us to play in all aspects of the game and the reveled mechanic is just punishing players that do just that.
/end runt

a 10-30-30 build is still “almost” glass cannon with less utility due to stealth not preventing decap.
as long as you put 30 in SA in order to pick shadow rejuvenation, you’ve an attrition build, sub par in PvP and overnerfed after 15november patch, when it was something like the strongest thief build in game.

in order to play S/D I would spend point in acro I order to get more ini and spam FS like if thers is no tomorrow (15-30-0-25), but currently we’re even more pigeonholed thn befoee: now 180 power from signet is TOO GOOD and other utilities don’t offer anything close to such a damage buff.
S/D damage is very bad when compared to dagger damage (even its sustained) and it’s also very, VERY slow and clunky, and hard countered by blind.

D/P Glass cannon is still the way to go to be a thief (altough I’ll go hipster and play S/D and kitten the leaderboards), with the onoy difference that now we’re totally useless from range thanks to shortbow nerf.

kailin.4905:

Its still pushing 2. I watched about 2 hours of thief in spectator today and the new boon steal is at least a new mechanic but still almost everything I saw was backstab, 2, 2, 2. Maybe I was watching noobs but they seemed to be doing well.

that’s the issue. the class is seriously hampered at high level but in hotjoins no one will notice.
so no one will complain

KarlaGrey.5903:

I still get hit for 9 k backstab. I demand a nerf. Smiter boon the 123 spammers, kitten

It’s actually even easier to do it right now. Before you had to activate the kitten signet, now you can keep it passive without losing damage.

ROFL.

Overall

1. Thief burst nerfed, but overall burst thieves effectiveness has been increased. Glass thieves now have a flat +180 power from signet and have no reason to activate the signet, while still outputting the same damage ( all backstabs will deal 10% more damage instead of having it increased by 15% for a SINGLE time).

2. Thief viability in teamfights has been killed. Shortbow nerf is huge, now our ranged sustained is GONE.

3. Still no build diversity. In order to be effective , you still need the shortbow for roaming ( altough it sucks now) and even if you go with S/D, in order to be effective you need to build full glass.

4. There’s a serious problem with the thief at the moment regarding sinergy and builds.
If you really wanted to nerf the shortbow you should just outright remove inf arrow and rehaul our weapon sets, because we’ll ALWAYS bring it in competitive PvP due to it alone. Yes, due to a single skill.

And due to the fact it’s our only AoE weapon ( bringing AoE poison and cluster bomb).

We also have only one build and always will unless you do something to base damage /damage multiplier/ traits.

And it’s seriously needed.

5. Other sets planly suck. P/P, S/P , P/D , condition builds, D/D ( compared to D/P) are outrageous.

Conclusion

If you want to increase thief sustained damage, this is not the way to go.

Initiative, Steal mechanic, traits and base damage, weapon sets issues are the way to go.

Start doing something, because our viability in high tier Pv kitten iously hindered now thanks to the shortbow nerf.

You found a way to effectively nerf the thief without annoying the noob thief fanbase ( dagger dps has been actually buffed thanks to sin signet buff) , effectively reducing at 10% the number of people who will whine about this patch ( regarding the thief).

Please, do something to the worst designed class of all MMO history. Thanks.

Hello guys,

first of all i would say the patch is actually pretty good, but what they did with the thief is something very, very odd.

Let’s start

Mug

This is probably the most odd one.

I know you want to increase thief sustained power and give him more survivability, but what you did to Mug makes little to no sense.

No, i’m not talking about the damage ( no crit for mug) since we all know you wanted to reduce thief burst and i’m not going to disagree/agree with it, but i’m talking about the heal.

It now heals for 2 k.

WHY OMG.

Steal is usally used for the burst combo, mostly used at full health after roaming.

A thief will never take advantage of the heal, as long as it is on a 45 secs CD.

If you really want to make steal help thief survivability, having it on such a long CD makes no sense: make it part of thief sustained damage combo and reduce DRASTICALLY its CD, since a 2k mug damage ( after nerf, and in full zerker gear and glass cannon build) is hardly gamebreaking; it could have been pre-nerf, now it’s totally worthless.

Signets

Ok, you made signets overall better across all classes.

But now assassin signets makes no sense.

I do ALMOST THE SAME DAMAGE with or without the activation, and since now i can no longer benefit from crit damage from mug ( which was a HUGE part of our burst).

Now if i activate the signet not only i do almost the same damage with my burst combo, but i’ll also lose a flat 180 power for my following damage for 45 secs.

Seriously, no.

Signet of shadow is still horrible, inf signet is still redundant and altough ( maybe) signet of agility buff will open up more builds, maybe with soldier amulet ( especially with S/D), without buffing base damage/adjusting damage trait power scaling, unless we go FULL GLASS we can’t deal decent damage like other classes.

Shortbow

Crazy nerf. This was really crazy.

Now no decent opponent will ever be hit by trick shot, even if stay on the ledge spamming there’s no way to make it land as long as your opponent moves.

And no, it won’t make me choose P/P instead, because inf arrow is still the only thing able to make the thief a good roamer ( and allows me to travel in z-axis at will).

You just outright killed thief effectiveness in team fights ( something which was already underwhelming).

With no compensation.

S/D

Good change, but S/D is still bad. Surely not because of the added utility from Flanking strike, but due to OH dagger being USELESS and due to Tactical Strike not being rewarding enough when compared to other stealth skills ( especially backstab).

Dancing dagger is not worth the initiative spent ( bad damage, bad utility), C&D deals bad damage ( bad damage, good utility, ini expensive) and is a good part of the set.

The set, moreover, suffers of thief main problem: damage scaling.

Unless you go FULL GLASS, damage is very poor: you need at least 2 damage trait multipliers ( grandmasters) and there ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in our traits for the sword.

Moreover it’s a very, VERY slow set.

Haste

Haste is the more punishing among quickness punishments. We lose all endurance and have slower endu regen for a while, meanwhile wars and ranger had all their debuffs reduced by 50% ( heal/damage).

It makes no sense.

MAKE IT TO LOSE 50% ENDU AND 50% SLOWER ENDU REGEN, like other effects.

just come back and try it by yourself.

I will never understand those ones “quitting” on a B2P game.

bah.