Guild Wars 2

BabelFish

(people saying PW’s damage is matched by auto attack aren’t building for Power/Toughness/Crit Dmg).

Both of these skills have 100 % power-based damage, they’ll scale exactly the same with power/precision/crit damage. If they’re the same naked (and they pretty much are), they’re the same with full Berserker’s exotic gear. Pistol Whip isn’t a damage increase, but it does have a place as a skill that does an interrupt, evades, and generates excellent hit volume.

Kurow.6973:

4: Head Shot: I believe this skill is perfectly fine as is. However, an increase to the daze duration from 0.25s to 0.5s wouldn’t hurt.

This is definitely one of those things where what looks like an insignificant change could have massive consequences. Headshot as it stands isn’t really a way to lock out skill use like other dazes, merely an interrupt on demand. Giving Headshot enough of a duration to actually stop the target from using skills for any length of time would be pretty significant. The skill is currently powerful, but rather situational. 100 % crit chance would give it some synergy with more builds without drastically increasing the power.

Dervy

A thief is meant to be glass cannon.

A glass cannon thief is meant to be a glass cannon, not all thieves. It is just one of many ways to build a thief. The sooner you stop restricting your view of the profession to one narrow playstyle the sooner the changes the devs want to make will stop bothering you so much. What is at stake here is the loss of one or two specific tactics, but the reward could be more power and synergy for many other builds.

Asum.4960:

It’s not as much of a “departure from every other profession” as most seem to believe.

It absolutely is, mostly due to things like initiative regen traits/skills allowing you to effectively manipulate cooldowns, rewards for having X initiative, etc. Just because it is somewhat analogous to how other professions work doesn’t mean that it isn’t a massive change to how the game is played.

You seem to have taken the OP’s suggestion as a nerf request, but it could just as easily be an overall boost to thief effectiveness and skill cap. The question, however, is whether the thief needs an increase in skill cap.

As Krathalos said, Shadow Arts doesn’t synergize particularly well with shortbow.

I’d also very much recommend against Rage sigil, opting instead for something that can proc more often. I don’t know where so many people get the idea that since they have a quickness proc trait they need a quickness proc sigil. They’re two independent effects and don’t offer any sort of additional synergy when you take them together.

Some tips in no particular order:
Get 15 into Deadly Arts for weakness-on-poison, SB is amazing at applying poison.
Consider Trickery + Uncatchable for an additional way to cripple incoming melee opponents or fleeing targets when you’re point-blank bombing.
In general SB is heavily initiative limited, going deep Trickery would be rewarding in multiple ways.
Dagger Storm is an excellent elite to punish people who think they’re going to just duke it out with you at a range.
Consider taking Shadowstep to play even more into the shortbow’s mobility strengths.
To dictate range you’re going to need a speed advantage. SB #4 is good for pulling back from an oncoming opponent, but poor for getting close to use cluster bombs. Again Trickery can help with this somewhat. Signet of Shadows is the easy option, but you can also push into Acrobatics a bit for swiftness on dodge.

FWB.1704:

Our survivability in dungeons is next to nothing given that we need to kill a mob before they kill us to survive.

Translation: Thief survivability in dungeons is bad when you use PvP doctrine to engage high-HP opponents that are tuned for an extended fight.

Thieves aren’t doing poorly in PvE, they are however one of the professions that does not do particularly well bringing PvP setups directly into PvE.

Okamakiri.8746:

Tulisin.6945:

In the latter, most of the high-burst setups people are using in PvP are completely unviable in PvE. PvE rewards constant ability to kill enemies at a quick and safe pace, whereas PvP (at least in this situation) rewards a single quick kill followed by a period of recuperation.

Speak for yourself. I absolutely love my BS build in PVE and I don’t use a bunch of utility skills to line up one huge backstab, which is why I’m strongly against nerfing the base ability. BS is fine, overpowered cooldowns (which ALL professions have) are the real cause of all nerf cries. They’ve already ruined S/P in PVE because of PVP whiners. If they destroy BS builds too in PVE, I’m done with this game.

If you aren’t trying to “line up one huge backstab” then you aren’t using a high-burst setup, are you? You would probably be better off in PvE if the raw damage of backstab was replaced with something a little more synergized and useful. Futhermore, S/P is still pretty viable in PvE as a no-brainer setup that requires very little action to be effective. The PW nerf was poorly executed, but its AE capability along with evade means it still retains some PvE use.

Backstab is, on paper, “fine”. It is, however, also boring. Even if TTK in PvP wasn’t a problem using instant closers and precast stealth to negate the setup requirement for backstab I’d still say it is a bland ability in need of some spice.

Thieves have quite a bit of viable condition removal. Traited (or even untraited) Signet of Agility offers consistent condition removal in addition to its other nice effects. Both Infiltrator’s Strike and Shadow Step serve as all-purpose condition removal, and then there is a rash of other condition removal abilities that only apply to specifically damage or specifically non-damage conditions. Not the most condition removal of any profession, but I think people are looking at other profession’s anti-condition specialized builds and trying to compare them to the average thief.

I dunno, I think shortbow is kind of the poster-child for the perfect weapon. Easy to learn, hard to master, good damage and amazing utility. Useful in and out of combat, and synergizes with nearly everything. TBH its only major weakness is 1v1, and even then point-blank cluster bomb spam is great burst damage depending on build. I’d say 1v1 weakness is a fair tradeoff for everything else SB offers. If all thief weapons were as deep and viable as shortbow, they’d be in heaven.

Stin.9781:

I would rate S/D highter actualy, since its much better then d/p. Probably on same scale as pistol whip, if you play well with your invisibiitys.

This is why I don’t think he should’ve tried to rank the builds, just listed viable ones. Lets not get caught up in the arguing over subjective rankings.

Ensign.2189:

Dagger Storm is strong against melee once they’ve burnt their initiative or blown their snare/root cooldowns.

I’d agree to this with the sole caveat of thieves. Thieves just have too many gap closers and can match dagger storm’s cripple output, making kiting them out of melee range a losing proposition.

stefanplc.5234:

I can’t even believe the large amount of people defending Thief single target damage in this thread. You must be out of your mind to think that killing someone within 3-5 hits is normal.

Killing someone in 3-5 hits is normal, most professions can do it. The problem is that thieves can do those 3-5 hits in half the time most other professions can, due to precast C&D->instant mug. The distinction is very important.

Ichishi.9613:

S/D dazes by themselves do not bring enough utility to be a separate viable build really.

Depends on your number of targets really. I mentioned it because going heavy C&D and daze duration is a big departure in traits and playstyle from other S/D setups, they don’t work the same at all.

samkong.2719:

“You mean like…roll for initiative….?”

very few people will get this lol

As much as I’m sure we’d all like this to just be an in-joke, “Roll for Initiative” is an actual thief skill in GW2 that evades and restores initiative, so I’m pretty sure 95 % of this forum population will get it.

crewthief.8649:

Tulisin.6945:

crewthief.8649:

Can we all agree that lifespan on a glass cannon Thief versus a glass cannon Warrior isn’t really a fair comparison? The Thief can escape SO many situations that a Warrior in the same situation would die in.

They’re comparable but via two entirely different scaling mechanisms. Warriors (even glass cannon ones) benefit from innate durability and scale well with stats. Thieves (even glass cannon ones) benefit from innate mobility and scale best with skill. As a result, at lower skill levels the warrior benefits more from their innate defensive characteristics, whereas at high skill levels the thief benefits more.

I can see how the skill level of the individual Thief player would greatly impact their overall survivability…but couldn’t that be said for any profession?

Yes, but not to nearly the same extent, which was my point. Thieves have high skill cap survivability due to heavy reliance on evasion (interrupt, dodge, mobility skill timing) and misdirection (knowing when to stealth and how to act while stealthed), but pumping another 50 points into vitality isn’t going to do much compared to what a warrior gets out of those stat points. Conversely, warriors benefit heavily from those extra stat points, but there are less opportunities for warrior to distinguish themselves with player skill, just due to the nature of their skills and the cooldowns they have.

This is a weird dichotomy, and some thieves take it to mean “thieves are a skill based class, I won because of mad skills”, but it doesn’t really mean that.

NightyNight

Thieves are designed that way to burst people down .Thats why they use initiative in the first place instead of CD’s.

If you think that is all initiative can be used for you’re missing a lot of the malleability that the thief offers. Initiative allows a skill to be spammed, in the case of a high-damage skill that can mean burst damage, but in the case of a more utility-based skill it makes the thief into a utility powerhouse.

Don’t forget “Dazychain” S/D, combat medic with venom share heals + stealth heals/revives, and bunker stealth builds. There’s also a lot of Acrobatics+Trickery dodge/might synergy that can be pushed into most builds to completely change their playstyle.

As I’ve said in other threads, I’d like to see the backstab nerf come in the form of endurance play. Maybe stealing endurance from the enemy.

Regenerating initiative on a curve isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but initiative management itself is such a departure from every other profession’s mechanics that perhaps it is best to keep it relatively simple.

crewthief.8649:

Can we all agree that lifespan on a glass cannon Thief versus a glass cannon Warrior isn’t really a fair comparison? The Thief can escape SO many situations that a Warrior in the same situation would die in.

They’re comparable but via two entirely different scaling mechanisms. Warriors (even glass cannon ones) benefit from innate durability and scale well with stats. Thieves (even glass cannon ones) benefit from innate mobility and scale best with skill. As a result, at lower skill levels the warrior benefits more from their innate defensive characteristics, whereas at high skill levels the thief benefits more.

Rayya.2591:

unless 1 of the thieves do an mistake, we can perma stealth vs eachother

Cool? You’re a thief, you know where the enemy thief is likely to go during stealth, swing your weapon in that direction. Sword is particularly effective at this, hitting a wide swath of space while also crippling the stealthed thief. Dropping caltrops is another good option.

Most of the time when I fight thieves we stick to eachother throughout stealth because both of us know how to work through it effectively. Thieves are, on average, much better at dealing with it because they use it themselvs.

-#1 is the problem the request is meant to solve, namely giving thieves a solid >900 range option. I’m not sure it is a good solution, but “You can’t use X to fix Y because of Y” isn’t really a good counter argument.

-#2 is a good point, it all depends on how a long-range weapon would function. That said, a weapon that lowers thief mobility could be interesting tactically.

-#3 is a problem with steal, a problem that should be fixed. Steal should synergize better with ranged setups than it does.

-#4 is a design decision. Flavor can be altered to suit mechanics.

Begur.3205:

Tulisin.6945:

This lack of understanding about how stealth works diminishes the strength of your other arguments. Stealth functions in no way similar to invulnerability.

The lack of experience with perma stealth thiefs in www diminishes all other your arguments. I may describe how invis ~= invul, but you will not listen. Enter www and see by yourself.

I have no problems with “perma stealth” thieves in WvW. Sword/caltrops + Signet of Malice makes it easy to see when I’m hitting them, keeps them crippled, and allows me to track them around until they either flee or die. Either the thief has enough offense to be dangerous when using heavy stealth and will actually die to being chased by stealth or they’re a high-defense stealther that will be very difficult to kill but need not be feared as long as they’re pressured.

From the perspective of some non-thieves this (“perma stealth”) is an un-counterable tactic, whereas from the perspective of a thief the vast majority of people immediately stop trying to kill the thief and start picking their nose when the thief stealths. If players would stop acting like NPCs in regards to stealth, thieves wouldn’t find it nearly as effective. Stop being stuck in the mindset of “must have a tab-target to do anything” and you’ll do just fine.

rook

Still doesn’t justify the upcoming change. I know you enjoy running S/D and that’s cool. Other thieves run strictly SB and then some run condition. That’s great.

That is difficult to determine until we understand what “the upcoming change” is. A properly implemented change to the backstab opener would increase TTK to a more manageable 4-5 seconds while offering more synergy to open up new build possibilities. Exchanging 20 % of backstab’s raw damage for a 50 % endurance boost on BS, for instance.

Teerwik.1650:

poison which is one of the most if not the most underpowered condition atm.

Poison is pretty awesome once you understand that its main role is really to prevent leaving combat (via long-term stacking it with duration) and nerfing enemy heals. The damage is a nice little bonus, but poison is an effect you apply for an attrition battle, not something you’re trying to kill someone with. I’d rather apply a poison than 3 stacks of bleeding to a group of enemies any day.

Shooopa.5632:

Tulisin.6945:

Shooopa.5632:

Tulisin.6945:

Adaneshade.2409:

The fatal flaw in this whole argument is that you assume the “Uncatchable” trait is the same thing as the “Caltrops” ability. They are not, the caltrops on dodge from uncatchable do not last more than maybe 1-2 seconds (doesn’t say in tooltip exactly but the duration is crazy short) and has a very small radius. The actual utility skill “Caltrops” does have a 14 second duration but is on a 30 second cooldown. The situation you describe would be standing in that.

No thief EVER stacked 25 stacks of bleed with “Uncatchable”…..ever.

The “Uncatchable” caltrops last 4 seconds and depending on skills and situation you can lay down 2-5 fields of them simultaneously. They’re actually a surprisingly effective tool, doubly so when properly synergized.

No, they vanish much more quickly than that. I’m using them now and they only stay around for about 2 seconds at max.

That is odd, but I can definitely stack up to 4 bleeds on a single mob using only one dodge. Either the caltrops field is taking effect multiple times a second, or it lasts longer than two seconds.

I have no idea how you’re managing that because my dodge caltrops only give one stack of bleeding and they disappear very quickly after being dispersed. You’re sure that’s just from the caltrops and not building up from other attacks?

Went and grabbed a crab in Bloodtide to test on real quick. This was the result after aggroing it and using one dodge on it.

Shooopa.5632:

Tulisin.6945:

Shooopa.5632:

That’s because they don’t have anything else. The only thing a thief can do at all is one-hit wondering. Their condition damage sucks, their HP sucks, their armor sucks, their ranged attacks suck… They’re not good at anything else but attacking a single target.

Absolutely true in the case of people that are extremely bad or extremely immalleable at playing a thief.

What can they do? Their only status effects are poison and bleed without utility skills, and the skills which apply bleeding and cripple like death blossom and dancing dagger cost a good deal of initiative. Their short bow is laughably weak compared to the ranger’s long bow, and its area effect attacks are way too slow.

Just about everything the thief can do, someone else can do better. The necromancer does more condition damage and has many more effects available, the ranger is much more powerful at range, and warriors and guardians do much more damage toe-to-toe with much less risk.

The thief’s unique feature is the backstab. It’s little wonder why that’s the only thing most people are using – otherwise they’d be foolish not to pick another class.

This belies a closemindedness about the profession’s abilities. Thieves have a lot of things going for them between extremely high mobility, great control conditions (cripple and daze abound in some weapon setups), etc.

Shortbow is far from unfavorable in comparison to other professions’ ranged offerings, it has one of the mob powerful AEs in the game, a very solid multi-target auto attack, spammable blast finisher, evade/cripple, and a movement ability. If you were to ask the community at large to rank ranged weapons in terms of effectiveness you’d find thief shortbow very close to the top.

For conditions thieves lack an ability to apply burning, but weakness/cripple/poison/bleed/vulnerability/daze are all readily available, and it isn’t uncommon for me to be able to get them all on a target in a few seconds with S/D.

You’re being too narrow in your assessment of the available profession specializations. The fact that necromancers have some very powerful condition setups does nothing to diminish the thief’s completely separate and unique condition-based builds. Certain thief specs can go toe-to-toe at low risk just as much as any guardian or warrior.

It is fine for you to personally enjoy the backstab playstyle and build your thief accordingly, but your personal playstyle decisions do not (and should not) dictate the range of the entire profession’s abilities. I know some thieves that enjoy a combat medic role brought on via shared heals and stealthed revives, but the community would, rightly, scoff at them if they proclaimed that their playstyle was the only “real” way to play a thief and everyone else was simply deluded.

Shooopa.5632:

Tulisin.6945:

Adaneshade.2409:

The fatal flaw in this whole argument is that you assume the “Uncatchable” trait is the same thing as the “Caltrops” ability. They are not, the caltrops on dodge from uncatchable do not last more than maybe 1-2 seconds (doesn’t say in tooltip exactly but the duration is crazy short) and has a very small radius. The actual utility skill “Caltrops” does have a 14 second duration but is on a 30 second cooldown. The situation you describe would be standing in that.

No thief EVER stacked 25 stacks of bleed with “Uncatchable”…..ever.

The “Uncatchable” caltrops last 4 seconds and depending on skills and situation you can lay down 2-5 fields of them simultaneously. They’re actually a surprisingly effective tool, doubly so when properly synergized.

No, they vanish much more quickly than that. I’m using them now and they only stay around for about 2 seconds at max.

That is odd, but I can definitely stack up to 4 bleeds on a single mob using only one dodge. Either the caltrops field is taking effect multiple times a second, or it lasts longer than two seconds.

Begur

perma invis ~= invul.

This lack of understanding about how stealth works diminishes the strength of your other arguments. Stealth functions in no way similar to invulnerability.

Jinks.2057:

“The problem is TTK being too low.”

That’s the problem w/ all of the classes.

Absolutely, which is why TTK needs to be increased across the board.

Puru.4217:

Sword Main Hand:

Auto Chain: Faster or more damage.

Sword auto is already the highest-damage auto thieves possess, depending on your condition damage. It also hits up to 3 targets and causes two powerful control conditions. It does more DPS than Pistol Whip, which you said was at a good point for DPS.

dank.3680:

In my opinion (as a thief player), just adding a 5 ini cost to backstab would change a lot of things

The problem with this “solution” is that it doesn’t really do anything for the problem. The problem is TTK being too low. To put it simply, fights are ending faster than ANet wants them to. Some people have suggested an increase in defense across the board, but simply decreasing the burst potential of combos that result in too-fast fights is the solution they’ve chosen.

Adaneshade.2409:

The fatal flaw in this whole argument is that you assume the “Uncatchable” trait is the same thing as the “Caltrops” ability. They are not, the caltrops on dodge from uncatchable do not last more than maybe 1-2 seconds (doesn’t say in tooltip exactly but the duration is crazy short) and has a very small radius. The actual utility skill “Caltrops” does have a 14 second duration but is on a 30 second cooldown. The situation you describe would be standing in that.

No thief EVER stacked 25 stacks of bleed with “Uncatchable”…..ever.

The “Uncatchable” caltrops last 4 seconds and depending on skills and situation you can lay down 2-5 fields of them simultaneously. They’re actually a surprisingly effective tool, doubly so when properly synergized.

Shooopa.5632:

That’s because they don’t have anything else. The only thing a thief can do at all is one-hit wondering. Their condition damage sucks, their HP sucks, their armor sucks, their ranged attacks suck… They’re not good at anything else but attacking a single target.

Absolutely true in the case of people that are extremely bad or extremely immalleable at playing a thief.

Chronic Man.2896:

The thief is a stealth burst class, which means they die easy.

Only if you choose to play it that way. If that is the playstyle you enjoy, it’ll still be viable after changes to backstab.

Ensign.2189:

Overarching all of this is this general issue that tanky builds dominate, and that very high burst damage is needed if every fight isn’t going to devolve into a bleed stacking contest.

At the same time, the sort of burst you need to blast through tanky builds totally eviscerates world PvE farming builds.

I’d disagree on both accounts. In the case of the former, “kill them before they have a chance to take action” is a very poor counter to a tank enemy. The fact that it is seen as a viable solution at all means that something is off. The whole purpose of a character building heavily defensive is to draw fights out to give them a chance to wear down their opponent, pouring on more offense to continue to instantly end fights is not, and should not be, the logical counter to that behavior.

In the latter, most of the high-burst setups people are using in PvP are completely unviable in PvE. PvE rewards constant ability to kill enemies at a quick and safe pace, whereas PvP (at least in this situation) rewards a single quick kill followed by a period of recuperation.

Blacksarevok.8104:

4.) Head Shot – two suggestions:
a.)reduce the initiative cost
b.) increase the damage substantially (300-400%)

Head Shot doesn’t really have problems, it is great at what it does (on-demand interrupts). I think the idea to give it 100 % crit chance would be cool though. The problem is that since P/P lacks a good burst direct damage option people want to change abilities like Head Shot that already hold a solid role to fill that gap.

Karthaugh

Actually I never had a problem with steal. When used appropriately it is one of the best group buffs we have actually! The only real problem is that is becomes pretty much useless when you have any kind of ranged combat, which is pretty sad IMO.

This. Steal is an excellent class ability and can be traited to do a solid variety of things. Its major weakness as it stands is that steal lacks synergy with situations wherein you want to dictate range that isn’t right on top of your target. Having F2 pop up with shadow return for a few seconds after steal might be a viable option, but it probably shouldn’t have condition removal.

Grimwolf.7163:

Actually, many of the requirements held by those other traits only allow them to apply maybe half the time. For example I’m quite sure there’s one that gives 10% more damage while Endurance is full, so you lose it for a full 10 seconds every time you dodge.

You are incorrect, the one you’re thinking of is “10 % increased damage whenever endurance isn’t full” which is quite easy to keep 100 % uptime on. Initiative >6 and “target has a condition” are also easy to keep 100 % uptime on. Trickery’s “1 % damage per banked initiative” is a little different, but isn’t much harder than keeping >6, and scales much better (up to 15 %, and below 10 % without an instant cutoff to 0 %). The specific 5 % damage traits aren’t as high-tier as the 10 % damage traits.

Webley

I think Executioner needs to get nerfed to 10%

Executioner is filling the “10 % increased damage when requirements are met” slot that most of the trait trees have. It has 20 % because the increase damage only applies 50 % of the time. 10 % increase 50 % of the time would make it underpowered compared to its peer traits. 15 % might be more reasonable.

Volrath.1473:

There are a lot of professions out there that have higher bursts than thieves and also higher survivability, if they are to nerf thieves AGAIN thous profession should get the same treatment.

There are plenty of threads where you can debate about whether a change should happen, keep this thread open for suggestions on how to tune backstab to increase TTK without negatively impacting overall thief effectiveness.

Don’t forget the condition damage they provide. I find Divinity runes extremely worthwhile, but I utilize all the stats so I can benefit from them fully.

As for 80 exotics vs. 78 exotics: You’re going to want awesome looking dungeon armor and weapons at some point anyways. If the extra small stats don’t matter to you right now, just wait for that stuff. In the longterm if you don’t want that stuff there’s not much else to spend money on at 80, go ahead and get yourself a level 80 set.

How much you can “take off the top” depends on what you replace a straight damage nerf with. If backstab was reduced to, say, the damage of a <25 % Heartseeker but had some additional effect that made it worthwhile, it’d still be useful and balanced.

For backstab I think the focus needs to be on making it a more complex and synergized ability. The simple “attack in stealth->big damage get” formula is too easy to break by trivializing the set-up. My suggestion would be to make backstab flow better into thief combat instead of making it an all-in attempt to end the fight. Things like daze and cripple are already thoroughly covered by sword. Applying vulnerability isn’t a bad idea, but since C&D is already applying vulnerability and is the commonly-used backstab setup, it seems a little bland.

My suggestion would be to follow suit with the dagger auto-attack and give back stab something that synergizes well with thieves but isn’t particularly common currently: endurance-on-hit. 50 % endurance on hit (25 % from the front), to be exact, one entire dodge. Thieves not only gain defense from dodge, but through acrobatics and trickery can use it to buff offense, do actual offense (via caltrops) or even heal. Dodge is good for everyone, and can further be synergized to be very powerful. This also gives D/D some good synergy with acrobatics that could be considered lacking.

With endurance from backstab the ability remains very powerful while being something that feeds into the thief’s battle rhythm without being the thief’s battle rhythm.

Grimwolf.7163:

I think the easiest way to fix it would simply be to make Body Shot into something useful. It can’t be made into a raw damage attack I don’t think, because that would be redundant with P/P having Unload as well, and Shadow Strike can’t be raw ranged damage because I can’t imagine how a combination pistol/dagger attack could be a sensible ranged ability. So the easiest way is to just keep it mostly as-is and make Body Shot into some sort of worthwhile utility type attack. Especially since that would also correct the effectiveness of P/P.

Right on the money, Body Shot is what is wrong with P/P. 4/5 are utility slots, auto-attack is condition based, and the dual skill is kind of weak and power-based. #2, if properly done, could tie it all together, but as it stands is incredibly mediocre.

Setima.8741:

~Dancing Dagger stays about the same but if it hits only one target you can hit the button again within 5 seconds to knock them down for 1 second and remove the cripple effect

I really like this idea, not necessarily in the specifics but in the general idea of making Dancing Dagger a more viable tool against single targets. In multi-target situations it is absolutely one of the thief’s most powerful abilities, it’d be nice to see a single-target option.

Ixa.6523:

Of all the classes, Thief’s get the absolute most out of completely dedicating themselves to one aspect.
The class is just simply designed that way. I’m not saying there is no “inbetween” builds. Just that if we build entirely for 1 hit, then we really have nothing to follow that hit up with. It’s easily 45 seconds before we can do it again

You’re right in your assertion that the initiative mechanic heavily rewards synergizing with one ability due to the thief’s unique ability to spam one weapon skill, but I’m very hesitant whenever someone decides to deal in absolutes as it concerns how a thief is “meant to be played”. The fact of the matter is that hybridized builds can be very effective, especially if you utilize things like Triforge Amulet, Divinity Runes, and Might. These kind of stat sources allow you to continue to build towards your primary specializaton (say, a power-based offense) without completely abandoning other beneficial aspects (like condition damage, or defensive stats).

Too much stock is put in min/maxing towards a particular aspect at the expense of leaving some synergies completely un-utilized. Thieves that run >5 stacks of might constantly, for instance, but won’t use Caltrops because “they aren’t a condition build”.

frans.8092:

Tulisin.6945:

S/D stealth+daze with heavy caltrops is an amazing bunker setup, provided you know how to use your stealth and drop out quickly.

You know a lot about playing a class you implied you never played?

This build is very effective in my experience, but doesn’t match my preferred playstyle. However, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist and proclaiming the way I enjoy playing to be “the one true thief”™, I can recognize and respect that there are effective playstyles outside of my preferred one.

Decutho.3642:

The stealth nerf just nerfed the p/d (which I WAS using) i have to auto att 3 times instead of 2 now and p/d is just another melee build if you want to do any sort of damage. P/P doesnt have kitten for survivability. S/p is okay but if you miss your 3 your screwed. d/p is just lolsies. The only build that actually is decent is d/d

D/P suffers from an awkward dual skill, but heartseekering through blinding powder is an excellent way to set up back stabs.
P/P is pretty terrible, agreed.
P/D is still a very potent condition build, but it does have to be played at close range at least some of the time.
S/P has more going for it than PW.
S/D(which you didn’t mention at all) is very powerful, but requires a lot more attention to positioning and movement.

If a nerf to backstab combo and a buff elsewhere gets rid of a bunch of “min/max towards offense, use d/d, everything else is bad, only care about 1v1” thieves, the profession will be better for it.

Decutho.3642:

Tulisin.6945:

I also have no pity for the dozens of thieves in this threat making points like “But thieves’ can’t do anything but use backstab, nerfing it will render thieves obsolete”. I hope you all follow through with your threats to roll warriors or guardians, the profession will be better off without people unwilling to look past a single role or build in a game very much meant to bend the rules in those regards.

My bad let me respec my thief for bunkering

S/D stealth+daze with heavy caltrops is an amazing bunker setup, provided you know how to use your stealth and drop out quickly.

You aren’t being clever by going with the “woe is me, thieves are terrible at everything but the specific tactic I’m using” bandwagon, just confirming that a large portion of the thief community is too narrow-minded and immalleable when it comes to ways the thief can work.

So once again, there is nothing wrong with enjoying a particular playstyle above all others, and it might suck when that particular playstyle suffers a nerf, but the chicken-little’ing over it is uncalled for. Thieves will continue to be an excellent profession in many roles and situations even if steal/C&D→BS gets nerfed, and may actually get stronger depending on what the offset is for the change.

I don’t have a problem with TTK being brought up on a whole. If Anet wants to try and make fights last >4 seconds then more power to them, especially if they’re going to do it right and examine all of the professions and the sources of their quick kills..

I also have no pity for the dozens of thieves in this threat making points like “But thieves’ can’t do anything but use backstab, nerfing it will render thieves obsolete”. I hope you all follow through with your threats to roll warriors or guardians, the profession will be better off without people unwilling to look past a single role or build in a game very much meant to bend the rules in those regards.