All I got have to say to the dev team is PLEASE do not give in to all the people crying for nerfs on thieves.
I played a thief and I want them to be nerfed. Thieves are killing this game.
do we hit hard?yes.
is it unavoidable?no.
no need to nerf.
Heartseeker is unavoidable. Once Dodge bar is empty. And since you can spam it 4-6 times depending on build, I say ‘it IS unavoidable’. Mesmer have daze and Knockback that can be time to interrupt.
The only way to beat thief is to interrupt him. Loosing endurance or hp = win for thief. Cause he gets so close to an ‘easy burst target’ down, that you can’t do a kitten against it. Interrupt works because it EATS the iniative, without the thief making progress (removing endurance/hp). Ele got one knockback every 40 secs. Apart from that you have full freedom to spam heartseeker down on our throat.
95% Unavoidable on non interrupt professions.
Heartseeker is far from unavoidable. If the thief jumps up, just walk towards him and he will miss.
Heartseeker isnt a fecking cruise missle, it just jumps to the place where you were before, if you suddenly walk backwards the heartseeker will very likely miss and I have seen several persons pulling that off in WvW, so again a L2P issue.
(edited by Panacea.4927)
14k from Stealth.
that’s the problem. The cherry is being able to reset the fight if the thief feels they are at a disadvantage after doing 14k in 3s.
1. Thieves dont attack from stealth. You seem them clearly till they shadowstep towards you and attack you, means you need to be aware of your surrounding and just need to see the thief first.
2. Thieves only are capable of delivering such a damage in a blink, if they blow all their cooldowns, all their abilities into it and dedicate every traint into it. Yet if you just dodge at the right time (very hard) or just carry a stunbreaker or use a invul ability, or blind the thief and you can nullify a whole character as after that one trick, the thief will be useless for 45 seconds.
3. Totally GC thieves have no condition remove, have no real heal, have pretty weak stealth, no HP and can die from anything.
The only thing which needs to be adressed is how easy that burst can be applied. The damage of it is fine though and Warriors, Engineers, Elementarists are capable of delivering the same, if not more burst.
Then let me quote you:
“Other than thief, which other class can 1vs4 noobs in open field and “sometimes” come out victorious?”
I cant tell on which ranking Miller’s Sound was as this video was created, but right now they are T3. Still, even if a server is now in T1 or T99 doesnt matter. Every server has noobs on which Thieves can prey. I for one could fight 8 ppl alone once and then the next time I struggled with only 3 enemies and were always running as they tossed out alot of CCs, alot of Blinds, alot of Slows and were expecting my moves.
Thieves are counterable you just have to know how to play and dont act like a NPC, which most ppl here are hardly capable of.
If you would actually try playing a thief you would soon learn that it doesnt need nerfing. The issue is basically newbs crying. I built my thief mainly foor power toughness and vitality.
If a glass cannon hits you and you arent geared for tough/vitality you will usually die. This isnt exclusive to thieves people. I can almost bet most of the whiners are low lvls with crap gear in wvw getting hit by decked out guys
Other than thief, which other class can 1vs4 noobs in open field and “sometimes” come out victorious?
Even the 2nd most OPed class, the mesmer, has no chance of actually winning a fight 1vs4 in open field. The mesmer might survive, but that’s about it.
No class should be able to 1vs4 enemies, no matter how noob the enemies are. The ceiling of the thief is miles above other classes.
This coming for a thief player who quitted thieving.
Elementarist, and Warriors for instance.
(edited by Panacea.4927)
Because it is such a wise idea to run away with 30% hp without any protection, letting channeled skills hit you or some big spikes to finish you off because a trait limited the way on how you can play.
Getting active in stealth is much better as you can choose a direction to flee at without the enemy knowing. With last refuge the enemy will know the direction you run at and if they use some channeled skills, they will hit you even when last regue kicks in.
Not sure if its been mentioned,
But Stealth finishing also has to be done away with.
Shouldnt even try and revive someone downed by a thief because the thief will finish him before you can even bring him up.
So please look into this, it is quite tedious.Stealth finishing is the weakest of the “special” finishers and easiest to counter. Just kill/interrupt the thief, both of those options aren’t even available with most special finishing moves.
Problem lies here, how do I or many around me kill or interrupt the thief if we cant see him?
I don’t feel we should have to Aoe everywhere randomly just to see thieves, then only after that try to kill him. (Which is more a problem with stealth in general)
By “Special” finishers you mean Stability, and that is not so much a problem because you can shoot at the person (doing the finishing) while he tries to finish someone and kill him. With a thief you can’t even do that (because you can’t even see him).Agreed. when they are perma stealthed, then how exactly should we aoe them? Lol.
Since this post was about stealth stomping… how about you go to the downed person if the thief used cloak and dagger on him and hit 1 till you get the attack chain and then use every attack you have or toss out a CC?
Only because you cant see the thief, it doesnt has to mean that he is not there and if he cloaked on a downed person, the chances are very big that he wants to stomp him.
Problem with a longer lasting build is, that you bring nothing to the table except delaying the fight in sPvP. Any other class which fights a longer fight will be able to support their team much more with AoEs, Combo fields, blinds, buffs, CCs while the thief just survives longer. Hence I think that thieves arent that useful if they go for longer lasting fights, except they are capable of keeping 2-3 persons busy on their own while the team fights for the objectives.
As already said, Unicorn is a Deathblossom and dodge heavy build which relies on self heal with signet of malice, caltrops, dodges, caltrops on dodge and alot of points in Acrobatics.
It would look somewhat like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4Ylcm6OXey9E+5ECXBL07xXNWkV3jrSrqKA;TwAg2Cmo8x4jwHLMOYkws+Y8x2jpHA
I just smashed it fast together, so there is clearly room for improvement. Just use deathblossom, then dodge, then deathblossom again and rinse and repeat. From time to time switch your weapons to get endurance back and apply again more bleeds. Every bleed heals you due to signet of malice. It is also usefull to use caltrops and to fight in caltrops.
I’m still curious what Vile uses for a control build… I guess the usual S/D dazelock build?
There is the unicorn or P/D Condition build, but besides dmg as mainrole the thief lacks in most departments.
When you try to go for a more tanky stealth/mobility thief, your dmg will be pretty low/medicore while you wont have much buffs/control abilities and if you want to use control abilities mainly, you wont do any damage at all as the thief’s utility is totally split from damage.
You can try to go for a x/P built, trying to blind your enemies very often, but you wont do any damage and every necro will do a better job at blinding.
You can try to daze and interrupt one person all the time with headshot or sword’s stealth attack, but your damage will be again pretty low.
This is the curse of the initsystem. While it is a good system to do burst and use your damage abilities back and forth, Anet couldn’t put decent control or buff abilities into the thief’s weaponskills.
Venomshare could be a way to go, but the venoms itself are also pretty lackluster and you need to put tons of traits into it which will end in pretty bad survivability.
Even the “tanky” thief isnt that useful in sPvP, as you will probatly need to stealth now and then which will make you lose the point which you try to defend and the signet of malice-heal unicorn build doesnt perform that well to be set on par with a bunkerguard/ele for pointdefending.
Also in PvE the tanky thief isnt worth much as stealth makes you drop agro and with that you cant “tank” anything. The unicorn build here works abit better but the lack of protection, regeneration and aegis doesnt make thiefs good PvE tanks.
If you are looking for PvE, you can try to utilize the shortbow and spam clusterbombs back and forth, abusing the blast finishers and combofields, but in the end you will rely alot on your teammates and their cooldownsystem to pull of some good combos with it.
Edit:
For PvE: you can buy healing seeds from a karma shop somewhere which create a waterfield. It doesnt has any cooldown and with it you are able to do alot of heals with the clusterbomb blast finisher without relying on any cooldown. But you would need to buy them over and over and I think it would be better if thieves could reliable steal waterfields from enemies or somekind of buffs/CCs/heals.
The Stealsystem is actually a pretty interesting system there as it could be changed that you can steal heals or CCs or buffs.
I made a suggestion on how to change steal here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback/page/6#post852944
And with some additional trait changes, you could maybe build a supportfocused thief who uses steal as source for support abilities.
(edited by Panacea.4927)
Another solution could be a special stealth you get from Last Refuge. A stealth which removes revealed and cant be broken for 0.25-0.4 sec after activation. The time would be too short to pull of a backstab while it would be long enough for your delayed attack to hit without revealing you.
Or just drop the whole ability and exchange it with something else.
Steal is pretty lackluster/boring and could be made more tactical without making it OP and initiative is curse and blessing at the same time. The initiative has enough downsides which outweigh the upsides.
If you are able to, try to slow the thief when he heartseekers away. Movementspeed abilities affect how far a leap goes. A slowed down leap is pretty short while a swiftness leap goes much further.
Signet thieves in group PvE are just bad and often a waste of a groupslot. There are actually only 2 signets which have some use in group PvE, Signet of Malice and Signet of Agility.
Signet of Malice is just your normal heal and with a build focused around it it is a good heal.
Signet of Agility refills the endurance of your team if you use it and with that you enable your party to be more mobile and dodge more. Furthermore it removes even one condition.
Borderline Signet would be Infiltration Signet. The additional init can help if you have a init heavy build or job, like unload spamming at a range fight, or when you need to have a stunbreaker ready.
The other signets only have some use in PvP.
Thieves dont have much group support to begin with, but some utilityskills are still pretty useful and if you ask me, every thief should run refuge and smoke screen in group instances.
Smoke Screen is a pretty awesome utility skill as it provides you with projectile block, blinds when a enemy stands in it and blinds when you shoot through it and even stealth when you are a backstab thief and have 3 init for a heartseeker.
Other good utility skills are skorpion wire, which is the best skill I know for pulling a single mob to you, even when he stands in a huge group and blinding powder.
no. Even with 100 seconds cast time, it won’t affect the combo damage
unless you put an big red icon on thief’s head when he cast stealHis argument isn’t about the damage, but about giving people on the receiving end more time to react.
A Warrior’s 100b, for example, is easier to identify due to bull’s charge initiating the burst is easier to dodge, as the Warrior’s wind-up is visible. Same with the Ele’s typical burst rotation (RTL into updrat, ect.).
I personally wouldn’t mind A-net testing it out, as how instantaneous a Steal x Mug into a basilisk’d BS can feel cheesy/hard to avoid for a large pool of players. Making it more obvious/easier to avoid may be a good idea.
That is why I once made a suggestion to change all instant teleports into a very short travel teleport.
Since a mere damage nerf on Backstab is just wrong…. Backstab doesnt do much damage compared to all the stuff you need to do for it. And before all persons cry out that I’m wrong, the dmg from the backstab-COMBO comes from mug+cnd+backstab and that all together with might stacking from your signets.
Drop the mightstacking and everything does less damage. Lower backstab damage and make backstab useless for all but glasscannons. Lower CnD damage even more (the 30% dmg nerf was unnecessary in my eyes) and you hit 1/3 of the backstab-combo and mainly the damage from S/D and P/D.
Furthermore, most complainments are about WvW where all the stat and damage stacking just gets insane compared to the balanced out field in sPvP.
Furthermore, the fully GC backstab thieves would just switch to infiltration signet instead of steal. Some might even use the utilityskill shadowstep, which is abit harder to aim but would still work.
You really have to change all possible teleports and only hitting the thief with that is pretty unfair. Like Krathalos said, you would need to nerf all teleport/blinks.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAV1kYmCO3dKR4pgsjt/AXB;TgAKtMaJ0yqlTLpWrPGfA
Basicly alot of vigor combined with alot of endurance return.
3 Dodges on default which leave you with 25% endurance. Withdraw is a dodge itself and gives you with the runes and traits 50% endurance and vigor, means another dodge and after a tiny bit of time another dodge.
Steal gives you 15 sec vigor aswell for even more dodge. Signet of Agility returns endurance again. You can even lower the CD of the signet with the critical strikes trait. And of course endurance return on weaponswap.
And roll for initiative as another dodge.
(edited by Panacea.4927)
I actually meant another preload… pressing it while beeing out of range and running towards your approaching enemy who runs directly into your CnD.
I’m sorry if I used a wrong term in that case as for me preparing to hit something which you cant hit right now would be preloading.
Yes, but I think it would be unfair to only nerf the thief in that department while other classes can freely chain their teleport abilities with other ones.
I’m pretty fine with the dodge swiftness as these 2 seconds and the dodge itself cover enough room. In the end its about to avoid the thief and his CnD so thiefs should work to hit that 6 init combo. The 1/2 sec execution time and 6 init are basicly designed that a thief has to work to hit with it and cant spam it easily.
CnD also has the biggest missrate due to the 1/2 sec execution time and as the dagger autoattack has the same attackrange and arc of CnD. Test it out on a practice dummy and you will notice that they behave the same and only the execution time makes it harder to hit with it.
CnD is fine, it is hard to hit and is expensive but for that you can use it often when you can cover the init costs. It gives you stealth which is a very strong mechanic if you use it proper. Right now you require abit of timing on when to preload CnD and the distance your enemy and you will cover in the next 1/2 second.
And I have no problem to land CnD in WvW, except we have skilllag and my execution time for CnD goes from 1/2 up to 1-2 seconds.
… which isnt about nerfing just the damage of the class.
Since I’m getting sick of all the whines about thieves and fear that Anet will once again nerf the wrong stuff, I would like to suggest another way on fixing the “instagib” of thieves. I would like to hear your opinion about it.
My idea was to give shadowstep (also also ALL other related teleport abilities like blink) a VERY short travel with a little effect you can see if you pay attention. For thieves it would be somekind of black blur which quickly darts to the target, for mesmers a purple blur.
Since shadowstep has now a traveltime, you would be able to dodge every shadowstep and with that even steal, IF you pay attention. It would also allow everyone to counterplay the shadow step. You are a warrior and see a thief in front of you and suddenly he is gone and faintly noticeable black blur approaches you fast? use 100b and hit the thief when he arrives in front of you.
Since the steal-insta-gib combo would be easier to dodge/counter now, a nerf at the dmg of thiefs wouldn’t be needed. Warriors can do even bigger burst in the end with bullrush and 100b, yet all say tis ok as you see him approaching.
Since it would be a “nerf” to a whole mechanic, it wouldnt only hit the thief. Furthermore I would also buff steal abit. First of the faintly noticeable fast traveling black blur should give you a very short invul frame. As steal is now harder to use, it would also be fair to reduce its cooldown and maybe even make whole steal more attractive as it is now.
Get swiftness yourself then and dont rely totally on your 25% signet, use dancing dagger to cripple your target, have 5 points in acrobat and dodge towards your enemy so you cover more ground while beeing in swiftness. I play a thief in WvW myself and I only have problems to apply CnD at enemies who know thiefs and try to dodge it.
CnD should remain a combo which requires somekind of skill and shouldnt turn into a no-brainer.
Edit:
The arc is already about 180°
Edit:
I’m sorry, the arc is even bigger, could use cnd while I had a practice dummy ON MY BACK!
(edited by Panacea.4927)
I’ve often used it once, hit and used it again by actident and hit again, revealing myself, because the class has no Cool-downs, it makes it hard to use certain attacks because I often que them up twice.
That is more a personal problem and not one of CnD. The only issue which CnD has is, that you sometimes dont get teh fancy stealth effect on your char and maybe try to hit CnD again, but you still can see the buff on your buffbar.
If you ask me, CnD is fine and there is no problem with it except the 30% dmg nerf in sPvP which was unjustified.
CnD isnt that hard to hit if you get used to it. I even think it is quite fair that you need to be in kissing range to apply it as it makes restealthing for thiefs harder and enemies have a better chance to evade the stealth.
But to the blinding powder trait (I call it often the “lets kill myself trait”). Either blinding powder needs to go and be replaced with a trait which doesnt affect your gameplay that much, or you need to be able to disable minor traits, or the blinding powder trait should give a special stealth which doesnt unstealth you for 0.6 seconds, even if you attack something.
The trait also can kick in if you do another delayed attack like dancing dagger, a normal pistol/shortbow shot or anything which is channeled. 0.6 seconds should give you some time to either stop the attack, or time for the attack to hit without getting the revealed debuff.
Some may complain that it enables thiefs to do a free backstab, but how likely is it that you suddenly drop below 25% health, notice it right away to pull of a backstab which takes 1/4 sec to be executed anyway? Means you need to notice that blinding powder kicked in after 0.35 seconds and if you make the unrevalable stealth time only 0.5 seconds, it would be 0.25 seconds to notice it to get in a free backstab.
Some issue with “Withdraw” … at least the dodge effect is still active while you roll on the same spot as you were immobilized.
Problem with thief “bunkers” is, that you cant keep a spot while you stealth which makes a thief bunker pretty useless. :/
I know this feeling. I didnt felt well with the one-trick-pony build either. You had no survivability, no condition remove, no mobility and just did your single burst and were useless afterwards.
Thats why I once tried to run this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUm6Ondy9E/5Ey2jdqCJKOFGlT1p4qiPA;TsAg0Cno4yUjoGLXOukct+YAxkCA
It is basicly a CC+Tiny Burst build. You roam along and support in fights. You have enough HP to take some hits and with Basilisk Venom and Scorpion wire you have 2 Hard CCs to help your team in fights to take out certain targets while still having a halfway decent backstab damage.
The build relies alot on backstabbing back and forth, using your CCs to stab easier. You have condition remove on stealth, so condition specs have a hard time with you and you have 3 dodges to avoid hits. With a weaponswap to shortbow you can extend your dodging even more so you can evade hits while ppl try to focus you down.
You will still have some troubles getting real bunkers down and probatly struggle in different 1v1 fights, but should have enough tools to escape a fight, when its needed.
You can exchange the condition remove on stealth to regeneration on stealth, if you desire additional heal.
Well, it is possible to mix crit damage and conditions, but not with the weaponsets you want to play.
Sword/Dagger is totally based on direct dmg and Pistol/Pistol has only vital shot for condition dmg (which isnt worth it to get condition dmg for)
Sword/Dagger relies on tactical strike to daze your opponent pretty often. To get that off you need to stealth often with Cloak and Dagger. Since it gives you a pretty stealth heavy playstyle, several points in Shadow Arts would be very useful.
Infusion of Shadows is pretty much a must have for it as it allows you to use Cloak and Dagger back and forth. The blind can also be helpful, but in the end you will struggle alot with groups of mobs, which is why P/P might be better for groups and S/D for single targets.
Pistol/Pistol is based on… well based on nothing but spamming unload… if you are in mood you can use black powder now and then and be a blindbot for non veteran mobs.
So if you INSIST to keep these two weaponsets (you picked exactly the 2 worst sets which a thief can take), then try to focus on direct damage and drop conditions totally. You wont deal much damage with your weapons (thank Anet for the Dancing Dagger nerf), wont have much buffs for your team and except on single targets, wont help much with your dazes.
Try to focus yourself on Critical Strikes, Shadow Arts, Acrobatic… maybe even Trickery if you want to toss out some buffs for your team.
Alot of issues were already mentioned here, which dont need to be repeated. Mainly the issue with synergy between weaponskills, redudant weaponskills and traits, traps and venoms.
This is from a PvP perspective.
People here who want stealth to be nerfed should realize that if you nerf stealth, you will force even more thiefs into a full zerker glass cannon backstab build and destroy even more diversity of which the thief doesnt has much anyway.
Thiefs can only do damage if they close in and melee your opponent, as thiefs have no good range weapon and every weapon needs to be used in melee or at least close range. But for that, thiefs lack armor, health, heal and protection boons to do that.
Other classes who fight in melee range have blocks, aegis, protection, lots of heals, lots of CCs… all these things stealth is supposed to do, so thiefs become viable in fights at all.
You can only outlast a long fight as thief, if you trait heavily into shadow arts to get healed in stealth and try to confuse the enemy with disappearing in battle, so thiefs catch less damage, or if you try to spam deathblossom to dodge most attacks.
Remove stealth and thiefs cant stay long in battle, they HAVE TO take the “one-shot” build.
A much better solution would be to offer more diversity in buildchoices as right now you can only go full glass cannon for direct damage to kill your opponent fast, or a condition/stealth based build (with some tiny changes here and there).
A possible way to do that would be more groupsupport/utility, which brings me to my idea on how to improve:
Steal
Anet cant give thiefs many nice things in their weaponskills which hard CC or work mainly as support as thiefs are capable of spamming these skills to easily. Due to that all support, CC and utility skills are in our utility slots which have a cooldown.
Yet the bit of supportstuff we have there is not that usefull, as alot of ppl here pointed out already.
My suggestion would rework lackluster steal abit and make it a more tactical choice.
Steal Idea
Give thiefs F1-F4 keys, while F1-F3 are slotted special steals, F4 is a shadow return without a stunbreak, which can only be used 0.5-1 sec after steal was used.
You can slot what for an item you want to steal and depending on the class you steal from it has a specific effect. Examples would be: Offensive Steal, Defense Steal, Heal Steal, Support Steal, CC Steal.
Depending which of these slotted steals you use, you get an ability which mirrors the one of the person you have stolen it from.
For instance:
Warrior
Offensive Steal – Whirling Axes
Defensive Steal – A shield which allows block (shorter duration as the warriors block)
Heal Steal – A regeneration Banner
Support Steal – Somekind of buff Banner
CC Steal – A hammer which you can throw to knock someone down
Engineer
Offensive Steal – A grenade you can throw.
Defensive Steal – An elexir which grants protection/aegis
Heal Steal – Regeneration elexir which you can throw on the ground
Support Steal -Some elexir which you can throw and buffs everyone you hit with it.
CC Steal – A bomb you can drop and does an AoE knockdown or Elexir which does a small AoE immobilize
Of course all F1-F3 steal skills should go on cooldown when you use one of them. F4 is for ranged thiefs who want to get the ability but get back to their former position afterwards.
As Steal became more tactical, you can also rework the trickery tree or other traits which buff specific steals, like more healing from stolen healing items, more dmg from damage items and so on.
End of Idea
Backstab Damage
Alot of ppl complain about backstab, but all of these complainments are based on WvW and not in sPvP where gear is normalized.
Problem with WvW is the gear difference and the possibility to get 100+% crit damage. To solve that I would simply include a softcap at crit damage at 50-60%. I for one run around with 61% crit damage, am not fully glass cannon specced and my backstab hits for about 5-6k on squishies and much less on thougher enemies. Nerfing backstab will force every thief who wants to do direct damage to specc glass cannon again, espeacily in sPvP.
Ways on how to do damage
Thiefs lack ways to apply damage.
Right now it’s backstab for direct damage and heartseeker as finisher, besides that there is not much a direct damage focused thief can do.
And condition specced thiefs use either P/D sneak attack or Deathblossom to apply their bleeds.
Which shows again the lack of diversity on how to play a thief. S/D and the strong daze combined with burst from Dancing Dagger was quite refreshing and gave another choice for thiefs, but that build got severely nerfed.
Glass cannon backstab thief attacks? Mitigate/evade his burst and bring him down to 50% hp and he will use hide in shadows.
Backstab thief used hide in shadows? Give him all condition dmg you have and some direct dmg. Even if he tries to stealth now, he will just die as the usual glasscannon backstab thief has no means anymore to remove conditions.
Channeled abilities are also nice to hit the thief when he is about to stealth. Often ppl even try to push the thief out of the refuge. AoE the place the thief went works nicely too.
Stealth doesnt make the thief unbeatable, as most persons still think. I’ve meet enough good players in WvWvW who made it rather hard for me to fight them even while stealthing, but on the other hand there are enough player who have no clue and behave like NPCs … “Enemy is gone?… Alright, lets get back to my usual routine and wait for another player to hit me in the face.”
What would you do if a Warrior pops his Vengeance after he was downed? Do you hit him still or do you ignore/CC him till he dies?
What would you do if a Ele goes into mist form? Would you try to hit the mist or try to wait the time till it ends?
…
Every class has someway to mitigate damage and yet no one complains about it as it are rather obvious ways. Thiefs way to “mitigate”…. well they dont mitigate it, they just go invisible… is stealth, which lasts only 3 seconds, is hardly worth to stack it and still lets the thief take full damage.
If you dont find a weakness at backstab thiefs, then you are just bad. :P
I cant remember, but I think it did. I only got myself the chest and legs as I dont like the look of the helm.
You can get the “Commando” look as reward for doing the story.
Against good players you will have some troubles playing with S/D, but its still a pretty strong 1v1 weaponset. But the video which got posted here is bad players vs thief again.
With all dazes you can block a player at least 2/3 of the whole fight, if he doesnt dodge/evades a cloak and dagger. But you will have problems if you fight 2-3 players kitten D is very much 1v1 centered.
To deal dmg with with that weaponset you need to use your autoattack in between your dazes, which means you cant dodge that much and need to stick to your target which makes you vulnurable.
For PvE you can try to use the ambush trap. It provides you get every 35 sec for 20 sec an additional thief who works as distraction and even damage.
Every thief has problems to go toe and toe with 2-3+ mobs and due to that they tend to use black powder for perma blinds, death blossom for lots of dodges or they kite them. S/D lacks these tools though.
Another hint, if you decide to take D/X instead of shortbow for mobility. The travel distance of heartseeker depends on your movementspeed. Try to use it “only” if you have swiftness running and arent crippled.
I for one like to dodge for 2 second swiftness and use 2 heartseeker. Now dodge again… rinse and repeat.
Dont forget that the western keep’s outer wall can be bombed from Garisson and the Tower in the southwest.
So you basicly “need” to hold Garisson and that Tower to hold the Keep. Otherwise they just can smash the outer wall kinda easy and bomb the inner wall with cats from high above.
When you try to defend the inner keep you even have a choke point at the bridge in the keep. If the enemy puts their forces in the southern region, defenders can only try to get you through the bridge, the hole in the gate/wall (which is your supply route) and the stairs which lead up from the water…. basicly 3 choke points.
It depends abit on your playstyle, but to be evasive and kinda sturdy you will need to invest points in acrobat and shadow arts.
I quickly slapped a build together which might, or might not suit you.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV8YlYmiP3cS6E95EB3Dnq0m6f4r9M4a8B;TkAKtMaJ0yqlTLpWLEGfs/A
Explenation:
Weapons:
Shortbow is the ultimate mobility weapon. You will use it to get faster from A to B and to escape enemies with infiltration arrow.
Sword/Dagger is for distraction. Infiltration strike allows you to port into the zerg, if he has seen you and quickly use cloak and dagger. Stay aslong in stealth as you can to remove conditions, heal yourself up and even regain initative. You can change the Patience-“gain more initiative while stealthed” to Infusion of Shadows-“gain 2 init whenever you stealth”… all up to you.
Anyway, cloak and dagger should even allow you to dance more or less around in the enemy zerg and give some reports on how they move on. If they notice that there is a thief you can switch to shortbow and port away or use shadow step to port away.
Utility:
I consider withdraw to be a superior healing ability as hide in shadows due to its additoinal mobility and as a way to remove immobilize and chill. I’ve slapped runes of the adventurer onto the armor so you gain additional endurance every 15 seconds. All these dodges should give you some mobility and with some camera turning, you can even “catapult” yourself away with withdraw to get some distance.
I took blinding powder since a additional way to get into stealth without hitting anything can help alot. You can also take shadow refuge instead… up to you.
Signet of Shadows is just for movement speed.
Shadowstep is for messing up with the zergs mind. With infiltration strike and shadow step you have 2 ways to shadow step into the enemy. You could for instance use shadow step to move into the zerg, right it abit, run into the opposite direction and use shadow return.
In the beta I also liked it to use shadow step around a corner, wait till my chaser run around the corner aswell and port back so they dont see me anymore.
Furthermore shadowstep removes stuns, just like the return of infiltration strike which makes you pretty slippery and hard to catch no matter how much CCs they throw into your face.
Thiefsguild is a pretty good tool to use when you are stealthed. Use it when you are stealthed and let the zerg fight the thiefs while you bail out.
Traits:
30 points in shadow arts:
Healing while stealthed
Regaining initiative while stealthed
Removing conditions while stealthed
=> you dont care about conditions anymore and the additional heal is very handy against stray hits.
20 points in acrobat:
You gain vigor upon healing (hence withdraw as the CD is only 15 seconds)
You get 50% endurance back for every dodge
You remove cripples upon dodge
=> You can dodge like mad with all the sigils of energy and withdraw, you remove cripples so you are hardly ever slowed down and the additional HP isnt bad either
20 points in trickery:
You gain initiative while you steal
You drop caltrops when you dodge and can cripple enemies
You have more initiative for infiltration arrow and cloak and dagger
You get vigor upon stealing for tons and tons of dodges. Vigor every 15 sec from withdraw and every 37-38 sec from steal.
All in all your dmg will blow, but with some training you should be able to win 1v1s due to daze from the sword mainhand. You have alot of dodges and alot of condition removes and anti-CCs combined with mobility.
Hard-CC counters:
Infiltration Strike
Shadow Step
Stealth
Soft CC counters:
Withdraw
Infiltration strike
Shadow Step
Stealth
Dodges
Maybe others come up with different builds, if this one doesnt suit you. But at least you should be very slippery with it.
(edited by Panacea.4927)
I didnt bothered to read all posts, but I think some reasons got already coverd in them.
I once read a nice article on this specific topic with I think 15 reasons for males to play female chars. Sadly I cant recall all of them anymore, nor do I remember the site, but I try to recall some of them.
1. Appealing Look
This is one of the biggest reasons. Most males find a female character to look at more appealing as a male character.
2. Seeing how the grass on the other side of the fence is
Some guys like to see how it is to “be” a woman. Most male players will react different to female characters as to male ones. If you now play a female and maybe even try to act as one, then you can see how the grass is on the other side.
Furthermore female characters tend to get helped more often as males try to take care of them. Free gifts, organizing help for a instance run/whatever, more sympathy for mistakes and less claims that you are a “noob”.
2.b
Trying to get much more help and easier gaming as you would get with a male character.
3. Playing with a dress-up-doll
Other males like to have a little “doll” to play with, dressing her in different outfits and colors.
4. Less identification with that Character
Ever got your kitten seriously handed in PvP or PvE? Ever did RP and noticed how different scenes even affected you behind the screen, even when it wasnt even aimed at you specific?
Persons often identify themself with their characters and due to that acts against your characters can be taken personally. Its often harder to identify yourself with a character which hardly is like you…. in that case males often dont identify themself with a female character as they would with a male.
At least that are some of the reasons which I remember still… hope that I find the article I read once again, in the near future.
My idea for steal (it doesnt involve pockets!)
I would give steal 3 slots. F1, F2, F3 while F4 is a shadow return which can only be used 0.5 seconds after a steal. Shadow return should make steal viable for range builds without giving it the oppertunity to port it, hit and port out.
The slots can be filled with specific steal abilities, like you can do with your utility slots.
You can choose from Steal-Offense, Steal-Defense, Steal-Heal, Steal-Buff, Steal-CC … and so on. Since you can only slot 3 of them, you have to make a decisions about the steals you will have.
Now when you steal, you can use one of the F1, F2 or F3 keys and ALL others go on cooldown with it and the stolen item ends up in the slots, but you can choose for yourself if you want to steal something offensive, defensive or maybe a heal or buff. Depending on the target you steal from you get a class specific item.
For instance:
Warrior:
Steal-Offense = Axe
Steal-Defensive = Shield (block for 1-2 seconds)
Steal-Heal = Regeneration Banner
Steal-CC = Hammer for a short Knockdown or Stun
Steal-Buff = Some banner stuff
Elementarist:
Steal-Offense = Scepter which does one of these random spells.
Steal-Defensive = Spell which gives you a 1-2 sec mist form (without stunbreak) or magnetic aura
Steal-Heal = Spell which casts a healing rain.
Steal-CC = Ice Shard which chills your target
Steal-Buff = Spell which gives in a small area around its target Vigor or Mightstacks.
….
That way steal would feel abit more like steal and you can use it more tactical. When you know that you need some heals, you can steal them. When you want some defense, you can steal it. Thiefs would even have abit bigger supportrole as they can now steal also different buffs and even a heal in PvP and PvE.
I noticed that dodge all in all doesnt work 100%. It seems that it is sometimes out of sync and you get hit while you are in the dodge animation on your client. At least it happens to me from time to time that I get downed while I dodge.
But it also could be lag.
I have yet to see a video which shows that thiefs are OP against a decent player and not the mindless ones who dont pay attention to their enviroment or use their skills/traits proper.
Right now thief is a pubstomper. You can kill baddies pretty easily and sPvP is full of baddies.
Infiltrator strike will only remove one condition if you return with it and in the end you pay 5 init for it. Its mainly usefull for breaking stuns or removing just one conditions… but who the hell applies only bleed and not other conditions anyway?
@Dacromir
So does mine, but the 5% of all thiefs who run a build which tries to conter most things arent worth to mention when you look at the 95% of all thiefs who think they are awesome with their totally useless glasscannon instagib build.
As condition thief, apply enough dmg till he uses hide in shadows. After that use spider venom and a condition burst and you have basicly won. Most crit/power thiefs have no real way to remove conditions…. other builds have but seriously, how many thiefs dont use a crit/power/backstab build?
Try to use a stunbreaker on their first burst, if they use basilisk venom. After they kittened up they are dead meat.
Use alot of cripples. Melee Power/Crit thiefs are basicly useless when you toss them a cripple. They often have no means to remove it and besides steal they have no working gapcloser while crippled.
It can also be useful to predict their movement and do a blind cnd. I sometimes manage it to use it on a thief who tried to sneak up on me… but its rather risky as you need to use half your init for it.
If they stealth and you arent, shortbow and disable shot/clusterbomb could help to avoid damage. All in all disable shot is pretty nice to avoid melee dmg.
In the end everything comes down to the build of you and him. There are traits which work against the cripple, there are traits which work against conditions, but if you take them you suffer some damage.
It also depends on the weaponsets which you and he have.
Then dont stack 20 bleeds on them straight off. Necros are meant to control and nullify conditions pretty easily.
Problem with that “slipperyness” is, that it is totally useless in a group pvp enviroment. You reach your slipperyness often with stealth and that means that the whole enemy group will just have 4 targets to kill isntead of 5 and can more easily spread or focus their dmg.
Not to mention that most slippery builds dont pack such a big punch, nor do thiefs debuff the enemy heavily.
If there wont be a big revamp of the init system, then:
Give the weaponswap sigils and the weaponswap trait in the acrobatic like a internal cooldown, then remove the CD for swapping weapons for thiefs, or lower it to 1-2 seconds.
Init limits thiefs already with their abilities, dont see a reason why a swap cooldown is necessary there.
Or:
Give every weaponset their own initbar. Problem is that that it makes certain moves too spamable if you equipt 2 times the same weaponset.
Pistol Mainhand:
Make the autoattack a chain of 2 attacks. First one does big direct dmg, second one big condition dmg. (or the other way around). That way P/P can utilize the autoattack better while conditionbuilds still have condition dmg on their autoattack.
or
Change bodyshot totally to somekind of stance buff. Press it once and you load bullets which do more direct dmg for the auto attack and if you press it in that stance, you load bullets which do more bleed damage and less direct. The stance could also apply for pistol offhand so you have a ranged way on applying bleeds on P/P with less survivability (unload) while P/D offers much more stealth for applying bleeds on melee-range.
P/D
Shadow Strike has no place in that skillset as the whole damage and survivability of that build comes from cloak and dagger.
Either change it that you regenerate some init when you sucessfully execute it, or turn it into a gapcloser which P/D lacks alot.
Or
Let Shadow strike stealth you for 1-2 seconds after you have hit your target. But as its pretty easy to hit with it, it would make it too easy compared to CnD.
(edited by Panacea.4927)
I see the root of all evil at the Initsystem. You cant give thiefs alot of strong/usefull stuff like other classes have, as a thief can spam these skills.
At the same time you dont need 2-3 different damage abilities, as a thief can just spam one of them due to the init system. The only reason why you need different damage skills are different builds.
The Initsystem also breaks all reason to use weaponswaps as the init is shared between both of them. The only reason to switch is a change of your tactic.
In my opinion, the whole init system needs a revamp and maybe needs to be merged with a cooldownsystem. That way you can add more diversity into the weaponskills of a thief, add more weaponsets aswell and even make some of their abilities stronger as a semi-cooldown system runs in a much better controlled enviroment as a pure init system.
I thought about giving everythign a cooldown, but to use the skill while it is on cooldown you use init. For every init spend you lose some dmg.
That way you still can use init situationable and when it is necessary you can spam some skills fast, which leaves you in the end pretty weak… but you finished your job.
I dont see any other way to unkitten the thief with the current init system as you need to keep most skills rather weak due to the spamability of them.
I for one would love to give backstabs an additional role, instead of doing only one big burst every 40 secs.
Right now the backstab suffers that it is pretty easy avoidable if you have halfway decent enemies and no hard CC as thief.
Due to that most ppl use it for max dmg and utilize it with a hard CC so they can pull off a high burst.
I for one would also love a more agile/dodgy role for the thief in the fray, doing several backstabs which dont get too bursty while evading and doging most hits.
All in all I think that crit/power builds suffer alot from bad weaponchoices for thiefs.
D/D and backstab are the only real viable way as Pistolwhip with haste is not really reliable. Hence I dont like the thought to make even backstab condition focused. Yet I like it that Deathblossom is, it gives condition thiefs a reason to use D/D and not only shortbow or pistol.
I would also love a better synergy between conditions and direct dmg, so that thiefs are able to utilize both equally good, without having insane burst on backstab or sick condition dmg… kidna like a 50/50 split… but thats just me.
Wrong, a thief without might stacking on signet use and maybe even assassin signet wont do that much dmg with a backstabbuild. The backstabs will reach about 5-7k dmg depending on the armor and the combo itself leaves enough room open to use a stunbreaker/block/blindfield to nullify the whole burst and with that the whole class.
S/P haste was and still is a joke. Of course you can haste and try to burst someone down, but if you have half of a brain you use a stunbreak and get the kitten out of there. Hell without haste Pistolwhip isnt even viable in PvP at all, the stun at the start basicly screams to the target “oh, lets dodge after this stun”.
Most burst thiefs are very easy to conter and after one conter you basicly have won the fight.
Immobilize the thief when he wants to use hide in shadows to escape and hit the place where he used that skill.
Use conditions when he uses another source of stealth and you will see a downed thief around the next corner as he couldnt handle the conditions.
The instagib full glass cannon thief build is the most useless crap ever and besides stomping baddies you cant really do anything with it as a good player will just nullify your whole build/class with one key.
Bladie: No profession packs as much utility into their utilities as a thief does.
You know… the utility slots are for utility useage and it would be new for me that thiefs have more as 3 so they are able to put more into their slots as others.
When the skills you are using because of their extremely powerful mobility (without even consuming endurance, you can move around the battle field and outmaneuver anybody 1v1) also remove high numbers of the conditions that most hinder your performance, when you would probably be fine without it, there is something wrong.
And when you use your weaponskills with your init to move around the battle field, you wont have any init left for doing dmg. Besides that is the condition remove on the sword mainhand and costs you 5 init for 1 condition, fyi thiefs have unspecced only 12 init.
Your quickness is not balanced because the side effect puts very little risk factor into your playstyle. A ranger cannot heal; a warrior takes double damage. These are much greater risk factors than losing your endurance when you don’t even need it to escape a battle/evade most damage.
Since when do thiefs have a special quickness? As far as I know the quickness of a thief is the very same as for other classes and the downside to lose all your endurance, not regenerating it for 4 secs. Without endurance a thief wont be able to evade anything and with that 50% of their survivability is gone. And dont come me with using my weaponskills for dodging then, since you would have used most of your init already in the haste phase.
You seriously should get your kittentraight. Thiefs cant have everything.
If they want to do lots of burst dmg, they wont have any/much utilityskills left.
If they want a pimped and strong stealth, they will lose alot of dmg again.
If they want to have lots and lots of mobility, they will need to sacrfice damage once again. Either from the specc or for using init for dodges and not for damage.
Most complainments are build upon ignorance of the thief class. A thief cant have everything without sacrificing something, hence most burst/instagib thiefs have a weak stealth, close to no mobility and are dead as soon as you use your stunbreaker or nullify their burst in another way.
Thief is sadly a noobstomper, hence alot of noobs play the class to kill noobs and the killed noobs complain and/or reroll thief themself to stomp other noobs. As soon as they face someone who understand their own class, they wont be able to do much.
The only thing which need to be changed is to make the burst harder to apply so that noobs have it harder to kill other noobs while halfway decent player can still kill noobs.
Ahh, last refuge, the most annoying crap minor trait of a thief.
You want to use cloak and dagger and press the key but in the 0.5 sec of the execution time you recieve enough dmg to put you below 25%. Now you get stealthed from the trait and THEN cloak and dagger hits and you get revealed.
Something like that happens to me very often…
Just make it either possible that minor traits can be deactivated (which would help alot as there are other minor traits which kitten up stuff), or change it in another way.