Guild Wars 2

Well finaly, someone with right idea . I hate how everyones hating thief for broken mechanic, on which our class is based, and asks for damage nerfs, Even if you nerf damage, thief cna stealth so often he wouldnt be rendered, till you are dead anyways.

Anxiety.2054:

Stin.9781:

in WvW rendering is realy bad, it works pretty ok in Spvp and Tpvp, however in WvW its not only thiefs rendering bad, all who can use invis render slow. Thief is certainly OP in WvW, where rendering is slowest in all game. though thats not class but game issue.

So you’re saying that my invis would cause the same issues for others? Guess I’ll do a lot of blade frenzies immediately after an invis “wears off.”

Berserker from greatsword+push and shatter is instant kill of any thief you pull that off. Yes if you are invis, and i dont know where you are, you could kill me in 4 button push. So could warrior if hes not rendered and pull off 100 blades, so could engineer with wrench/bomb kit… i dont get ur point. Thief is rendered worse since of invisibility, which is our class mechanic.

in WvW rendering is realy bad, it works pretty ok in Spvp and Tpvp, however in WvW its not only thiefs rendering bad, all who can use invis render slow. Thief is certainly OP in WvW, where rendering is slowest in all game. though thats not class but game issue.

Ianervan.3415:

“The diffrence between full berserk ele and thief is only that, i got chance to heal up and run from ele”

A difference between life and death. My point exactly. 27 second “very dangerous dmg”.. Yeah, you know, I wouldn’t have a problem if Steal+Backstab etc hits for 20k dmg over 27sec. I would laugh at it.

i said 9/12k=75% of my hp + 8100 hp in next 27 seconds. And i also said, once i can heal as good as you and tank as good as you, and our damage is similar whats the bloody diffrence between classes then, if all classes can do same. Anet said all classes can do all things damage/support/control, however not to same extent. If you dont threat dots as damage i dont know what to say.

Ianervan.3415:

This is not L2P issue.

Do you think a full berserker thief will die in 1,5sec to full berserker non-thief profession? No, it won’t. Nowhere close that time.

A full berserk elementalist hit me 9k dragon tooth+ with combo left me 27 second burn which ticked 300+ damage. Lets count 9k+27x300=17k damage. I got 13k hp in WvW. The diffrence between full berserk ele and thief is only that, i got chance to heal up and run from ele, If ele let me burst him fully he dont have a chance to heal, but once again, ele outperform me on bunker and support, so there is no point why should it be equal on dps side truth be told.

Revelstoke.8924:

I’m trying to figure this out. To my knowledge, no other class has a pass run speed bonus. Most get swiftness, obviously, but not a passive/constant.

Why am I consistently unable to ‘catch’ people running away in sPVP while running this signet? Im running the signet AND swiftness on evade and I still can’t catch up?

I feel like greased lightning out of combat…the second someone offers me their back and I go for it its like they’re always JUST out of reach and I have to HS just to close the gap…what gives?

Signet and swiftness does not stack, the bigest movespeed bonus is applied, meaning if you got swiftness+signet its same as just swiftness. So necro with swiftness=you with swiftness+ signet. All that is to it

Redscope.6215:

Gonna be locked soon due to thief qq and trolling.

Suffice to say, Steal seems to do tons of damage….eh?

You dont think mesmers shatters deals tons of damage too ? or warriors evisecerate/killshot?
As items stolen atm are 80% useless. Its worth mostly for damage atm.

Deandur what i meant is 3500 attack, which im sure you understood.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Stin.9781:

First of all shadow shot in full glass hass hight damage around 1.3 of hearseeker. and close to 2.5x autoattack with blind in it. To another glass cannon as i allready tried deals ~5k damage and blinds him. With low initiative cost you can use it 2 times to save up some some later for smoke cloud and hearseeker>blackstab combo. It can dish out around 20-25k dps using 17 innitiative, i dare you to dish out that ammount of damage with p/p using less initiative, so fast. Not using utilitys. I think D/p is in front of P/p yet behind all others.

If you manage to do 5k with Shadow Shot, then Unload would actually do 7k-8k on the same target.

Problem with D/P is that it is melee glass cannon with the worst defence, blind. Atleast backstab has stealth which is quite good and D/D condition (isn’t really glass cannon but still) has evade.

Blind in GW2 is weak, very weak. Auto attacks clear it with ease, if blind was “duration” instead of next attack then it would be interesting.

P/P has the advantage of ranged, which becomes a lot more important in group fights where you can stay in the back and do damage without risking to go in melee range.

That is all about sPvP.

In dungeons, D/P would be good if most enemies didn’t have that buff that makes Blind less effective, but areanet had to do it or else two Thieves would just blind lock bosses lol. A D/P thief would experience a lot more random instant 1 shots than a P/P thief, in fact if the P/P knows whit is going on he will never be random 1 shotted because he will have a longer window to respond to what the enemy does (ranged travel of the attack or w.e) while a Melee thief won’t have that luxary.

The first part is true, however shadow shot is instant, and blinds, making it more bursty than p/p, which at best is mediocre sustained dps. Wont argue futher, cuz no matter D/p or p/p i find them both unplayable in tourneys so w/e

First of all shadow shot in full glass hass hight damage around 1.3 of hearseeker. and close to 2.5x autoattack with blind in it. To another glass cannon as i allready tried deals ~5k damage and blinds him. With low initiative cost you can use it 2 times to save up some some later for smoke cloud and hearseeker>blackstab combo. It can dish out around 20-25k dps using 17 innitiative, i dare you to dish out that ammount of damage with p/p using less initiative, so fast. Not using utilitys. I think D/p is in front of P/p yet behind all others.

Why would you smoke cloud+ hearseeker at 100%, you just tp with #3 few basic attacks till around 50% then smoke cloud hearseeker and backstab, which finishes off, though gotta agree its not match for D/D since 2 most viable builds are on it. Though cant agree p/p is better … i find that most useless at all.

@ Wraithforge: The idea of yours isnt good, since, it fixes nuthing at all, and ruins certain styles of gameplay,(ones that focus on hight hits), and no fixing can be done in WvW unless they remove orbs+ using food in there. Making such changes as you mentioned ruins certain skills of certain classes. etc- Mesmers power/crit builds on phantasm who now cant hit past 25% hp Thiefs backstab, warriors evisecerate/killshot.

In WvW if i use 4 signets(signet of malice too) pop them all at once steal 2 hearsekeri can kill in 3 hits ANY glass cannon, however i just blew my heal all 3 utilitys too. Hearseeker damage at hight health scales well, however problem is you are in WvW, where i have orbs/food and i can spec more into dps then Spvp. I told earlier i can have 3500 power not far from 60% crit chnce. i get 21 stack of might thats 3500+735 attack= lets call it 4250 attack power. Which makes my heartseeker hit pretty much close to 4k-5k on another glass cannon with 100% hp. Mind that another glass cannon is ranger who should have 20k hp at least, in my opinion downing him is next to imposible in 2 hits. 3 hits + steal is minimum

God you are silly you know that TheRamosOnline. Full glass spec in WvW i got 12k hp. another full glass thief can hit 6k with cluster bomb aoe size of shadow refuge. 2 hits im dead. I wont tell of eles dragon tooth wth full glass that can hit 9k+ in combo burn which gets me dead. But hell, why look for suggestion to how win, better qq.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

If the fall damage wasn’t 10% of our health, I’d agree that it would have given the thief an advantage.
If it was more than 1 thief, the second one must have vanished by the time the render engine decided now would be a good time to show me the face of the Asura who so eagerly turned my Sylvari into Salad.

1 thief cannot down 4 ppl unless you are like sheep, getting lost over someone invisible. random attack in front of yourself, aoe under yourself or something. Ive seeh much worse scenarios with 3-4 mesmers pushing ppl of ledges in the puzzle and they did it for couple of hours. Btw use food in WvW helps a lot along with 1-2 orbs i can have 3500 attack and close to 60% crit rate.

Recently tested Hearseeker on heavy target golem. The hearseeker above 50% target did 1000-2200 damage(2200 criting when i had 50% critical chance) Average hit of hearseeker taking in criticals was around 1500 damage. taking in mind i could use 6 heartseekers in a row. Its enough to down 1 golem, however takes more time to take down first 50% then just autoattacking with basic attack. Which is tottaly inefficient. C&D and backstab even up front works 2-3 times better then hearseeker. Btw tested this with my friend too, speced as glass cannon 25/30/0/0/15 used hearseeker till i ran out of innitiative. Managed to take off 60-80% of his tottal hp w/o him healing or doing anything. This tactic is is kitten not even half effective as autoattack. unless you are pure glass cannon. Tried Hs on light golem too, dealth 1200-2650 or so damage. It is possible to down anothe full glass cannon with heartseeker if he dont dodge/heal/use any defence or chill/criple on me. The hightest hearseeker i ever got was 7250 when target was less then 25% hp and i had used assasins signet +15 stacks of might, which blows all 3 utility.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Our paths cross once again old friend

The Thief was doomed to this playstyle when they implemented global inititave for both weapon sets, you and I complained about a lot of valid stuff but this is the vision arenanet has for the Thief.

Exactly thief does not propagate weapeon swaping. Whats the point to swap weapeons in combat if you still cant use any skill while you swaped to other weapeon. Lets say you blew all your initiative on Shortbow, cluster bomb aoe, you can only basic attack. Swaping weapeon will still let you only basic attack.

A serious lackluster for thiefs class. Only exeption is unicorn thief with +3 innitiative on weapeon swap.

Redscope.6215:

Knyx.5926:

@Redscope They arent showing much intelligence in regards to well-placed and data intensive based balance changes.

Do you have their data and decision-making process on-hand or are you just mad at the:

Knyx.5926:

See heartseeker nerf

Knyx.5926:

See Pistol whip nerf

I’m not claiming that they’re making all 100% correct decisions, but they’re obviously trying their best since they’ve been claiming this game is skill-based enough to play competitively.

Oh, and I still see a healthy number of thieves around. If you’ve read the forums without playing the game, you’d think they were broken, underpowerd, and extinct. In almost all games that have forums like this, that kind of return usually comes from bad players and ones that know they’re playing an OP class.

Well, ofcourse you see a lot of thiefs… you know what ? When i came to Gw2 i left other game and some 10-15 ppl left game too, guess what. 7 of us ware going to roll thiefs w/o knowing how this class is played 7! 7/15 is half kittenit, 4 rolled mesmers 4 others something else.
Dont you understand Anet showd thief as awsome class so many many ppl rolled it.

I cannot agree AS+BS is neccesary in Khylo i as daze thief, i can tottaly nulify bunker guardian if i manage to steal+ land 1 hit out of stealt ,, it adds up to 8 second daze + scorpion wire and you just kitten their defender if he tries to defend or is forced to leave point, which is still a win. However ive seen Engis outperform that with insane knockback skills.

Witough haste pistol whip isnt playable, as long as any player is smart enought to dodge after 0.5 pass eating only 30% of your damage.=1 sword basic attack that crited. Is it more clear to you now ? W/O haste in pvp skill is beh, nuthing else… so boost the skill damage/stun duration or add slowed moving to Pwhip etc u can move but at speed of cripled person or something like that as atm , im more likely to hit 2 basic attacks in a row then 30+% of pwhip in competative pvp. Thats clear now ?

Okamakiri.8746:

Stin.9781:

If quickness needs to be removed tell me, how many builds are gonna be gone from viable pvp ?

Any build (of any class) that relies on Quickness is a noob spec. A stat that doubles your DPS is overpowered no matter how you try to justify it. Cooldowns that create such burst remove any strategy that comes into play with prolonged combat. In a game that prides itself on balance and skill based PVP, it’s laughable that they event when live with abilities that allow people to get instagibbed. I don’t want to see any class nerfed (especially in PVE) because of PVPers using unbalanced cooldowns. If there is a problem, nerf the cooldowns, not core class abilities. Without cooldowns, BS hits hard but nothing unbalanced. Its damage is inversely proportional to the survivability of the thief using it.

So give me a weapeon set, which can do better or to same level as Backstab w/o quickness not neccesary Dps but it has to be Tpvp viable. No other weapeon has one exept unicorn baller.

Vrak.2193:

I have not read any of the responses in this thread, but just to chime in: Backstab needs to be nerfed (and it likely will be.)

My Warrior has close to 2.1k toughness and 27k hp. Backstab thieves that specc glass cannon can instantly teleport onto him from 1,200 range (right into an auto-stealth) and proceed to crit him for half of his hp in one single attack. As this happens my Warrior is also instantly “turned to stone” (stunned) and then rooted; this all happens within the space of about 2-3 seconds and is not even remotely RNG reliant. This is unbalanced, simple as that.

Of course you could counter argue by saying that the Thief is glass cannon, and thus you can kill him just as fast, but we all know that this is simply not true; a pure glass cannon thief is perfectly capable of surviving on the battlefield for an extended period of time.

How? Stealths, stun-breaks, teleports, and to a lesser extend other forms of mobility such as swiftness; a Thief can linger on the outskirts of any battle and when the opportunity presents itself they can teleport in and 1-shot any squishy. If their target happens to be a tanky profession/build (much like my Warrior) they will still crit for approximately half their victims health.

But what happens next? Well, there are a different options available to the Thief, none of which include being killed by the enemy (unless they are incredibly unlucky or have vital abilities on cooldown. The Thief can for example re-stealth and disengage, linger again and wait for another opportunity, or they could simply re-stealth and burst the next viable target. But what’s that, your stealth did not allow you to make a clean exit? Well try popping your other stealth, and if this fails you could always use your 1,200 range double-stun-breaking-double-teleport, or simply switch out to your shortbow and use that to teleport.

Now, I am using absolutely no hyperbole; everything here is simple fact. Yes it is true that things will not always go in the Thieves favour, however on a far more consistent basis it will, and the end result is basically a class who can lock a target in place (depending on stability/CC breakers of course,) and crit them (100% guaranteed) for anything from about half of their health to all of their health. Then the Thief can happily evade retaliation until the next viable opportunity presents itself.

This is very clearly imbalanced, however I welcome any other counter arguments. Maybe there is something I am missing?

Regardless, needs to be changed.

And when phantasm mesmer shatter them after innitiatial hit for like 10k+ on non glass cannon doest get physical with you , still got just 1 utility used and elite skill available is ok ? Backstab sure does more but it also give in more elite skill+melee range + if he root you its 2 utiity slots not 1. means .. he has 1 utility left failed to get a kill.

if you steal daze and manage to pull off C&D with attack from behind to daze up to 4 seconds, and manage to pull it off 2 times you can tottaly disable him for 7 seconds, After that, if you dont have it dead or he dont let u to pull of third C&D and daze(only lame ones would allow that) you got no counter to guardian, He shied up in bubble and heal to full waiting for his backup to arrive.

You do understand quickness is used for quick damage dealing conditions stacking or DEBUFFING. Which i as playing bloody rare supportish mediocre dps thief will lose withouth haste. I even use Mesmer runes for +33% daze on swords stealth attack 2.66 daze and 1.33 second daze on steal etc 4 seconds daze= you and your friend can kitten the pesky guardian/ele who is disabled with no boons(what my haste just let me remove) to defend himself, hes instagibed by 2 of us. Ok nerf Quickness will be only dagger MH build viable

Tulisin.6945:

Stin.9781:

Tulisin.6945:

Stin.9781:

You do understand thiefs sword/X is not pvp viable then? since in both builds w/o quickness most powerfull skill is… quess what basic attack ! Oh ye i feel like spaming basic attack to kill someone.

Newsflash: Not all thief weapon sets follow (or should follow) a standardized template. There’s nothing wrong with the basic attack combo being the best option for most attacks. Weapon sets with more favorable standard attacks lend themselves to more initiative-efficient setups that hang just under maximum initiative. These conditions lend themselves to a more reactive playstyle than the proactive one that, say, d/d benefits from.

Besides, S/D has dancing dagger for heavy burst damage in the same situations where S/D is heavily favorable (target rich environments).

Yes part is true, But it is not viable as a roamer thief to have low damage weapeon. I dont spec as dps even i spec as rly fast support with boon removal plus daze, with slow animation of Flanking strike no idiots gonna get hit by it. Trow dagger is ok, but this whole weapeon set as daze/de-boon loses all its value. I dare you to land 2-3x Flanking strikes in a row w/o haste.

Flanking Strike is alright for evade and major boon removal (getting rid of swiftness, >520might stacks, etc.), but the fact that you would even try to spam it makes it obvious that you’re trying to fit S/D into the same template as other weapon sets where the dual skill is meant to be repeatedly used for burst.

That said, Flanking Strike is weak and could use a rework, but I’d rather not see it become a peer to other dual skills for spammable damage.

WHAT BURST? I just said i use it to remove boons, i use steal to rip away 2 boons and signet to take away boon 60% chance on critical. If i cant use flanking strike fast(just first hit) i cannot take away all boons . But why the fak to use S/D then why not just D/D and backstab which if quickness is removed will take 50+% of players due to others builds non-viable endgame pvp,

Tulisin.6945:

Stin.9781:

You do understand thiefs sword/X is not pvp viable then? since in both builds w/o quickness most powerfull skill is… quess what basic attack ! Oh ye i feel like spaming basic attack to kill someone.

Newsflash: Not all thief weapon sets follow (or should follow) a standardized template. There’s nothing wrong with the basic attack combo being the best option for most attacks. Weapon sets with more favorable standard attacks lend themselves to more initiative-efficient setups that hang just under maximum initiative. These conditions lend themselves to a more reactive playstyle than the proactive one that, say, d/d benefits from.

Besides, S/D has dancing dagger for heavy burst damage in the same situations where S/D is heavily favorable (target rich environments).

Yes part is true, But it is not viable as a roamer thief to have low damage weapeon. I dont spec as dps even i spec as rly fast support with boon removal plus daze, with slow animation of Flanking strike no idiots gonna get hit by it. Trow dagger is ok, but this whole weapeon set as daze/de-boon loses all its value. I dare you to land 2-3x Flanking strikes in a row w/o haste. In haste i manage to hit like 5x and with steal remove 2x more boons. kitten retaliation guardians and other boon dependant builds heavily. no way im gonna ht it on ele running around me like crazy w/o haste more then 1 time after initial snare. im forced to take venoms.

You do understand thiefs sword/X is not pvp viable then? since in both builds w/o quickness most powerfull skill is… quess what basic attack ! Oh ye i feel like spaming basic attack to kill someone.
Truth is before removing haste they need to fix certain builds for certain weapeons, as only haste makes those weapeons viable in spvp.

Minx.7521:

our group runs around with a guardian. i use him as meat-shield o.O had no idea guardians can actually do decent damage

They can but Its more likely warrior pull off HB succesfully then not evading guardians burst, cuz its kinda slow even if you are initiatily pulled you can always avoid 50% of dmg.

Well taking in mind that i with full physical burst can unload up to well 3-4k on glass cannon 3 times if with quickness and steal its around 17-18k combo on another glass cannon, but its weakness is no weapeon integrated runaway mechanism, Well blackpower could do the job but if you are spaming unloads you wont have initiative for that + easier to dodge and doesnt require stunbreaker as other viable builds do. It may not tottaly be awfull but its, not worth the exchange. Hell even spaming dagger trow between 2 targets does more damage then unload.

If quickness needs to be removed tell me, how many builds are gonna be gone from viable pvp ? HB gone PW gone S/D boon removal with haste and dazes build gone too… Unload sux even quickness dont help. Whats left ? all spec into backstab ? for quickness removal all damage on our skills needs to be improved, all i can say. Like none of sword builds are viable w/o quickness not minding that its autoattack is most damaging for thiefs … which says how weak it is.

Minx.7521:

pistol/dagger don’t have unload o.o also it’s 900 range

I do not aprove so easily dodgable mediorce to low damage skill, compared to what thief got in other sets.

Look 1 person above said, thief weapeons arent based on combos like other weapeons. Rly simple look. Lets say Sword and dagger that i use. Basic attack mediocre damage can get hight with haste, but packs daze out of invis. 2nd attack is gap closer. third attack is good dmg boon removal, 4th is ranged criple 5th is invisibility. WTF do u expect me to use on u ? criple ? spam invis ? infinite gap close ? ofc i use only 1 or 3 for dps if u dont need utility as all other skills got leser damage. Look at Dagger/pistol 1=basic attack 2 leap finisher 3 gap closer 4 low damage interrupt with daze 5 is blind field. You imagine me spaming using wha to take away your hp ? you use 3 to near 1 to take u to 50% or 5 and 2 to go invis then backstab and then 2=HS as finisher as it does best damage. or maybe weapeon swap if its hard to keep up with you. The System promotes skill spam, and nerfing only dps skills in weapeons ruins the whole weapeon set. Look at Pistol whip now, it does less damage then basic attack. Bloody broken weapeon. Flame more, till thiefs unplayable

Im not a fan of guardian PvE so i wouldnt know about PvE change however i was happy with 5 seconds shorter leap. Lost some damage for some Utility which i find a good thing.
Maybe, it was much better before as i did not play it for a long time, before the nerf, however its still a very viable weapeon.

The Adines idea is … not so good, engineers allready got ton of knockbacks im against any more of them. The class with most knockbacks getting 1 more dont sound good. Thiefs got bow with imobilize and poison allready, If they made crosbow it has to be non condition damage based weapeon with hight damage as bow got all utiity you need pistol main hand has conditions. All i can say. Warriors with stun and pull on 1 weapeon are kitten too.

I could agree partly on some things but …. i hate the names of class and skills… its like

-What class your playing?
-Oh the new one Sword of Stars…

It sounds childish at least… not gonna make futher comments

Well yes, but there is no skill in Sword and dagger setup allready. Its most powerfull attack is basic attack combo allready

My suggestion would be Flanking strike, Strike with dagger from up front, and spin 180% around the target, while hiting him with few minor strikes, and stabing in the back with sword. This would be whirl finisher. The damage would be the same exept maybe 3 hits of 1/6 value of the hit with sword during the spin, and same starting and finishing damage. So it would be around 33% damage incrase from whole skill or so if you manage to land last hit which is so slow and clunky.

No class can use skill in slot 3 instantly after beeing downed. You should have read wikipedia or something and not create this useless question in non fitting forum place.

Minx.7521:

I think it’s funny people place so much EMPHASIS on backstab. I’ve had thieves use backstab on ME (and I’m the glassiest of cannons ^.^). You just have to react faster. Learn to hotkey the dodge. Get hit, DODGE, HEAL.

Stealth only lasts 4 seconds for me. I use it to mainly change my POSITION in a battle. And seriously I think engineers need to be buffed up, I’ve downed every single engi I saw in wvw. Maybe they’re just bad, but I srsly think they should give the engineers extra damage or speed boost or SOMETHING.

Well good engis are kitten tought in sPvP,

Well, Pistol/pistol got no reason to be better then pistol/dagger as it has gap making skill+ stealth, so you can stack conditions from 1 faster… other then that it dont match shortbow

Rozbuska.5263:

Sorry for my bad english. I mainly play engineer for most of the time. Now I trying thief just for fun and.. This class is so OP then its not even fun. I agree with dmg its stealth class, its work alike in other games but stealth possibility is simply ridiculous.

Few ideas for balance:
- allow apply fully functional stealth only out of combat
- if stealth will be used in combat it disable weapon skills while invisible – stealth in fight must be only escape mechanic!
- before hit from stealth must thief appear 0.5-1s (or add some “incoming” sound) before hit to get player chance to counter this attack. Now is Backstab uncounterable win win button.
- Show hit dmg if thief get aoe dmg in stealth for better identification of his position.
- All attack actions in stealth MUST remove invisible.
- Disable stealth while thief finishing players – for most of classes its uncounterable.

To do that you much change our whole class, since all of our weapeons got attack of out invisiblity, packing some extra element. And one of our trait trees are only like for stealth(33% faster movespeed, gain regen in stealth etc. making them both useless since out of combat i allready regenerate hp) The only thing i could agree is if you failed to hit from stealth you become visible. etc. you failed to land a backstab you dont have second chance.

Rocky.8195:

On the contrare, you gain 2000 HP and aside from losing a bit of precision, you actually increase your damage output as well as keep power the exact same. Basically amplifying your critical burst as well as giving you perhaps that final critical chance you need to seal the deal.

Runes of Divinity do not exist anymore lol.

You do not incrase your damage output choosing power/vitality/crit over power/prec/crit, as you will always have lesser damage output, however the berserkers gear is hightly problematic in vast siages, where some random siage hit or aoe might drop you dead. In solo PvE i found more damage more usefull then extra HP, due to as a thief i pick my encounters, and my damage is enough to drop oponents w/o beeing hit, if i dont mess up(using Flanking strike as a dodge)

I tested myself this information is about corrent but 1 thing, PW gives you evade+ stun on target, if you got +15% stun duration, sigil, and cast haste, you can next to perma root your target too, and thx to few ways to teleport to your target during the casting(steal, and 1 of signets, can make your PW unavoidable, even if your oponent packs 1 stunbreaker.

Coffeebot.3921:

The biggest problem the thief will face is the initiative system, the reason for this is due to the fact that initiative rewards players for efficient usage rather than varied usage.

Just looking at the damaging abilities of the various weapon set combinations you can see that many sets have only one damaging ability that uses initiative;
Sword-Dagger: Flanking strike (4 initiative)
Sword-Pistol: Pistol Whip (5 initiative)
Dagger-Dagger: Heartseeker (3 initiative) AND Death Blossom (5 initiative)
Dagger-Pistol: Heartseeker (3 initiative) AND Shadow Shot (4 initiative)
Pistol-Pistol: Unload (5 initiative)
Pistol-Dagger: Shadow Strike (4 initiative)

That’s a list of initiative using abilities that deal significant damage, as you can easily see there aren’t enough abilities there for a thief to be anything but a one button wonder, hell with the way stats work in GW2 having a pistol in the main hand requires the use of condition damage and power to make it mediocre (otherwise it’s terrible) but those stats counter the use of Unload or Shadow Strike which benefit mostly from power/precision/crit damage.

So to all the people complaining about one button wonder thieves, based on this information can you suggest any way for a thief to NOT be forced to spam one button when the system punishes us for using all of our skills?

Not all of those work Sword and dagger Flanking strike has slow animation, clunky pathing and sometimes misses on its own, i would not call that a damage skill, unless you are talking PvE wise, which again is offtheme.

i find d/p much more viable thx to aoe blind, and i dont get in touch to use C/D often enuf, ussualy it ends with me not having a chance to swap out from shortbow, in large scale battles anyways.

The weapeons are good as they are, maybe exept anything that involves pistol as main hand, as i find it the only truly unplayable set, as other sets outperform it. no, the sword dont need conditions, the dagger is the all rounders weapeon and skill 3 dont need to be speced for conditions, you can just use it as an extra dodge in some situations, which i find perfect. Shortbow has very hight skill cap, as Lan said but, the thing is, w/o this weapeon i do not want to play WvW on thief… every single other ranged option is soo bad in WvW, its hardly reasonable to change SB on that end.

You do understand a full physical damage speced thief will have 15 points of initiative, 5 points for each shadow assault, we regenerate 1 initiative each 1.8 seconds, and shadow assoult dodge time is 2.5-3 seconds. Taking that in mind, lets say we steal egg from shark,3 innitiative for steal we can have 914 iniattive=cast shaddow assoult … 5 times at the best, IF we got the right spec and IF we get the egg from shark, making spamming shaddow assoult at best for 15 seconds, up to 18 seconds with non full dps spec making shadow assoult dmg into self rooting kinda low damage, frontal assoult. while still viable to conditions, and sink. That skill is entirely useless, for anything but capping that point, so take away that skill and make 2nd weapeon set of thieves useless in PvE too if you change it. In pvp as a thief i avoid any sort of water combat, as it us hell unbalanced, and stupid.

Tulisin.6945:

Bwillb’s answers are the most correct. The only point of contention I’d have is that Signet of Malice isn’t actually worse than any other heal skill for burst healing, completely ignoring the passive, it is above Hide in Shadows and below Withdraw in healing-per-second. Stin, Daggerstorm isn’t anywhere near 180 seconds for cooldown.

If you’re having major problems with a daggerstorming thief it is actually relatively effective to just wade in and hit them hard with melee. It won’t be too easy to keep up since you’ll likely be crippled, but forcing a dodge will make them prematurely end their elite. A S/x thief itself is a great counter to a highly mobile thief and will at least force them off-field if not lock them down.

ye noticed the mistake and fixed it

So give us Diffrent skills on weapeon sets then, so that backstab and few other builds warent only ones viable. S/p only damaging skill is PW and autoattack, w/o haste its useless in PvP. S/d thx to flanking strike beeing soooo messed up with its pathing most powerfull damage you can pull off is !!! autoattack!! imagine your autoattack beeing most powerfull attack. D/D if your oponent is 100% hp you need some way to drop him below 50% for heartseeker to be effective, what ways you got to do it ? no gap closer(innitiating with steal is stupid as it makes you lose 3 innitative, unless you precast C&D, which eventualy leaves you with best option to backstab) and closing gaps with hearseeker is stupid as by the time you arrive to ur oponent ur 0 initiative done 0 dmg. no good ranged dmg,(the trow dagger is rly bad against single target, and is only good for criple 1on1), which leads to conclusion you need to pack another weapeon or a utility slot with gap closer, or damage booster like haste for sword combos. Making those weapeons only viable if we set them up with most utility assosieted with them. But then we end up beeing 1 trick ponys. Backstab nubs or PW spammers, but our weapeons are made like that, if you want to lower our spamable skill damage remake our class first so we got an option not to spam skills. Only thing i would agree to remake is Assassins signet’s active effect into +25% dmg for next 4 skills or something like that.

P.S. I personaly play Sword and dagger Boon removal and daze build, with haste+flanking strike spam you can tottaly blow away all of your targets boons. If you lower haste’s boost in speed, you need to make highter basic damage for all sword skills, and fix pathing + cast speed of flaking strike so to make it viable in Tpvp, as any person can dodge it, in those times when i dont fly off on my own thx to messed up pathing, of it.

Condition damage works in PvP or playing solo. in Large groups for champions or dungeons its very lackluster. Ok lets say you are LDB thief, you can stack 15 stacks of bleeds solo other 4 ppl 100% sure can stack 10 more. the rest of stacks after 25 are gone. The damage will not go up and that portion of damage is wasted. Now imagine 3-4 condition ppl do dungeon. 50+% of all damage is wasted, making it not the best spec for dungeons.

1. What build and/or abilities are you using that make you nigh indestructible in WvW when we see you spinning around in circles laying waste to groups of individuals?

Its Dagger storm, our elite skill which makes us to reflect all projectiles and trow daggers in random directions which couse bleed and criple.
2. How many times can you do such a move within a 60 second time-span?

It has 90 seconds cd. so its once per 1.5 minutes/
3. Do you heal when you do this spin as well as damage?

You only heal if you got Signet of malice healing 100 hp per hit, however if a lot of ppl still shoot at you healing can be incredibly hight.

4. How often can you go invisible/stealth within a 60 second time-span?

From my utility and other skills i can steath 4 times if all utilitys pack invis. However some of them, dont allow me to move out of aoe(etc. Shadow refuge)

5. What can I do to counter these things and drive you off or kill you?

First of all dont shoot at thief using Dagger storm. You take your own damage, my dmg +criples. a heavy shooting at thief during dagger storm is like hiting yourself in the face with a brick. You can easily counter a thief, with ground targeting aoe(invisibility ain’t invincibility) and staying smart not letting up for a backstab or other attack. All thief weapeons out of invisiblity got stronger skill, so stealthed thief is not only a survivability, but also an opening to attack, so dont get overconfident making a thief go invisible. Also glass cannon thief > any other glass cannon due to their ability to innitiate combat when they want, and avoid unwanted combat.

And about invisibility spec. You cannot keep the point defended from caping if you are invisible. However in killing a invis speced thief in WvW is next to imposible, as even outnumbered he has capabilites to run away, thanks to our only viable weapeon in WvW shortbow which packs Infiltrators arrow as #5 skill slot. which lets us to shadowstep a good distance, minding that we have +25% movespeed signet, makes us most mobile class in WvW.