Guild Wars 2

thought you guys might enjoy something else instead of D/P.

Wargameur.6950:

Cynz.9437:

Wargameur.6950:

The sub-forum is not that active these days, so if you look other pages up to 4 you should find answers about your question. There was quite a lot of “I’m new to thief” threads already.

very quick answer for your question:

- thief effectiveness is all about creating opportunities for your team and create unfair fights with rotations and +1.
- don’t spam headshot, learn other classes mechanics and interrupt key skills ( heal, signets )
- Auto attack damages are as good as a backstab if not better, It’s usually not worth except in few cases. ( an exemple : you have a 10% hp ranger that is about to heal and you blind powder offensively to proc a backtab ). Backstab is also very hard to land these days with all blocks and invuln. AA proc poison as well.

Those are superficial answers don’t hesitate to dig deeper

The “guide” to thief guides definitely needs….major update lol. Although i feel like, if one was to write a full guide how to play thief properly in pvp, it would would have volumes of a dissertation. I mean after few thousands of ranked games i still have a lot to learn and improve T_T

So true….maybe we can set up something like a multi contribution up to date guide.

Actually I would love to see a guide with several layers of depth. I’m sure new players would love something about the basis, but I for example would like to see something to identify the best targets given an enemy comp. I know it all comes to experience and practise. But there are definitely some constants in that analysis.

It’s hard to really say “this is the best target” because the best target is the one that is pressured or has used most CD’s, it can also change heavily depending on your own comp, there’s to many buts and ifs and this comes with experience

DeceiverX.8361:

bluri.2653:

AikijinX.6258:

Straegen.2938:

If Ghost Thief survives through a full balance patch, ANet has completely lost touch with the game.

Anet Loves condi, in all forms. So don’t be surprised if it survives. lol.

And since sind says we’re getting nerfed, and since he primarily plays acro from what I see, I wont generalize that comment towards power DA. :p

Think i’ve heard it all. Me playing acro? I haven’t ever touched acro, think you need your eyes checked lad

Was gonna say AFAIK you’ve only ever moved to SA/DrD for defenses.

Meh patch for the thief, though. Needs reworks over minnor tweaks at this point. But I can’t say I’m surprised at all.

I mean yeah I played SA/DRD in start of HoT but I played old acro with S/D when it was meta ofc but thats forever ago, never really touched acro in HoT

I agree, I was expecting a bigger hit to all endurance gain (Endurance thief, minor in DrD, SoA and CV)

However the SoA I’m a bit.. How do I explain it, previously when it was 1 condi removal it required thought behind removing condis making it a little bit more skillbased to use, you had to think about what you condi cleared and how quick you were. Now you kinda just blow it and get away with clearing condis. I am more than fine with the changes, as I said I was expecting bigger nerfs to this, I think this helps a lot of lower tier players too I get a lot of questions on “how do you handle condis with your build?” well, for me it was never really any issue as long as you never overextended and knew your limits, this is still a nice change and allows for more aggressive play too against nec/mes/condiwar when you + 1 and the endurance change is obviously a nerf in many ways, people think it was only to use it as a escape/dodge in fights but i used SoA a lot of times to rotate so the rotation speed becomes a tiny tiny bit lower through out a full game which is still OK. Same goes for CV if you count it over a whole game (the amount of dodges it would have generated in total)

Condi cleanse with previous SoA being more “skillfull” example:
Druid taunting you with pet you getting a quick weakness procc and you cleanse the weakness instead if you are to slow to blow the signet, similar stuff to this.

Problem why they won’t revert the jump #2 which obviously was a very cool thing to use and made S/D being able to chase targets efficiently is that they also removed all kind of “jump” bugs, example being mesmer shield #4 where you can evade the clone and you could delay the clone spawning by jumping in shield #4, this got removed and that’s why I do not think they will revert the #2 jump thing.

Also you say that you want traits becoming baseline from trickery, I heard it many times but I think that traitline is so important as a thief in general that making prepardness baseline will still not help trickery being mandatory, for me personally I could never play without bountiful theft/Sleight of hand on any build I play wether it be D/P S/D S/P or Staff.

And if you would add Prepardness/BT/Sleight as baseline I think obviously that would open up to more diversity (people would play around with DA/CS/DRD or DA/SA/DRD etc etc but I think making those things baseline would also make thief pretty crazy strong hehe

Mahou.3924:

bluri.2653:

Lmao can all of you stop talking as if you know me or make assumptions.

https://youtu.be/UHNbX2xdYkE?t=513

I’ve played S/D on a higher level than all of you here. Also S/P same situation (when it was strong af)

Nerf D/P all you want, none of the other sets will be viable in PvP, closest one or can be considered would be Staff.

Talking about weaponsets in general and S/D gameplay

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123950964?t=1h59m30s

Also Jana, you talk about as if D/P is OP in SPVP, you aren’t even close to be remotely good or be at the top to understand how it is to PLAY D/P there. There for whatever you say has no impact because you don’t know how it is to play at a high level SPVP.

If you talk about this beloved wvw utopia i couldn’t care less what they do to dp there, remove it for all i care

http://imgur.com/a/vHtPF more oldschool screens from when i played S/D

Nobody cares abour your self-praising bragging rights.

I never said I was good, mind you. I only meant it as I have PvP’d on a higher level (if you want to see that as bragging be my guest) also I am utter trash on S/D right now I’d say. But people saying that I never played S/D or know how it works are wrong.

Anyways, these forums never make sense so there is no reason for me to really read or post here. Thank god Anet at least understood that D/P doesn’t need nerf and share the same vision.

Lmao can all of you stop talking as if you know me or make assumptions.

https://youtu.be/UHNbX2xdYkE?t=513

I’ve played S/D on a higher level than all of you here. Also S/P same situation (when it was strong af)

Nerf D/P all you want, none of the other sets will be viable in PvP, closest one or can be considered would be Staff.

Talking about weaponsets in general and S/D gameplay

gameplay: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123950964?t=1h48m10s

talking: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123950964?t=1h59m30s

Also Jana, you talk about as if D/P is OP in SPVP, you aren’t even close to be remotely good or be at the top to understand how it is to PLAY D/P there. There for whatever you say has no impact because you don’t know how it is to play at a high level SPVP.

If you talk about this beloved wvw utopia i couldn’t care less what they do to dp there, remove it for all i care

http://imgur.com/a/vHtPF more oldschool screens from when i played S/D

Doctor.1905:

-nerf PI damage
-buff sword auto
-sword 2 should reach out to 1200
-reduce initiative of Larcenous Strike to 1
-slightly increase speed of the initial stun of pistol whip
-dagger 4 should inflict 2 seconds of poison and cripple longer (meant to be used against downed)
-dagger 5 should have initiative reduced to 5

This will be enough to make SD and SP viable.

You actually thinking these things would make SD and SP viable in high end pvp is laughable

AikijinX.6258:

Straegen.2938:

If Ghost Thief survives through a full balance patch, ANet has completely lost touch with the game.

Anet Loves condi, in all forms. So don’t be surprised if it survives. lol.

And since sind says we’re getting nerfed, and since he primarily plays acro from what I see, I wont generalize that comment towards power DA. :p

Think i’ve heard it all. Me playing acro? I haven’t ever touched acro, think you need your eyes checked lad

we gonna get obliterated to unplayable

We getting nerfed bois

Pretty much, no matter what you do to D/P unless you do either one of these things:

Revamp other weaponsets to fit the meta
Revamp all classes/skills/utilities to create a meta where other weaponsets of thief works

It will not do a thing if neither of above is done

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Yes. This is the other problem. The game is balanced around conquest and since the new hot specs came out a lot of builds have been left behind. I am bringing wvw up “all of the time” because spvp isn’t the only pvp mode in this game, and what ever balance happens in spvp, that reflects to wvw as well (may be they are going to do more spvp skill only in the future)

To tell you the truth, we can sit here and discuss/argue all day about what we want the other sets to do but I belive that the game has gone to far beyond repair for the other/older builds or weapon sets. and its not that some of us cherish or love them…people are just fed up playing the same kitten weapon set over n over, that is all.

If we are gonna balance around both game modes then they need to be identical, in wvw you have food/stones and different scaling, different gear/tweaks.
Borderland buffs/Keep buffs I can go on… (runes/sigils that don’t exist in SPVP anymore, minstrel/nomad/trailblazer stats)
therefor you can NEVER balance the same as in spvp I hope you understand this.

This is why we need split balancing as they have been doing (but we need MORE of this) I simply couldn’t care five cents about the mess that is called wvw/roaming because this is beyond saving

I’ll state it again, it doesn’t matter if you remove D/P none of your beloved weaponsets will be good enough to compete anyway. And I said and i’ll repeat, no matter if you remove D/P your weaponset doesn’t change still, they are still as bad and will remain as bad D/P has nothing to do with them being bad.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

You’re right, it isn’t just pi but the whole dd line that has pushed d/p far beyond any other weapon set in the pvp scene as well as wvw. They nerfed a lot of sword skills, gutted acro and made the dd line. S/d pretty much lost its trait line since then because now d/p has the same number as evades as old acro s/d, they gave it a trait that synergies so well with head shot and they gave it a dodge skill which pretty much is immune to all soft cc and a dash range of 1350 range if used all 3 dodges in a row, it’s no wonder d/p is so strong.

S/x used acro before and d/p either used crit strikes or shadow arts so they were on even footings, now d/p is God mode compare to other sets and you can’t deny this.

Absolutely you are right, but let’s pretend for a moment old acro would still exist and DRD would not give you extra dodges, that wouldn’t change kitten all, S/D would not be viable regardless, even if we would in this moment revert all nerfs to S/D and make acro the old acro and remove DrD S/D wouldn’t be viable still do you get what I’m trying to say? Even if you remove D/P none of D/D S/D S/P would be viable UNLESS you revamp the whole wepsets and please for the love of god can we stop combining wvw and spvp in the same balancing sentences because the game modes are seperate and theres so many things in it that are broken and the scaling is different/tweaking and all other scenarios blabla you get what im saying, everytime you talk you bring up wvw as if it’s the same thing which its so far from. I don’t care what they nerf or buff in wvw as long as it has no affect in SPVP

I think what you guys also have a hard time to understand is that

D/P has a role it’s a + 1 due to it’s reason (rupts, stealth)
S/D has no role, the previous role was more a 1v1/+ 1 kind of a hybrid (does not work at all currently)
S/P was a little bit of both as well (has no role anymore, at least closer to being a +1er than any other weaponset cus of stealth on demand with bound and rupts)
D/D (has this ever even been meta? i’d see this as a +1)
Staff 1v1/equal fight orientated

The problem with the weaponsets are that they lost their role/purpose and anet doesn’t know what they want to do with them, at least that’s how i see it.

Do we want S/D to be the old 1v1er or do we want to make it a + 1 role? We need to sort these questions out before we start tweaking, because right now without knowing what the purpose is of each weaponset it’s impossible to say they are not meta because of D/P.

But hey these are just my thoughts

It’s funny how people think PI is the thing that makes other weaponsets of thief unviable, wrong.

Stealth on demand
Interrupt wether its damage or not

Nerfing PI has nothing to do with any of those two.

And yeah then not to mention how garbage everything else is and has no role along side it. Staff is the closest one that would make you be able to 1v1 due to dodge spam together with acro or non acro and it’s also a completely different role from what thief plays (swapping +1 to 1v1/equal fights instead)

I’d say staff has a good role in pvp if you get super good at it and play around being a strong 1v1er adapting ur trait to DA vs Acro depending on comp

If you then nerf D/P you’ll only see staff, so I don’t see the difference from what it is now except you’ll have one less build viable. if you want builds like S/D S/P to be viable again that won’t happen, ever. Unless you give S/D stealth/interrupts LUL or make larc precast and almost one shot targets OR lastly revamp every class in HoT

Phoebe Poison.4875:

Don’t have high hopes but yeah, would be nice.
The arena titles were great, they were easily dinstinguishable from anything else, they had the common part “of the arena”, and then you could also easily tell that “master” is higher rank than “soldier” etc.
Wtf even is “unyielding legend”? Is it better than “merciless legend” or is it even from this season or grinding pips? And how does it connect to “legendary demigod”?

Pretty much yeah, I see Merciless/Relentless/Unyielding and no idea what is better unless I actually go and look it up which is pointless imo

BikeIsGone.8675:

Thanks to both of you for responding!

As for watching the health bars. You are right, Wargameur, maybe i should have paid more attention to it, but since the DH had a support with him, I couldn’t really tell how much of his cooldowns he actually had used already. Realizing that he has used most his CDs already, as I entered the mid fight, made the whole rotation a bit awkward.

bluri.2653:

Go close to kill them so ur necro can rotate to mid and win the mid fight instead, the druid full caps far by the time u killed close and he prolly goes mid so u can decap straight after. Then go mid and outnumber cus respawn prolly goes their close and fullcaps

Could you please eleborate a bit more on this? What is your thought process on this?
I guess it makes sense that the druid would have gone for the mid fight instead of close anyway; so basically I could have capitalized on the guaranteed 3v2 scenario on close.
Does this sound about right?

Necro > bunker killer, so the necro/druid against druid/war on close means you will more or less one shot the druid esp if it was a condi nec on your side, then you’ll finish the warrior quickly after too cus he most likely used CD’s in this fight. The sooner your necro can rotate into middle against the engi (engi melts against necros) the better.

And theres no logical rotation for a druid to go far and outnumber it making it a 3v2 druid/druid/war vs nec/druid so obviously his choice would be go middle and outnumber that (even this decision is bad, but less so) And ele/nec/druid from your team even if your DH dies is still an insane 3v3 compared to theirs, ele > druid/engi as a support.

So since druid goes middle you decap far before the guy respawns forcing him to go and cap there, then you just outnumber middle

Go close to kill them so ur necro can rotate to mid and win the mid fight instead, the druid full caps far by the time u killed close and he prolly goes mid so u can decap straight after. Then go mid and outnumber cus respawn prolly goes their close and fullcaps

Stealth Attacks: All stealth attack skills will now have a 1-second recharge between uses.

since July

Remember there’s no problem to signup now even if you are unsure about 1 player not being able to do it, you can make changes to the roster up to check-in so go go more teams!

No, the camera shake effect in gw2 in options, not how you shake it hehe.

I can’t watch vids with camera shake, makes me nauseas

sophiewhite.3149:

bluri.2653:

kitten you make too long posts okay I’ll give you one last reply as well then.

2. You say thief can 1v1 mesmer and ele. Let me tell you this – do you think 1v1 an ele for 1-2 minutes before killing it is worth the time or optimal play? One the ele shouldn’t even be in a 1v1 EVER so this whole 1v1 is weird from the start. And you also feel that ele should be able to tank any dpser forever without dying? Fighting a mesmer as DP dash thief there is no way you hold the node against a mesmer, I bet you can hold the node much longer for the thief to not have this matchup being worth a single second and not even being able to kill you, as said feel free to prove me wrong on stream.

im sorry but a full bunker class shouldnt be instakilled by thief at all. taking 1 or 2 mins should be a minnimum. ele isnt going to be able to kill you. so you shouldnt be killing it easily 1v1 at all. you call instagibbing a class completely specced for tanking balanced? thats your end goal?

Dude where have I ever stated that we should instagib ele? All i stated is that it’s possible to kill an ele after a long time which shouldn’t happen in any game (ele shouldn’t ever be stuck in a 1v1 even less so against a thief) and even then it’s not worth the time it takes, but I disagree that supports should never be NOT killable but it should as you said take a long time. So please stop putting words in my mouth.

kitten you make too long posts okay I’ll give you one last reply as well then.

1. You mention that every top player wants thief nerf and “every single top player” (mostly your teammates i haven’t seen anyone else from vM for example) mentions PI as the problem so don’t give me anything else here you know this too, every one in your team except drazeh mentions this. All of them mentions an ICD on PI. So in theory this wouldn’t affect the SUDDEN 1v1 capabilities against “ESL classes” thief has.

2. You say thief can 1v1 mesmer and ele. Let me tell you this – do you think 1v1 an ele for 1-2 minutes before killing it is worth the time or optimal play? One the ele shouldn’t even be in a 1v1 EVER so this whole 1v1 is weird from the start. And you also feel that ele should be able to tank any dpser forever without dying? Fighting a mesmer as DP dash thief there is no way you hold the node against a mesmer, I bet you can hold the node much longer for the thief to not have this matchup being worth a single second and not even being able to kill you, as said feel free to prove me wrong on stream.

3. You mention that thief is in the same role as mes and revenant which is again something completely wrong. Thief has only one role and that is to +1 and decap you can’t enter equal fights or teamfights meanwhile both mesmer and revs shines in these. Mesmer is not locked into a 1v1 role only, you have impact in teamfights with both moa/distort/heals/portal

4. Sure you can revamp PI all you want and again this doesn’t change our 1v1 capabilities as you say we suddenly have against some classes. Buffing heartseeker damage wise is not the solution because it’s too slow and its too telegraphed

So all in all, the whole community wants PI nerf which won’t change these 1v1’s you are talking about it will only equal to lower chance of killing bunkers. And this goes for your top players/teammates wishes too

Funny thing is an 3sec ICD to PI would technically not make the difference in the mes duel either because I’m pretty sure you are not eating PI proccs more than every 3 sec lmao so nerfing PI still wouldn’t change thief being this godlike 1v1er suddenly

nothelseth.4621:

bluri.2653:

nothelseth.4621:

imma just refer u to the edit to my post
ull agree with everything

So you are saying thieves suddenly 1v1s mesmers and eles is actually worth the time it takes? I’m pretty sure you understand that yourself, I can fight a good ele and he’ll survive a long time before I can kill him that should be enough time for anything to rotate or win the map lol, and even then I’m not sure you really can (I haven’t really tried to fight a good ele 1v1 because the amount of time it actually takes) and it would be even worse against mesmers.

And it’s funny how you bring up revenants then, you want the class to be back into the state where it can stalemate druid, kill eles, engis and do equal/teamfights yet thief is considered to OP being a + 1 role and suddenly have a good matchup against revs (rest of the MU you list are debatable and too unknown for me to say anything about)

So just let me get this straight you feel thief is too OP because it can 1v1 ele/mes(ur words) and revenants? But nerfing thief to not being able to kill those 3 classes results in thief being even more ineffective against all the other bruisers?

Ele melts to thief, ive watched densh duel drazeh for hours and thief kills ele faster than any other class. I’ve also spammed duels vs drazeh thief as a mesmer. You know how good drazeh is at thief duel MU and it’s absurd to see how optimized thief 1v1 MU chart is. You don’t see that because you insist on playing thief in the roam +1 POV only but the actual 1v1 capability of thief is horrifying.

I’ll just repeat what I said:

The class with the best mobility in the game as well as a constant access to stealth NEEDS to have a bad mu chart. You shouldnt only lose node to warrior, engi and druid because only one of these three classes can ’’almost’’ follow you. This means that in a competitive setting the team without a thief literally has 0 counterplay to a thief pushing a node. The only counter is to have a thief of your own.

This exact problem has existed in the past before with pistolwhip thief. You can’t make the roamer with the best mobility the best 1v1er out of all the roamers.

Thief was perfectly fine(strong, otherwise you would not have beaten VM) the last balance patch. After that they nerfed everything except for thief. What do you think the result is going to be like?

You basically ignore half of the questions I ask, you feel revenant with the capabilities of both doing teamfights and equal fights and having good mobility should be allowed to have good MU 1v1?

The only nerfs that happened last balance patch was mesmer and rev ye that affected thief, so you want thief to nerfed because those two classes got nerfs? Do you then agree all the sustain classes should also be brought down quite a lot then?

So the only reason you feel thief is too OP right now is cus you feel it can “MELT” eles (I’d love to see this on stream) kill mesmers (love to see this one as well) and kill revenants (could do this pre patch as well) So the only real change according to you then is that thief suddenly can 1v1 mesmers which happened after the nerfs to mesmers (still this is according to you dueling drazeh I’d love to see this duel on stream)

You also forgot DH in the mix of classes who thief can’t 1v1 and who can easily defend.

And you shout out that thief will be needed in every single comp is hilarious because you have no clue how it will be unless you actually start to scrim teams and try out different comps you know this and I know this.

nothelseth.4621:

imma just refer u to the edit to my post
ull agree with everything

So you are saying thieves suddenly 1v1s mesmers and eles is actually worth the time it takes? I’m pretty sure you understand that yourself, I can fight a good ele and he’ll survive a long time before I can kill him that should be enough time for anything to rotate or win the map lol, and even then I’m not sure you really can (I haven’t really tried to fight a good ele 1v1 because the amount of time it actually takes) and it would be even worse against mesmers.

And it’s funny how you bring up revenants then, you want the class to be back into the state where it can stalemate druid, kill eles, engis and do equal/teamfights AND being a better +1 against druids/engis due to reveal, yet thief is considered to OP being a + 1 role and suddenly have a good matchup against revs (rest of the MU you list are debatable and too unknown for me to say anything about)

So just let me get this straight you feel thief is too OP because it can 1v1 ele/mes(ur words) and revenants? But nerfing thief to not being able to kill those 3 classes results in thief being even more ineffective against all the other bruisers?

You say absolute dominated vs vM? Please we barely won Legacy we did a lord rush and won we were behind most of the game, temple could have gone either way. This is as you said against vM vs pugs sure but you also know they had zero pracc against thief and frosty being back. And to be honest “never played together” is a huge over statement as well. I have played with both denshee/frae/zan on thief before only one that I hadn’t was Misha

I said it before i’m all up for nerfing PI if they buff/remove nerfs from thief (stealth attack CD) add damage into HS/increase speed or more damage for backstab to make it valuable to use other than with steal.

Also D/P thief is not even close to being viable in a 1v1 role we will remain as a + 1 role cus lack of sustain etc etc. And what the hell the only decent 2v2 thief ever has on paper would be thief+mes if you happen to land a good moa or fight 2x dpsers (rev, DH) or something like this. You add 1x sustain and 1x dpser and thief has no 2v2 potential.

And you say that engi+war is the only who can sustain a thief? DH? DRUID?? Even mes to some extent if you are on your A game and have a 1v1 against no counter class. The fact that so many classes can survive and resustain a thief making a fight uneven where they are supposed to shine makes you wanting to nerf it making it EVEN harder to kill these bunkers

Pretty much 10/10 this post, if we want to cater to the low tier players then by all means let’s start hitting the nerfs lads

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Just deployed some new functionality to fix this omission.

• Season 5 NA leaderboard
• Season 5 EU leaderboard

In brief, the old URLs will still work (in the old broken way), but new code should append /na or /eu to select a region to pull leaderboards from. Will probably make omitting the region an error in the future, but I didn’t want to horribly break anyone’s stuff without any forewarning.

Thanks for bringing this up; still can’t believe I overlooked that.

Ah thank you!

Lawton Campbell.8517:

Umm.

Huh.

I’ve never claimed to be a smart man. Here’s a tracking issue.

It happens LOL, don’t worry. Thank you!

foste.3098:

The issue is not impact damage in a vacuum, the problem is when you slap the 3k impact on top of all the other damage sources thief has. After a thief opens on someone and drops them below 50% he can keep his distance and kill with timing headshots. The design is not fun to play against especially if you are on a class with poor stability access.
The most elegant solution would be to add a ~5 sec cd to the trait and go from there, also make it unable to proc on auto attacks.

@cynz: why are you adamant about defending this one trait? thief will do fine if it gets nerfed, the class role will stay the same it will simply mean you actually have to be more involved in a fight to win it rather than haphazardly using headshot.

Again, have you ever played thief yourself? I’ll reply to this once and for all. The classes thief struggles to kill are the ones who are 1v1ing already (war, druid, engi) yes? These all have access to stab/reflects/stealth not to mention invulns/blocks. Do you know how hard it is to successfully +1 any of these targets? You barely touch an engi you actually take more cleave damage/retaliation damage than you pump out yourself, now try to imagine that you nerf PI on top of this what do you think will happen to the meta? People fail to realise that targets that thief easily kill are DPS’ers doing 1v1s (this is obviously a flaw in your rotation if you are fighting against thieves and you should know that you are gonna get +1’d there for you should play safe and be ready to start kiting/jumping on spots where you can’t port/steal) or not take 1v1s if you don’t understand how to play against thieves.

You’ll get full bunker setups that will be unkillable with a necro as main source of damage. Mark my words that if you nerf thief after having nerfed rev this is what will happen:)

Question about API: https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/pvp/seasons/A54849B7-7DBD-4958-91EF-72E18CD659BA/leaderboards/ladder this one shows the leaderboard depending on your region (so if im EU i will see EU) and NA will see NA, and since the API is the same for both regions, is there any way you can get each leaderboard with a different API?

Fat Disgrace.4275:

That’s odd you say this because a top 40 druid roams with us (not saying the names) sometimes in wvw and claims thief is rediculasly strong because of pi.

What dmg does pi do in pvp now a days? Because in wvw I often hot 3700 on enemy glass builds (thives mesmes and sf eles) and then around 2500 even so low of 1300 dmg on some tanky builds.

I have changed my mind set about this trait from a few months back but that’s only because I fought a lot of thives ad learnt to be patient when we fight but it must be frustrating for necros and possible revs not being able to even get close to use UA

First of all comparing wvw and spvp is always inaccurate. You have sigils/runes/food/stones/oils that don’t even exist in spvp and not to mention scaling/buffs you name it.

And heres the footage of how PI works against tanky classes, then try to add nerfs and think about the consequences. https://youtu.be/cncHvOoesxs?t=6397 http://tinyurl.com/goa5e9p http://tinyurl.com/gr4g37u

It’s also pretty interesting that people think a class who is forced and only manages to kill stuff while outnumbering is considered OP who has no viable role around equal fights or big teamfights.

Rickster.8752:

bluri.2653:

Azukas.1426:

I’m a mesmer main and I’ve seen this type of thread many times before. So I will post what I’ve always posted in these threads.

You have to look at the grand scheme of things in terms of PI. In those terms nothing about the Thief is OP. The only class that actually has a,decent gripe is necro, but if you should never be left to 1v1 a thief anyways. If you find you are in one vs a thief and die….that is a l2p issue on you and your team. Same with rev.

Now on each of those classes while you are countered you can survive a 1v1 long enough for a +1.

Now the other 6 classes pretty much hard or soft counter thief. This is with the OP PI trait too. So if you are dying 1v1 to a thief on one of these other classes then PI is not the problem. You are. Also if you are unable to hold out in a 1v1 with a thief long enough for a rotation to help you while on a necro or rev, PI is not the problem…you are.

No changes at this time are warranted to PI based on the current state of the entire game.

Thank you and /thread

^ what he said.

Also a side note, since rev is nerfed and you want to nerf thief do you guys realise what impact this will have to the meta? It will end in not being able to kill any bunker classes so we will have season1 all over again. Also another thing that you guys seem to not grasp is that thief is already stuck being in a +1 role since theres no teamfight capabilities and theres no 1v1 capabilities against any decent players whatsoever except rev/thief.

All in all, l2p issue – if you face an enemy thief and you are 1v1ing keep track of the map see if he’s gone and be ready to kite/jumping puzzle. *t’s near impossible to kill a good druid/engi/war in a +1 unless I have a mes with moa or a heavy counter to any of those classes then again your rotating was off if you got into this bad matchup.

Any sort of stab/block/reflect/anti projectile negates headshot as well and there’s plenty of this in the game.

The only nerf I could support would be that PI would be dodgeable and then you get room to play around it, everything else is nonsense

Surprised you say this /s

Seriously though, I think 100 posts proves that it is too strong. Time for anet to take a nerf to it. Do it small if needed then increase it until it is balanced.

So the amount of posts equals the truth? Good to know, regardless PI don’t need tweaking at high tiers, perhaps against people who have no clue how it works but if we are gonna balance gw2 around that then yeah….. Have you ever played thief yourself and tried to outnumber an engi/druid/war? Try it and see what would happen, if you do it successful against a good player then try to imagine PI nerf ontop of that and then perhaps realise what a joke this whole thread is.

I do sincerely hope anet don’t touch PI because if they do you’ll have no power based roamers available anymore since rev/thief will be a joke compared to the tankyness of bruisers. If you however only touch PI to dodgeable you actually make it skillfull to evade the damage and a way to play around it. Damage nerf = unkillable bunkers same goes with ICD, theres too few casts with long casting time to actually be able to headshot anything to get PI valuable, include /stab/reflects/yada yada and you’ll see that again it needs to procc on AA

this is my 5 cents. unless you play high tier thief you do not know how hard it is to kill good players even with PI right now, imagine a nerf to that, it would be a joke.

And last but not least, if we do nerf PI thief will 100% be unviable in competitive mindset with communication team v team.

If they do however by some dumb chance nerf PI to satisfy the lower tiers then I defo hope they make heartseeker cast time 50% quicker and increase the dmg by a lot. Remove stealth attack cd add damage to backstab to justify the pi nerf and to be able to kill bunkers

Azukas.1426:

I’m a mesmer main and I’ve seen this type of thread many times before. So I will post what I’ve always posted in these threads.

You have to look at the grand scheme of things in terms of PI. In those terms nothing about the Thief is OP. The only class that actually has a,decent gripe is necro, but if you should never be left to 1v1 a thief anyways. If you find you are in one vs a thief and die….that is a l2p issue on you and your team. Same with rev.

Now on each of those classes while you are countered you can survive a 1v1 long enough for a +1.

Now the other 6 classes pretty much hard or soft counter thief. This is with the OP PI trait too. So if you are dying 1v1 to a thief on one of these other classes then PI is not the problem. You are. Also if you are unable to hold out in a 1v1 with a thief long enough for a rotation to help you while on a necro or rev, PI is not the problem…you are.

No changes at this time are warranted to PI based on the current state of the entire game.

Thank you and /thread

^ what he said.

Also a side note, since rev is nerfed and you want to nerf thief do you guys realise what impact this will have to the meta? It will end in not being able to kill any bunker classes so we will have season1 all over again. Also another thing that you guys seem to not grasp is that thief is already stuck being in a +1 role since theres no teamfight capabilities and theres no 1v1 capabilities against any decent players whatsoever except rev/thief.

All in all, l2p issue – if you face an enemy thief and you are 1v1ing keep track of the map see if he’s gone and be ready to kite/jumping puzzle. *t’s near impossible to kill a good druid/engi/war in a +1 unless I have a mes with moa or a heavy counter to any of those classes then again your rotating was off if you got into this bad matchup.

Any sort of stab/block/reflect/anti projectile negates headshot as well and there’s plenty of this in the game.

The only nerf I could support would be that PI would be dodgeable and then you get room to play around it, everything else is nonsense

Your role as a thief is to burst and +1 that means air>force because you are not there to do sustained constant damage, if you were then force would be a better choice. You need a constant up time of damage pretty much.

Scholar runes > all the others as well since as i said +1 is your role and the initial spike will always have the beneficial 10% dmg bonus. Even without it power>prec>fero until you reach a certain amount of prec then fero scales better than prec.

Also you dropping basi for IS is just crazy due to the amount of blocks in this game, this mean your +1’s will be sloppy and bad. SoA > RFI then last utility is up to you to fit ur playstyle (BP or BD)

you can shortbow #3 out of gravity well last “tick” so instead of wasting block/shadowstep you can swap to shortbow while in the air and then just spam #3. Same goes for druid with staff #3 and I think also the evade on sword/dagger of ranger.

Thank you for existing Azukas, you are probably the only one who makes sense on this forum, funnily enough you don’t even play thief

Tomiyou.3790:

bluri.2653:

its because SS is unblockable, would have worked same if i put on basi then my black powder/headshot goes through any sort of projectile stuff

I don’t know if I can agree with this. At least remove their blind if it goes through projectile hate.

It has nothing to do with agreeing or not, i simply told you how it works – this is how unblockable works in their coding

its because SS is unblockable, would have worked same if i put on basi then my black powder/headshot goes through any sort of projectile stuff

Never start with steal because of their passive trap, always basi up and get a hit on him to trigger it – theres plenty of ways to do this. Stealth up and hit him once with basi, headshot him twice (once to get rid of aegis, second to hit him and procc the trap) or basi up and headshot.

Always walk into the trap to trigger it cus he gets stab from it – then you can steal safely onto him. Then it’s up to you to pressure him, keep blind up a lot here and try to bait out his F1 (the pull)

Basic tips

Hope you guys get it rolling

Lettuce.2945:

ades.1386:

Min, Reckless, Sind, Vallun, Bruno, myself and many other of us all play D/P over staff,

like the posts before staff is a telegraph, does not offer the team support of stealth and blast fields that d/p does nor the clean spike from backstab (if used right on a low target thats an ista down/kill for your team) by going staff/ bw you give up the stealth fields for your team, the mobility from shadowshot, you give up the interrupts from headshot, the burst from heartseeker+auto chain.

Staff is yes great for teamfights and holding on nodes. However that said, that is not your job as thief, thiefs job is to use the mobility of its class to +1, decap and FINISH a fight QUICKLY. By holding a pocket in staff not doing the listed above you are not helping your team to its full potential.

Uhhhh wrong. Min and reckless prioritizes staff over d/p. They’re my guildies and we have been training reckless in the proper use of staff over what is stereotyped about staff which a lot of people have common misconceptions about. Reckless is a d/p convert to staff now. Staff is by far the most versatile weaponset bar none for thief since there’s so much you can do with it at high level gameplay.

People seem to think staff thief is a +1’er. Well here’s a hint. You’re wrong. It can fill a couple roles when played right.

So what is this role you talk about “when played right”? Please elaborate

Urejt.5648:

Oh boy. Ppl say staff can not fulfill the role of dp. I highly disagree. It can do everything dp can (exept stelath) and so much more! Staff has even better mobility thx to much better endurance regeneration. It can +1, it can duel, it can teamfight. Obviusly staff is has much different skills so it must be different.

I explained in my posts why it can’t any of it, if you want to believe otherwise then that’s up to you, regardless no top thief will run staff in future competitions unless something changes (heavy dp nerf/buffs to staff)

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I think d/p has changed since when them people left as it dosnt rely so much on pi, before it was about back stab but now it’s interupting and keeping out range of certain skills (rev sword #2/3 as an example) stealth and mimd games were still there but PI seems to of over taken the weapon set and made it even more powerful. And that’s the power creep not just from pi, but from other hard hitting over tuned abiltys other classes have. You can do enough dmg at range intempting people now instead of risking going into melee.

On topic, I think staff is only good if you play acro and bunny hop all of the time, and quite frankly I feel that people are just rotating between dodge, #3, and dust strike but that’s all it can do, why use this for team fights when you could bring a dh trapper or something else wity high sustain. Staff thief is only really at dueling and I have had better success at it then s/d and d/p but that’s only in wvw or GH fights, probably wouldn’t bother using g it in spvp much

These people you guys like to mention who are they or are they just some ghosts? Seems like not a single person knows who they are

Interrupts was a huge part even before HoT in conquest/5v5 – Interrupting warbanner could more or less win or lose a game if you failed to do so, or healing turret from engi in a +1

Jana.6831:

I’m known to be mean, so I’m saying it anyway: Sinderer has got a great timing, but all others that were better than him have already left. That’s not meant offensive, but lets not pretend that he’s the be all and end all. He’s right on this though, although he probably doesn’t know why.
And I’m with Kocoff: D/P is about the utility it brings, and you can run anything with D/P as a second – it’s still D/P and not whatever set you’ve also equipped.

I couldn’t care any less if you think I’m good or bad because no matter how you put it I’m 1 out of 4 thieves that have competed in WTS and only one of them quit this game, so who are these other great players you mention? I’m curious

You seem to have this “I know it all” kind of attitude and no one else seems to understand anything, guess what? I already clearly stated why Staff is inferior to D/P in competitive play in my posts, if you read them again maybe that will clarify something for you.

Also I do hope you understand this discussion comes from me saying that D/P is the only viable option in competing (5v5 conquest team vs team), this has nothing to do with normal sPVP.

in EU we still have competitive games even off season, there are exception games of course.

Normal ranked going to timer: https://youtu.be/uH2YJvxeQhU

Urejt.5648:

bluri.2653:

Why is it not a good +1 you ask? Simple, you run bound(makes you slow way too slow) and you have no stealth on demand it makes enemy counter rotations/knowing where you move all the time and that means you cannot do anything.

But staff can work with dash instead of bound. Actually i find superior to bound. Staff might not be better +1 because it lacks stealth, but i suspect pros know where enemy thief is thx to communication or simple map awarness. Also staff has much better mobility thx to staff trait which is like super vigor giving much more dodges. At least on paper.

Anyway i hope ppl explore staff a little bit more.

People can explore staff all they want, it has no place in competitive matches aka ESL/WTS because it simply does not have the tools as D/P has, simple.

You swapping to dash instead of bound with staff makes no difference whatsoever, the role of staff just has nothing to offer at the highest levels no matter how you look at it.
I’d even say that the 1v1 capabilities of staff without bound decreases heavily so you lose that.

The reason D/P is also stronger to +1 with is because of interrupts and the surprise factor which you do not have on staff so going dash to match D/P thief on mobility will also not matter one bit

Also regarding the “oh but the enemy team has voicecoms so they should still know where the thief is” The thing is that you fail to understand is that you can juke with D/P just by stealthing up might even make them start rotating or play safe in the 1v1 at the side, even if the D/P thief doesn’t move you have already caused them to react to something that no other wepset of thief can do.

And better mobility with staff? Dash with shortbow#5 and dash with staff#5 is such a tiny difference in mobility it has no impact whatsoever – the bigger difference is however enemies knowing where the staff thief is compared to the D/P one because of stealth which we already explained. Also you would never pick staff mastery over EA as staff because the ONLY reason you even go staff is cus u can 1v1 condi mes but only with EA

To be honest staff in teamfights against good teams gets too easily countered by the abundance of CC’s as well (shocking auras, surging runes yeah you name it) so the actual impact you have with staff there is very little – I can agree on one thing that the cleave is cool and all but after the patch with invuln frame gone and no daze on gyros dagger cleave is actually fine if you are careful and know the limits.

If you actually listen to what I say I’m talking about competitive play aka the highest level ESL/WTS etc. In ranked Q you can play whatever the F you want and you can have it viable. I suggest you check ToL EU finals against vermillion the 2nd place in worlds who lost to us as a mix team with D/P thief. Also the team that you also quote on “they just leave him(the thief) and teamfight” got absolutely demolished by us

The reason staff is not viable in the highest level is that it has no role or place in the game, your teamfight is not worth offering any of the other bruiser classes over it, it’s not a better +1 than a D/P thief and it’s not a better 1v1er than plenty of other classes.

Why is it not a good +1 you ask? Simple, you run bound(makes you slow way too slow) and you have no stealth on demand it makes enemy counter rotations/knowing where you move all the time and that means you cannot do anything.

This is my own analysis over it, I’m not saying what I say is 100% accurate you can feel free to debate it all you want.

Feel free to watch ToL4: https://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/99502738?t=2h16m15s

kdaddy.5431:

bluri.2653:

I understand your sceptisism and i’m fine with that.

Helseth is saying how he would optimal want to play against a thief comp of course and thats natural since he knows the weakness, however executing that is different than knowing the weakness.

It’s natural that they have ideas on how to stop thief otherwise all teams would play thief if you don’t know how to deal with it, right?

But what I more or less meant was the team that got placed second who already beat a thief comp should have enough understanding how to counter it yes? Yet they got beaten by a mix team, that should give you the understanding that it just isn’t do this and do that

Everything you say is correct.

But once again lets get Helseth or TCG or what ever they want to call themselves in the situations.

Of course having a elite thief will counter some of the mesmer/ team comps you can mess around with because of rotation and personal skill issues.

Lets just say we have the best 4 teams from EU and the 4 best from NA. And they are playing at the highest level. Out of these 8 teams lets just say 3 ( since Eu had 3 last tournament who did not play thief and crushed the thief team comps) know how to rotate and handle a thief in 1 vs 1 situations.

Because these 3 teams know how to do it, the 5 other teams can not play thief. It also allows these 3 teams to play the most effective builds possible without worrying about a niche team comp that might give other teams problems due to a lack of skilled rotations or ability to handle a certain player on a certain class.

Thats all im trying to say, is when the best play the best i personally dont think thief and warrior can be used in a team comp in this current meta.

And this is why I’m telling you that you don’t seem to understand. Vermillion who placed second in worlds won against Abjured’s thief comp. We 2-0’d vermillion in ToL with a pug team against them with Frostball back on the team as mesmer who is considered to be one of the best mesmers in the game WITH our thief comp. You bring up old stuff from worlds there has been a patch ever since. Hello??? Retri nerfed, druid nerfed, downstate changes and gyro daze removed, these are huge things for thief, wake up.

So if we as a pug team with thief manages to beat the team who placed 2nd in worlds imagine what a team that actually pracc thief comp can do.