Guild Wars 2

Hype.8032:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Hype.8032:

A d/d thief perma stealthing off of your clones is pretty cheesy but you’re playing with a PU mesmer (oh so cheesy) so honestly anything the thief does should be considered fair game.

How is this cheesy? It’s a legitimate tactic against mesmers when you use DD, and it also requires critical decision making since a lot of the time you may need to keep stealthing just to find the right opening to attack and not take a large amount of damage from phantasms or potential shatters

Any build that overly relies on stealth in wvw is cheesy imo. Using that same build in spvp is fine because you’ll lose the point using it. Getting ~80% stealth up time by timing cnd’s off clones is lame, not fun to play against, and it’s really easy to do (no critical decision making necessary).

See above explanation, there are decisions being made when one stealths off of a clone. People don’t just stealth off of mesmer clones to just be in stealth, also considering DD get’s its main power attack off of getting stealth. Guarantee if we could backstab without stealth, we’d be stealthing a bit less

Hype.8032:

A d/d thief perma stealthing off of your clones is pretty cheesy but you’re playing with a PU mesmer (oh so cheesy) so honestly anything the thief does should be considered fair game.

How is this cheesy? It’s a legitimate tactic against mesmers when you use DD, and it also requires critical decision making since a lot of the time you may need to keep stealthing just to find the right opening to attack and not take a large amount of damage from phantasms or potential shatters
That being said, OP, if you see a thief CnD off of your clones and they know what they are doing, don’t make a mistake, they aren’t confused. To add they will cloak off of clones to confuse you a lot (many a time I have involuntarily tricked a mesmer into thinking I thought the clone was the real one which led to them standing there laughing to themselves and getting backstabbed, so don’t fall for that). Another thing too is if you confuse the thief (like actually confuse, not the condition) and he for a second doesn’t know which is the real you, another common tactic is to once again stealth off of a clone, but this is different. When I see thieves, and myself, stealth off of a clone since we are confused, we are spending those four seconds in stealth to look for you and not worry about the phantoms or clones attacking us. If this happens then -usually- the thief won’t go after you right away, they’ll let stealth wear off since by the time the find the real you they’d be out of stealth anyway, and then they’ll immediately re-stealth to make their way to you. Not necessarily advice, but moreso words of caution.

Steal their mace headcrack, do damage, when they are low, use said mace to prevent them from doing anything, thats it generally in a nutshell, results may vary

An engineer complaining about thieves? A condi engi complaining about thieves? Why is an engineer complaining about thieves? You guys don’t even need to target us all you literally need to do is run in a circle while spamming grenades at your feet to- you know what I’m done with the thief forums for today. See you guys later *Takes cloak off of coat rack and walks out door into the snowstorm

No really, thank you. This is my first time posting a pseudo-feedback thread since launch because at this point in time I feel like I desperately need too. In regards to the recent flame whiplash, I have to say that while it was not in your best favor to put a cultural reskin on the gem store, at the same token I am upset that it is being taken away from everyone. I have a human, two actually and I am not at all upset that other races were getting a variant of the human cultural armor. In fact, a lot of people don’t care about others getting cultural armor. But then why don’t you see any of these people? The answer is simple: Those people don’t feel the need to post on the forums. From a statistical standpoint, if you are posting on the forums, you are posting a complaint because those are the people that feel as though their voices need to be heard. When in reality there is a ton more voices you don’t hear because they are at the very least content or understanding with the content you guys work so hard to bring out for us, for free. Am I saying I’ve been happy with each and every single thing you’ve done? Of course not, but that’s part of being human (no joke intentional there) but I have at least been understanding and respectful of the fact that you guys have given us this stuff for free and that you try so hard to please your fan base. The only problem is like I said, the only fan base you hear are the complaints which gives the illusion that they are the majority.

In closing, I feel like many more of us need to make more threads when we appreciate something you’ve done. Because as it stands many of us are showing you appreciation by not saying anything because we are at least content. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it has proven to be a less than satisfactory method to show gratitude. I have seen a couple threads about the new armor “scandal” in which people say that that was their first time posting since pre-launch or etc. Why was that their first time? Because they were unhappy about a change. So you can assume that with all of the other things you’ve done, those people accepted your updates and patches and remained silent about it. So here is another one of very few posts saying, thank you. I understand you cannot please everyone, that comes with anything. But you guys are giving it your all to please most of us. I thank you for the lack of a sub fee, I thank you for the free additional content, I thank you for the occasional armors you dish out making me want to work to get it. I am upset that the majority are hidden behind a negative and selective few.

Alright so let me be the devil’s advocate here. Yeah you “wasted” money on an armor set because Anet came out with the “same” armor just with effects on it. Alright so let’s say they came out with a brand new not re-skinned set of armor that you so LOVED over that T3 human cultural for the same price as the current flame armor now. Would you still complain that they made you waste your money then? After all how dare they bring out a new cool armor after you’ve spent so much time and effort acquiring the cultural armor. The armor is still exclusive anyway, if everyone bought the flaming armor, then the people with the plain, vanilla armor would still be unique.

Keeping this on topic with the OP’s thread title about this armor not being exclusive, I sorry but I have to say that the “exclusive” factor is far from a valid excuse to not like the armor that -used- to be there. What was so exclusive about an armor you literally saw every three seconds? Everyone practically already had it, so I didn’t see why anyone else shouldn’t have it. Same with the HCT3 Medium. I saw a sylvari today in the flamekissed armor and it was honestly one of the most gorgeous things I have ever seen. But now that’s finished. Value? I can see that argument, but uniqueness? That went out the window as soon as you picked a human female light armor class to begin with. Because most generally go toward the same armor sets whether it be whole or mix and match.

What i don’t get is, the main disappointment is that the armor is no longer “unique”. You mean the armor that I see every other light armor classed human female wearing? The one that more than half of the people in Lion’s Arch that are afk in front of the bank wearing?

All you adorable human thieves and your T3 human cultural, I’m here to represent the stealers from the Grove.

This thread honestly impresses me. We are known to supposedly attack anyone who enters this forum with extreme hate and prejudice when they show an ounce of ignorance toward the thief class. Yet this shows that if someone is honestly coming here with an open mind and the willingness to learn, people can and will help them. He could just have easily been told to re-roll another class simply because they are easier and won’t get majorly hurt come Dec 10th but no, he’s being given precise advice by people who have been there done that or been there doing that. We could easily discourage him from this class but no, we tell him that he most likely will fail but that failing is ultimately part of the success train. See, we really aren’t a bad sub-community.

Qaelyn.7612:

Thanks, that’s useful stuff.

I don’t really have the skills yet for thief in PvP, was using it mostly to test builds I hope to use in WvW, and I get the caveats.

The problem for me with Yishis’s build is that, bluntly, I’m not good enough to make it work. I don’t have the reflexes and coordination, and don’t know enough about other characters’ strengths and weaknesses yet. I might try going back to the condition build, though I will need to get some better gear to make that work.

Asking people about information on their class can help understand them better. About weapon swapping, the thing you have to realize is that initiative gives you a false sense of freedom. You’ll get so happy and excited that you can do what you want when you want, then find yourself out. Also, unless traited, you’ll get zero initiated back on weapon swapping while other classes get to shed CD’s. Every thief goes into combat with a weapon set and only swaps if the situation calls for it. Most thieves use the same weapon for the whole battle because of the intiative conundrum. For example:
I personally play DD with SB off-hand mostly. If I’m fighting a warrior and notice that he does a number on me on the melee front, that’s when I can switch to SB and take the battle from a ranged perspective. However if the warrior does some hits my thief can actually withstand, I’ll be staying with DD for the whole fight.

Knowing the other class is crucial as well. The prime example for anyone, not just thieves, is mesmer. Everyone remembers their first encounter with a mesmer…good times..good times. I used to be scared of them to the point of flat out avoiding them. But when you realize that the true player is the one who gets chaos armor, evades, moves erratically, moves backwards. Then The clones become a nuisance rather than a distraction. But for a thief, they can be used as a tool. Thieves can turn other class’
mechanics against them. Rangers, necromancers and yes mesmers give you more targets to Cloak and Dagger off of (engineers too with their turrets but it is ill-advised to take on an engi in his turret field)

As for Sword 2, you’ll use it to close a gap between you and a person and start attacking them. Only return when you feel as though you are in trouble or when you predict you enemy is going to deal a massive amount of damage shortly. But as many have said, it takes practice to acquire.

I think the take home thing I want to bring here is that at the current point in time, the thief, while fast, isn’t as fast as it used to be in terms of killing speed. We’ve been falsely advertised for awhile now, so don’t gear up for WvW to do those classic 3 hitter quitter builds. Most classes have a very reliable counter to being bursted so choose a build that does decent damage but offers survivability such as the popular x/30/30/x/x build. If you plan on getting in and killing quickly, it will rarely happen. Take for instance necromancers (here is another example of learning other classes), Necromancers are notorious for simply not dying. You can bet that if you blow all utilities and skills on a simply “opening attack” the necromancer will simply deathshroud, heal and fight you at near full capacity while you are there with nothing to fight with. The thief takes practice and effort to use. Not even being egotistic, it definitely is one of the hardest classes to become respected with, let alone master. Don’t be discouraged if you lose. Pick up your daggers, bow or sword whatever you use, dust it off, pull your hood back up. Figure out what went wrong: Did you evade too late, misuse a skill, or was the match up a destined failure to begin with? Some class builds simply cannot be beaten by a certain thief build of the same or less skill level player wise, plain and simple. You can’t win them all, but you can sure as hell try. If you have questions on a specific build then ask away. And if they laugh at you when you’re defeated, laugh back, assuming you did everything right, you should be in possession of at least their car keys.

The easiest way to handle the typical engineer you are describing is with the S/D evasion build. I have found this is the absolute quickest and most reliable way to kill these kitten guys. Fighting most engis as a thief clearly illustrates just how hard we have to work to get something done:

If you try my advice, you’ll be using sword 2 and 3 alot and evading alot to minimize damage. Even so much as stalling until your heal is up by evading constantly to re-engage. While literally all the engineer is doing for most of the fight is I kid you not running in a circle dropping bombs while you most likely aren’t even on the screen most of the time, yet they still are doing a number on you. SB works well too to stay at range, but most competitive engi condi builds, (if they have a Pistol/ Shield combo expect a hard fight) have that insane burst healing they can dish out which can and usually will nullify your SB damage. DD thieves 9/10 will lose against a well played condi engi since they can and will drop aoe everywhere, they don’t need to target you. As I said, sword is your best bet solely because of 2 and 3 however it is not advised to spam these. And come Dec 10th I’ll most likely just avoid engineers. It’s crazy how they can burst grenades at you dealing pretty nice damage from the grenades alone, and then follow up with condi damage.

Okay what did I just watch? A documentary on Warrior players?

Bumping this so i can contribute later :p

No one hear mentioned that DS #3 puts you in stealth making DS#1hit pretty kitten hard. This combo alone has rallied me too many times. 1111121113(1)111111
EDIT: Someone did mention it >_>

messiah.1908:

nice team video and gg for the ele who soak all the dmg from you
and still the mesmers are the best counter to thieves

This is very debatable. I think P/S engis and condi necros are best. Mesmers create more targets for a thief to stealth off of. Have I won every encounter with a mesmer? Of course not, I’m one of the few people you’ll see here that will admit they actually lose a fight. But I have beaten quite a lot of them and using clones usually means they are creating my playground.

As an avid thief user I have to say I am peeved. Royally peeved. The post game META, especially including but not limited to, warriors makes us appear as some kind of monolith. WE ARE NOT A MONOLITH. Thieves come in all shapes and sizes (give or take a couple human female T3 cultural short white haired variants). A whole slew of strategies implemented. You don’t see me complaining about the 3k with each swing axe warriors do followed by an eviscerate of at least 8k. They just see thief and automatically get the PRTSC button ready and the QQ on the forums.

omg he said “thieves”

sierras.6297:

Anyone know if he runs full zerk?

No valkyrie with travel runes and ruby/zerk stats everything else

Yashi.8703:

Thanks all for the kind feedback

No Yashi thank you for giving us something to reflect on.

Qaelyn.7612:

Yeah I was wondering about the quick escape. Though it still seems fairly uncommon and we do get not very many trait slots… then again, he seems to know his game a lot better than I do.

Trust me, run with this trait and see just how even the slightest falls you would normally take dmg from proc stealth for you. This will greatly increase stealth time.

Hype.8032:

In wvw it can happen pretty often and he uses it as another way to get a backstab in.

I always like his videos though… even on engi.

Dont forget to make a needed escape easier and less risky if it involves a cliff

When we use the pistol off hand 5, makes the blinding aoe field, we like to jump through it alot, you may think I am crazy but when you see them cast that, stand in it. They will heartseeker into you revealing themselves for 3 seconds. When you see them cast it, an alternative is to quickly Use Doom so that way you made them waste half of their initiative, staff 5 works well too. And save you DS, use it to eat backstab damage. Tainted shackles works well too now hope I helped- copy pastad from earlier thread months back that i wrote it :p

Well the yelp and moan when Im hurt and crippled suggests they do feel pain, as to what pain “feels” like to them though is unsure

Oghier.7419:

Wow.

I’ve been running a D/D spec for a bit in WvW, and I learned a fair bit from watching that video. I also learned that, relatively speaking, I am a terrible thief

Just this video? You should watch all of his DD, and maybe even DP but lets be honest that wont do much come later on, vids. I can say I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Yishis.

Selver.1307:

it’s tricky making a bullet traveling quickly bounce off of someone to hit someone else.

either that or we have wonderful powers…

http://alphas.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperkinetic

Thieves do have Deception Magic…..perhaps there is you answer, otherwise they are just kitten skillful

Man it has been a LONG time since we’ve seen one of these. Bless his dark soul <3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Lh8Oogl6Y gives me a tiny bit of hope

I don’t know if youre trolling or not but either way you made my day Coloxeus “If ya can’t beat em, join em”

They nerfed opportunist yet upped the base initiative regeneration in hopes that “more builds” could be made. They weren’t trying to buff us, just flush us out with more options. The one thing that made them fall short however was that once you take into account the pros and cons of initiative regen with the soon-to-be opportunist, you’ll see that our initiative will seem barely untouched. I think they were just trying to make it so that there will actually be some thief builds that don’t focus in the Critical tree. They essentially just gave us more flexibility but tried to throw the word "buff: into the equation which isn’t what it is, more like a spread. Which means that the upcoming update for us is primarily nerfs again :/

ramorambo.6701:

I wonder what i will do with all that +0.33% init regen without any decent build to use lol.

Go into WvW and be the silent and dark protector who watches over battles from a distance. No need to fight, just relay information and be a good little thief. You may be a thief, but it’s not the mask, but what you do that defines you.

Can’t due to current time constraints so I’ll bump this

Renny.6571:

swinsk.6410:

Almost all wvw builds just got huge nerf with infusion of shadow tho…

Except base initiative regen was brought up 33%. It’s already been maths’d that it’s pretty much a great buff.. except for the cheese d/p permastealth guys.

You are forgetting Opportunist changes. Factor that in and you’ll see from a DD standpoint that not much is being changed at all, could be slightly better could be worse in terms of probability now that the trait is on a long CD, yes 5 seconds is long considering we can naturally dish out crits like no ones business.

Zanshin.5379:

What made it fun? That you owned every other class in 1 vs 1?

I feel the need to say that this rhymed and I liked the way it sounded coming off of my tongue, that is all.

Excalibur.9748:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Excalibur.9748:

I’m not sure how Refuge would get you killed. When I’ve used it in the past I’ve gotten away the majority of the time without much trouble.

It’s because the thief HAS to stay in the house for 4 seconds, so everyone and their mom just lays their AoE right on top of it and a dead thief pops out shortly after.

1. sacrifice HiS and Blind Powder
2. Drop SR away from location
3. watch zerg take dump in SR while you SS away safely
4. ???
5.Profit

lol go ahead and sacrifice 3 skills just to troll…

fixed*

Excalibur.9748:

I’m not sure how Refuge would get you killed. When I’ve used it in the past I’ve gotten away the majority of the time without much trouble.

It’s because the thief HAS to stay in the house for 4 seconds, so everyone and their mom just lays their AoE right on top of it and a dead thief pops out shortly after.

1. sacrifice HiS and Blind Powder
2. Drop SR away from location
3. watch zerg take dump in SR while you SS away safely
4. ???
5.Profit

No Zacchary, youll never leave us, you’ll stay here….forever ._.

Jrunyon.3012:

RedSpectrum.1975:

And how is DD cheese but not DP? DP can stealth, whenever it wants, gap close, interrupt, blind.

Never did I say d/p wasn’t cheese as well. I welcome the fall of that particular perma-stealth playstyle.

This thread is about s/x and the nerfs that seem to always be directed at it.

I must have missed the s/x part, but I did catch only s/p which made it appear like you only cared for your own specific build. Irregardless, I too welcome the loss of perma stealth but am worried about what else may be acquired.

I don’t mind a DD rebirth. I actually liked its feel more and it felt more rewarding to me to win with that set. Esp when fighting very tanky classes. And how is DD cheese but not DP? DP can stealth, whenever it wants, gap close, interrupt, blind. All DD can do is gap close, stealth off of targets, cripple, and evade while giving bleeding, which is rarely used for a stealth build, as is dancing dagger so that makes it 3 of the 5 that are used, so DD belittles itself while DP does all DD can and more.

Ultimately it comes down to personal preference. You may not find them visually or even dare I say, sexually attractive as someone else might. They aren’t meant to be humans, but on that note they aren’t meant to be ugly, they are supposed to be attractive in their own little way. That being said I tried really hard to make her look like a think twicer:

Alright I’m not even going to get technical since I agree with Soilder although on a less offensive term: DD without the blind on stealth is much easier to fight than a DP. And just because they are invisible doesnt mean you cant hurt them! And since you are fully aware that when you turn your back, they backstab you, this should tell you they are going for your back. Can you tell exactly where they are? No, Can you have a very good idea of where they are? Absolutely.

Burnfall.9573:

Neoheart.2750:

Think outside the zerg OP. Watch a good small encounter or gvg video and you will find that more often than not the coordination over both reviving and stomping can be a huge decider.

Would you rather us thieves have stability or stealth stomps in the grand scale of things? I’m willing to bet this is QQ from someone who hasn’t played much of thief.

Any thief will tell you outside of stealth or black powder it’s pretty hard and pretty stupid to attempt s stomp in PvP OR wvw

i am not only making a case against thief’s’ stealth class, but to all stealth classes.

…..so thief mainly? I dont see much mesmers running around with torches. And guards can still interrupt a stealth stomp with their interrupt and so can rangers, and eles, and mesmers, and thieves. In that same regard, what thieves cant stomp safely via stealth we can do with shadow steps. If a down a guardian, ele, thief, or mesmer i dont even need to stealth first I can shadow step stomp so nerf that too. But do keep invincibility stomping or stability stomping, you know, the two where you can’t do anything to knock the person off.

I personally think venoms should be more F key options for us Anet did say in their descriptions that we utilize venom but let’s face it, the only poison most of us use in Lotus Strike. But giving us venoms and incorporating them to our F keys I think would be a nice step toward thief revolution

Even though everyone else has said it, D/D didn’t get nerfed, you were never able to stack stealth with it legitimately like D/P, if anything it got buffed…true DD thieves UNITE

Zero Day.2594:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Zero Day.2594:

Hidden killer should be reduced from 100% to 25%.

This would make it pointless. If thats the case Id just go with executioner since my normal crit chance is higher than that.

Don’t think you read my full post and the builds that theses changes would open up.

Hm? Oh I apologize

Oh, I know…
They want constructive feedback… I think I will add some for the Thief.

Back-stab builds will still be overpowered, let’s reduce the side-strike trait to 2% chance. Reduce a bit of damage on Back-Stab it self. Hidden killer should be reduced from 100% to 25%.
Sneak-attack on pistol, right now stacks a bit too many bleeds. The number of times shot using that skill should be reduced from 5 to 2. The normal attack on the pistol should no longer apply a bleed effect
Black powder should be as suggested, powder, only blinding one enemy without an AoE effect.
Executioner should be decreased from 20% to 10%.
Backfighting increase damage from 50% to 150%, thieves generally fight when they’re downed, so it’s a good idea to provide a buff and expand build options.

Did I forget any other changes the thieves should get? Gonna post it as a suggestion in that post…
Think these would be some solid changes… Would greatly open up thief builds (for instance, re-rolling to warrior build, or re-rolling to guardian build).

This would be pointless, I’d just go to my guard or necro, hell maybe even join those thieves that rerolled engi
EDIT: How the hell is hell not kittened? kitten , gee that is though and just as if not more tame a word -_-

Zacchary.6183:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Ahem Im going to leave my idea here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Scythes-for-thieves-D/first#post3072708

fixed*

NO bad Zacchary!

Ahem Im going to leave my idea here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Scythes-for-thieves-D/first#post3072708

Zero Day.2594:

Hidden killer should be reduced from 100% to 25%.

This would make it pointless. If thats the case Id just go with executioner since my normal crit chance is higher than that.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The point with Immobilize is that even if they stealth, you still know where they are and can keep stabbing them.

You would need to immobilize them while in stealth somehow, due to the condi meta, most of us run cleanse on stealth, so when we enter stealth we cure any condition, and an additional after 3 seconds. So im not sure immobilizing is going to be the real bane here, especially since he is a dagger necro, he still needs to walk up to the thief after which they would most likely cloak and dagger to :cleanse the immobilize, set up for a huge crit and gain a bit of health back.
If they run D/P then he doesn’t even need to get close they’ll cleanse right then and there. I personally think Well of darkness sets you up in safe territory to fight. Or a minion mancer but OP rolls dagger main hand so that wont cut it.

Zacchary.6183:

Me being OP with my sword.

You all do not know thief swag.

What’s the matter Zacchary, afraid of a lil ice wurm? I only see hits on you from that thing.

MrForz.1953:

There are enough shadow demon ninja assassin lords roaming around the game.

This made me lol actually my thief isnt a shadow demon phantom assassin ninja dark overlord cipher