Guild Wars 2

Braxxus.2904:

DeckerDontPlay.1639:

Impossible to track and catch definitely falls within the class description. Impossible to defeat is an exaggeration.

Actually the impossible to defeat comes from the whole impossible to catch or track. If the thief decides “Oh hey, maybe I should escape” he can, at will, without issue. Yes, the majority of this issue is because of culling but the fundamental issue is because yet another game decided to have a class which goes invisible, evades and deals high damage as basic a class design.

Except that what allows thieves to escape at will is mobility far moreso than it is culling or even stealth. Escaping at will using just stealth without mobility isn’t easy against competent people. Conversely escaping at will via Shadow Step and running off into the distance is completely viable without using stealth at all.

I’m fine with the argument that thief mobility allows them to exit fights too easily, that is at least a debatable point, but the “blame” keeps being incorrectly placed on stealth because that is the last thing people see thieves use before they escape.

Dylan.4980:

He is not resitant to conditions, he just doesnt take more damage in heated mode.
And the Necromancer with his slot skills is based around conditions not Power, i dont think the playstyle which so so inherent to the necromancer should be punished so gravely

This is entirely perception. If his heated state is the natural state to do DPS in, he is effectively resistant to the kind of damage you brought to the field.

If you overspecialize to the point where you’re utterly useless when your standard build doesn’t work, then that is a tradeoff in return for that specialization.

Red Falcon.8257:

Skill 2 is a useless, terribly dumbed down version of shadowstep.

Yeah, shadow step is a terrible utility and I don’t see why anyone would want that crap as a weapon skill.

Dartu.8160:

Isn’t the thief sword basic attack more dps than pistol whip since the nerf? if this is true the whole build (spamming pistol whips) seems pointless.

This is true, but PW does have some attributes that make it worth using.

1. It has much higher hit volume than using auto attack, landing more hits means more crits and consequently more procs. While sword auto will out-DPS PW, PW will vastly out-heal sword auto when using Signet of Malice. This has a multiplicative effect on multiple targets as well, the hit volume of PW on 3 targets is pretty much unmatched for thief skills. If you can land 10 hits a second then things become interesting with on-hit and on-crit effects.

2. The evade is a great way to sustain melee range in a hostile environment. Properly timed, you can keep meleeing away even when everyone else is dodging back out of the red circle.

3. Chain PWs put out a lot of dazes which are excellent for wearing down boss stun immunity without losing a lot of DPS (like Headshot spam can). You can chain PW until a target is open to control effects and then move out and use something like scorpion wire for positioning, or even preserve that vulnerable state for a while so you can interrupt an annoying ability.

The fact that auto attacks are better DPS doesn’t completely preclude the use of PW.

Hufflepuffer.4201:

if you mess up just once, he can potentially heal to full.

I wouldn’t really call missing a lava bucket and then failing to stun/poison messing up “just once”. That is like saying if you mess up “just once” he can kill the entire group. It is a series of failures that cause him to heal to full.

Car.3805:

Braxxis.7062:

Nothing is inaccessible in that area.

Just hit 1, 2, 3 and you’re fine. All the Krait, including any you just revealed, will rush the little sea scorpion while you zip by unimpeded. Get near dead person, hit 5. Repeat on the way back.

I’ve dropped that little sea scorpion often and it never seems to do anything as the krait continuously drag me under and eventually kill. In fact, I think the runs that I’ve survived on have been the ones where I just swim past and don’t drop that sucker…

You have to be proactive with the decoy. For instance when you’re coming up on the champion at the end dropping the decoy before you get within aggro range, having it draw enemies towards it and then dashing around the other side is a good way to get through.

Try switching to more power-based damage for this fight? I just consider this boss highly resistant to conditions and weak to power, it is sort of like saying that something should be changed because your ranged weapon shots keep getting reflected against the golems in the bonus boss fractal. Be more adaptable.

Flayfirst.4735:

I know it’s a silly trait but in the right situations it is great. I only use in wvw, in a roaming group, snagging those pesky defenders that decide to rum and my steal or shadow step are on CD, this is great fun! Was doing a wvw capping group this morning, and sieging a keep and the opposing side kept trying to sneak in the keep, I just stood off to the side a bit, and snagged them back and had my way with them! Not a staple but a good utility to use in certain situations.. I wish I could pull people off of walls with it though!

If you’re catching runners with Scorpion Wire they need to be more situationally aware, you can literally dodge it by turning slightly while you run. And you can pull people off the walls with it, you just need a very clear shot and a very slow target.

1. For PvP on a bursty build it is hard to beat HiS’ stealth and burst heal component, although Withdraw is nice if you get locked down. I would not recommend SoM with your build philosophy.
2. Shadow Step is amazing in PvP, as is Shadow Refuge.
3. Depends on your build. Thieves’ Guild is excellent for turning the tide of a small numbers fight, Dagger Storm offers more battlefield control and AE capability, but really needs SoM to shine. Basilisk Venom is the elite of choice for locking down one target for an assassination or if you’re running venom synergy.
4. Depends on your trait lines and build, too general of a question to answer well. I can guess that you’ll probably want to go into Deadly Arts and take Mug for instant Steal damage though.

A critical build sans large amounts of precision is somewhat possible but only running D/D with the 100 % crit-from-stealth trait. This allows you to ensure an autocrit on a sufficiently high amount of damage (back stab) to make stacking critical damage worth it. It isn’t much of a PvE build though, and it isn’t going to work well with a sword mainhand.

Theoretically you could sacrifice the critical damage portion of the equation and gear for power/precision + vit or toughness, which would give you crit volume without the numbers to back it up. This could work with on-crit procs though, like the ones granted by the Critical Strikes line and weapon sigils.

havoc.8569:

grenade engineers

This is a build, not a profession, every build isn’t well suited for every situation. As a thief I don’t use my standard weapon set on this boss either.

This might be less of an issue if the tears mechanic actually came into play earlier on, many people are just now seeing it after it being completely non-applicable in tier 1.

Demonspawn.9046:

If at least one person reaches the checkpoint to the boss area, then the party can die so everyone can respawn at the boss checkpoint before killing off the jelly.

This. I usually just run through it solo, have everyone die, and then checkpoint it to save hassle. If 3 or 4 people get through you’ve got three options for the last 1/2 dead folks:

1. Go back for them.
2. Die real fast and checkpoint them up.
3. Be a dick and kill the boss with 3/4, like OP’s group.

Depends what you mean by “top competitive servers”.

If you mean the most powerful in WvW, just look at the top of the rankings. But note that the top tier is often heavily slanted towards one side. If you mean which bracket puts up the best fights and is consistently close, it varies by week.

sPvP doesn’t really have server-based PvP to my knowledge.

windwalking.2674:

Best thing to do is to balance survivability with damage with S/D because you are all about sustained damage, not how fast you can burst.

Mostly because, as of the last balance patch, S/D no longer has a way to burst.

THATS GOLD.2806:

1) Don’t use conditions cause they get removed easily by bosses; and
2) Don’t play glass cannon backstab spec

Neither of these is 100 % true. Conditions are awesome in PvE with the caveat that everyone else around you plays nice. That means they’re perfect when soloing, and awesome in groups where you coordinate who is using conditions, but very weak in mass-player situations where big enemies will always be full-stacked.

Glass cannon is very viable in most PvE situations, once you’ve learned how to avoid most damage without using stats. In open-world PvE glass cannons end fights much faster and enjoy the benefits of both more loot/exp and less survivability issues than their tankier counterparts simply because fights end before they really begin. That said, there are times when it is a bad idea. Theoretically you can dodge everything in most boss fights, but unless you’ve got god-tier evasive skills you’re best leaving yourself some room for error and losing a bit of offense. I, for instance, support full-berserker armor on the condition that you’re using Divinity runes, all-stat jewelry, or investing a solid number of points into something like Acrobatics.

General things about PvE:
1. You should be avoiding most damage via movement. Primarily this means WASD, don’t stand still and most mobs will straight-up flail around uselessly for half of a fight. This also means using dodge when appropriate. Your endurance should almost never be full, particularly if you’re running Might-on-Dodge. Finally, this means learning how your evade abilities function and timing them properly. See above for how you can spec more into offense once you stop relying on vit/toughness for defense.
2. AE damage is way better than single-target damage in most situations. The glassiest most well set-up backstab does far less DPS than a sword auto attack smacking three mobs at once. In open-world PvE you can govern how many mobs you’re usually engaging, engage lots and utilize that AE damage. In most dungeons, there’s still plenty of AE opportunity. If you enjoy the P/P or (non-Death Blossom)D/D playstyle by all means go for it, but shortbow, death blossom, and sword-based builds absolutely wreck groups of enemies in PvE.

It is worth pointing out that you can trait for permaswiftness if you want to, especially with food available.

End.8794:

3. ‘Low skill’ factor, or heartseeker syndrome – I think it’s indisputable truth, that thief doesn’t require much skill to perform well in casual environment. Literally, in some cases I could unbind all skills but heartseeker, place monkey on a chair and watch as it kills opponents while mindlessly smashing the keyboard.

Treating the symptom here: But I think it’d be interesting if Heartseeker was altered to use a mechanic similar to the high-damage gun shot from the Halloween MOBA mini-game. Namely, a ground-targeted ability taking the form of a straight-forward line, a true skill shot. This would be a major nerf to spammability, so perhaps a range upgrade would be in order. It’d remove the ability to shamelessly mash the key while actually boosting the mobility aspect in competitive play by giving more perfect control.

BabelFish.7234:

I’m just surprised that thieves who are supposed to have the greatest mobility don’t.

Whether the most mobile thief weapon set is the most mobile weapon set in the game is debatable.

Whether thieves are the most mobile profession in the game is not. Between utilities and things like the Acrobatics traitline, it isn’t even close with very very few exceptions. Mobility heavy elementalists can keep up with your average thief not specialized for it, for instance, but a mobility-specialized thief is all but uncatchable.

The amount of mobility thieves can attain just by grabbing a shortbow swap and a utility is something other professions have to focus their entire builds on attaining.

BabelFish.7234:

Koeril.2057:

Tulisin.6945:

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait.

I’m still not seeing an init-on-crit trait … ? The closest I found is “Initial Strike” which he doesn’t have in the build, plus it is a flat 7% on strike rather than crit. I’m wondering if this was why I was having trouble?

Probably, I don’t use it because its a % on a % which is unreliable,

It is 20 % trigger chance, which with a 50 % crit rate ought to pull in about 1 init per PW on average. Plus it isn’t like there is much opportunity cost with it being a passive.

Koeril.2057:

Tulisin.6945:

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait.

I’m still not seeing an init-on-crit trait … ? The closest I found is “Initial Strike” which he doesn’t have in the build, plus it is a flat 7% on strike rather than crit. I’m wondering if this was why I was having trouble?

“Opportunist” is the 15 point passive in the Critical Strikes line, you get it without picking it. It has a 1 second cooldown, but with enough hit volume and crits you can pull 2 initiative back out of a PW from that trait alone, on top of any you’re regenerating.

Bluebird.1890:

Sorrow:

Whirlwind attack has about the range of an Infil arrow. Bladetrail has a double cripple on it, and it can hit a ridiculous amount of targets. Rush is basically the distance of a shadowstep.

And with Mobile Strikes, the movement abilities remove all movement impairment.

So, yes, they have some ridiculous mobility.

They do have excellent mobility, and I don’t think another profession having good mobility weapons is any threat to thief mobility. People always talk about Infiltrator’s Arrow, which is an awesome mobility skill, but they forget:

1. Infiltrator’s Strike, spammable back-and-forth shadowstep that not only allows you to close, but allows you to return to your original location instantly. This is amazing in the right hands, both as a means of escape and deception.

2. Heartseeker…as a movement ability. Relatively cheap at 3 initiative and will transport you straight-line a very solid distance under Swiftness. Again, spammable.

3. Spammable evades including Death Blossom and Disabling Shot, which basically function as extra dodges if you’re good on the timing.

Completely ignoring the excellent mobility-based traits and utilities thieves have, there are some weapon skills that are quite good for it. I would also submit that as nice as the warrior trait is that removes mobility-affecting conditions when they use movement skills, the thief trait that removes cripple on dodge is a good parity. My only complaint is that it should also remove chilled.

PopeUrban.2578:

Steal
Steal IS good when traited for the build, but it pales in comparison to every other profession mechanic in terms of usability. I don’t have a problem with it being pseudo-random. That’s actually part of the fun, and part of what allows stolen skills to be as powerful as they are. Simply allowing it to be used slightly more frequently by lowering the base cooldown would match it in power with other profession mechanics, and further incentivize currently unliked Trickery focused builds. In addition, I believe that due to a lack of a 1200 range weapon option, steal should have an inherant range of 1200, and the range increasing trait should be moved to another function.

I don’t think straight up making Steal stronger is a good solution, although 1200 range non-traited might be in order. I’d like to see more synergy with steal to make those steal-centric builds viable though. Something like “Steal recharge rate increased by 100 % in stealth” would be intriguing, making SoS’ active instantly recharge Steal, or even shoring up some of the weaker weapon skills by having them knock a couple seconds off steal CD on activation.

Shoring up weak thief skills by giving them Steal synergy is a better solution than just giving it raw boosts.

lotusedge.6743:

Also as long as haste is an ability, there will always be spike problems with the thief in pvp. It would be best to get rid of the ability and replace it with new ability.

There’s nothing wrong with an attack speed increasing boon as a concept, but ideally it needs to be made a stacking boon up to 10 stacks, with 10 % attack speed per attack. This way activated quickness like is found on Haste can be selectively weakened while preserving Quickness that is not at all overpowered, like can be found on weapon and trait procs. It’d also introduce the opportunity to have stuff like weapon skills that grant quickness, or more chances to grant the group quickness without it being a high-cost huge damage utility.

BabelFish.7234:

Tulisin.6945:

Koeril.2057:

Been trying out this build in the mists and I can’t seem to find any such rotation that gives you the ability to spam PW and keep it going for a minute – especially with haste thrown in.

Roll in – PW – haste – couple PW’s – steal – couple PW’s – signets – couple PW’s – no initiative left

Not an exact rotation, but this is generally how it goes. Am I missing something?

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait. That said, OP said he was going power/toughness for gear so if he was able to pull out enough initiative to PW for a minute it should be doable in The Mists. Also note that he may have been consistently using PW against 3 targets, which would result in much better initiative returns.

All that aside, there isn’t much practical use for being able to spam PW forever. Use it for the evade/hit volume, but you can auto attack for more DPS/mobility in most situations.

He forgot that Signet Use gives 2 initiative back, Fast Recovery gives some back and natural init regen as well.

The guy I was responding to stated he used OP’s build and had signets as part of his rotation, so he should already be utilizing those things except Fast Recovery, which apparently the OP can do one-minute PW spams without.

FluffyDoe.7539:

In a few mins

Why is it taking you a few minutes between attempts? If you’ve got time to come to the forums and type up a thread between wisp attempts there is some serious slowness going on.

The traps don’t move, figure out where they are and jump over them. Have non-running groupmates run interception on mobs, use runspeed boosts and teleports if available.

There is a small element of luck that can result in getting totally destroyed by tree spawns, but most of the factors at work in this fractal are controllable.

Highlie.7641:

i would just like to add please don’t change flanking strike. it is fine the way it is

This is like the second time I’ve heard this ever. Can you explain what you like about the current functionality?

Depending on what you’re doing with your Acrobatics trait, Signet of Agility could be a better choice than SoS. SoA will give you a small damage boost as well as situational condition removal and, more importantly, two dodges that will each impart swiftness and possibly might. Each dodge will also refund about a third of another dodge thanks to the 15 Acrobatics trait, so two free dodges actually comes out to almost three.

If you are going to keep SoS on your bar, learn how and when to get the most use out of the triggered AE blind so you aren’t just running a signet for the passive.

Koeril.2057:

Been trying out this build in the mists and I can’t seem to find any such rotation that gives you the ability to spam PW and keep it going for a minute – especially with haste thrown in.

Roll in – PW – haste – couple PW’s – steal – couple PW’s – signets – couple PW’s – no initiative left

Not an exact rotation, but this is generally how it goes. Am I missing something?

Non-sPvP gear and food gives more potential for precision stacking which is fairly important for the initiative-on-crit trait. That said, OP said he was going power/toughness for gear so if he was able to pull out enough initiative to PW for a minute it should be doable in The Mists. Also note that he may have been consistently using PW against 3 targets, which would result in much better initiative returns.

All that aside, there isn’t much practical use for being able to spam PW forever. Use it for the evade/hit volume, but you can auto attack for more DPS/mobility in most situations.

The token rewards actually used to be much lower. Nowadays you can pretty quickly run all three explorable paths of a dungeon and reliably net 180 tokens in a single day. This means even the most expensive piece of armor will take 2~ days of just hitting each path once a day, and a full set will only take a couple weeks. This is not at all unreasonable.

Vile.5678:

- Deadly Arts increases Power and Condition Duration, specializing in Venoms in particular.

I actually prefer Acrobatics over Deadly Arts for a lot of situations. Acrobatics lends itself to Might stacking, which can be a potent way to boost your conditons and, IMO, has better traits as well. You’ll miss out on the awesomeness that is Trickery’s Utility Steal + Deadly Art’s Damage Steal.

Scootabuser.4915:

PvE? Yes, full berserkers, 0/30/0/20/20 picking up initiative regain and damage. With that a P/P rogue can spam 3 ALL day long for kittenloads of damage. You also have the survivability from Black Powder and dodges. The on demand boss interrupting of headshot. And finally the lack of dependence on any utility skill makes it so you can bring whatever skill best suits the fight, calatropes for kiteing, venom for heal heavy bosses, ECT… you also turn steal into a massive support skill giving everyone fury might swiftness vigor and 2 of the enemy buffs without kittening your dps.

Best team buffs
Highest Applied DPS
Survivability up the kitten
No condition overlap.

What P/P brings to the table in PvE is relatively safe ranged damage with access to the nice utility of the pistol offhand. You’re mistaken about applied DPS though. Unload spam doesn’t even do as much as sword or dagger auto attack. P/P also lacks AE capability, which is a heavy weakness to have in open-world PvE and even many dungeons.

I’d like to point out that I run S/x in PvE and have just as much malleability in my utility skills. For group situations I, too, can run boons-on-steal. What I don’t have is the safety of 900 range.

That said, P/P is absolutely a great choice in some fights. For the Dredge fractal boss, for instance, no other weapon set gives interrupts-on-demand while delivering enough raw power based DPS to consistently burn down the boss while kiting. Same idea with the grawl fractal boss, high hit volume is a great way to wear down the shield and pistol’s range means constant DPS uptime even while staying mobile.

Scyntrus.2458:

3 problems:

-Thief stealth lasts way too long and the cooldown is way too short.

-The usual culling problem.

-You can block camp capture while stealth.

One of those things isn’t a problem. As you said the issue could be resolved by making stealthed characters not count towards capture or capture blocking.

If you’re having trouble with either of the dredge fractal bosses healing, any thief with an offhand pistol can permanently shut down their heal by spamming away stun immunity with headshots and then interrupting the heal, the downside being that they won’t have the initiative to do much else.

Musty.3148:

^ yep. 10 seconds but you can add as it is depleted.

http://imgur.com/6Vxjd

Rissou.7213:

The only fix they need is to put a mystic fountain at the end of the darkroom just before the little arena with animals in it, then you can basically stealth through the whole puzzle.

Except for chain-arrowcarting the obvious spots causing stealth to break.

Strifey.7215:

I do agree the length of the fractal is way too long. They need to either take out one event or the champion boss.

This. The initial switches area is equivalent to one event, which is then followed by breaking the door, then the champion, then this moderately difficult boss. Four sub-events.

Compare to…
Ice Fractal – First and second event are basically clumped together into one, then you just walk through the forest and kill the boss.
Swamp Fractal – Basically two events (wisps, boss).
Asura Fractal – Three events (champion prison, Old Tom, robocats).
Water Fractal – Three events, and only if you consider the initial trash clear a real event.
Charr Fractal – Two events separated by a large portion of clearing.

Pretty much the only one that matches Dredge in volume of stuff to do is the giant fractal. The problem is likely that ANet considers “clear some trash while jumping/walking around” to be an event in some fractals, whereas players just blow through.

The problem is that there aren’t really a lot of content tiers in GW2, there’s no difficulty levels available for dungeons, merely the story version and the explorable paths. Most dungeons as-is are relatively easy unless they’re being done with the very minimum (first time group, around the minimum level with blues/greens). People found AC to be very challenging on release because people were doing AC at level 35 with blue and green gear.

If all of the dungeons were tuned to be easy with blue/green gear and low levels, they’d be near AFK-able at the point that most of the community is quickly getting to, namely level 80 with full exotics.

I’d prefer dungeons remain somewhat interesting at 80 with exotics and be difficult below that than be tuned for the lowest common denominator and be even easier at what is fast becoming the standard for gear.

Optionally, introduce hard modes like every other MMO eventually does.

The jumping puzzle is King of the Hill, that’d be why you can go further along in the puzzle and shut down previous parts with traps. Dropping siege is just an extension of this concept.

Siphaed.9235:

jkctmc.8754:

Sure, when AoEs stop doing more damage than single target abilities, I’m game for that.

Many of those “AoE’s doing more damage than single target abilities” are channels that require the caster to stand there for the full cast, out in the naked reach of the enemy, to get it off. Meteor Shower takes 3.25sec of channeling cast….a Mesmer with Focus #4 can pull the Ele off to both interrupt and get them into the group to kill (so can a Thief with Scorpion Wire, and an Engineer with Magnetic Pull off their Tool Kit utility). Not only is that one thing, but it’s also random hit inside the radius of the effect, where the ‘ball drops’ is where it damages…which is more of an RNG system with the spell than anything.

Even without consideration of that one spell, other AoE’s have issues of a delay result or are channeled as well. Dragons Tooth hovers there for a while and it’s an obvious “take a step right to avoid”, same goes for dropping the ice shard from the sky. A Ranger’s longbow ability is the same issue as Meteor Shower.

While this is true of some AE abilities, it only takes one or two that aren’t to create a bad situation wherein a small group and swiftly nuke down an unlimited number of people in a small area. Thief cluster bomb, for instance, can not only be fired without any kind of channel, but can be fired from stealth and the stealth won’t even drop until the projectiles land.

Jamaz.9837:

Actually, the jumping puzzle is pretty useless since it only rewards 2 plans and a dozen or so badges for 10-60 minutes of work depending on activity. You can farm the gold for 2 alpha siege golems easily within 30 minutes, and the vast majority of the time you’ll only get a Flame Ram and Arrow Cart blueprint from the chest making it even more trivial.

You’re right on the money as far as blueprints go. If you can hop in and get the puzzle done in 10 minutes, great, free blueprints. Conversely, it is good to ensure opponents can’t easily do the same. You completely ignored the fact that “a dozen or so badges” is far more than you’re likely to get in the same timeframe for actually helping your server.

I enjoy having the JPs here as a strategic asset to be fought over, badge-wise they’re definitely worthwhile, even if the siege reward is usually small and the chance of precursors is tiny.

Klawlyt.6507:

BabelFish.7234:

Recently I’ve seen thiefs with 1 minute worth of stealth on themselves. To me that’s overpowered.

While I agree that stealth should work in WvW as it does in sPvP with regard to point capture, you didn’t see a thief with 1 minute of stealth stored up. It caps at 10 seconds. Granted, you can constantly be filling it to that cap, but you can’t just fill ’er up and go.

It most certainly does not cap at 10 seconds, pretty sure the cap is 30-60 seconds. Heck, shadow refuge will give >10 seconds by itself with no extra help and no stealth traits.

That said, permastealth is only actually useful for one thing: holding capture points while stealthed. Get rid of that mechanic to make it work like sPvP and permastealth is no longer an issue.

Katsumoto.9452:

A Thief can work fine in Zergs you just play it different. You have either the direct damage cluster bomb type who can run with the Zerg, the dagger/dagger type who circles around the Zerg and picks off stragglers or reinforcements or you have the condition Thief who isn’t as good in a Zerg, but you can provide some utility with stealth stomps, aoe stealth etc.

Sword mainhand is also viable for extending past the front lines with IF, getting in the thick of the melee, and then tapping #2 to pop back out when people start to notice.

Breaking down your utility skills:
Haste – Destroys your mobility in return for burst damage.
Assassin’s Signet – Brings a slight damage boost to the field, nothing defensive. It really isn’t helping you much.
Scorpion Wire – Rather mediocre in open-world PvE, doesn’t really help you offensively or defensively.

You need to be focusing on keeping mobility high for PvE, both via normal WASD movement and knowing when to hit dodge. When and only when you’ve learned to avoid most of the damage in PvE by movement you can start using burst/offense utilities.

For traits: My recommendation in the short-term would be to go ahead and put 15 points into acrobatics when you can and focus on learning how to dodge. Acrobatics is unique in trait trees because it is mostly survivability based, but by taking the Might-on-Dodge trait it will give you a minor offensive bonus as well.

Furthermore, you’ve mentioned both backstab and Death Blossom as engagement options, but each of these are going to be vastly more effective with different stat setups. You may want to streamline your stats towards one or the other and make a choice in play style.

Finally: D/D just isn’t that great in PvE unless you’re specialized towards Death Blossom spam. Open-world PvE is all about utilizing AE to kill large groups at once, an arena that single-target dagger damage has a hard time competing in.

Reiven.2543:

I understand it is one of the thieves main game mechanics but maybe one small change that could be implemented is that damage still shows if you hit someone in stealth.
…
Thieves are able to reach excessively long amounts of time in stealth with popular combos like sitting in shadow refuge, heartseeker+dark field, CnD to name a few. Perhaps making a cap on the time allowed in stealth or increasing the revealed duration means that thieves actually need to use the stealth tactically at the right times instead of using it without impunity and fear of any retaliation.

1. As a thief I agree, with a caveat. One of the main reasons I don’t have as many problems hunting down stealthed opponents on my thief is that Signet of Malice gives great positive feedback when you hit a stealthed opponent. This, combined with other tells, make tracking enemies in stealth possible. However, I think every damage hit popping up red numbers is a bit excessive, especially with AE effects. My suggestion would be as follows: Critical hits done to stealthed targets show numbers. This lends more weight to certain stats as a countermeasure and allows some specialization in tracking stealthed targets.

2. The costs associated with remaining in stealth long-term more than make up for the benefits of it, especially considering the majority of stealth’s use is gone if you’re remaining in an area where the enemy knows you are.

kurtosis.9526:

The only recommendation I have is, don’t take recommendations from the forums. You may or may not get an accurate picture of the true state of thieves, and you’re susceptible to having the squeaking wheels skew your opinion of where the problems lie.

Too many people bend the truth, for example complaining about another class without having done the due diligence required to figure out a counter, or complaining while WvW’ing in less than optimal gear, or any number of variables into which you have no insight in this format.

This might be forgiveable if you didn’t already have the perfect laboratory for evaluating class balance – sPvP. The only guaranteed place in the game where all variables except skill and builds are normalized – gear, team size, etc.

Instead of seeking feedback on the forums I suggest you create an advisory group of top sPvP’ers, say the top 20% are invited. Then get spectator mode implemented ASAP, and use that to observe top sPvP matches, and reconcile that empirical/observational evidence against the advisory group’s recommendations.

Make it clear that instead of trying to please everyone, you will instead base class balance around 5v5 or 8v8 sPvP, and the reason is because it is the systematic, scientific environment where you can be sure all variables except skill and build are held constant. And by limiting to the top 20% of sPvP, you hold skill relatively constant as well, allowing unbalanced builds to be more clearly spotlighted than anywhere else in the game.

This is great if you want to balance only the top 20 % of sPvP, unfortunately the other 95 % of the game doesn’t play out quite the same. Even only using high-skill players is a problem, since it ignores how the game functions in a low skill environment. As much as devs have to watch out for best-case-scenario when it comes to balance it is just as much of a failure to fall into the trap of assuming that if you balance the best case scenario the average scenario will follow suit.

Cinaed.2649:

I’m not allowed to discuss = “I’m b s ing you guys.”

GW2-flavored copypasta commencing:

What the kitten did you just kittening say about me, you little kitten? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Fractal Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on the Swamp Fractal, and I have over 300 confirmed fractals. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top fractal runner in the entire fractal running guild. You are nothing to me but just another fractal. I will wipe you the kitten out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my kittening words. You think you can get away with saying that kitten to me over the Internet? Think again, kitten. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of thieves across Tyria and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, grub. The storm that wipes out the pathetikittentle thing you call your fractal. You’re kittening downed, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can down you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the Black Lion Trading Company and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable kitten off the face of Tyria, you little kitten. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your kittening tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you godkitten kitten. I will kitten fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re kittening downed, kiddo.

boneduste.4023:

Tulisin.6945:

I’d love to see how fast people who want unlimited-cap AE would make a 180 change in opinion once 5-man perma-stealth cluster bomb thief squads start roaming around.

I think people would prefer being able to defend against portal bombs than to worry about getting 5 thieves with that specific build roaming around.

“Hey, you, equip a shortbow and throw Shadow Refuge on your utility bar” isn’t exactly a specific build. Permastealth is easy with no bells and whistles if you’re talking about a group of thieves. This is pretty much the only reason I’d be in favor of this change, insta-downing/finishing large groups of unsuspecting people forming up to go somewhere, building some siege, attacking an NPC, etc, would be a hoot.

I’d love to see how fast people who want unlimited-cap AE would make a 180 change in opinion once 5-man perma-stealth cluster bomb thief squads start roaming around.

Zen.9135:

Or at least normalize the shortbow to all the skills be 1000 range instead of 900/1200.

I don’t think +100 range on trick shot and choking gas would be worth -200 range on cluster bomb. Unless you’re proposing IA would change as well, which I doubt.