Guild Wars 2

CombatEvolve.9238:

I liked it, I’ve wanted to try out Bound with D/P for awhile now, stealth play makes it interesting.
Seems like you’re using Daredevil runes, what about sigils?
Also, are you doing the Shadowshot, stow weapons, backstab trick? I see you stow your bow a lot so I’m assuming you are, any tips on practicing this trick?

Don’t need to stow weapons for that.
Just Hit Backstab as soon as the Bullet of Shadowshot connects to your target (you’ll see a shadowy puff of sorts). Ofcourse, you can also stow weapons at that time if you don’t want to break stealth, but meh. It’s not that hard. Just look for the animation of that puff and you’ll be fine.

Also, pretty fun video ^^

Well… It’s a start.
There’s miles to go for Thief still.

Proc his traps by dodging over the point he’s holding.
Check his animations to see if he’s putting down new, if he did, just dodge over the point again.
Just wait out the duration of the traps by making use of Line of Sight.
If the traps have worn of, you got a Trap DH who can’t do anything for ~10 seconds.
Just be careful on what attacks you use Dodges and/or Flanking Strike on.
After whacking him for ~10 seconds, start looking for those animations again where he puts down traps. If it’s one that hurts: Wait it out outside of his Line of Sight again.

It’s just a game of being patient.
Look for the proper opening and don’t let him pin you down, use Line of Sight to your advantage.

Counter to this build: AoE & Properly timed interrupts. Anyone who knows Vaults Evadeframe will be able to completely shut you down. If that person is also capable of rotating between their close/mid, you’re useless to your team in al ways possible.
This is a fun build to play up until Ruby, after that you’re probably going to need to make better use of the other skills on your toolbar because Vault/Bound spam will get you killed against any decent group of players.

EDIT:
Also, the stream isn’t particularly worth it… Seems like a guy with an ego too big for HotM, posing as TCG/oRNG player (albeit with trollnames, kitten ) having a moderate success against players of relatively low skill.

just waiting to see what traitline they’ll gut this time before giving it back to us in a “reworked” Acrobatics.

Did a Thief and/or Shatter Mesmer burst your Bunker Bubble?

Don’t get hit.
I engage only on my own terms (stealth allows me to do this), I just make good use of the environment to avoid getting hit and I keep my dodges ready as soon as I see the guard precasting a skill from a distance as it means he’ll likely teleport onto me.

Basically, I always keep a route of escape at hand because I like to think ahead.

What? A fix? An actual fix that is as easy as copy-paste with different meshes/animations attached!?

Yeah, way too hard.

Great video yet again, didn’t expect anything less.
To be fair though, the intro’s a bit long :P

It’s very easy to dodge it, just look for the animation and/or wave that is sent out.

Sorel.4870:

muscarine.5136:

Reason : everything you do some other class does it better. Even mobility.

No class is more mobile than thief. Mesmer can somewhat compete with Portal, but on a long CD. Whether or not mobility is sufficient to give thief a role in pvp is another matter.

Warrior, Ranger/Druid, Necro’s with flesh Golems, Ele’s and even guards under certain conditions all got comparable or even better horizontal mobility.
We only excel at vertical mobility nowadays.

Well… Just keep pushing yourself.
Reflect on fights even if you win them, what could you have done better? Consider all tools that we have and try again.
Personally I just wouldn’t want to play anything else so I just keep trying until I find a working method that I still find enjoyable.

You can still win any 1v1 against any class, provided you play it smart, and play like an kitten.
Avoid fighting on any terms but your own and keep your eyes open for moments where you can and can’t engage (or sometimes even disengage…).
It’s tough to play Thief right now due to the balance (or lack thereof depending on your views), but also because it requires you to play with a team that can actually tailor itself towards having a Thief on their team. If you want to play Thief, it’d be great to have a friend to duo with just so you got at least one additional player that knows how to play with you.

You’ll probably be more successful on any other class as Thief is currently in a “high risk/low reward” phase, but it’s great fun if you can pull it off correctly

Luckily.
Granted, the animation looks good. Major downside is the fact that Aftercasts (especially as long as the vault one) leave you open and vulnerable for your enemy to punish you.
This’d be awful in PvP/WvW…

Azukas.1426:

Not trying to say those people are right per say, but in a ways they are. For a thief to properly work in PvP it requires the other 4 players to be able to 4v5 and let the thief freely roam the battlefield. Those other 4 players will have to rotate properly as well.

Now what do we know about all the meta specs that are in this game? They are brainless low skill high reward builds. You don’t have to think while playing these builds.

So why would you expect these players to meet the criteria that allows a thief to be an asset?

Do you see what I’m getting at? In the PUG world of PvP ladders thief is actually a detriment to the team. Its hard to have them play 2 points while the thief does his job. I will state though it takes an extremely good thief to succeed in today’s game as well.

p.s. Also no one in the pro league is using a thief as well. You had Toker play 1 round on Kyhlo, and the Abjured didn’t roll them nearly as handily as they did w/out the thief.

He also played it on Temple where they completely steamrolled the others.
They also had the interview after where it’s pretty clear that they didn’t have a close match because of the Thief, but rather due to trying some new ideas in terms of strategy and/or rotating.

I agree with what you say though, there’s indeed a massive difference between pug PvP and pro PvP. That’s exactly why your exmple is a bit peculiar… Especially considering a fair number of pro-league players actually do pug-PvP on a Thief. But really, there’s just no point in cherry picking to make a point (even though it’s a rotten cherry…)

I got the exact same issue.
While in GvG’s it’s still possible to effectively run a traditional Thief/Mesmer focus party due to the fact that it’s a more controlled area of sorts (you can tell how melee train and backline will move and/or bomb and position yourself accordingly). It’s not possible to effectively run such a party in your average Guild Raid on EB/Borders. You can’t predict where enemy pugs will randomly throw down AoE etc. or even worse, those stupid OP idiots playing Rev and mashing Hammer #2 in all imaginable corners and beyond.

I’d recommend you to quit, or to play something else for your normal raids (I’ve picked up playing Guardian in the melee train myself…)
I really, really hope they’ll balance things out soon, as while I don’t really mind playing Guard, it’s not what I love to play and I will leave the game sooner rather than later if things don’t brighten up for Thief soon.

It’s because of the restrictions of Ground-Targetted skills.
It’s a known issue as it has been raised often enough during the HoT Beta’s.
However, it can’t apparently be fixed without significant work on the engine, so chances of this happening are very slim.

Pretty much: It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Kaishina.6584:

Why ??? Just why 1200 range weapon ?? If ranger gets 2500 range u will cry for 3000 range weapon cause thats how you are. Actually dual handed katana is the way to go

Because we don’t have a 1200 range option, unlike everyone else.
Also, Rangers got 1500 range… Don’t see me asking for that though as it’s clearly ment as a Ranger-only thing. Thief shouldn’t be OP, I don’t even want it to be. I love the challenge that the Thief class has to offer, but it should have a fair shot.

Some people actually try to keep balance in mind when making suggestions.
Maybe you should keep that in mind before making assumptions…

We need a 1200 range weaponset.
I’d personally love off-hand Sword as I’m simply a sucker for swords, but it’s yet another melee-(mid?)-range set depending on the kind of skills they’d put in #4 and #5…

Maybe the third Specilization could give the off-hand sword, but for the first Specialization, I really want to see us getting 1200(+) range weapon(s).

I watch ESL if I can’t sleep…
Beats counting sheep, I’m knocked out when I see the team comps.

Because outside of Warriors, all of the other classes got the ability to have both high sustain and high dps aswel as good group support.
What put thief in the meta before was it’s mobility, right now there’s high horizontal mobility across other classes aswel (Rev’s, Mesmers still, even Druid’s really) so we’re facing a point where literally everything we can/could is done better by classes that got a much lower risk vs a much higher reward. They do what we do, along with higher sustain, more support and probably more dps over the course of a fight (not to mention direct counters such as Reveal etc.)

Really, the only thing we still do best, Is vertical mobility.
Which is useless as soon as your enemy has two points bunkered in PvP (vertical mobility doesn’t matter in PvE and hardly in WvW).

We just don’t bring anything to the table.

EDIT:
Also… Passives… Those crutch “get out of jail for free card” traits/procs prevent us from effectively taking out unaware/bad players within seconds.
Bad/unskilled play doesn’t really get punished anymore until you reach higher tiers of gameplay.

Double Trouble.3162:

Snip.

Hate to break it but that build and others like it don’t work against people who got interrupts and cleansing.
DB’s evade frame is bad and it’s easy to punish you after that really. Reason you got to diamond so easy might be because mmr wasn’t reset at the start of leagues. Your rank and mmr are low so you face easy matchups which allow you to progress a lot faster.

Small Norn is basically a tall human…
I personally always preferred the aesthetic of the Norn.
Norn thieves are also much rarer and therefor interesting than Human ones.
It also fits in with their lore in a way. The Norn mean to wrought stories so that history remembers them, the means by which this done is of no real importance.
A thief in Norn society wouldn’t necessarily be looked down upon, a thief in human society would be an outcast of sorts.

Lol?
You are not going to kill someone within seconds no.
The strength of that build lies in the fact that it has high sustain while maintaining high pressure.
Don’t know what you were expecting to burst in seconds during a meta were almost everyone has high sustain through passive trait procs and utilities.

Engi/Scrapper’s meta because it fits in with the consistent sustain + dps that everyone but Thief/Warrior has right now.

EazyPanda.6419:

Oh that’s Easy.

Here’s the build.

Sentinel Amulet (Vit, Power, Toughness)

Rune of Melandru/Resistance

Staff/Staff (Sigil of Energy, Purity, Generosity, Water)

Acro 2 2 2 or CS 3 3 2
Trickery 2 3 2
DareDevil 3 3 1

Skills
Heal:
Channeled Vigor

Utility:
Signet of Agility
Roll for Imitative
Bandit’s Defense

Impact Strike

Usage. Dodge, Dodge, Dodge, use Bandit Defence, Staff 3, Staff 3, Dodge, Staff 3, Staff 3, Swap, Staff 3, Staff 3, Dodge, Signet of Agility, Dodge, Staff 3, Staff 3, Roll of Initiative, Staff 3, Dodge, Dodge, Staff 3, Vault, Dodge, Bandit’s Defence, Dodge……
(Staff 3 can be replaced with vault)
……
……
This may actually work.

And then you find someone with the brain/awareness to interrupt you after the evade frame(s).
gg :/

EazyPanda.6419:

Oh that’s Easy.

Here’s the build.

Sentinel Amulet (Vit, Power, Toughness)

Rune of Melandru/Resistance

Staff/Staff (Sigil of Energy, Purity, Generosity, Water)

Acro 2 2 2 or CS 3 3 2
Trickery 2 3 2
DareDevil 3 3 1

Skills
Heal:
Channeled Vigor

Utility:
Signet of Agility
Roll for Imitative
Bandit’s Defense

Impact Strike

Usage. Dodge, Dodge, Dodge, use Bandit Defence, Staff 3, Staff 3, Dodge, Staff 3, Staff 3, Swap, Staff 3, Staff 3, Dodge, Signet of Agility, Dodge, Staff 3, Staff 3, Roll of Initiative, Staff 3, Dodge, Dodge, Staff 3, Vault, Dodge, Bandit’s Defence, Dodge……
(Staff 3 can be replaced with vault)
……
……
This may actually work.

And then you find someone with the brain/awareness to interrupt you after the evade frame(s).
gg :/

Looks like they were able to farm you guys then.
Play better is all there’s to it. I don’t enjoy Stronghold myself because of the system it’s based of (if I wanted that, I’d play Dota) but I’m very glad that beating the lord isn’t a sure victory.
Why? Because that’d encourage zerging no matter the cost. At least now there’s minimal tactical and skillful play behind it. Don’t get farmed in teamfights…

Learning to fight them is indeed key. Especially if you’re new to the scene.
I’ve always recommended people to play the class they may or may not struggle with in order to learn how to fight against them, so I’ll tell you to do the same :P
Just hop onto metabattle and start playing with the builds.

Mesmers/Chrono’s may seem strong right now because they got the ability to either sustain loads, or to end a fight in seconds with a well set up shatter.

You are right in the fact that mesmers are susceptible to Condi builds though. Even the sustainable Bunker Chrono has to rely on his shatters to cleanse conditions and to make the most of it they need to take good care of their illusions/clones/phantasms which can be countered easily with almost any AoE and they can be pressured easily like that.

Well if it’s bumped anyway…
While I personally don’t mind Chaos Armor so much, but I really would like to see Shocking Aura and Magnetic Aura to be more visible again.
Not having proper visuals on those auras is a big factor in fights…

Edarkness.7543:

But scappers are years better arent they

Eons’ better.
Heck P/P condi engi even makes me laugh when I play Thief…

yolo swaggins.2570:

reikken.4961:

yolo swaggins.2570:

I am never going to understand why anyone would want another melee weapon.

as opposed to another ranged weapon? This isn’t a good argument. our melee/ranged mix is almost equal

1 melee 2h, 1 ranged 2h
2 melee main hand, 1 ranged main hand
1 melee off hand, 1 ranged off hand

Technically we got 3 melee weapons and 2 ranged weapons that don’t have any value beyond short range. So more like 3 melee and 2 not-really melee weapons.

Another thing to avoid confusion.
I think Yolo’s talking about a 1200 range weapon, of which we currently have a whopping total of… Zero.

evilapprentice.6379:

Vornollo.5182:

Straegen.2938:

SoulSin.5682:

I haven’t tested properly, but on the last Closed Beta I could “cancel” the kick from bandid defense by dodging.

I can’t seen to be able to cancel the kick now.

I’ve used a lot that skill on CBT, it was a 10 sec stun break and could basically block ranged attacks freely.

It still gets prevented when using Dash at least as of last night. Haven’t tried it with a different dodge though.

Bandit’s Defence Kicking part can be cancelled by all dodges (including the base dodge without a GM dodge selected) aswel as the stowing of your weapon.

EDIT:
Now that I think about it, I’ll test if it can still be “overruled” by another skill (like how you can overrule the Strike on Infiltrator’s Strike with CnD if timed right).
Will update accordingly.

Not trying to be rude, but this information is of little value – if I used BD, it’s partly because I wanted the block. If I was going to blow 50 endurance on a dodge anyway, it takes away a lot of the value of DB.

Regardless of whether or not you can dodge out of the kick, it should be redesigned to roll-over on block, or else it’s kind of a kittenty, limited skill that won’t find it’s way onto a thief’s bar most of the time.

Not rude, just pointless as it was a response to a post that mentioned the dodges as means of cancelling the animation.
At any rate, as I mentioned, can Stow to cancel the Block and the Kick keeping the block (if desired) and your 50 Endurance plus extra points for style, lol.

You can’t cancel the kick with another skill, tried it a number of times with a variety of/in timing.
If anything I’d suggest getting used to Stowing the kick.
After that it’s also easy to follow up with another skill almost instantly.

EDIT: Oh yeah… My preferred solution would be to add an Evade frame to the kicking part.

The fact that you can’t take 1v1’s against equally skilled people means we’re weak in the meta.
Your “role” (sadly) is to decap and +1, both of these “roles” become pointless as soon as the point you want(ed) to decap has a player on it of equal or better skill.

Michael.9517:

DeceiverX.8361:

Depending on the camera and targeting settings, skills can be used without a target, thus a smart enemy can directly counter the effects of stealth if they know where the thief will likely be.

… you mean just spam stuff and win? RIP Thief

Essentially yes.
It also means that your opponent is possibly/likely a former Thief player themselves and simply knows how you’ll move/act because of it.
Action Camera made it easier for people to “follow” you in your stealth.

That said, I do feel like the Revenant Hammer AA clings to you even through stealth.
It’s a feeling, haven’t properly tested it.

Straegen.2938:

SoulSin.5682:

I haven’t tested properly, but on the last Closed Beta I could “cancel” the kick from bandid defense by dodging.

I can’t seen to be able to cancel the kick now.

I’ve used a lot that skill on CBT, it was a 10 sec stun break and could basically block ranged attacks freely.

It still gets prevented when using Dash at least as of last night. Haven’t tried it with a different dodge though.

Bandit’s Defence Kicking part can be cancelled by all dodges (including the base dodge without a GM dodge selected) aswel as the stowing of your weapon.

EDIT:
Now that I think about it, I’ll test if it can still be “overruled” by another skill (like how you can overrule the Strike on Infiltrator’s Strike with CnD if timed right).
Will update accordingly.

Well, I personally pretty much always play the role of a Roamer. Get quick/sneaky decaps (not necessarily full cap, a neutralized point is often enough), +1 fights before rotating to the next point etc.
So yeah. While you do a lot in such a role and can be the deciding factor of a match, your statistics will be low. If my allies outnumber the enemy after my +1 I leave, “deciding” the outcome of that fight with only 5 points to my name for it. Same for decapping, if an ally shows up on the point, I leave it. I may get 0 points for it, but staying there would be a waste of time.

So yeah, the statistics are really just fun facts outside of potentially using it to compare the efficiency of your build within the role you made it for, like Toeofdoom mentioned.

I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry about this…
But yeah, exploitable indeed lol.

Nah, it’s fine in it’s current iteration. Due to the fact that scrubs get butchered by it and qq will indeed likely mean it’s going to get nerfed.
I’d rather have them focus on Thief’s core issues before meddling with a skill like this.

Those are the people that get too high on their horses.
Simply put, the Meta as set by ESL (while obviously effective) does not apply to pugging, wether it’s ranked or unranked.
It’s because pugs cannot communicate an therefor can be “easily” outrotated by something such as a Thief.

While it’ll obviously be harder in higher tiers where you can expect people to rotate better simply due to their experience, it’s certainly possible to be effective and efficient as a Thief.
Granted you’ll have be pretty much flawless, but it’s possible and there’s a fair number of good and well-known thieves in high tiers that still play Thief in pug matches and are able to make it work.

I personally start matches with the question: Do you guys know how to play with a Thief on your team?
Usually it’s enough to predict our win/loss chances of the answers.

Expect to get flamed a lot (or people will report you, afk/leave game because of you), but if you’re good, either your team or the enemy team will send you some kind whisper with a little praise in it.

Damage Output is pretty irrelevant for classes/builds that focus on single-target damage and don’t rotate into teamfights.
If you got a fair number of AoE abilities and spend 60% of a match in teamfights, the damage you dealt in total will obviously be higher because there’s simply more fodder running around.
A Shatter Mesmer as displayed in your example will rotate in to +1 get a single quick kill (avg. 20k or something health at most give or take random AoE dmg from your shatters which is almost trivial) before rotating out for another quick single kill on another point.

So yeah, don’t use the stat if want to find out your effectiveness if your role isn’t around the teamfight (as a Shatter Mesmer, rather look at kills if anything on that page).
To be fair, there’s not much to deduce from the combat page other than fun facts if you’re just rotating for the +1.

muscarine.5136:

What i meant by unreliable, is that you actually need to interrupt your target to benefit from the pulmonary impact, it’s not just about spamming stuns, KD and daze.
The good side is, pulmonary impacts do stack, so it’s possible to get a nice burst supplement, but most decent players won’t let that happen, and then there’s stability spam.

It’s very easy to get of interrupts if you’re a good player.
What also shouldn’t be forgotten is the fact that the interrupt playstyle is based of a build that has a high base damage to begin with. You don’t “need” the interruptions to deal damage, they simply aid you. It’s one if the reasons why it’s such a strong build against ele’s for example.
You maintain pressure while denying key abilities used by your opponent. Especially since most important abilities got rather big animatic and/or graphic tells on them.
As for Stab… To be fair that’s hardly ever an issue since the change to how it stacks, not to mention the duration on most stability can easily be waited out while just using AA’s or other utilities.
Add to that that most fights shouldn’t last long enough for them to pop stability and you really should be fine.

Saturn.6591:

Helseth actually made a video about power shatter these days, and in his very charming way cough he kept stressing that as a power shatter Mesmer, you NEVER want fair fights. You always +1; you NEVER fight with equal forces (also no 1vs1) or even outnumbered. Unless you are 100% sure you can win the fight quickly, that is. You’re supposed to quickly burst someone down and then leave and go burst down someone else.

Granted, that might not always work if you solo-queue… well, maybe unless you’re really good at it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uVxUXUyAnu8

That’s it.

I personally don’t care about his banter throughout, but he definitely makes good points.
But yeah, I play Power Shatter Chrono and Thief and I play them much in the same way. I leave if a fight’s going sour and give my teammate the finger if he /she got killed because they didn’t leave aswel.
Play like a scumbag really.

No, but you may have postponed your third Auto Attack with a Dodge or the Stowing of your weapon.
I do it quite often when I play S/D to start a second burst chain with AA#3 → Steal.

Should Driven Fortitude get swapped with Escapists Absolution, the healing and/or ICD should be reviewed to make it a viable choice over Staff Mastery/Impacting Disruption.
Think I mentioned that :P

Just watch them make Withdraw obsolete just so Channeled Vigor becomes the best option and it’s just a marketing idea to sell more HoT copies.

Actually happened to me in WvW earlier, on the road from Blue Keep to SM.
Flat surface, no clutter, still got obstructed message…

… Be able to fight without wondering how the kitten I’m supposed to get up/down that kitten mountain /cliffside/tree/random vertical clutter.

Anything 1200 range would be good. Don’t care if it’s a rifle, as long as it’s 1200 range.

I’d say Incinerator would see the most Screen time, most of our main weapon sets use a dagger in at least one hand.

Bolt is my personal favourite though, just love how it looks

Or a Passives Penetration…
I’d love to punish those players that survive solely due to the ridiculous abundance of Passive Procs…