Guild Wars 2

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

mrmadhaze.8706:

This is why thief class is getting nerfed patch after patch:
junky threads.

just meh

I would say they were getting nerfed because they needed it, but hey thats just me. When a thief has enough stealth to get INTO the main spawn in an enemies WvW Map (the centre spawn) and is able to just stealth around inside it and not get killed, it has issues.

I experienced this last night as well. Once the extremely overpowered stealth is fixed they will be fine.

Or instead of waiting for ArenaNet to make thieves easy for you to kill, you could go ahead and learn to play instead of complaining about it

Even thieves wanted perma stealth to go away. It’s gone now, so please direct yourself to the nearest “L2P” thief thread.

Juba.8406:

Tom.8029:

My issue with this is it seems to me that they can have good damage, while having good defense, health regeneration, and speed.

lol

“Warriors are masters of weaponry who rely on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive in battle.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/warrior/

/thread

Nowhere does it say they rely on Healing Signet to survive in battle.

Each pistol whip hits 9×. He hit you with the actual attack itself 3 times, and you sir are really bad at dodging (or face tank like a boss)! You only moved out of one of the hits.

Arlette.9684:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Except you couldn’t be more wrong. Invisibility =/= Invulnerability. Not only does getting hit inside of stealth damage the thief, it takes a SIGNIFICANT chunk out of their health. AoE spam will kill any stealth backstab thief.

What AoE spam as a guardian?

You’re joking, right? Staff 1, hammer AA, hammer 2, hammer 5 with AA, GS spin2win, GS pull, GS AA, Shield 4 & 5, and several utilities with AoE damage and burn around your character. AoE simply means things that aren’t single-target and don’t require a target to use. Spam them attacks!

Arlette.9684:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Thieves sacrifice reliable condition cleanse, any and all defense, and have the lowest health pool. Literally the only thing squishies is a zerg staff ele. Beating thieves is a L2P issue. Backstab thieves have a very front-loaded attack rotation, and a well-timed dodge can mess up the entire thing and force them to retreat or die.

I’d call spending 90% of the fight in stealth avoiding most if not all damage popping out only when it’s convenient one hell of a defense.

Except you couldn’t be more wrong. Invisibility =/= Invulnerability. Not only does getting hit inside of stealth damage the thief, it takes a SIGNIFICANT chunk out of their health. AoE spam will kill any stealth backstab thief.

Arlette.9684:

So Thief complaining about Warrior running around?

kitten PLEASE!

At least that Warrior does next to no damage (he sacrifices damage for that mobility), What do you Sacrifice for your mobility dear Thieves?

Thief is by far the most broken class in the game, OP in any type of small scale encounter up to the point where you just feel like deleting your character and rerolling because that’s how ANet intended it.

No other class can 3 shot a 3k+ armor character while maintaining next to godlike survivability due to their ability to avoid taking damage 90% of the time.

So yea Warrior might be annoying running around like a headless chicken while you try to catch him, but at least he can’t do much more than that.

Thieves sacrifice reliable condition cleanse, any and all defense, and have the lowest health pool. Literally the only thing squishies is a zerg staff ele. Beating thieves is a L2P issue. Backstab thieves have a very front-loaded attack rotation, and a well-timed dodge can mess up the entire thing and force them to retreat or die.

Eloquence.5207:

What: Thief player ego
Why: The world would be a better place

I could actually get behind this nerf.

Samhayn.2385:

Warrior logic.

healing SIG, we need so we can stay in the fight!
heavy armor/high hp, we need it so we can be up front in the fight!
heavy cc, we need it to control enemies and reduce damage so we can stay in the fight!
Condi removal and damage immunity, we need it to stay in the fight!

high land speed, we need so we don’t need to fight?

honestly, warrior is in the best place you can be with a class, good to great at most things with little to no down side.

I think you’ve pointed out the need for warriors to be like necros and stay in the fight. >.>

Vanthian.9267:

aspirine.6852:

Thats a heavt class compared to a lower armour class. How can you even compare that. The fact is that warriors should not get away so kitten easy. It fails every logic.

Who would have thought that a trained battle veteran could out run a scholar? Logical fail.

Thieves are supposed to be trained in agility, endurance and cunning. A warrior wears armor that weighs his own body weight and expects to be able to outrun someone in armor that barely weighs them down?

law.9410:

How bout Staff for a 2hander? Sun Wukong anyone?

This would be so fun.

I generally can fight and win most classes in a 1v1 scenario pretty regularly, but lately condition stealth mesmers have been a real pain in the butt. Alone they’re only a minor inconvenience, but when they’re in a group that outnumbers me I may as well run. There’s just no point in staying in the fight just to die.

Burnfall.9573:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Let me know when you see a dev thief!

you won’t know, they’re in stealth

Man, Burnfall. Do you just search the forums with the keyword “thief” and respond to every post mentioning it? I think you must have some sort of affection towards us.

Let me know when you see a dev thief!

I’m a thief running this, and warriors are pretty easy to chase down. However, any other class I can lock down and kill within a 1500 range distance from start to stomp, and warrior quadruple that distance with their escape power.

Ashen.2907:

Grats to Anet and GW2.

lordkrall.7241:

People will clearly never accept that GW2 won something for actually being better, but rather only because of lack of competition.

It did not win for being better, it won for being preferred over its competition by specific individuals.

I’m pretty sure this is the definition of being better. “Better” is subjective to its core.

ipan.4356:

For a burst heal – I just don’t think it’s bursty enough.

It needs just a little more, like 2-3% more healing.

Part of it’s problem, is that to get it to work at all, you have to invest in full Healing Power – otherwise, it doesn’t work, and that means massive trade offs to dmg.

The thing is, SoM isn’t meant to be used at all. It’s meant to keep you actively engaged in combat by design, so using it is a counter to its design.

Proven.2854:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Signet of Malice will perform far greater in group situations due to death blossom hitting up to 5 opponents 3x, and AoE fields like Caltrops and Choking Gas also tick SoM. In general if you’re running at least 500 healing power with this build, SoM will always outperform Withdraw.

For now, I’m running this build in PvP with some success (although I don’t know how much of that success is due to the build or just my own twitch skills and game knowledge). But when a solo queue pops I advertise myself as a close point bunker. Often times that just means one person from the enemy team coming at me, maybe two.

Also, I’m trying to move away from using Caltrops because it’s not like I’m running a lot of Immobilize. One dodge roll and a few steps gets you out of Caltrops’ range. I’m currently trying out Scorpion Wire as it’s an extra CC for dealing with Stomps/Revives/Heals as well as keeping them in Caltrops, but I’m also considering dropping both of them and adding Signet of Agility along with Shadow Refuge for better group support for those times I’m in a team fight.

Caltrops is absolutely necessary for point bunkering, as it takes up the entire point. I used or run a similar build and act as mid point bunker while the other 4 on my team went close and far. It’s very effective at holding point.

Signet of Malice will perform far greater in group situations due to death blossom hitting up to 5 opponents 3x, and AoE fields like Caltrops and Choking Gas also tick SoM. In general if you’re running at least 500 healing power with this build, SoM will always outperform Withdraw.

Personally, I think gambits should be stacked against the winning servers as their score gets more and more unreachable as the matchup goes on. (e.g. Siege costs more to build, lightning strikes randomly to prevent stacking, etc.)

Flissy.4093:

Thief isn’t the only thing getting nerfed, every single profession is. It’s like an anti-power creep. Thief still have their stealth and high burst, so the ability to catch an offguard player with a massive spike still makes them arguably the best.

This is true. I see so many people complaining that warriors and necros got buffed, but after thoroughly going through the patch notes repeatedly, it seems as though it was nerfs across the board with a single (and very debatable) major buff for each class. Ele’s Diamond Skin is the equivalent of the Thief’s initiative regen buff, and there are many threads in said profession’s subforum debating the usefulness and whether or not it’s actually a buff to the elementalist. The same can be seen for other classes as well.

What SHOULD happen is staves for thieves, and then you can just skin scythes onto them. Just saying.

Chokolata.1870:

Even if it is a l2p issue , thieves can reset fights all day long . They cant be cought, they can run away whenever they want . In short, they dictate when the fight happens and how long it lasts .

So can sword/x+GS rangers, mobility warriors, stealth mesmers, engineers in general, GS+sword/focus guardians, and x/d eles. Go complain on their forums about how they can break combat.

Docherty.8372:

Firstly: there are alternatives to Traveller runes for the +15% if you’re not keen on dropping 20g – Water Runes (25s last I looked) and Monk Runes (AC dungeon vendor) do the same job – true boon-fiends can get two of each for a cool +45%, before traits or food (Omnom cake for +20%).

Secondly: 30 in Acro is not necessary unless you want it, 15 points and you can still manage +80% with runes & food, +65% without a single point in Acro – that’s 18-16.5 seconds of Vigor every 21.5 second steal.

Thirdly: 30 Trickery (for Sleight of Hand+Bountiful Theft+Thrill of the Crime), while a bit painful for sword Thieves who don’t do a lick of condition damage, is not a waste – it takes your Mug down to 21.5 seconds from 35 – which steals two boons, is an interrupt, grants initiative, shadowsteps, gives you an item (which are all great), heals you, damages them, poisons them, grants Fury Swiftness Vigor (don’t forget perma-Swiftness and a very high Fury uptime, it’s not all for the Vigor).

It’s very simple in practice: trait&gear up, press F1.

I can’t +1 this enough. Thank you for showing the math here and explaining why everything is how it is.

You can go ahead and ignore the naysayers. We aren’t in a fantastic place as far as tPvP goes, but we’re still more desirable than engineers, eles and necros when it comes to team comp. Those complaining are refusing to adapt to the meta, which is now tanky s/p 10/30/0/0/30 or a variant of it. Very few of the people above actually contribute to the build crafting portion of the community and peruse the forums to cause trouble, so taking their word is less than advisable. I’ll answer your questions now.

• Depending on how long you’ve been gone, we can no longer cap and hold points in stealth. If you haven’t been gone too long the only notable changes are the nerfs to the boon strip capabilities of s/d and the fact that d/p can no longer perma stealth (a good and much needed change).
• See answer 1
• There have been some improvements when it comes to lag within the past few months, but reset night is still a spam 1 fest.
• the overall player base is larger than it was at launch and rapidly increasing — even more so with the looming launch in China

Lightsbane.9012:

Aaroneous.6190:

I agree, so many people complain about the wrong things with thieves when it is simply a L2 play issue, this case what I am speaking of is a very specific situation that applies to WvW only. These guys are blinking around with 1200 range so frequently escaping everything. Why? I cannot understand why. They are so entirely favored it’s undeniable. Blinking up on bridges, teleporting behind entire zergs, completely choosing when they want to lose or win. If you have seen one of these thieves, then you know that this is no exaggeration, this is a problem.

so why don’t thieves have to ‘l2play’ other professions to know how to beat them?

We do. Ever faced an HGH engineer or a condition stealth mesmer? You have to play and understand completely every class in order to perform at your peak in this game. The issue is that thieves have the most complex mechanics that people don’t seem to understand, which inherently gives us an advantage. You’ll never find thieves an issue in tPvP because people know the classes in said arena.

It’s not really an issue with EotM. Swap a utility for Scorpion Wire when you’re in the undercarriage of the map and you’ve got your CC to pull people off of cliffs.

Oh! I know! I know!

I chain Infiltrator’s Strike, Infiltrator’s Signet, and Steal together to cross a 3,000 range gap in less than a second and combined with Basilisk Venom can surprise the kitten out of people like OP who /laugh from a “safe” distance. He just feels violated, guys. It doesn’t matter that I’m blowing initiative, my steal, my elite and my signet to get to him. I’m OP because I can chain shadowsteps. He’s not actually talking about the utility Shadowstep.

frans.8092:

But with just +45% boon duration from acrobatics and traveler runes you will not get 100% vigor up, you need at least 20 in trickery for Bountifull Theft, and possibly 30 to get Steal cooldown down

Yep.

frans.8092:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Fortunately I’ve been running 10/0/0/30/30 for quite some time and have always carried both traits.

+ runes to get to the +45% boon duration.

And you call that an easy upleep of vigor?

Docherty.8372:

Perma-Vigor is a thing, contrary to what you said, …

It’s hardly an easy thing, which is what he said.

30 in Acrobatics + Traveler runes. Yes.

Maugetarr.6823:

Viking Jorun.5413:

frans.8092:

Viking Jorun.5413:

With Vigorous Renewal and Bountiful theft with 30% boom duration you can still easily upkeep 100% vigor duration.

Vigorous Renewal? Are you playing the same game? Maybe you should try playing a thief before commenting here.

There’s no perma vigor for thieves, 30 points in Acrobatics, 20 points in Trickery plus two traits and wasting your heals and steals for 75% vigor uptime do not fit with ‘easily upkeep 100% vigor’.

Try some boon duration. I have 45% and can upkeep 100% vigor uptime while in combat. Maybe if you’d take the time to learn your class mechanics and how they interact you’d be more open to the fact that thieves don’t actually suck as bad as people make them out to be. Please level your thief to 80 before trying to devalue my comments with empty claims.

Even with 45% you can’t get back up to the pre nerf time of vigorous recovery. To compensate you’ve had to go deep into boon duration and pick up 2 separate traits to increase your suvivability. A-net just changed initiative regeneration to supposedly not lock us into initiative traits and at the same time locked you into 2 other traits + 60 trait points (if you are x/x/x/30/30 + travelers runes like I think). The point is that there is a huge double standard as it pertains to the uptime of defensive boon/capabilities and anet in fact accomplished the opposite of increasing build diversity with this last patch.

Fortunately I’ve been running 10/0/0/30/30 for quite some time and have always carried both traits. The nerf to vigor was only a minor inconvenience to my ability to dodge constantly. Obviously I don’t focus on vigor upkeep in a fight – that’s not something you need to be focusing on. However, in theory it’s entirely possible to keep your vigor on at all times while in combat (or out of combat stealing every 20s on critters and using withdraw for mobility every time it comes off cooldown). That’s my point. I never said that it was possible for any thief to have 100% vigor uptime in all situations.

Is there any chance we’ll be seeing weapons expanded to other classes in the near future, or are you guys focusing on balancing what’s currently here?

Ezekiel.1985:

If you think thieves are hard to catch you clearly haven’t come across any terribly mobile warriors.

A high mobility warrior I cannot catch on my thief once he gets away from me. If I don’t stop him from getting away to begin with, I just can’t catch him.

I run a chasing/lockdown build and still have a hard time with mobility warriors. It still takes me from a camp to a tower to kill them, or they escape.

frans.8092:

Viking Jorun.5413:

With Vigorous Renewal and Bountiful theft with 30% boom duration you can still easily upkeep 100% vigor duration.

Vigorous Renewal? Are you playing the same game? Maybe you should try playing a thief before commenting here.

There’s no perma vigor for thieves, 30 points in Acrobatics, 20 points in Trickery plus two traits and wasting your heals and steals for 75% vigor uptime do not fit with ‘easily upkeep 100% vigor’.

Try some boon duration. I have 45% and can upkeep 100% vigor uptime while in combat. Maybe if you’d take the time to learn your class mechanics and how they interact you’d be more open to the fact that thieves don’t actually suck as bad as people make them out to be. Please level your thief to 80 before trying to devalue my comments with empty claims.

With Vigorous Renewal and Bountiful theft with 30% boom duration you can still easily upkeep 100% vigor duration.

Sabreene.8062:

Thank you!

Made me want to pick up my thief and learn to play it better.

The fact that he was fighting you in a camp made it easier. NPCs don’t move out of AoE fields, and Caltrops and all of his attacks heal him due to Signet of Malice. The one downfall to the build is it’s lack of stun breakers. He also heals inside of stealth, so be sure to interrupt him when he goes to throw down Shadow Refuge and dodge his Cloak and Daggers.

When you see them black powder IMMEDIATELY use Head Shot. If you’re managing your initiative correctly you should be able to have enough to interrupt their heartseekers before they can combo, and the same goes for mesmers and stealth (note that they gain boons in stealth). As far as actually killing the d/p thieves, try practicing chaining Pistol Whip + PW/Infiltrator’s Signet + PW/Steal. This is usually enough to perma stun any d/p thief and down them within a few seconds. As for condition mesmers, you may as well not even bother fighting them. They’re VERY powerful right now, especially with the buffs they got to conditions December 10th and their new heal. Luckily they still lack chasing capabilities, which is why you need to prioritize thieves over them. You can’t run from a D/P thief (to a certain extent.. my s/p build is made for chasing/escaping and hasn’t been caught be anything yet), so you need to kill them or find a tower to hide in if you start losing control of the fight.

As for general fighting, the rule of thumb is just as it is in chess: the moment you’re reacting to your opponent rather than your opponent reacting to you, you’ve lost the fight. This is especially apparent against difficult opponents like the d/p thieves and Condi mesmers you have a hard time with.

For me, changing my stats is a MUST. I’d rather be able to enjoy the game, constantly tweaking my builds to perfection than worrying about being stuck with the gear I have until I’ve farmed enough for a second, third, fourth set and so on. However as it stands I feel that getting a full set of legendary gear (if that’s the route you’re going with stat changing) would take YEARS to accumulate, and stat changing would definitely be beneficial to WvW teams who encounter a specific tactic and can actively change their stats to hard counter said tactic, rather than mashing their faces into the same brick wall, and provide a route to take for skilled and thoughtful play, especially in WvW/PvE world events.

I wonder who designed the new legendaries since Kekei is no longer with ANet?

Interceptor.2653:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Except when you’re running condition removal food when you use a heal, and vigor on heal. I only use SoM in PvE.

Well, build are about choices, as they say. I combine SoM with AR occasionally, and it does work.

I should have clarified myself. I use SoM in PvE, for soloing camps, and during large group fights. For solo fights and roaming however I take Withdraw, and often swap on the fly depending on the situation. SoM can be VERY powerful, especially when you have enough enemies to proc it, and you would have to be mental not to use it at all when you take the time to put at least 500 healing power into your build.

Interceptor.2653:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Even still, I have 500 healing power and am healed for 490 each pistol whip. I’d like it to be more for sure, but it has kept me alive in swapping to shortbow and spamming cluster bomb/choking gas for a quick 2k health when I get desperate. I can’t stay in a fight at that point though. It’s either break combat or die, and assassin’s reward only allows for an escape mechanic rather than a sustain mechanic.

You really need to combine it with Signet of Malice if you want to use it as a sustain mechanic. With that, now Pistol Whip will give you 1500+ health, and the AOE Shortbow skills can top you off really quickly in a mess.

Except when you’re running condition removal food when you use a heal, and vigor on heal. I only use SoM in PvE.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

I love that down state exists, it adds more elements of play. It brings in more strategy. I’ve often used downed teammates as bait so I can kill the person who downed them. Or I will use a downed enemy to bait his friend into trying to res him, then I beat up the guy ressing and I now have 2 kills!

The only real issue I have with down state is that it’s too easy to rally. In PvE I understand kill 1 mob, rally, ok. But in WvW you should have to meet some more criteria before you are allowed to rally off a certain target. I think either multiple targets should have to die to rally you. Or that you need to reach a higher damage threshold than just “tagging” someone. Possibly a combination of both.

As a WvW and sPvP player, I like that downed-state exists. I feel that the game meta would be so burst focused without it that it would be incredibly boring.

This. The downed state replaces the need for a dedicated healer class, and makes organized team play VERY rewarding, and also allows for organized teams to punish rezzing. It’s an active decision you have to make, and I can’t fathom why these threads still pop up every week. It’s part of the game and is actually one of the KEY things that makes PvP fun to spectate.

Even still, I have 500 healing power and am healed for 490 each pistol whip. I’d like it to be more for sure, but it has kept me alive in swapping to shortbow and spamming cluster bomb/choking gas for a quick 2k health when I get desperate. I can’t stay in a fight at that point though. It’s either break combat or die, and assassin’s reward only allows for an escape mechanic rather than a sustain mechanic.

They were running a d/d bleed build with apothecary/dire gear, and his name is Jenar. You’re welcome.

Bazzoong.7145:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Apparently none of you have played S/D in competitive PvP and combined BV with LS to stop that guardian Shelter and secure the point.

Steal + mace crack does it better and more often, steal with sleight of hand does it on 1 button….

That it does. Except that Steal isn’t Unblockable and you won’t get the mace due to being blocked. And is Mace Crack even Unblockable?

Guys, it’s Burnfall. Please don’t feed.

Warning given.

Have a good day!

What: Movement
Why: Thieves move out of my hundred blades. OP and needs to stahp.

Yeah, I’ve found that the Inf Return nerf isn’t all that bad once you’re used to it.

That’s a pretty standard (and very old) d/d backstab build. It hasn’t changed much today, aside from putting 10 points into DA rather than Acrobatics to have an extra heal on steal, as well as the 2k damage you get from Mug as well.

Dahkeus.8243:

Viking Jorun.5413:

DakSevkla.3278:

S/P and P/P 30/30/0/10/0

30 DA for 5.5s Immob on 50% or less
30 CS for 20% dmg on 50% or less

Stacking Vuln with crits. I get you down to 50% and you are completely screwed. Anyone who uses a stunbreak to dodge the Immob gets hit with 2-3 more. PW and they’re dead. Hitting about 8-10k per PW.

Big numbers are great and all, but sacrificing that much survivability to hit hard isn’t good for anyone, especially when you’re rooted by Pistol Whip and can be 1-shotted at the end of your evasion. Get some vitality man!

Nah, I played PW for a good while with a zerker amulet and it was fine. In WvW, yea, you probably want at least your armor in full valk, but that’s pretty much with any build.

Blinds and evades replace passive defense from stats when you use them right.

In sPvP it’s worse. The new s/p meta is 10/30/0/0/30 using a soldier’s amulet and knight’s jewel. You just aren’t viable running full zerk in any PvP setting, including WvW (unless you’re a back line staff ele).

DakSevkla.3278:

S/P and P/P 30/30/0/10/0

30 DA for 5.5s Immob on 50% or less
30 CS for 20% dmg on 50% or less

Stacking Vuln with crits. I get you down to 50% and you are completely screwed. Anyone who uses a stunbreak to dodge the Immob gets hit with 2-3 more. PW and they’re dead. Hitting about 8-10k per PW.

Big numbers are great and all, but sacrificing that much survivability to hit hard isn’t good for anyone, especially when you’re rooted by Pistol Whip and can be 1-shotted at the end of your evasion. Get some vitality man!