I don’t think thief as a whole is “Cheap” but I do think that they made d/p way too easy (emphasis on easy). I play every class regularly in pvp (thief most of all) so I can confirm this. Of course I’m not saying anything that’s viable is easy, I’m just saying that d/p is literally the most easiest setup for burst. Going against a opponent with slow attack speed and requires to get close to you? Hit 5 and spam your auto til he’s low on health, then hit 2! All your stealth skills on cd? Hit 5 then 2! (as well as blinding those nearby/your target). D/p thieves are not glass cannon even if they go full zerker and trait zerker. If you think of blinds like a block (both of which prevent your opponent from landing a hit on you) you can hit 5 and block slow melee attackers in the radius (ever other or so hit for fast melee), hit 3 for a teleport to the target and make their next attack miss, while at the same time dealing damage. No build that makes you reduce the damage you take by that much is glass cannon.
It all comes down to the base statistics of it really. Take two new people to the game, put them in a 1 v 1. Give one of the noobs d/p and the other d/d. Who is going to win? The p/d of course just because he noticed once he hit 5, his opponent started to miss his attacks, and he was able to stealth more. Of course there are counters to this, and it requires timing etc etc, but if you are a decent thief these “counters” don’t mean anything. If someone decides they don’t want to step into your 5 skill and attack you with their longer range weapon, you hit 3 and get close to them and force them to. Why do you think these kinds of builds are the meta? Because they are easy, plain and simple. You can justify it by saying “but it requires timing and thought” , but that is not enough considering every class has to deal with timing.
Then there’s also the point that this game’s pvp is built around “Team combat”. For anyone saying that thief can’t be useful for team combat needs to think a bit harder. If a team battle arises, all you have to do is go off point, spam auto with shortbow/clusterbomb (great aoe dmg). Close in on weak targets and gtfo if your team starts to fail. You can also pop a few smoke bombs in the fight to make people miss their attacks (nullifying any slow startup skill in the radius). And shadow refuge for rez’s.
d/p is that easy folks no doubt about it. Saying that weapon set takes large amounts of skill/thinking is just silly (even against good opponents).
I agree also that the “Living” story updates are pretty rubbish. I really enjoy rich content that feels like there was some heart (and time) put into it, and “Guys guess what new skins
, mor partay w00t, guis we promis that this time it’s like omg you are actually there, just like the manife- well not like that but look you can farm this time!”. The cut-scenes were nice, voice acting is good, content itself? Very themepark-ish. I mean the new pavillion stuff is literally structured like a theme park. I almost feel embarrassed when I tell my friends I still play Gw2. But luckily the combat is amazing and enough to keep me invested.
Just thought I’d share a build I’ve been having fun with lately that involves sharing boons, turning your allies conditions into boons, and doing sustained damage while healing allies. Now, this build isn’t perfect so you won’t do massive damage while tanking everything the game throws at you, but it does offer some balance in damage and team support. And like any build you’ll want to see how it works with your comp.
Link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQRBHhd21IoT1byjzDTcAA9wKs2yUoo0DyYLNA;TwAg0CnoKyUkoIbRuikFtIYUwekZEA
If it says “Bad Link” then just copy/paste the url.
Here’s an quick overall look at what the build provides:
• AoE Stun breaker.
• 1432 Heal per-shout. (4296 total)
• 43% crit chance, 63% with fury, and 53% with full precision sigil.
• When in combat, you and the allies around you get 70 power.
• Reviving is 10% faster, and when the ally is revived all allies around target gain might.
• You gain 400 toughness while reviving, and 200 while crippled, chilled or immobilized.
• While in combat you have 3,022 attack.
• Automatic endure pain at 25% health.
• Projectile reflecting.
• You don’t get demolished by conditions. (Most of the time anyways).
• 1,300 – 1,4300 axe crit. 4-7k eviscerate. (depending on how much might you give yourself)
• Remove all conditions on you at once, and gain all boons.
The weapons involved are: Axe/Warhorn and Axe/Shield. You want to use A/W because the sword doesn’t do as much damage as the axe does (and you don’t have much condi dmg) and the mace is too slow for my tastes. As for A/S, the stun is great for interrupting heals and the block will be used for reflecting projectiles.
So to use this build to it’s fullest potential, you are going to want to be around your teammates at all times (unless you feel like the situation doesn’t demand it). So when the match starts, switch to A/W and use “Charge” in the beginning of the match to speed your team mates up for 13 seconds. Charge’s range is 1,200 so it should cover everyone around you including the person going out of the side gate. You are going to want to follow the bunker (if you have one), or whoever is wanting to go far node. When the enemy first appears, use “Call To Arms” to give your allies Vigor and weaken the enemy (This ignores enemy Aegis and has a 1,200 range also) Weaken is very useful because it causes non-critical hits to glance, and reduces their dodge regeneration by 50%. You are going to fear the enemies right when they first get on the node to give you enough time to cap. Now while in combat make sure to use " For Great justice" to give everyone 3 stacks of might and fury, and dish out as much axe damage as you can (which is pretty good considering axes hit multiple enemies). From there just go with the flow of the battle and do what you think is right and don’t push your limits.
Here are some map specific tips, and just facts overall:
• The warhorn skill “Charge” stacks with “Quick Breathing” (the trait that turns condis into boons). To go into further detail, Charge removes all movement conditions including chill ,cripple and immobilize. So when you use the skill, it will first carry out it’s default use and then turn another condition into a boon. So if you or an ally have cripple, chill, immobilize, and poison, it will first take away the movement conditions and then activate Quick Breathing and turn poison into a random boon.
• At the start of the spirit watch map, give everyone swiftness and rush at the enemy as if you were heading to their spawn, and use “Fear Me” to push everyone away from the orb then continue to support the orb carrier. If you don’t see anyone and they have a thief on their team do it anyway because most likely they are invisible.
• Save your elite for when you have too many conditions on you that warhorn/shout can’t remove. Use Charge for swift travel.
• When facing a boon-corrupting necro, save your elite for when after he uses corrupt boon. Then use your elite, remove all those condis and wreck face. This should be do-able because corrupt boon has a 40 second cooldown.
• If a thief uses Basa venom on you, use “Shake it Off” immediately to break the stun, use Fear me, switch to A/S and spam your auto attack until he starts to heal, then use Shield bash to interrupt it then eviscerate.
• If you feel like reflect projectiles isn’t for you, switch it with “Last Stand” to gain automatic stability on knockback.
• The 30% boon boost you get from the build also applies to outgoing boons (boons you put on allies)
Hope this gave someone something to play other than zerker or condi.
This isn’t a post to rant about a specific class or rage at a certain aspect of the game, but just a small list of little things that can be done to make the game more enjoyable for people who primarily play sPvp/tPvp.
• When you log off in the Heart of the Mists it will show your Structured Pvp gear in the character selection screen rather than your Pve gear.
• Have the weapon merchant tell you what steady weapons are for ( if they are for anything).
• Take away the dialog from the tournament master that tell you was quick paid tournaments are (since they no longer exist).
• Make forge weapons glow on all maps. (Plz c:)
• Remove the annoying bug were when you hotjoin a room that doesn’t appear to be full (ex. 14/16) it freezes your pvp browser for a good minute 1/2 to tell you that it is now a full room.
• Remove the wall of champions until it is actually active.
• It would be nice to add loadouts. Example is say I have a burst thief build and a condition thief build I would be able to save the traits/runes/sigils/amulet into a profile that I would be able to load before a round starts or in the mists. This way we don’t have to go and grab runes for a build s we’ve already made before.
• Give us the option to go to the heart of the mists through the tutorial zone. ( It comes to a point were having to do the tutorial gets tedious when you’re making a character just for sPvp)
• Allow us to deposit backpacks and arcane converters into the Pvp locker.
• Give an in depth tutorial on how to craft sPvp gear from the Pvp instructor.
• Put a normal bank npc in the mists.
If anything else comes to mind I’ll add it, have a nice day