Guild Wars 2

Hey I’m just curious about the results of people of the forum this season:

here are mine :

season’s statistic :
- started emerald, Got diamond
- Game played : 251
- Game won : 127
- Loss streak : 4
- Win streak : at least 2, one that got me through sapphire, the other one from ruby tier 1 to ruby tier 5. Then I stayed there for 2-3 weeks before reaching diamond.

Things I remember : I got nights playing more than 5 games and not moving one pip up or down. But I believe it is ok.

If you look at the stats only, wich I believe mmr is mostly about, then that’s a good season for me. As for the quality of the matches, well there was ups and downs.

I played only with my thief ( 90% of the time ) and my mesmer.
background : I’m playing for 2 years and half. I have ~1k games on my thief, ~700 in ranked.

Anet, if you could post the repartition of the players in each league at the end of the seasons I would be grateful !

Silverbolt.2301:

…and this is the mindset of a highly ignorant, yet stubborn thief. Believing something is a certain way, because you want it to be that way so bad that you fool yourself into thinking that’s how it is.

I know you are salty about thief, I don’t know your pvp level and I don’t really care. But there is a place for thieves in pvp, yes it is harder than other classes for the same amount of effectiveness. Yes you need an excess of awareness. You don’t like it ? it’s fine, you have the right to not like it.

I played my thief during the 4 pvp seasons, reaching ruby the 3 seasons before and diamond this season. It may be not mean much level wise, but I played enough to know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, except your mindset, your advises were on point.

How do you play the first one ? like a d/d condi spam ?

Thief is the best feeling in the world, I do what I want, when I want to do it. But you need to shed blood and tears to get that.

you know you can also play p/p with a bit of awareness and stow weapons ( yea guys you can cancel skills and stow weapons ) when you see a reflect. And yea, p/p is nice against DH, it doesn’t mean you have to stand in one place, spam unoad without thinking and you win.

you know just like you don’t braindead attack a revenant that uses it’s heal on brill legend….

TwiceDead.1963:

Silverbolt.2301:

Thief is trash in sPvP. If you give enough kitten about winning, you should play anything but thief.

Having said that, your only job as a thief is to run to points that don’t have anyone sitting on it and decap it. As soon as you see an enemy coming for you/the point, run away. Just…run away. Don’t even waste your time trying to fight them until you have your allies fighting them.

The other part of your job as a thief is to always look for the lowest HP and the squishiest target, in team fights, that just recently used all their blocks, invulnerabilities, and passive in an attempt to try kill them by getting the surprise jump on them as they fight your allies. If you fail to kill them with a surprise jump, you’re probably about to get kittened – so, do what thief does best and run away. Come back later and try again.

Overall, your job is to run away and fight the capture points that are held by nobody, cause that’s what you do best – air fighting. You’re really good at kittening up the air and imaginary enemies.

This seems to be the consensus of most people I meet… But I will persevere with the underdog because I am stupidly stubborn… Or stubbornly stupid. Or both.

That is the mindset to get good on thief ^^ Thief is not trash in spvp, it’s just highly dependent on the team comp. It is underwhelming at pro level, but hey we are far from that so thief have a nice place, but you have to work a bit harder than others to find it

I would say, have all weapons ready. On my thief, I have all the weapons so I can swap when I need. Anyway, even if you have a preference for one set, you need to know how to play all of them. Each set will give you a different perspective of damage, temporization, anticipation of the enemy. Some enemies are just more easy with one set than another.

Even if some sets are underwhelming, learning them can be great. I tried again power p/d in WvW. For some burst you need stealth + the stealth version of unload ( #1 skill), that you get either from CnD or blinding powder. When I switch back to d/p in pvp, I sometimes need an extra burst, I remember my experience on p/d and use blinding powder offensively for an extra backstab.

Broading your experience is always better

Toasa.1236:

@Taobella
Shame on you.
Thats the silliest build ever! If you cant Play a real thief then go pve.

No skills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As long as it’s effective and he likes the play style, I think it’s ok. It would be more skilled with a shortbow build though, if that even exists :p

Hey, welcome to the thief world

As a thief it is often more worth to decap a point and leave to +1 somewhere than decap and full cap (except home node). As a thief you play 1v1 in a “in and out” fashion. I mean you jump in, temporize by getting out of the fight ( stealth, dodge to put distance and so on ). You have the advantage of cooldown because of initiative. For exemple mesmer with no shatters left is a lot more easy to bring down.

How do you do that ? you gank, he will try to burst you, you disengage, wait a few secs, you gank again, he will have a signet to recharge shatters so he will try to burst you again, disengage, and repeat until you get the window of oportunity ( most skills on cooldown ). The truth is, the encounter is more difficult than that but you get the general idea.

In that setup, since you disengage a lot and avoid AOE, keeping a node is hard.

If you want to 1v1, then most of the case don’t play fair. Use the element of surprise. but once again you should avoid 1v1.

There are some games were a thief trully shine and you get the feeling that you where the deciding factor of every fights. Or your decap play slowly peel their score whereas yours just keep growing and growing.

You can try 1v1 in unranked, since there are absolutely everything out there. So you will get variety of levels and builds. if you want to have a chance in 1v1, the best answer is to know the rotations of the enemy. A rev used his herald heal ? I need to stop attacking or he wil get full health. That engi just went into elixir form ( auto at 25% hp ) ? when he gets out I will have a 1-2 sec window to burst him before he heals with healing turret + blast in water field.

Hope it helps

Terissimo.6852:

This should help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS4rgCRwCBw

Nice video, I knew most of them, but the stow mechanics were what I was looking for.
I ’m quite surprised by your turn around, how do you do it ? Is that using the free cam ?

Hey,

I just tried the /talk emote on my norn elementalist and something funny happened ^^
The eye of the elementalist move from the forehead to the mouth. So now I have a burning microphone !

I think it’s a bug ^^

Healix.5819:

Since map completion isn’t required, I wouldn’t count on hero challenges being nerfed. If they were going to, they probably would have done so when they first nerfed them in VB. But have fun trying to complete them next expansion, assuming it doesn’t go F2P.

Personally, I play off hours and they’ve always been dead content, but so is everything else there. It actually seems more active now than back then, but all along I’ve seen people request help for hours. After doing them on my main, I chose to take the easy route and skipped map completion altogether on my alts.

Wargameur.6950:

You know that Anet previous game was a full team game, with almost no single player content ( except niche builds and farming spots ), having to redo a whole instance in case of team wipe.

GW1 was like 90% single player content at launch, 99% after they allowed for full hero teams, which opened up the elite areas.

Nah…grouping with a bunch of AI is still grouping to clear content.

I play berserk GS / Staff mesmer in pve, and it provides good AOE damages and the escape is enough for survivability. Only problem of the build is too much condis but it’s not something unmanageable.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJAWBnknhtfCmpBEgiFcjycBChRqMAWtfpOWr1cF-TpAXAAdZAY/BA

Saiyan.1704:

Wargameur.6950:

Only way to fix it ? make scorpion wire work the same way on thief. Then DH will compla..

-snip-

Ya right, a Thief using scorpion wire is just asking for trouble lol. All Elite skills are stronger than core and shouldn’t be comparable in that way.

Torch on War vs Torch on Guard
LB & Traps on DH vs LB & Traps on Ranger
Staff on Ranger vs Guard, etc.

We all want what the other has, it’s called HoT powercreep and it’ll likely never change.

In this case we want a skill that we can actually use without a 90% chance to bug on something ^^ Scorpion wire is even worse than spirit weapons.

New specialization : Baby dragon’s toy. Thieves can now be chewed, beat up, stomped, without dying thanks to hours of playing with Aurene.

This is my experience, I just reached diamond yesterday ( that was my goal after 3 seasons in ruby, yay ! ) I played 248 games, I won 127. I got stuck at emerald for a while, then got through sapphire and ruby tier 1-5 with win streaks. Then I got stuck in tier 5-6 for 3 weeks. I play a thief ( with some rerol mesmer ) so the game can really not in my favor depending on the compositions.

Yes, people can get toxic. You don’t since you are a druid but getting a "reroll plz " is really anoying. A lot of people don’t know how to rotate ( I know the basics but I’m not prefect either ) or don’t call for targets.

This is how the match making worked for me : a mix of win and loss. something like 2 wins then two loss, then a win that get you 2 pips because you broke the beginning of a loss streak. I got nights playing 5-10 games and having moved one pips up or down.
This is frustrating until you take it easy. I think I’m not far from my actual pvp level not beeing carried by my class, so I started to concentrate on my gameplay more. I just realised that I would play pvp even if there was no league system, because I have always liked pvp. Pips are a double edge sword once you start to care about it. Your actual real reward is playing the game.

My gameplay changed a lot through seasons, I got bad habits in lower divisions( full caps instead of decap and support ), so I changed that. I also look at the enemy comp, d/p against a 3DH team is awful, but a p/p build is gorgeous. I was running basilic venom then changed it to impact strike because this meta heavily favors rez, and a quick disabling stomp is a huge advantage.

All this thief rambling to tell you that you have to be flexible and don’t really care about win/loss. your gameplay will improve and your enjoyment as well.

As for what to say at the beginning. I usually say “hi”, then where I go which is usually close. Sometimes I ask about weapons and armor appearence because I don’t know them ( sometimes it breaks the ice of people then you can talk strategy ). I look at the enemy comp before the match begin. i don’t know if people do that often but it allows me to tell " hey they have 3 DH and two Ele, I’m a squishy thief we will be at disadvantage for the first mid fight, what do we do ?". Just making people aware of the comp make them change class or engage the discussion.

hope it helps

oh, and one thing: I hate people that stop playing because there is one DC/AFk or say to the enemy team " please win fast" and then stay at spawn…Those people are the worst. The just are losing sight of the game to focus on pips and that is really sad

Only way to fix it ? make scorpion wire work the same way on thief. Then DH will complain. Then they will fix the mechanic.

sigh…today is a salty day for me, sry anet.

throw the bags, it’s one drag and drop and one click. Easy, mouse friendly.

You had a half price discount for HoT just before LW3. My girlfriend moved from a free to play account to a HoT account with that discount. It was a really good deal ! They advertised it for 2 weeks as well.

Sigh….I don’t know what people expect from GW2.

It’s a hero point it is supposed to be challenging…Learn the mechanic of the hero point, change build depending on the situation, experiment. I main thief, full zerker for the most part. too much cleavage ? I turn to p/p instead of d/p. I’m alone ? well thief guild + p/p + venoms and I can go condi. I had to up my mesmer not too long ago, I did most of the HP solo or duo. Max was 5-6 people. Balthazar HP or any commune point ? Use a kitten stealth ( Yes any classes have access to stealth with consumables, check the wiki). You ~15mins to finish a HP, you will get someone attracted by the event eventually. The only very challenging HP in my opinion is the mushroom king.

it seems you keep your mats since you gave up on legendaries, then craft your gear for different situations.

Isn’t all of that just playing the game ?

Do you expect to go to a HP, succeed it at first try with AA and leave ? You know that Anet previous game was a full team game, with almost no single player content ( except niche builds and farming spots ), having to redo a whole instance in case of team wipe. Anet have evolved so much to favorize solo content…and yet you ask for more.

Maybe GW2 is simply not fullfying you and you should look for clickers and RPG games ( that’s ok you know ). Maybe I’m all wrong and I’m one of the try hard players that like a bit of challenge ( thief is perfect for that).

I got one time where I got pulled by a DH and the sword 5 of a necro in the middle of temple. It reproduced the same effect as the death from a giant in skyrim, but less impressive

I was glad to get another vision from the egg, Those gives a really dark vibe that is nowhere else in the game. You really feel the danger emanating out of it !

I suppose you need a little bit of maguuma’s mushroom sniffing to get those done, but the final product is awesome !

For those who wants to play around, that_shaman made a translator:

http://orrian.thatshaman.com/

I asked not too long ago in the DH forum, here are the answers

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/How-can-I-pressure-a-DH-as-a-thief/first#post6307280

As for warriors, retreating and waiting are often a good solution.

Ok, it’s buggy but the Intent is here !

Straegen.2938:

Not really a trick but something I see newbs not doing is priming a steal. So many thieves steal then attack rather than start an attack and steal. Doesn’t work on all weapon sets but most targeted attacks with a wind up are prime candidates. Pistol Whip is probably the best example.

Is that also recommended for AA-chain ? I already do it with “special-skills”

Thief
Fixed the sound effect of the short bow’s arrow release for all thief skills.

finish gift of battle and don’t activate it again. Anyway you will get used to it at one point. I play mainly pvp and the track keep reset to crucible of eternity.

Just asking here because I don’t want to create a new thread, isn’t daze on traps a bit too much ? I suppose it’s designed to be annoying and it works but adding up lot of small things is really frustrating.

Hey,

Just saw that video of Helseth on mesmer tricks, I was wondering if there was the same sort of advanced tricks that I didn’t know for thieves.

tricks I know so far:
- Camera looking down for more heartseekers into blackpowder
- Withdraw canceling with weapon swap( not really useful except in pve )
- Casting backstab after a shadow shot to land both

Are there any other things ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qipMu_1-oYk ( there is a thief trick in the video )

Edit : you can bait a dodge with canceled head shotsby stowing the weapons. ( can be useful in a 1v1 thief )

Hey,

Just wanted to know if a list of streamers could be added to the sticky or updated. The list of pvp streamers from the "new to pvp? start here ! " is two years old.

Since there are efforts done to promote Esport, I think you should at least update it on the forum and make it easy to access.

Yes it is ^^ Between “it’s lost” when you get 50 points differences at the beginning and people that are literally stopping playing the game once they loose a little.

I hate those guys, and then they tell you “most horrible team ever”

Don’t know if it was only me but in-game sequences were blurry until Astral Authority matches. Then it got better.

Commentary was good, I like when they have pro players as guests. Sindrenerr insight was nice. I appreciated the use of the free cam.

Congratulation to Denial Esport, in my opinion they really seemed a league higher than the others.

Well, you have a lot of options :
-Play late at night (or really early), the level is more balanced during those times
-Quit your job and play all day, that’s the brute force methods.
-Find a premade of 2-3 members with good guildies.
-Having the luck to get a winning streak. That was my case from ruby tier 1 to ruby tier 5. I’m now blocked in this tier. I’m trying the brute force method myself there.

Hey,

Just wanted to know if we are supposed to take damage when teleporting in/out of Test of faith. Is that intended or does it comes from the path search mechanisms. I’m a thief so it’s pretty much all shadowsteps ( utility, weapon skills,…) but this is valid for any teleport out there.

So you are pretty much punished for escaping it right ? don’t tell me to dodge, if I get pulled in I got dazed and can’t escape without a teleport.

Don’t know in which div you are, but I know that legendary is ~1h long queue time ( lucky me I’m late ruby). So at 6am if you are diamond it doesn’t surprise me.

Maybe a trait to have 50% chance of a glancing attack on a non moving thief :p

Feiyans.8312:

I wonder if it isn’t done on purpose. Because if the thieves are made to be tricky, they have to do things pretty fastly.
However, strong & fast mustn’t be melt together unless to feel something really powerful. Like warriors in berzerk stance, which chains quickly skill over skill with high presence.

As a tricky class we are based on skills combo with 5 buttons for the most developped ones.
As a tricky class we are based on mobility, if the thief stay on a same place, he’s dead. No matter if it means keeping a “safe” distance from an enemy by turning around him.
If the movement is continuous, it’s easily predictable. And a tricky one without tricks, is dead.

What we have every others classes have it.
->Teleportation ? ofc
->Invisibility ? only other 2 classes. Ironically, we arn’t the easiest class to use it.
->Dodge ? lol, yeah
->Interrupt ? Ok, i admit. For the price of initiative. I don’t really count the skill of the 3 knifes. They are hard to land + priority to useful skills.

I wonder why we don’t have a ‘passive’ dodge skill who would allows us to attack while being safe from hits during seconds. Why don’t we have just to press a button to be invisible ? Something must evolve in our gameplay.

With necromancers we are the weakiest class of the sPvP. I challenge anyone to show me a convenient video with one of these two classes taking advantage over the rest of the roster. And i’m talking about good guys, isn’kitten The ones who know, who desire victory and who have the mind for it. I’m talking about both fighters.

Ps : excuse my bad English, please

There is a trait, that nobody uses which is called instant reflexes ^^ 2 seconds of invulnerability

DeceiverX.8361:

I’d be hard-pressed to believe a dev is or has been interacting with Teef.

If one has, I’m pretty concerned with the way your guild sees engaging or reasonable gameplay mechanisms, and how the underpowered and the overpowered things things have not been addressed.

People are probably connecting because of the group lamentation of the nerfs and the overall state of the profession.

Trust me, the discussion in game are not that far from the forum thread :p

Or maybe it’s hype for LWS3. They want to get their thief cremated in the fire island chain…

We already relied on MMR for a long time, so what happens if you use only the pips system ? Isn’t it supposed to level the players by itself ? The question is, how much time does the ladder needs to stabilise itself.

The problem is pips are shining with so much intensity that people get frustrated when they don’t see them move…

Out of the usual member that I see almost every single day. There are more connected people as usual in the guild. This is not a really bright time for thieves, so why now ?

Maybe they are devs in disguise secretly playing our class^^

PS: This is a stupid thread, but hey sometimes you need to stop reading about skills rework ideas

Are you not supposed to reach a level were you have to either find a team to stay competitive ( in a team based pvp, that makes sense right ? ) or be confident in your skills to surpass those and just stop complaining ?

Sigh…it’s even more funny to see a guy coming from WvW and complain about premade….Aren’t you used to TS already ? You know, squads leaders and stuff.

For OP I would say go to the wiki and check for the skills description and try to understand what a 3/4s evade frame represent on dodge animations and vault.

Cynz and BlaqueFyre don’t get too heated up, there is definetly a skill gap between the OP and you.

I wonder what the Op and his friend were playing, except on a vanilla build there is way too much confort out there to get downed by a thief on a 2v1 situation.

Otherwise, they may have better luck on DH. Just be careful not to mess with F3, the elite skill and weapon swap for focus or shield. This can be tricky because all the keys are not perfectly aligned on the keyboard so you can miss the 90% block uptime.

I agree with BlaqueFyre. To avoid falling you can still weapon swap to cancel the roll. You don’t get the heal but in dungeon that should be ok.

Some answers to pressure DH from their perspective :

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/How-can-I-pressure-a-DH-as-a-thief/first#post6307280

In my opinion, let the teamate against the DH and go help mid. apply small pressure with shortbow and once you identify the end of a rotation on any of the enemy jump in and burst him down.

Just a post to tell that [Teef] members are out there, But I don’t know where to start ^^
I have to think about it and come back with a constructed answer.

I can only talk about the post june 23 patch introducing the new specialization, since this is the period I know the most. If you only look at the thief without looking at the other classes, Anet have tried to open a path to more build diversity. A condi build with D/D, a +1 aggressive support build with D/P and maybe a high burst build with P/P. Unfortunatly, the state of the game doesn’t allow a diversity of builds to be effective giving us only few competitive choices.

Regarding balance, I think that Anet hits a wall. Elite spec are supposed to give the best of an area of expertise. Daredevil is the master of evades. In a world with multiples elite specializations ( Daredevil, Smuggler, Pirate, Sneakster, and so on ) you get to do the balance between elite specializations. With one elite spec, you have a problem because a trait line offers the best of an already existing line, so you are forced into the other areas trait lines. The balance then becomes awkward. I think that the thief class needs more accessible elite specialisations ( not bound to expansions ) to unlock more diversity. In the system designed as it is, no core build can stand a chance. If you can’t find a balance in 1 elite spec, then do 10 elite spec and that is a form of balance.

I won’t extend on traits and all, since there are better people out there to talk about that ^^

PS: this sort of thread is hard because we talked about all those subject so much already. Only a Dev opinion on the matter could move us a bit.

It’s quite easy to get, just follow a bus, lurk around fights and kill squishy people. The reward track is as fast as the PVP one

My post isn’t really clear. It’s not about the DH but the statement that Staff is a better weapon in this current meta.

Hey guys,

I needed advises on the thief / DH matchup ( I know, I know, I should never ever fight a DH but hey it doesn’t kill me to ask ) so for once I asked on the DH forum. Who better than a DH know it’s weakness right ? Here is the link if some of you are interested:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/How-can-I-pressure-a-DH-as-a-thief/first#post6307093

I got this answer from the thief of Never Lucky :

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

D/P Thief can’t really fight DH well. You need some sort of evade in your weapon set or you can’t dodge all of the important kitten. Staff is much stronger in the current meta. My favorite way to pressure DHs is to Vault on their backside when they use Shield of Courage. Use Weakening Charge on your Steal to apply Weakness for a little bit of wiggle room. Weakening Charge can also be used to break the focus block because it hits three times. When you use Bandit’s Defense, a good DH will follow up with Spear of Justice, so be prepared to dodge that. Debilitating Arc is stronger than Vault in this match up unless you’re sure he won’t dodge the Vault, but be careful because the end of Arc isn’t an evade frame, so you’ll take damage if you use it wrong inside Test of Faith. Dust Strike isn’t worth it. The third part of the Staff auto attack is a reflect, but it’s hard to plan that. Use it if it’s up, but don’t rely on it. Steal to interrupt the Wings.

So my question is, do you agree with that statement ?

I gave it a try, and there are some good point to staff against DH. But I felt like it isn’t worth over d/p. In my opinion d/p offers much more than staff, either interrupts, damage mitigation or dammage.

Shadow.1345:

Why would you even fight a DH as a thief when its weakness is your strength? DH woefully lacks in the mobility department and thief dominates in mobility. You’re better off just going where the DH isn’t.

Because I want to know what I can do in every matchup and because thinking that mobility is the solution to everything is a mistake. The name of the thread is “how to pressure a DH” which mean the tips I can get from all the answers are also useful in a +1 situation.

Darknicrofia.2604:

I’d suggest watching sindrener’s stream for thieving tips/advice

I did that already ^^ I watched the one, where he was trying to get through ruby. He was like “WTF are those damages ?”, “You would never see a full trap DH in pro leagues, set traps and then leave point…how would that make sense ?”.

holychampion.7386:

I have more than 1k games on DH/guard and around 300 on thief.
If you want to pressure DH as a thief you have to main options:

The second option I’ve found to work is, if you are carrying D/P + SB, to have basi venom + immobilize venom. Most DHs key spam and don’t analyze their oponent so if use immobilize on them they will pop their wings just to get rid of that condi or any other condi cleanse ability they have. You force them to enter cooldowns. If you are able to pop the traps while dodging DH will be defenseless as you can now activate basi venom and burst them to death. If you can’t kill them in the burst you should go back to ranged and finish them with the bow.

IMHO, the symbolic DH is just terrible since they lack stability options. If you see their symbols are larger than usual you can interrupt their skills with “Steal”. You should use it not as an opening strike but as a way of continuous damage while your venoms are on recharge or the DH popping symbols to heal itself.
If they are carrying longbow you will kill them while interrupting them. Longbow 5 has a really long casting time, you can headshot. Longbow 2 has a shorter casting time, you interrupt with steal.

If you see the DH pop his heal in the middle of the cap, don’t ever go to melee range. Bear in mind that the trap if not triggered only heals for 2k. That’s a shortbow autoattack. Play smart and keep your distance. If they use JI + heal trap they are forced out of their traps, so you melee melt them given that case.

Staff builds work pretty good too but i’m not proficient on thief as to use it effectively. You should consult in the Thief’s forum for that.

Thank you, I didn’t thought about the mind game, I have to give it a try I will also watch out for the lack of stab on the symbolic build.

I know this is a difficult matchup, and there is no good answer to it. But hey, these answers are really good.