Sup mates, PPRR coming at ya
I just wanna take a little time to explain how imo the power thief meta is changing (heavily based on my D/P roaming spec)
First of all let’s start by saying Burst damage, the thief speciality has been utterly destroyed, there is still some builds out there who do okay with heavy speccing into Crt dmg for one big hit but in general D/P and D/D burst is dead.
So how is this shifting the meta? i found out this is leading us to a more sustained dps playstyle, you can even see how anet is working towards it with invigorating prec, RoS, etc but they are nowhere enough to make thief sustained damage a viable option.
Before patch i went full power/crt and i left out prec at a 40% roughly because my main damage source was backstap and thanks to hidden killer i didnt care much about prec but after patch i found myself not doing any damage at all compared to how good i was performing before, crits that should be 8k became 5k and so on.
It was obvious i had to do something to get my dmg pressure back and the solution was ditching some power for prec, changing stones for oil and rune of force for Accuracy took me to 56% crt chance, speced into fury, changed HK for Exe and I got myself a nice Valk/cav set 4/2 and got runes of the wurm, which imo have absolutly the best synergy with valk stats now i can say my overall damage is on “par”(still nerfed) to what it was before patch.
But still, i feel like im nowhere near as great as i was before patch and i say If anet want this kind of meta then tweak and add feautures to our current class that improves it to be on par to what other classes can have.
Here is my list:
Traits:
Invigoration Precision:
- This trait is utterly bad, there is absolutly no reason to pick this over Executioner (or even HK). 5% heal is pathethic, 500 health recovery on a 10k backstap which you will never see anyway because of the dmg nerf.
Changes:
- You are healed for a percentage critical strike damage dealt. Current rate is 5%.
- You lifesteal a percentage of damage dealt. Current rate is 10%.
That gives a overall 10% damage modifier and some more decent sustain that would open a lot of options for some builds.
Last refuge:
Tbh altough i admit is not as harsh on D/P users this trait is super toxic for D/D users. There have been a lot of posts and ideas about changes that could solve this but anet seems to ignore the cries for help
Venoms:
Give us a stunbeaker venom, something like the mesmer mantra, a venom that awakens us when we are disabled up to 2 times, That would make venom shares alot more viable and rewarding to play.
Ooze Venom (60s): When applied will break the two next stuns used on the target.
Elites:
Okay so, elites. Dagger storm has its function and certains scenarios which is what an elite should, Basilisk Venom is overall great but underwhelming in some scenarios and now that burst is nerfed it is not as good (still best in slot imo, free stun lol), Thieves guild is just cheesy and bad overall.
Let’s try to paint an idea of a new elite, based arround sustain and keeping the thieves alive in scenarios where he is in a bad position atm A.K.A WvW.
In Gw1 we had this little thing called Critical defenses which was an utility that did the following:
- For 4…9…10 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block. Critical Defenses refreshes every time you land a critical hit.
Recreating this into Gw2 would be a step into the right direction imo , of course tweaking it into gw2 meta but keeping the core blocks which now, thieves for some reason lack.
Maybe something arround the lines of:
Critical defenses (instant cast)(90s):
- For 5-7 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block. Critical Defenses refreshes every time you land a critical hit.
That would give us some viability into the current wvw melee train stacking meta (as we are terrible at bursting ranged after patch anyway) and give some nice options for pve.
I am sure i’m forgetting something, but whatever! Feel free to share your opinion and how did you adapt to the swifting meta!
Cheers!
