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for everyone that say’s they can down good thieves 1 v 1 with ease, please do show us the video? Otherwise, it’s thieves trying to steal the message of the thread.
You can down a good Thief, good Mesmer, good Warrior, etc. It’s all about skill. If your opponent has more skill than you, it won’t be easy.
So why is it that when I get on my Thief, I die less than any of my other lv 80 characters? You’re telling me that I magically become more skilled when on it?
It’s even my 2nd least played character.
Edit: I’m not saying that Thieves are super over-the-top OP, but to claim that Thieves die as much as any other class is ridiculous. And this is coming from a Thief.
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Devs: DO NOT LISTEN TO THE BADDIES!!!
FGS and Lightning Hammer are amazing! Do not touch them!!!
Shield and axe could use updates though, and bow needs its auto attack upped to give a conjur build a range viability (FGS can already be used as skirmish range, but I would like to have a real ranged option in my conjur build that isn’t just go back to lolterrible staff dps).
TBH: Fix staff first.
Lightning Hammer is only viable in PvE. Nobody uses it against other players.
But yes, fix the staff first.
“There’s no challenge on my thief. No risk of dying unless I do something stupid. I wanted to play something more challenging for a change.”
This is why I don’t play my Thief any more.
But the hunter elite with the tangling roots. That kills my thief every time. There may be some thieves that know how to counter it… but it simply destroys me on mine, since I don’t run with a stun breaker.
Infiltrator’s Arrow
Edit: You wanna know how to not die as a WvW Thief? It’s pretty easy:
-Plan ahead. If you are going to run out steath don’t stand next to the enemy, instead disengage. If you go “oh no I ran out of stealth what now” you aren’t a very good Thief and deserve to run all the way back from the waypoint.
-People will always try to CC you the moment you pop out of stealth. Wait 1 second (for player reaction/aiming) then dodge.
-Don’t be stupid and try to 1v3+. Unless you are an amazing player this is a really dumb thing to do. “Oh no I died 1v3 we have no escapes” is not a valid reason for why Thieves suck.
-Change directions when entering stealth
-Stealth is not invincibility but you can dodge roll and avoid area attacks (don’t walk into Necro marks, that’s silly).
Alright, it’s not actually very easy, but once you do all of these things, you will be a good Thief! Then you will realize that we never die, and go “why am I playing a game with no risk”, then quit your Thief.
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As for anyone that say “thief should be the most mobile class”, why? Thematically I would think an elementalist in light armor harnessing the power of lightning and air would be the most mobile thing out there. Having one class “supposed to” be this or that is a silly justification really. Balance a class around what makes it competitive and fun, not what other classes should be or not be.
Because Anet said so!
Obviously we (I play a Thief too) should have the highest mobility, burst, and have good defense with stealth, because Anet said so! (We can even get almost all three in one build, but pretend I didn’t tell you that.). Elementalists? Anet said they should be ‘master of nothing’ so they can’t have high damage or mobility, nor should their bunker build be effective.
(Honestly I’m tired of Thieves saying that, because it is a silly argument.)
Edit: The build is D/P + Shortbow, by the way. In case anyone wants to try it out. 0/30/30/10/0. Burst is not as high as the standard burst spec though (obviously)
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I don’t display any title, to appear as un-threatening as possible in a WvW environment.
However if you forced me to it would probably be ‘Dungeon Master’ because that was a pain in the behind to get.
It’s mostly what everyone uses except
-Don’t use “One with Air” – instead, take Glyph cooldown reduction, or fury+swiftness on auras depending what weapons you are using (take the second one for D/D)
-Weapon sigils share cooldowns so you should just use the might on crit one, and put something like +10 power on kill or +5% crit chance or +5% damage on the other dagger
-You want a lot of boon duration so 2x Superior Water, 2x Superior Monk, and 2x Major water runes. This lets you have perma fury (I think…?)
If there is gonna be any change to conjured weapons, it will be a small one. Things like ‘let us use weapon swap with it’ may sound nice on paper, but it takes time and money to implement.
Seeing as so many classes (Engi, Necro) have a ton of bugs, and every class has a lot of utility skills that just flat out suck, I doubt conjures will get a major rework anytime soon.
With that said here is my super lazy number-tweaks-only suggestion to make them work like engineer kits:
-Put a trait that says “Conjured weapons now have a 10 second cooldown” as the 30 point fire trait.
Instant versatility for the fire tree, and doesn’t affect other existing builds.
OP? I don’t know. Certainly it makes us able to give a lot of people the conjured weapons…
Edit: Simply increasing the duration of conjured weapons won’t make us use them. The problem is that we need all four attunements to be able to survive, and conjures lock us out of them.
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Thief is pretty kittening broken dude.
I would just like to add that the Thief in the video isn’t a particularly good player either (he’s not horrible, but not amazing either), so before everyone says ‘oh his enemies suck’…
Edit: You know what, before I get flamed, here is a list of things that he did wrong.
1) Using Shadow Refuge with the revealed debuff on him for ~2 more seconds.
2) Using Heartseeker in stealth with the enemy facing away (Shadow Shot is better, since it guarantees Backstab)
3) Using Shadow step’s part 2 skill halfway through the stomp (perhaps to avoid the ranger downed skill)
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Yes, each individual meteor can hit 5 people so Meteor Shower bypasses the 5-man AoE cap (in a sort of roundabout way, I guess).
why are theives forced into always going full berszerker??
Thief defenses are skill based, not stat based, so you shouldn’t be surprised when stats fail to help thief defenses.
Exactly, why should it be that way? isnt that kind of counterintuitive??
It’s not really that stats don’t help you survive more – they do but it’s not really a lot. Stealth is just so good that you don’t need anything else.
Let’s look at another class – the D/D elementalist. Why do so many of them build bunker stats? Surely running 3 cantrips and having lots of heals is enough? It’s certainly more heals than any Thief, and more stun breakers than any Thief. They even have on-demand protection from Earth attunement. Yet there are very few berserker D/D elementalists, and lots of berserker Thieves.
The answer is that stealth is just too good. I can run berserker because in small fights, it is a guaranteed target drop – why chase that Thief that may or may not be there, when you can just hit that (whatever other class). In 1v1s it lets me control what happens – if my health is low, I just don’t attack until the 30 point stealth trait gets it back up. D/D elementalists don’t have this luxury so you see all of them build tanky. It’s become even more pronounced because the one thing that could rival stealth’s all-encompassing defense – their mobility – was cut by a lot with the RTL nerf.
As long as we have such easy access to stealth or stealth works the way it currently does, there will never be any reason to build anything that is not berserker. None at all. By the way, you kind of see this with Mesmers too.
*Condition damage is an exception, of course.
Edit: Actually a little toughness and vitality isn’t too bad, since you’re bound to get in bad situations and it might help. However stacking large amounts of them is pointless.
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You must be referring to targets that don’t know their dodge roll key. In that case, was this OP more referring to sPvP, PvE, or WvWvW?
Dodge rolling is not difficult, neither is knowing the timer on when a thieves stealth runs out right before he will backstab.
Isn’t this exactly what this entire thread is about? I don’t need to care if they dodge roll, because there is no penalty to going 11111 forever. No other class can do this.
If they blow their dodges on an attack that I can just keep repeating, that’s awesome. The Shadow Shot Backstab combo takes ~.5 seconds to pull off, works from range, and I just use that when they run out of endurance.
Edit: For clarity, I don’t really have an opinion about whether a dodge roll should cause revealed. Either way is fine. However, you are shooting yourself in the foot there.
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Yet again, I’d beg to differ.
1. even with all these extra utility stealths, one can only do so much to waiting for that initiative comes back. already, bear in mind that the thief already takes 8 initiative on his stealth approach, maybe and extra 8 to jump around before strike. this already gives him less options in taking the warrior out without much of a fight.
2. A well experienced warrior can simply shake off the initial Backstab, cc to trap the thief down, burst with a large aoe attack like Combustive arrow and finish off the remainder of the thiefs health with it.
Fact. I’ve seen too many thieves being overly confident that the warrior wouldn’t be much of a challenge after the initial strike, and they go straight for heartseekers, which would be their demise.
3. I give this one to you in that a warrior wouldn’t be able to chase the thief. however, a thief with long ranged shadowstepping capabilities can, and will chase down the retreating thief with relative ease.
These are definitely valid tactics so maybe I should revise my post not to say ‘D/P has no counters’ but rather ‘much less’.
Compare D/D to D/P – it has all of these weaknesses, plus some. CnD can be avoided (and if it is avoided, it costs 5 initiative, almost the same as BP+HS combo, which effectively always costs 7 initiative), and it has no on-demand blind, or interrupt. Long duration stealth is hard to achieve. All of the ‘burst him down’ tactics are still the same.
For your last point, by the time the Thief has caught up to me, I’ll have enough initiative to enter stealth again, restarting the process, most likely with either HiS or Blinding Powder up. In any case, most other classes can’t do that (Thieves have very high mobility) so I can usually get away.
I’d beg to differ. Countering perma stealth D/P thieves takes patience and anticipatation. To note, perma stealth eats a lot of initiative and requires a lot of micromanagement.
Wait for the thief to run out of initiative, and burst him down while he’s scrambling to retreat and retry the attack. Using a multi hit skill, like hundred blades for example, while the thief uses black powder while he spams dagger 1 on you is enough to cut at least half of his health, even when blinded.
The amount of out-playing that you have to do to beat the D/P Thief is quite ridiculous. A similarly skilled D/P Thief:
1) Won’t run out of initiative, because she takes stealth on utility slots.
2) Will use the same anticipation that the warrior uses, and predict the only thing possible – if the Warrior doesn’t die to the backstab, he’s gonna turn around and kill you (or heal, which doesn’t really threaten the Thief).
3) If, unluckily, I forsee myself running out of both utility stealths and initiative, I will retreat preemptively before the enemy realizes that. By the time they go “oh look she has no more stealth” I’m about 1200 distance away.
Doing a Backstab on a block does not reveal you.
Honestly, a pretty fair middle ground is to increase the range of Backstab by a decent amount and slap a 2 second cooldown onto it (even if you miss).
Guess I got revealed by coincidence then, in any case, your suggestion will sound logical if it was a ranged attack, but a real backstab should remain close very close. The way it is now is challenging and fun, going with any of the two suggestions would kill it.
My suggestion is definitely not a very good one
However, landing Backstab now isn’t very challenging because I just go 1111111111 and that’s all there is to it.
Aegis? Blind? I don’t care. 11111111 always works (and it always crits so I don’t even have to care about weakness either).
Doing a Backstab on a block does not reveal you.
Honestly, a pretty fair middle ground is to increase the range of Backstab by a decent amount and slap a 2 second cooldown onto it (even if you miss).
We have to fight Thieves that Stealth too, we have no real special tools to deal with it infact we have less then say a class with a ton of quick AoE, yet no Thief complains about Stealth.
This is because blindly spamming “quick AoE” has never, ever, been a good stealth counter. The best counter to stealth has always been the ability to anticipate where your opponent is going to be even when you can’t see them, and either avoiding or attacking that spot. Thieves don’t have a problem with stealth since they can simply say “what would I do in this situation?”
People continue to perpetuate the idea that there’s some sort of magical mechanical counter to stealth if you use the right abilities, but all of the mechanical skills are useless if you don’t use player skill to fight stealth.
This is very true, and as an extra point I’d like to add that Thieves can do the same thing, so all the Thieves who say “see if you L2P Thieves suck” are talking out of their behind (because someone, somewhere, is going to say this)
As a Thief player who has multiple lv 80s of other classes, I do this a lot:
“What will this Mesmer (for example) do? He has a GS so he must be Phantasm build, so I will dodge immediately after Backstabbing. I won’t use Shadow Refuge unless necessary, and will get ready to dodge the GS #5”
Alternatively “This D/D Elementalist will try to slow me in Stealth so I can’t land the Backstab. I will use D/P #3 to land the Backstab from range. He will also have mist form up so using Basilisk Poison to open from stealth is a bad idea (although I always use Dagger Storm anyway).”
Even though stealth can be countered by skill, a skilled Thief can counter the stealth counters. (That’s why D/P still has no counters).
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u guys think D/P will get busted next?
if so what should change?
Being able to run away from anything is silly. The build has little to no counters and is excellent for WvW roaming. It has high sustainability, condition removal, and damage.
They can just change anything and it will be a nerf, because as it stands D/P is far too good.
Edit: I’m not saying that all of these should be nerfed, because that’s too much. What is probably going to happen is that WvW traps stop Thieves from running away when they lose.
Our different attunements don’t mean much when we’re forced to switch between them due to weak autoattacks, long cooldowns, and bonuses for swapping attunements, instead of using them for specific situations.
What he said.
I thought it would be like the Engineer, where you swapped attunements depending on what’s needed. Right now I’m leveling an Engi, and it’s a lot more fun because all of the 10-30 skills can be accessed at any time.
Obviously if attunements have no cooldown, it would be overpowered, but I still hope that one day I can swap attunements not just because all the skills in the current attunement are on cooldown.
Lol I don’t care about nerfs i will play whats op till I can’t and for now that’s d/p with thiefs. I say let the nerfs come and I’ll play the next most op build (I gave on discussions because they don’t fix the game recently) Enjoy your stealth spamming while it lasts.
This is the conclusion I’ve come to as well. It’s reached the point where I just can’t shake the nagging feeling of “this build is so ridiculous, how has it not been nerfed yet”.
And so that puts me off playing my Thief. Not because Anet hates Thieves, but because this one build is so silly that it can’t possibly stay in the current state for much longer.
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Let me ask you a question: other than condition builds, why would anyone run anything other than berserker?
Bunker Thieves aren’t bunkers because they wear Soldier’s or Clerics, it just depends on the play style – such is the nature of the class. With stealth I don’t need high vitality or toughness, but am still able to avoid lots of damage.
My Thief is wearing Berserker + Cavaliers (since it can be bought with Karma) and she has a lot of sustainability with high sustained damage, simply because of how I play and trait (D/P)
It’s like asking why people wear berserker gear for CoF speed runs – if you are able not to die with berserker gear, why wear anything else?
Edit: Evidently the solution is to nerf stealth and buff other forms of defenses. With stealth around there is absolutely 0 reason to build tanky. But yes, I agree that most Thieves are berserker, in the same way that most CoF P1 farming warriors are berserker too. There’s just no reason not to.
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We have the best defense against other Thieves – stealth. Going invisible means no stealth #1 attacks can hit you unless they are very lucky.
Where does all this “The traps will make us useless for zerg battles” sentiment come from? Stealth already doesn’t do anything in zerg fights, unless for some reason the entire enemy zerg hates you. Most people just throw random spells everywhere and hope it hits something, and with so many people it’s impossible to dodge everything (unlike smaller fights where Stealth can actually let you avoid things)
Go ahead, use Blinding Powder and walk into a 50 v 50 fight. See how long you survive.
Well alright, I’ll agree that Thieves actually have a decent amount of stunbreakers. However, very few Thieves use them so if your aim is to just kill that random Thief in WvW, it’s still a decent strategy.
It does feel a bit silly that I’m basically saying “hope the enemy is a bad player”
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In any case, I completely disagree with the post about Thieves giving up all other WvW capability, so they can be justified as ‘good scouts’.
First, even if this is the case (which it sort of is, but certainly not to the extent that you make it out to be), it is a problem that should be fixed by buffing the Thief in zerg fights, and nerfing roaming ability.
Second, Thieves aren’t useless for zerg fights. You might be surprised that we can switch to a Shortbow and spam Cluster Bombs and poison fields everywhere. For sure, it’s not as effective as a Staff Elementalist (almost nobody is), but that is hardly little. A Smokescreen is the same as a Guardian’s Wall of Reflection since everybody has learnt that firing projectiles through that is stupid. Spammable poison (poison fields too, which apply poisoning finishers) reduces healing by 33%.
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Finally, we do not suck 1v1. I don’t even know why anyone thinks this, and I’m not going to bother arguing about it. Let someone more patient explain.
Oh yes, about “If the thief got away from you easily, you didn’t outplay him” (fixed for grammar). That doesn’t mean the Thief player is amazing. It just means the Thief has lots of good escape skills. Tell me, how can the world’s best Necromancer (or insert generically slow moving class like Mesmer or Guardian) catch a decent Thief? It’s just skewed heavily in the Thief’s favor.
Before everyone tells you that “it’s so easy to counter stealth”, let me reassure you that you’re not the only one who faces this. When I’m on my Thief it’s all too easy to run away from just about anything.
With that being said, here are a few ways:
Stun the Thief – The most obvious way is to chain-stun him. Depending on which class you are (I don’t know a lot about Rangers) it may or may not be possible. Thieves don’t have a lot of stun breakers.
Knock the Thief out of Shadow Refuge. Most classes can’t reliably do this but it’s worth a shot.
Avoid the Cloak and Dagger (if he is using D/D), or somehow interrupt the Black Powder Heartseeker combo (D/P). The first one isn’t too bad and the second is downright impossible. In the past 100 hours of WvW on my D/P Thief it’s happened about two times, both against extremely skilled Mesmers.
Stealth doesn’t stop knockdowns. Stealth does clear a condition if traited for it so just immobilizing is not a guaranteed way to lock us down. Even if the Thief is loaded with conditions and stealth-condition-clear has a low chance of removing the immobilize, Infiltrator’s Arrow still works while immobilized .But if you land some sort of knockdown and the Thief disappears just attack the area with everything you have since it will probably hit.
Unless the Thief goes completely glass cannon, the claims of “oh we die in just 3 hits” is nonsense (and even then they’d have to be three pretty hard hits). Don’t go in and wonder why it doesn’t happen, because that claim is extremely far fetched.
In the end it’s still pretty hard to kill a good Thief (in WvW I assume, since that’s what your 2nd paragraph implies), and that’s just how it is until Anet changes stealth’s mechanics.
Edit: If the Thief is really bad, assume they run in a straight line upon stealthing and work from there.
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As someone who plays a Thief and roams in WvW, Guardians are a pain to kill. Unless you are particularly glassy, the amount of heals makes it very hard for me to actually kill you.
Typically there are two types of Thieves that roam – glass cannon one-hit wonders, and the more sustained damage type (D/P or P/D).
For the first type try to dodge their burst, then attack with Whirling Wrath or something like that. It should force them to back off since most Thieves who build like this wear berserker.
For the second type of Thief they are much harder to kill since both Cavalier (D/P) and Rabid (P/D) give a lot of toughness. Their damage is lower, so just try and hit them as often as possible and it should be a stalemate. Blocking CnD or running around to avoid Backstab works pretty well (the odd interaction with D/P #3 makes it so a good Thief will still land Backstab a lot though).
S/D fits into this category as well but I hate the weapon set so not going to say anything. It’s not very bursty though.
The problem is actually killing us, which is frankly impossible. Nobody catches a good Thief, especially not 1v1 in WvW. Even if I can’t win, I’ll just stealth away and you won’t win either. Maybe that’s why Anet wants those stealth revealing traps.
Another problem, as BlackBeard mentioned, is that we need to keep swapping attunements.
A lot of Fire and Earth traits only work in their respective attunements, which is not possible against players. Lightning, Water, and Arcane traits are better because they work across all attunements.
The standard D/D 0 10 0 30 30 build takes swiftness/fury on auras (works in 2 attunements), and makes cantrips more powerful (works in all attunements). Obviously the Arcane tree affects all attunements, and reduces the swapping cooldown too.
Solution (because why not)
1) 30 (or 25) point trait that reduces cooldown of that particular attunement so it can be used a lot more often. Pretty sure it’s been suggested before, somewhere.
or
2) Make traits non-attunement specific, which is what everyone else has said.
- Stealth Reveal needs to be upped to 4 seconds again. There is no denying how easy it is for a Thief to pop in and out of stealth, and it is insane to think Thieves should have one fairly easy escape button, let alone 3+ (I didn’t say guarantee, just easy). Some builds can cheese stealth to the point where it is almost impossible for even a group to kill a single thief (granted, the thief won’t be killing anyone either, but this shouldn’t be a problem for ANY group against a single class). By increasing Reveal to 4 seconds again, there is a bigger window for someone to actually pull a few hits against Thieves before he disappears. Again, you SHOULDN’T be walking away with little risk in group fights by yourself.
You’re gonna get so much hate for this paragraph. I’m sick and tired of arguing for or against buffs since few people seem to understand that stealth is one of the best forms of damage mitigation. (Important edit: Except in sPvP, where it stops you from capping points. Because I just know that this point will be brought up sooner or later)
But anyway, good luck, you’ll need it.
Edit: And like the poster above said, HiS has a long cooldown so it heals a lot. The other two heals will heal more than HiS if used twice in 30 seconds.
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Let’s see what happens when they introduce the ‘Anti-Heal Trap’. Oh man… That day will be glorious in the history of MMORPGs…
Poison reduces healing by 33%
Backstab has a very small range, so being taken out of stealth for simply missing is a bit harsh. If they increased the range of Backstab I have no problem with this (annoying to adapt to the change though).
You can still pull off the Steal CnD Backstab combo, with a D/P weapon set, except replacing CnD with Heartseeker.
1) Get in range of Steal
2) BP+ HS
3) Before Heartseeker completes, Steal to the target
4) Mug will proc, Heartseeker will hit, and then you will stealth
5) Backstab
6) Spam 2!
Most people don’t do this because D/P is more of a sustained damage kind of build, but if you really want to, you can.
Then.
Use.
Something.
Else.I am done trying to get it through your kitten head that there is NO DAMAGE MITIGATION to stealth.
This argument is going nowhere. You are technically right because stealth doesn’t reduce any damage.
However, certain skills (most notably Mesmer illusions) cannot be cast without a target, and many others will have an almost 100% chance of missing. Of course, the obvious solution is to use skills that easily hit stealthed Thieves, such as Guardian GS pull, but there aren’t a lot of such abilities.
Would you really waste an ability with a long cooldown for the slight chance that you might hit a stealthed Thief? I certainly won’t, unless there is a pretty high chance that they are there. Therefore, it effectively reduces the damage you take, because 1) The enemy player can easily miss and 2) nobody uses their high-damage skills on a non-immobilized stealthed Thief.
This is what people mean when they say stealth reduces damage. Does Blink or Cleansing Fire stop any actual damage? They don’t. Yet every single D/D elementalist takes at least one, because mobility/stun breakers (like stealth) indirectly reduce the damage you take.
Well if the trap is expensive but very large, it’d probably be used to counter Veil bombs.
Anyone saying that its hard or time consuming for a mesmer to setup a three clone shatter hasn’t played the profession. Its two button presses…three if you count the shatter.
It’s not very hard to land, but is definitely harder than Steal CnD Backstab. In addition, to deal the same amount of damage you have to burst with more than one shatter, which takes a longer time to pull off, or use Mirror Images (a stun breaker)
thief burst requires perfect variables…..warriors/mesmers just go at it. thief dps is the most unreliable of the 3 classes topping the category. only dagger is fast enough to stack up with warrior. 1hs pistol and bow are sloooooooooooow lol (part of which is buggy i think due to “.25s” activations acting like 1 sec activations.
I think this paragraph means you have no idea what you are talking about. Go play a Mesmer and you’ll see why.
Edit: Okay then, here’s your reason – compare Mesmer/Warrior burst to Thief burst
Thief
Steal CnD Backstab – Yes it’s possible to dodge this, but the window is less than 1 second.
Mesmer
3 Clone shatter – Mesmer needs to get into melee, put 3 clones up, then shatter. This takes pretty long and doesn’t even do as much damage as the Thief combo. If you want to be fancy you can press Mirror Images and F3 shatter for lots of vulnerability, but that uses up one of your stun breakers, and a lot of endurance for Deceptive Evasion. It also takes a pretty long time to do.
Warrior
100 Blades = dodge. I think everyone knows this.
It’s hardly ‘easier’ to dodge a Thief’s burst.
The reason I reply to your posts so much, is because you tend to be wrong. I don’t care too much for all the more theoretical posts (e.g. Is Stealth equivalent to perma protection, cause who the heck really knows), but when you post, it’s full of factual errors. Does that make sense?
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Yeah, you haven’t played a Guardian
-Shield of the Avenger blocks projectiles not melee attacks
-Resolute Healer makes a projectile-absorbing bubble (like SoA) as well
-Sanctuary is tiny and you can still be melee-d through it.
-Protector’s Strike (Mace #3) blocks 1 attack. If the guy next to the Guardian gets hit, it goes away for everyone. Where does it say that it blocks 3 attacks?
-Shield of Absorption blocks projectiles not melee attacks
Edit: If anything, Rangers should be complaining. Thieves…? Get your dagger out and realize these bubble things just block projectiles.
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An list of blocks (including, but not limited to, Aegis)
F3 Virtue – 90 second cooldown, can be traited down to 63 seconds. Blocks 1 attack
[Retreat] – 60 second cooldown, can be traited down to 48. It’s useless other than for getting swiftness so nobody takes it. Blocks 1 attack
Focus #4 – 45 second cooldown, blocks 3 attacks. Not Aegis (Edit: Also lasts 4 seconds)
Mace #3 – 15 second cooldown, blocks 1 attack. Also not Aegis.
Gain Aegis at 50% hp – Guardian trait. Blocks 1 attack.
Shelter – 2 second block, no limit, 30s cooldown.
Renewed Focus (okay this isn’t really a block). 3 second invulnerability, 90s cooldown.
Yes, it’s true that Guardians have a lot of blocks. However if you use a Mace + Focus you will do absolutely 0 damage (You can burn for 1 second on block). Isn’t this the same argument that Thieves use to justify being able to chain CnD for perma stealth? Both of them do very little damage and make the user hard to kill.
This should really be in the Elementalist forum (and it will probably be moved there soon), but you can consider the focus as an off-hand weapon. It provides a lot of supporting abilities.
I still wouldn’t consider playing a condition build, because once you swap out of Earth, you are left with only burning in Fire. It’s alright if you just want to PvE, I suppose.
No the point is to make Thieves worse for 1v1 so that they can be buffed for group play.
Isn’t that what everyone wants, anyway?
The ele nerf was for two skills, I don’t understand why you would need to change an entire build because of two skills.
Note: WvW player here explaining why I changed my build. Doesn’t apply to sPvP.
The only thing D/D is really good for is roaming around. D/D doesn’t do very well in zerg fights due to having absolutely 0 ranged attacks and being squishy – It uses stun breakers and occasional heals to offset the naturally low armor/hp. This works against small numbers of people, but in a zerg you’re bound to get hit no matter what. Might as well play a Guardian (which I did).
Now the D/D ele is good at roaming because of good 1v1 capability (nerfed a bit with the mist form change) and being able to escape when things go bad (nerfed a lot with the RTL change). The second point is what separates good roamers (Warriors, Thieves) from bad roamers (Necros, Guardians).
While you may be pretty hard to kill 1v1, it doesn’t matter when you run into a group of 5+ people. You’re still gonna die, just not as fast (but you will still die). Even the tankiest Guardian can’t survive a random zerg. However, a Thief who can quickly stealth and run away, can. The only actual way to escape is to either stealth, or just be so darned fast that nobody can catch you.
Since we don’t have stealth, and aren’t fast any more, there is no reason to play a D/D elementalist (I play a D/P thief now for roaming, and it can even swap to Shortbow for range, lol).
That’s why.
Edit: D/F is nice and worth a try, but you still can’t run away.
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
Stealth already doesn’t do much in zerg fights, and anyway it all depends on how they implement these ‘traps’.
I see this as a way to reduce the effectiveness of roaming Thieves (face it, we are OP at roaming) while not having to touch PvE or sPvP, by changing the environment of WvW not to favor this class so much.
This way, they can improve the zerg-fight potential of Thieves without making us the only choice for roaming (which will happen if they just buff Thieves because “we suck at zerg fights”)
And again, it really depends how the traps are implemented. It seems like a step in the right direction.
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
You can immobilize with the Shortbow stealth attack. It’s especially nice to use with the stolen skill from a Warrior (or Daggerstorm)
The build isn’t particularly good at making people hold still – instead, you kill people by being really good at chasing. Shadow Shot seems to be bugged and still lets you land Backstabs(although…I suspect this might be nerfed soon)
Alternatively you can use some kind of crippling/chilling poison or caltrops, or just shoot someone running away with your Shortbow (I still get a pretty high hit rate on those auto-attacks, not sure if people are exaggerating) as it does nice damage and has a spammable cripple.
Edit: Just make sure that if you switch to Shortbow, you have no need to stealth any time soon, or if you do, have at least one utility stealth ready to use.
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
Well, if nobody wants to provide a guide, I will provide (a very sarcastic) one. This is based off WvW (I hate sPvP okay) and is mostly based around D/P + Shortbow. You can alter it for S/D if you want by going 0/10/30/30/0 or something like that, but it’s up to you.
Equipment:
Berserker or Valkyrie for lots of crit damage. I’d just use berserker because you already have it, and with such high crit damage, the returns on precision are nice too (for everything that is not Backstab)
Cavalier on jewelry for even more crit damage (toughness works well with 30 pts in Shadow Arts). You can just buy this from the Temple of Balthazar for 42k karma, and they aren’t even soulbound so just get on your main and put them in the bank.
Divinity Runes and whatever jewels that add crit damage. It doesn’t even matter, just stack your crit damage really high (>90%). Obviously you want high power too.
Traits
0/30/30/10/0
Important traits
-100% crit chance in stealth. Obviously. If you don’t take this, I will cry.
-Health regen in stealth. Why not?
-2 Initiative on stealth. This lets you use BP-HS a lot more (it even gives you back initiative if you are already in stealth, which I think is kind of stupid)
-Remove a condition in stealth. This will trigger the moment you enter stealth, and 3 seconds later. It’s amazing and stacks with the condition removal from HiS.
-50% Move speed in stealth. To land more backstabs, duh.
You can also use 10/30/30/0/0 if you like Mug, but whatever.
How to play:
Spam 5-2-1-5-2-1 forever. Press Blinding Powder or HiS or Shadow Refuge if you don’t have initiative. Use Shadow Shot (#3) if you are far away and have lots of initiative or just like teleporting around for no reason.
Use Shortbow to immobilize/cripple people if you want to kite them around or land daggerstorm or whatever. Use Shortbow #5 to get out if something goes wrong (it looks like it breaks stealth, but really, it doesn’t).
That’s it.
TL;DR: Stack crit damage, spam 5-2-1, win.
No they cannot avoid area damage, they just can’t be taretd by area damage. If the player vs. a stealth player cannot predict where they are (obviosuly they want to kill you) then thats their fault.
I’d argue that if the Thief keeps walking in a straight line, they deserve to get hit by area skills. I almost never get hit by AoEs in stealth, because you just have to play a bit unpredictably, then nobody can really guess where you are.
Even though it’s true that people need to ‘learn to play’ against stealth, Thieves can’t just say “oh he L2P-ed I can’t do anything”. There are a lot of things that a Thief can do to stop people from countering them. Most thieves, however, can’t be bothered, so they just say the class sucks.
How does not having a trinity mean there is no need for a DPS meter, or any other kind of meter?
A question to your question:, how would it benefit this type of game even one bit?
Since GW2 is not only about who has the highest DPS, having a DPS meter is akin to measuring the blood temperature of a rock: inapplicable.
stuff…
Like it or not, people still do damage. And if I have two different builds that do damage, I’d like to see which one does more. (Your argument is like saying the weather isn’t entirely about air pressure, so barometers are useless)
Therefore, a DPS meter would be nice, as would a meter for everything else including damage taken, healing.etc It shouldn’t be ping-able since then everyone would just be like “LF2M 3k+ DPS”, but as a way to gauge yourself, it definitely has its’ uses.
Since a lot of Thieves seem to have no idea how to use stealth as a proper form of defense, I’ll make a mini list here on how to stop the stealth ‘counters’ (which aren’t really counters)
-When you stealth, change directions. If you keep running in the same direction obviously it’s easy for people to AoE you. In fact, projectiles may still hit you if you keep running the same way. If someone is lucky enough to turn and follow you, just change directions again.
-You don’t have to run straight at the enemy. This is another sign of a Thief who fails. Stealth lasts some time, and people like to blow their defensive skills immediately. Wait a second or two, approach from a random direction and at a delayed time, and it’s much harder for them to snare/stun you while invisible. Another reason why D/ kitten o good – you can get very long durations of stealth.
-Stealth can be traited to do all sorts of things. Since it’s so easy to access, just use it to remove conditions, heal a bit, and as a sort of all-purpose buff. Then again most people know this…
-Don’t stealth after you get hit. Seriously. Why would you wait until you are at 10% hp to press blinding powder? Do it early so you never get below 50% hp. See an incoming warrior? It’s kind of stupid to stealth after he lands 100 blades. Stealth early and often so nobody can hit you in the first place, and so bleeds don’t stack too much. With the health regeneration in stealth, you can usually leave stealth with >70% hp. Again, D/P abuses this a lot.
-Don’t always think you can win. If the enemy player is more skilled/too tanky/has reinforcements, then just run away. You’re invisible after all, if you decide to fight to the death that’s entirely your problem.
-Dodge in stealth, especially shadow refuge. See a mesmer with a greatsword? Dodge. A guardian with a shield? Dodge again. Kill shot being channeled? Count to 3 and dodge. It is painfully obvious when someone wants to forcibly remove you from Shadow Refuge. Any Thief who is halfway decent will dodge those abilities (Mesmer focus pull exempted).
-Abuse chain stealthing. Whether this is CnDing off WvW mobs or just spamming BP-HS-HS-HS, it doesn’t matter. Obviously you don’t want to always do this, but there are lots of Thieves who are stuck with the ‘oh I absolutely must land this backstab’ mindset and just do dangerous things.
There are too many thieves who like to say ‘oh stealth just makes us invisible and doesn’t stop damage’. This is because they don’t know how to abuse the mechanic.
The ‘counter’ to stealth is to avoid CnD. D/P builds don’t have such a weakness, and with all that initiative on stealth, can stealth over and over again. Yes, the combo costs 9 (actually 7 with traits) initiative, but you can chain it with HiS and Blinding Powder for stealth every 4 seconds.
How does not having a trinity mean there is no need for a DPS meter, or any other kind of meter?
Even though everyone can do any role (at least that was the intention), I’d still like to have some non-anecdotal way of seeing how much damage my Guardian takes, and compare it to everyone else, to see whether stacking all that toughness was worth it.
It would also force Anet to balance the classes in PvE, but that’s a different issue.
I’ve been playing a Thief in WvW (don’t like sPvP). The only problem is that it’s kind of boring, and the skill lag affects me more.
I see no reason to play a D/D elementalist in WvW. Mobility, sustain, and burst is all available on a Thief, and with decent toughness (2700 armor!) it’s not like she is particularly squishy either. And I’m not even locked into melee like D/D.
The best thing is that there are so many fail thieves that the class will probably keep getting buffs.
Stealthed players, however, can still move around avoiding area damage almost completely. This doesn’t even take into account targeted abilities which are completely useless against someone who has stealthed.
The reason that these are ‘counters’ to Thieves isn’t because stealth somehow makes you more vulnerable to them, it’s simply because we have low hp and few stun breakers. They are not, however, counters to stealth
Also, most D/P thieves will take +2 initiative on stealth, allowing for near constant BP-HS spam. I use HiS and Blinding Powder as well for even higher uptime, and there’s almost no situation which I cannot easily access stealth (except during revealed, of course).
AOE = dead stealth player
Arrow Cart = Destealthed and dead stealth player
Back up 10 steps = destealthed player (by the time he gets to you)
Move away from smoke fields that allow thieves to stealth = no stealth for stealth player
Immobilize = stuck in 1 spot stealth player
Spin attacks = stealth player who has to run away
Stand in an AOE field = stealth player takes damage just to get to you
There are literally dozens of ways to counter stealth, being lazy and asking for a nerf is unfortunately the most used method.
All of these work against people who aren’t stealthed too. In fact it’s harder to do area damage and spin on people who are stealthed (since you don’t know where they are).
Edit: The ‘counter’ to stealth is to avoid CnD. D/P doesn’t have such a counter.
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)