Don’t think about thief as killing everyone in sight. Thats the job of bruiser based classes that are tanky and can stack to 25 might in under 20 seconds.
Your job is primarily to use your unparalleled shortbow mobility to force decaps on side nodes first, and to use SR/SA traits to rez downed allies, since stealth prevents stomps, so unless they have very heavy cleave and see it coming they won’t be able to stop you.
As for actual fighting, have your team call targets for you so you can enter a fight after getting a decap and take down a target thats low and blew all of its cooldowns, while doing the same job of +1ing a 1v1 on a side node. Don’t 1v1 yourself unless its another thief, but you should be able to take on other zerker classes depending on their build, such as zerk staff ele, power engi/war, etc. Especially don’t 1v1 builds with high sustain or tons of active defense.
^ This.
Playing Thief in conquest require you a very different mentality.
You’re here to make your team win, never forget about that.
Couldn’t get the detail since it was throught Phanta’s pov, but it was a S/D daredevil build with Bound.
I’d be surprised if bound became meta over dash.
Honestly, Bound is forgotten in this beta because its bugged as a blast finisher instead of a Leap one.
Dash is insane for mobility, but Bound will definitely be better for dueling ( it hits for 2k5 crits ). If Bound allow us to be real far harasser, Bound will be taken.
Couldn’t get feedback from Toker himself if he tried Dash over Bound or not.
Honestly I wish Karl used the idea that is floating around in the thief forums, aka, have a F3 that allow us to toggle between the dodges out of combat, which would be the class mechanic ( instead of only being it a 3rd dodge bar ) and add proper Grandmasters which could push the class to be even better.
Try to imagine the life as non thief class if you can lose to thief easily, and that thief can literally run around the map 2 time faster than you.
Do you see any thief asking to buff them to a point that they can easily take out other classes? I don’t.
All thieves ask for is having fair chance vs at least some classes.
Well, we have that, dueling as D/P SA just takes so much time its not worth fighting the classes we can fight.
Daredevil S/D is also looking good at dueling, heard reports of Toker being able to beat Phanta on his D/D build, and Nos on his cele necro.
Heard reports of random pugs beating toker on his DD build using various xpac builds.
Stop.
The thief hate is real in you
Heard it directly from Chaithh, and saw the duels against phanta on phanta’s stream in real time.
How I am a thief hater ? I main thief since launch, I try to defend the idea that thief is actually not as bad as people make it to be.
Try to imagine the life as non thief class if you can lose to thief easily, and that thief can literally run around the map 2 time faster than you.
Do you see any thief asking to buff them to a point that they can easily take out other classes? I don’t.
All thieves ask for is having fair chance vs at least some classes.
Well, we have that, dueling as D/P SA just takes so much time its not worth fighting the classes we can fight.
Daredevil S/D is also looking good at dueling, heard reports of Toker being able to beat Phanta on his D/D build, and Nos on his cele necro.
Can you play a stealth daredevil? Being acrobatic, daredevil and shadow art and be competitive?
Not really.
Both SA and Daredevil are really the specs you tak for survability, and since you always need trickery, you end up not having any damage traitline ( DA or CS ) and you do very poor damage.
Thief is not going to vanish (haha) in pvp.
Still good with D/P and Shortbow. Just not much room for error.
Mess up and you die in a second.
Our survivability isn´t the best. Not really suited for sustained fights.
But we can do fast spikes, rip stability, have pretty good rezzes and we have superior mobility.
Build diversity would be nice but well i think that has to wait. Daredevil and Staff seems like they won´t give us that option.
Best regards!
Shino
Trickery DA Daredevil S/D is a very viable option. Bit more survability but lacks the stealth rez.
CS Trick Daredevil P/P has high potential if they make pistol 2 worth using one day.
the main problem, is that now there are other classes than do a better job than thief.. mesmer>thief… ing>thief-( come on.. they go inv.. they have a lot of burst damage. +condi damage—and now they can reveal you..):….. nocta… im good with thief… i now how to play.. i now all the builds…. what i say.. is that there is no rol for the thief right now.. not in pvp.. and not at wvw…. a good mesmer can kill a thief in no time.. (i use mesmer as well .. and thief dont last 2sec…) ing.. can hold and dcap points… and about the burst damage.. any class right now…can do more damage than a thief with backstab… and we add that some class can be tanky.. and zerker at the same time..
Mesmer and engi are nowhere near Thief’s mobility.
Mesmer doesn’t have easy access to swiftness, only has one 27sec CD Z axis teleport, and is all burst no sustain dps.
Mesmer is about few but very important mobility tools ( portal ), thief is about mobility all the time.
Engi has no teleport, good swiftness access ( current meta build has average one with only elixir B ) but nowhere near the same burst. It’s also a Soldier profession, which mean it doesn’t overlap with Thief’s role. ( see Team Abjured, using thief and engi )
+1ing fights anywhere on the map in less than 10sec with a 20sec CD fully traited Steal is insanely powerful and I’m tired of people saying we have no role / we get overshadow by other classes at it.
I don’t think merging EA with DF will ever happen because EA is too good to be a minor.
I agree on the whole idea tho, Thief is nowhnere near as bad as people are making it to be. We’re very good at what we do, and a slight push into a very few things would be enough to ease the complaints.
The complete absence of protection access is something that was probably a design choice at launch which should be re-evaluated. Maybe reworking acrobatics so its less based on vigor and more on protection access.
Protection on heal instead of vigor ? Stability on dodge instead of vigor ? ( that’s a scrapper trait already sadly )
Just throwing out ideas here, but there’s potential.
Thief is fine, daredevil is looking great for stealthless thief builds, you’re all whining over nothing because you want thief to be something it doesn’t need to be.
I’m a thief main, been for 3 years, and I’m happy with it. I’m tired of people whining about this particular topic. Just go play another class.
Not going to lie. I don’t at all feel survivalble with the DD. That said I think most of the issues with the DD atm are either QOL problems or other classes.
IE I feel insanely squishy on my DD, more so then I should . . . . But I noticed a trend ,that really only occurred when fighting reapers.
That said, I feel the DD does need more innate sustain, and merging the ‘on dodge remove condi’ trait with the heal on evade would really be advisable.
We also lack any sort of strong disengage tools, we can kinda get by with steal as our engage, but having no way of backing out of a fight is really debilitating.
Dash twice + 1 shortbow 5 and you’re disengaged from anything.
Okay, I just played a few games as S/D Shortbow Daredevil with Dash, and the mobility is beyond anything that ever existed in this game.
I hope you like +1 decapping, because that build is SO fast we become literally GOD at doing it. Run signet of agility and try to steal when not full energy, and you never stop dodging to any point that need help.
Nice post. I was testing something similar but as an hybrid in spvp, running a carrion amulet, two venom and shadowstep, with DA instead of CS.
The result is a bit different, but the idea is the same, P/P can hold its own if you use a second weapon set for the stealth / mobility access.
I really think there’s a lot of potential into the archetype with Daredevil.
Something like CS Trick Daredevil, P/P with Staff if its good enough or keep the D/P secondary.
I think the key to making the idea really good would be some kind of redesign of Pistol 2 so the set get something unique to it that is useful.
I’ve crit for 11k with backstab constantly but i was using D/D with DA CS and Trickery with 11k health. yeah i felt like i was playing dark souls with how much i would die. dark souls is actually easier cause i could dodge more than 2 times. so D/D the new dark souls
Could be an Elite signet if they ever decide to add skills to core professions for missing catagories. Way of the Fox signet with a duration to it to be balanced. A trait that makes “Dual wields” unblockable would be more fair but all attacks would be imbalanced as hell.
If they ever make an elite signet, I’d rather have one with an active effect that reset Steal’s cooldown.
Don’t forget the trait that gives them permanent unstrippable swiftness.
And stealth + superspeed allowing them to basically teleport 10,000m away from you in 2 seconds.
It’s 2sec everytime they leave the form, and then they have to build it again from scratch. I think you’re a bit overacting, especially about this trait. I highly doubt people will run it, it seems undertuned.
There’s a lot of weapon type seeing little use right now.
Riffle, Mace are far worst offender than shortbow.
We’ll have to wait for the second generation of elite spec to see them being added, just be patient !
Balance right now is good, only one class feels over the top ( Elementalist ) and two feels a bit weak ( warriors and rangers ) but there’s a big patch coming tuesday fixing a lot of issues.
The specialization patch was also a way to redesign the system for allowing the elite specializations.
I kinda understand where you’re coming from, but in the end, the current system is more logical, prevents people from creating bad or exploitable builds ( it can be very hard to balance the traits if you’rte not forced to invest in the whole line ) and still allow for good customization.
You can’t mix runes sets but they added a lot more runes sets. You only have the amulet but they added more stats choices.etc etc
I have 60% on my thief solo queue. Some pug groups are good enough to beat bad premades, always remember that when playing.
Try to communicate strategy atleast a little before the game starts, and ping / draw with the minimap about stuff.
For balance purpose.
Also, the 3 lines makes little difference to most classes who were using 662 build ( or 30/30/10 depending on when you quit ) anyway.
I dont think SB#5 is the problem, even S/D can take shortbow…
So this is actually the problem that Nocta was talking about. Our combat styles (s/d d/p soon-to-be staff) don’t affect our ability to take shortbow. So if we have a weaponset that is able to fight people 1v1 AND our shortbow, then no point with fewer than 2 people on it will be safe from us.
In essence, taking a duel-oriented weapon set (if it existed) doesn’t detract from our ability to be across the map.
Actually the problem is that we keep staying in meta thanks to our shortbow (5#) and not thanks to our duel-oriented weapon set. If for some reason anet should decide to nerf shortbow 5 to 300 range thief would instantly kicked from every game mode.
It’s like mesmer 1 years ago when it was a portal bot, you bringed mesmer only for portal, now thief is the same with 5 of shortbow.
Because they nerfed our duel oreinted weaponsets instead of nerfing our ability to be anywhere we want on the map.
And while shortbow 5 is a big part of why you want a thief, the class also bring some insane tools for conquest unique to it :
Daze through stability every 20sec
Stealth rez with +20% rez speed
Shadow Refuge
Basically, out utility is way too good for us to be good duelists.
S/D always lost to D/P, even in the best days of S/D.
Toker believed in daredevil S/D, and so do I. I believe SA and stealth in general will have more issues in HoT because of Herald and maybe Scrapper.
The way that thieves usually lose a match is when they focus on 1v1. In fact, this is how any class can cost their team a match. But I’ve noticed that thieves do this a lot. I see a thief decap a point, so I go there and take it back. The thief attacks me, fails, and runs. Does the thief run to support his team somewhere else? No, he heals and comes back for more punishment. They believe that they should win every 1v1, and if they don’t they sacrifice reasonable gameplay, cost their team the match, and come to the forums to whine about how op other classes are.
I play Thief and I agree with your sentiment.
I feel like a lot of the Thief players complaining here just don’t understand that we can’t be this all powerful class that can be everywhere and also win against anyone.
I feel the problem right now with Thief is that we’re locked into this role, not the role itself. I really enjoy being a D/P SA Thief, it has so much impact onto a match, it’s no wonder Toker got MVP at the WTS for his thief play.
The feeling of being everywhere at once, making the one that tip the balance. It’s very rewarding.
I think people would be less inclined to be doomsayer of thief if we had a more teamfight oriented build for the people that want the more " Assassin" side of the rogue archetype.
The issue is that since you can’t prevent us from taking shortbow, it’s hard to balance such a build without making it problematic.
I just don’t see the Thief issues ending any time soon unless they rebalance shortbow.
They just need to buff every thief set a lot in teamfighting potential….
now that they will indirectly nerf dp too there will be no viable set anymore…
@belial.9350 L2P the only reason why thief is played in esl is because vampiric rune lets them ress extremely well(Revenant will be as mobile as thief so no point to mention sbow #5)
Revenant doesn’t have any real mobility if they don’t have a target to go after.
Thief having issues as a teamfighter doesn’t mean the class itself isn’t extremely useful.
There’s probably more people on the forums these days being overly extremist over the " state of thieves" than there is people thinking thief is still OP.
Oh and plus why shouldn’t be able to stealth as a defensive measure…do you know how many times thieves do this….fight…stealth….fight…jump through ring to stealth… its crap you guys complained about PU so much but forgot about the bigger stealth picture as a defensive mechanic.
Does a thief have countless of blocks + invulns ontop of that stealth ? Thieves only defense mechanism IS stealth.
No they have countless blinds, teleports and evade frames instead.
Technically, a D/P thief has no extra evade frames beside shortbow 3 that was nerfed years ago anyway. Mesmer has Sword 2 and Shatter 4.
Blind on shatter is probably just as powerful as black powder as far as blind goes, and while we have a lot of teleports, mesmers has 24sec CD Blink which is the best teleport CD in the game outside of thief.
I wonder if the full patchnotes will have a Merciful Ambush bug fix.
For those unware, this trait gives 20% rez speed instead of 10%, and is part why we are so good at being the medic of the team.
By the way, you guys are nuts. Thief is looking awesome even if we didn’t get any changes ourselves. D/D ele and PU Mesmers nerfs makes us even better in conquest. If Eles go to fresh air, we’re very good at fighting those.
I agree, everything seems really sensible. It’s also coming next week !
I’m happy they announce balance change and we don’t have to wait long before they’re ingame. I rather have this than nerfs being told 2 months before they’re applied.
Meh, you people are so pessimistic. I rather have the dodge because I know dodge are useful than a potential pretty but useless mechanic ( overload )
The whole " zerk meta is going away ", " you can’t just dodge to survive" is marketing. They well know Thief is purely based on dodging stuff to survive, especially in pve.
Daredevil is not flashy, but it will get the job done as far as getting us a spec which doesn’t need as much stealth as the others one, and that’s all I’m asking from it.
It’s also pretty obvious we’re gonna get good news from the balance talk on core specs.
