I then replied in vast detail about my zero stealth build I had been testing in sPvP. This apparently disarmed him and we ended up just chatting like normal people.
They do need to get at least all the skill changes and and stuff like the downed state changes over to WvW. I’ll take the nerfs for the overall benefits.
“He even effortlessly avoided all dmg the other 3 or 4 pple that showed up to try to take him down as well.”
If it was effortless, that would be amazing. I wonder if he had the SB to get away.
Anyways, a thief that doesn’t stealth is going to die rather quickly. It just sounds like you were a victim of the culling issue. Don’t think that thieves are invincible with stealth. Many of us tend to avoid Warriors & Guardians due to their knockbacks & knockdowns. Necros and Mesmers also give us a tough time. Engineers and Eles are little easier to deal with, imo.
Any profession that has some bunker is hard for this build. It’s a counter to glass cannons which 90% of WvW players run.
Not sure how you have init to dump in PvE. I would think your rotation would keep your init empty. If not, maybe swap some traits around so you don’t have so much surplus init.
What rotation? Body shot is useless vs golden mobs. Shadow Shot is usable only once then you’re outta range. Cloak n Dagger is melee range.
The ONLY skill you could dump ini on as a P/D ranged thief was Dancing Dagger.
Now it’s autoattacking aaaaaaaall the way on bosses. Boring.
Are you playing a glass condition build or something? You don’t have the health/toughness to roll in, C&D and roll out? Or just walk in timing with the mob?
Thieves can perma-stealth. ANet failed to address that issue in this patch.
As far as fighting a thief… Immobilize then nuke. 2 hits from my lvl 65 guard sends a thief running with his tail tucked (that’s what thieves are best at anyways) They’re stealth stomping you with shadow refuge. If someone goes down and the thief is invis, AoE the downed player and use knockbacks/knockdowns.
You can’t catch or out-run a thief. If you don’t have immobilize, you lose. Also keep in mind that they can instagib players with < 15k hp…from stealth, 900 units away. You cannot counter a thief’s burst besides wearing toughness gear.
There were us 2 eles on him the whole time and we were trying to root/daze him together. We were on vent synchronizing our attacks and everything but we couldn’t do a kitten thing to him while he stealthed and whittled us down. We tried the CC route and it did nothing to him at all. He even effortlessly avoided all dmg the other 3 or 4 pple that showed up to try to take him down as well.
The answer is you didn’t understand what you were fighting so you lost. I have done this 1 on 5 stuff daily with this build but I can tell you that each and every profession I have come across (besides Ranger, sorry guys) I have run into solos who stand toe to toe. Sometimes you are in a 1vN fight and just one of those guys shows up and you can feel the pressure of their arrival. GW is a skill based game.
I run this particular build. It’s a bleed build that doesn’t kill fast and has a ton of stealth and healing.
There are counters. You need to knock them out of Shadow refuge and put pressure/conditiosn on them after they use Hide in shadows. Identify and dodge/block Cloak and Dagger (most important). Time roots when they are at 50% health (MoA = wins of course if you are a mesmer) and swing at the area they were rooted when they stealth. Learn to identify stealth “swirls” so you know where they are appearing or chaining stealth. Learn to ID shadowstep and where the return location will be. Roots 20-39 seconds after shadowstep are wins.
It goes on and on, the key is identifying the abilities your enemies are using and knowing what they do and how they work.
But we’re both lvl 80 and were holding our own against him. Like i said it was an hr long fight and there was nothing we could do to take him down and he was invisible for more time than he was visible. Anytime we did any CC or dmg to him that was significant he dissapeared for a few seconds and come back to max health.
Are you level 80 when you are in Lion’s Arch? I feel like we aren’t getting a straight answer.
Not sure how you have init to dump in PvE. I would think your rotation would keep your init empty. If not, maybe swap some traits around so you don’t have so much surplus init.
I don’t see why showing names in WvW couldn’t be a toggle option in settings. It would make everyone happy. They still can’t whisper you, they only know the char name. Then they just need server forums for @posts. No one has to click on them if they don’t want to and you can hide your name from WvW via options if you don’t want to deal with it.
It’s been this way the entire time so I have a feeling it’s intended. It’s a counter to stealth. If a group is fighting a single thief, they can wind up channeled abilities to keep the pressure on or track where they are going.
I can’t get to those links now but I love my P/D build for WvW and it’s very defensive.
10 Deadly (mug)
30 Shadow (regen, con removal, stealth healing)
30 Acro (50% fall dmg, Pain response, Hard to Catch)
I use P/V/T armor and P/V/Cdmg everything else.
You don’t see 3 didget bleeds very often but everybody dies eventually and you have over 20K health and over 2500 armor so you can take a massive beating.
Abilities are Hide in Shadows, Shadowstep, SR, Sig of Shadows, Thieves guild.
There was some talk from Anet about allowing custom dye’s in WvW in the future. Hopefully this is the start of more identification in WvW. I had irl friends on my social tab from other servers that have been removed as well. It sucks but hopefully they will change WvW to be less generic in the future. I can handle 50 hate messages for the one that is awesome. Well worth it.
I feel bad for Rangers. I have two friends who main rangers and were excited for the patch who are now re-rolling thieves post patch. One salvaged all his ranger gear to outfit his thief and the other is rolling a thief. I think that says something about the state of thieves post patch.
Lots of people are confused but there seem to be a lot that do sPvP. I just don’t know at what level they sPvP because there is hot join which is a different game than tPvP which is a different game then the top 5% of tPvP. Different things matter at different levels.
Cluster bomb was only useful for roamer thieves like myself when fighting another thief who has stealthed and you needed some aoe damage to hit him in stealth.
That’s pretty much the only time I’ve used it and I play solo 99% of the time. Sure, I’ve used it in zerg fights but it’s never made a dent in a zerg.
Roamer thieves were able to watch a point and rain down cluster bombs that crit for pretty kitten good dmg from above on a 2ndary point. Maybe it’s a map design problem but that’s probably why they did it. All that single target burst dmg and the gear supports huge cluster bomb crits.
Yes, I only sPvP. I’m only level 50 in PvE because I’ve been devoting all of my attention to sPvP.
I’ve spent maybe 2-3 hours in WvW.
So with runes of Mesmer it was cool to give people maybe .5 second to do anything each rotation while your team destroys them since they can’t use any cool-downs?
C&D and Dancing Dagger both have primary uses that are outside of damage. You would use them even if they did zero dmg. Auto attack has always been S/D’s primary source of damage.
[Edit]
I think you are confusing me for someone who cares. I play WvW primarily. I run P/D and have never been killed by a S/D thief. I’m just explaining why Anet made this change based on competitive team based sPvP. In sPvP you have teammates that stop them from kiting, all you have to do is keep Daze up so they can’t use defensive cooldowns.
[Edit by Moderator: Removed a quote from a removed posting]
Yes, I only sPvP. I’m only level 50 in PvE because I’ve been devoting all of my attention to sPvP.
I’ve spent maybe 2-3 hours in WvW.
So with runes of Mesmer it was cool to give people maybe .5 second to do anything each rotation while your team destroys them since they can’t use any cool-downs?
C&D and Dancing Dagger both have primary uses that are outside of damage. You would use them even if they did zero dmg. Auto attack has always been S/D’s primary source of damage.
So the Dancing Dagger nerf hits every x/D build but other than that.. do you guys only sPvP?
Both C&D and the Daze duration only hit sPvP. The .5 second reduction just makes you not able to completely lock people down in sPvP with builds that give +%daze duration. You are talking about taking one person out of the fight while doing constant dps to them as your team either focuses them down or takes on the rest while your target is useless.
So in WvW the only change to this build is the dancing dagger nerf and that still would be used as a snare anyway. You still have init based shadowstep and condition removal, you still have daze/blind, you still an init based evade to stack with your other evades so even if FS does suck, it’s another evade.
Not going anywhere. We were hardly touched. Dancing Dagger always was a snare first. Now we just can’t abuse Rangers with it. If you play WvW that’s pretty much it besides slight S/D nerfs that people are blowing out of proportion.
Thieves guild now yanks people from 1200 range…. it’s so awesome!
I think we got some bad info from a “red” post and that’s all. Assuming they still balance around sPvP why would they nerf burst when almost all of the complaining is directed toward bunker builds? Nerfing burst buffs bunkers indirectly.
They took away some Thief AoE ability and gave slight nerfs to P/D and S/D. You all know that those builds were actually more powerful than the standard burst build that is easy to counter once you know what’s what.
I play P/D and it’s still strong in both WvW and sPvP. The fix to the P#1 opener is nice, we can once again decide if we want to take a 3rd shot or wait a fraction of a second and re-C&D.
They obviously want Thieves to be doing high single target burst. The nerfed their ability to do insane AoE at the same time. They also got out ahead of the QQ and nerfed Dazelock and P/D a bit which were both more powerful than the standard burst build anyway.
At least it proves that Anet does what they feel is best and not what the masses QQ about.
This took D/D and tried to make it more of a single target burst spec. With all that zerker gear the ability to blow all your init on Dancing Dagger then Dagger Storm then Cluster spam did massive AoE damage. Now that is reduced but all the burst is there aside from a nerf to C&D in sPvP.
I am not asking for thieves to be nerfed. I want culling fixed or stealth adjusted to compensate for broken culling. once thieves attack, we deserve the opportunity to fight back. That’s only fair and balanced.
The culling issue aside, if you are a Ranger then you have exactly 0 chance vs a Thief because you are playing the worst profession in the game. Other classes have counters to the openers but you guys are just hosed. This will hopefully all change with today’s patch and Rangers will be as much of a threat as everyone else.
Just go full power/crit traits and all the dmg% stuff with full zerker gear. Then use basilisk venom, sig of power etc.
Main issue is you have bad timing, this build is getting the nerfbat today. I’m sure it will still have some decent burst though even after the changes.
Whenever I juke a bunch of people on my Thief I always show myself to them 2000 units away just so they know I didn’t alt-f4. I really don’t get how they don’t have a 10 second timeout in this game yet. Maybe today’s patch!
Hey Stiv, I am the guard who contacted
As much as I hate the thieves, battling you has been the best battles I’ve had. You never move from your spot and I can always find you there insulting our yaks!
PS: After dueling you, I did manage to down a few thieves with the trick you showed me, so thanks man!
-just another Yaker.
Hey man! Yea, I had a blast with you guys Glad the tips helped. I’ll keep looking for you next time around.
$15/month optional subscription. This allows you to show your name in WvW and gives access to a stat tracking website as well as a points based ranking system tied to titles and cosmetics. I’d pay the sub.
If you don’t pay, you still WvW just like it is now.
Whenever I juke a bunch of people on my Thief I always show myself to them 2000 units away just so they know I didn’t alt-f4. I really don’t get how they don’t have a 10 second timeout in this game yet. Maybe today’s patch!
Anet already trolled you with player activated spike traps, rolling boulders, fire traps and knock-back rocks all over the place. Players are just using the tools available to them.
I feel like this game didn’t even need to have leveling or levels at all. They use leveling as a way to introduce you to your class slowly. I have never been so into a game for it’s game-play other than somting like Dark Souls. Power creep removes that “playing for the fun of playing” aspect.
I don’t mind rankings, stats, skins etc but added power becomes something you are required to get to compete. The main problem for me as a WvW style PvPer is Anet considers WvW to be PvE.
In DAOC the assassin type could climb the keep walls (later on the heavy tank types and minstrels as well). It did allow for some ninja keep takes with outside healers but it wasn’t as big of a problem as it would be in this game. Worked great in DAOC though..
This would be fine but the simplest solution would be to just have the new gear = exocit stats.
The other option which isn’t as good but works for me is if Anet just said “Hey, we needed a level above exotic and it just wasn’t there at launch”. In that, this new stuff will be the best stats this game will ever see (obtainable via WvW/Karma and other methods like they said). I’m ok with that if that’s the case. At least we know it’s not a treadmill and if it were there at live, no one would be complaining.
I’ve been playing wvw 4-5 days a week since launch on TC a few hours a day (mainly solo or small group roaming). Out of all the match’s CD has by far the highest alt-F4 players I’ve seen. Tonight i thought I’d keep a tally, in 3 hours 10 alt F4’s. I’d be lucky to see 10 all week against other servers. They complain about being out numbered on this thread from time to time yet thats exactly the way they slamed us a month or so ago when they were FOTM. No respect for CD. Yaks however is cool.
I can confirm this. CD alt-F4’s like crazy. They are also much more likely to find your name with report and send immature/insulting whispers to you. I’ve had some Yak’s people contact me and they are nice and ask about builds and stuff.
I wonder if these servers had some “theme” at launch that would cause this difference in behavior?
You know this game has no monthly fee right? I don’t personally use these boosters but at some point you have to thank the people for paying to sustain the game you play with no subscription. If anything, Anet needs to add more things that people would want to pay for. Not pay to win but for instance, let me pay a monthly fee to unlock WvW ranking/progression and showing names. Others that want to opt in to this system can pay too, else you just play WvW as is with no stats/rankings.
I would happily pay $15/month to participate in a good WvW ranking system. Anet needs more ways to make money to avoid doing things like “catering to the whales” and putting in content that the big spenders use the gem shop to get fast and the rest of us see as a grind or power creep.
Evade tanking extraordinaire! I tested this in the mists last night and it works great. So if stealth somehow gets nerfed, we will have “thief can evade too much” QQ
Ignore the offhand sigils, those can be anything you want. You can’t use food in sPvP so no point in Agony not hitting a breakpoint. You can also use inf signet instead of the endo heal one. The extra init regen doesn’t hurt and a shadowstep to get into the fight would be nice since steal is used to regen init/endo after the fight starts.
The build is just complete evade tanking. DB spam and evade spam. Heals give vigor and init, swapping gives init and endo, stealing gives init and vigor. Roll for init when needed and malice heals like crazy or can be used for it’s active every 15s, every utility stun breaks..
Anet is talking out of both sides of their mouth. They aren’t adding a gear treadmill yet they say they will continue to upgrade legendary items to be the best tier of gear as time goes on?
This entire idea would be fine if it did not include an increase in stats. The change to stats (no matter how small) amounts to a huge betrayal by Anet. To their fans like me, who appreciate easily accessible endgame gear that you don’t have to constantly update as time goes on unless you want a change in ascetics.
Anet is making a huge mistake catering to this crowd. They will be the first ones gone when the next big MMO is released and now so will people like me since GW2 just destroyed it’s niche.
“Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two.”
I don’t get this. What is this gap between exotic and legendary? They have the exact same stats. Everything is cosmetic! I thought that’s how this game was designed. Now they are (for some reason) adding higher stats? I just don’t get it. The cosmetic progression is what sets this game apart.
They could do all of this with no bump in stats, add the new infusion slots, new skins that only protect you from PvE dungeon stuff and be fine. Why the bump in stats???
) They’re stealth stomping you with shadow refuge. If someone goes down and the thief is invis, AoE the downed player and use knockbacks/knockdowns.
