Guild Wars 2

neogico.3298:

sorry not trying to down you, but you have a lot to improve on. Your timing with cnd is off and your skillchoice awkward. You shouldnt need shadow refuge (needs to be nerfed) or blinding powder but focus more on applying poisons to get your targets down faster. Also Daggerstorm is the worst elite to choose as a p/d condi, Thieves guild or even basilisk or reaper of grenth suit the build 10 times better. Again, use the condition damage to your advantage, not as a bystand.
Also, killing upscalers doesnt show the true quality of P/D.

this guy must have skipped to middle of video and watched or something. The opening engagement I saw shadow refuge on his skill bar 0 times how many times did you see it?

He is running venom it looks like he switches venom for refuge just depending on situation. Since he is asuran I highly doubt he is going to run reaper of grenth since you know he is asuran. Maybe he could run reaper of golem? lol

Not bad I prefer to see a P/D video that isnt running all invis like BP and SF. I run P/D but I use Refuge and shadow step I don’t know how you get by without shadow step though. I did run BP for the escape since its kinda like a stun breaker but I like shadow step better incase I do have to get out. If I know Im going to fight I switch out SoS for spider venom or caltrops sometimes I dont run SoS at all just depends. Not bad though.

I don’t think they will nerf this build it is a single target condition build its not op. Its like a Necro that only applies 1 or 2 conditions on 1 target instead of AOE.

Nemo.6295:

So how the kitten would you justify the difference in peformance between DD and SP, or PD and SD? Am I trying to justify my poor play of a mediocre build? Is that wat you got? Cause honestly I’m not, I’m not too happy about the damage SP does but I’m still sticking with it cause it’s not a lost cause, what I’m saying here, and what you aren’t getting, is that, as much as you hate it, the nerf is coming, how can it not considering what’s happen with the thief class since launch. It is bloody coming and I don’t want what’s left of SP devastated by it.

And if I were to toss suspicions around, I’d say you were a bad player holding on to PD/DD with his teeth cause when those go, so does your oddly gained skill… and really? It took you several months of effort to master a thief? Again… really? Took me less than a week to master daggers.

The end of the world happened on December 21, 2012 or did it not? You sound like the people saying the nerf is coming in the December 14th patch I didn’t notice it did you? Every patch the nerf is coming is pretty old now. How about wait and see if the nerf is coming and then when it comes post but I guess you can’t win the internet without a post saying “I told you so”

frans.8092:

Stealth is not just for defence, stealth is the precondition for damage, backstab is the dagger-mainhand damage dealer, would you think regular auto-attacks doing backstab damage (without requiring stealth) isn’t going to invoke QQ? Stealth is also the required state for sneak-attack, the only damage skill for pistol mainhand. Do you think having sneak-attack damage and bleeding in the regular auto-attack chain isn’t going to invoke QQ? Stealth is also the required state for sword daze, can you imagine the complaints if that was transferred to the regular auto-attack chain?

This post clearly explains that the OP clearly didn’t think to long before he posted. Ill take sneak attack wthout stealth all day long!!

Yes what Binary Said! If you are running Signet of Shadows you don’t need fleet shadow. You can not exceed 33% movement speed. From testing fleet shadow really only works in combat.

this is basically the same thing you probably find what your looking for in this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Venom-P-D-Vs-Condition-P-D/first#post1200585

I run SB also I have tried to see if there was another set to pair with P/D I tried all of them in different ways but I think SB fits the best. You can make S/D and P/P work actually as another set. You wouldn’t use it for damage but with applied bleed stacks then swap to s/d or P/P and headshot/tactical strike to deny heal and condi removal works really well.

P/P is far easier to use since its range interrupt but less survivability but does ok. S/D is good but is melee if your good with getting tac strike off it really messes people up. As it is now though I prefer SB will keep messing with other weapons why I like thief so many options.

I am currently running the standard 30/20/20 build but I change around alot sometimes I run 25 in acro for the extra 10% damage or I run 10 in DA just depends but I like experiments.

Right now I like to go with SB ideal opening is caltrops, suprise shot to keep them in and swap for geomancy on p/d. If you do have a extra Pistol in the bank though since you only need 1 give it a try in WvW. It isnt about damage like normal but with a geomancy sigil 3 stack bleed, and vital shot and head shot it works pretty well. You just want to headshot enough to deny heal as long as possible to let your bleeds do work. Heal animations are pretty obvious and you have enough time to hit it. I usually have to swap the my power of inertia trait to quick recovery just to make sure my ini is decent.

Sarrow.2785:

Venom PD was my first ever build. I ran spider venom, signet of shadows, shadow refuge. I changed ages ago however to the 0/0/30/20/20 spec, pretty much before it was known as the PD spec to roll with. I changed venoms to include shadowstep and to be honest I much prefer this setup for the following reasons:
- don’t need to take leeching venoms in shadowarts. There are so many great options here instead
- free up a utility slot. I chose shadowstep for chasing those eles, running from zergs, clutch escapes etc, such a versatile utility, but you could just as easily take caltrops to throw on players manning siege or players trying to res an ally. Blinding powder works too
- more durability
- great access to vigor for excellent dodging (+ more dodgetrops!)

You still have access to poison through shortbow (I prefer this over DD) and you are still capable of, not burst as such, but good spikes of damage. I open with choking gas+cluster at their feet to trigger weakness and put me in combat, switch to PD to trigger geomancy sigil which puts 3 bleeds down, cloak and dagger and immediately unload into them. If you manage this fast enough you sneak attack through your poison field getting some good poison stacks out of it. That’s 8 stacks of bleed, decent poison duration and a good 2000+ raw dmg as an opener. On a squishy with no condition removal (or without the wits to use it) that plus a few autos can almost kill them right there.

However the poster who said that 30/20/20 gives durability and 20/30/20 gives more damage is correct. Just taking leeching venoms gives around 1800 damage from a sneak attack, and this doesn’t include the bleeds, poison damage or the physical damage itself. Add in 1000 damage from mug and 20% condition duration, with the proper runes and food you’ve got a more offensive oriented setup.

For 1v1 I’d still prefer 30/20/20, but only if you keep reapplying poison with shortbow.

This is right on, I tried the normal venom build it is fun but not as durable and i was running 5 in da cause poison is so good on the steal and it gave me 100% duration on bleeds. 30 in SA 20 in acro and 15 in trick. I messed around with 30 DA 25 acro to get the +10% damge when endurance is not full which is like most fights and 15 in Trick.

Right now I am running the stand 30,20,20 setup Which drops my bleeds from 7 secs to 8 which isnt so bad but I am able to drop a agony sigil since bleed ticks only matter at 25% increments i.e. 25%,50%,75% and 100% each of those is 1 extra tick of damage. So im at 80% right now as I hate wasted stats. I dropped the 2 centuar runes i was running for mad king which is same power but -5% duration but it is +10% duration from the 2p bonus.

By dropping the agony sigil I can have access to geomancy which at 75% duration is 12 second bleed 3 stacks (yes please). I run SB also I have tried to see if there was another set to pair with P/D I tried all of them in different ways but I think SB fits the best. You can make S/D and P/P work actually as another set. Your wouldn’t use it for damage but with applied bleed stacks then swap to s/d or P/P and headshot to deny heal and condi removal works really well. P/P is far easier to use since its range interrupt but less survivability but does ok. S/D is good but is melee if your good with getting tac strike off it really messes people up. As it is now though I prefer SB will keep messing with other weapons why I like thief so many options.

Is this WvW, sPvP? Really in my opinion the only real good thing about 20 in DA is for the reduction on venoms at the same time I don’t feel like 20% reduction on venoms is mandatory. Those are the basic cookie cutter builds but you can run them in a variety of ways. I have 5 points in DA for the poison and I don’t feel like the extra 50 stat points to condi damage is worth that much since it would be about 2 extra dmg per bleed.

That said like ZLE said it depends if Thieves Guild is up and you have venom share on and running ambush then venom build is strong as hell. Then it also depends on what class your fighting also. Overall I would say venom share thieves guild and ambush. Thats my opinion but I can see instances where it wouldnt matter a bunch either if you where fighting another P/D thief then the extra thieves you have out are just something for them to CnD off of.

Thobek.1730:

cannons.8109:

Not bad for your first video. Wild Bill abuses the culling issue the best, taking on entire groups by himself in Tier 1. You should watch his vids for some tips on how to stay stealthed 90% of the time while still hitting players.

fixed that for you.

his videos show exactly why thieves are broken at the moment. In trouble? just stealth and reposition, you have the luxury of resetting the fight whenever you feel the need. hit them a few times before you become visible again then restealth.

Stealth has never been done correctly in any MMO for pvp, GW2 is no exception. They need to increase the visible debuff to compensate for the horrible culling issue. Double it at least.

Or you know fix culling issue with a team of people working on it! Oh wait they are!

Ok I play P/D condi build I love P/D build its fun yes. Your video is basic P/D play nothing special honestly. I know alot of people like Wild Bills video and what makes his much better than most P/D videos is that he isn’t running shadow refuge or blinding powder. He can only get into stealth from CnD and Hide in shadows. Run that and venoms then I would be more interested in the video but otherwise its just normal. 1v2 isnt really hard to pull off as P/D unless its to bunker guardians and then that fight takes forever!

Of course there are ways to counter every build in the game if there was no counter probably everyone would run it. Some people will have no problem against p/d thieves if they are running the right stuff and some will just depends on each scenario.

Rayya is right that if you trait for condi removal in stealth you will have a much easier time fighting a P/D thief. Most other thief packages that trait this condi removal in stealth will have to give something up possibly in damage or in larger ini pool.

A d/d 10/30/30 can achieve this with heal in stealth and condi removal. If you miss a CnD then you will be eating bleeds until you can restealth. It all depends honestly.

If I know I am going to duel any kind of melee class I can remove SoS put down ambush sit inside it and pop thieves guild and lulz. Fighting a D/D thief you can go for good lulz and just keep Shadow step on incase of a bask venom then put all traps down and sit inside them rinse and repeat. That’s if you know its a duel though. Just typical roaming though then yea you will be ok.

Anyway pretty much every thief can chose when to fight and when to run for the most part especially in WvW its alot easier.

Samhayn.2385:

Look I know that as we are currently built stealth is the key to our survival. I also know that what I am asking would be a major shift to the class. With that in mind I will go ahead.

Being a single target light armor melee burst class we are part of the norm for every fantasy mmo or game made. Also in every game with stealth it has been a mechanic of contension because people beleave that if they could just see us they would win the fight (weighed this is true or not is not the point it’s how they feel). So I would like to see stealth changed to more of a shadow meld type ability where we can be seen, just a outline or a shadowy figure, well in shadow meld we would gain protection and be untargatable (not unhittable). Of course this would also have to come with a change to some of our stealth traits and also a bump to our base survivability.

Again I know that this would be a huge change, but maiming a thief I would rather the person I killed know that “I” beat them and not some mechanic and I think it would remove what will forever be a balancing headache for Anet.

Just my thoughts, feel free to give a better ideas or expand upon mine. Anything really.

What? Ok so we would have a outline and take 33% less damage so they would have to AOE but they couldn’t target us. So your suggestion is to make us have a outline so people can see us because people want to see us.

Stealth is fine your suggestion is just to appease people whining which if they took your suggestion people would still whine. The balance is in the damage no stealth.

Yea venoms I will run occasionally depending on situation spider venom is good against bunker types because of the heal reduction. I will usually switch out Shadow signet for 1 venom either devourer or spider venom but most of the time that spot goes to caltrops honestly. You dont really need the venom reduction trait imo since you get 30 secs to use it once activated. So its really a small cooldown in my opinion anyway. To run aura you have to be 30 in shadow arts and you give up heal while in stealth which is much better than the aura. It has its places sometimes but yea.

add to list devourer venom. if traited for condi duration I don’t need to catch you most people run when its to late after they have used their cleanse and heal so the bleeds and or poison are doing the work.

Anyway on topic I play P/D and I have came across S/D fight can go either way depending on if the s/d is good. I came across a good S/D from Yaks bend who put a hurting on me I won’t lie about that. Also a good D/D thief can get you too. With opening on bask, mug, cnd you know the usual. You have to use your stun breaker. If you can lay your cals down and fight inside them then you can be ok. I usually don’t have a problem with D/D GC thieves but they can kill a P/D pretty much like they can any other class.

Ahh so subjective. I play P/D thief and I find it fun and I find D/D bursty boring. I have tried D/D but its not my style. You go in kill 1 person among a few and almost die trying to stomp due to the aoe. Now P/D I see 3-4 people im def going in and will be able to fight all of them for a while. Survivability is insane.

So since this guy above doesn’t like p/d and I like p/d omg its the internets. To answer your question on topic.

Frans pretty much gave it to you straight and tremain. Carrion, stack condi duration, and there you go. 0/0/30/20/20 is the cut and paste but you can tweak as you see fit but 30 in shadow arts is pretty much a must imo for the build. Some run some points in DA for venoms but I find if you wanna use a venom the cool down is fine.

Runes 3xkrait 3xafflicted is a set up. 2x centur 2x krait 2x afflicted.

Your main goal is to hit +25%, 50%,75%, or 100% duration anything inbetween is wasted since it doesnt round up or down. 100% duration will make your vital shot and sneak attack bleeds 8secs instead of the 4sec base.

Guy above me is spot on lol . We must have been typing at same time lol. Yea caltrops a must if your focusing on just bleeds.

Fyi P/D is not imba or op I don’t know why people throw that around. You can still be instagibbed by a D/D gc, a GC warrior etc. like he said you will have good survivability for a thief but you arent invincible. You can beat d/d eles. with cals but without caltrops i feel it is a stalemate in my experience. A full bunker guardian you might as well wave and walk away no body is winning that one.

mark.3160:

This sums it up perfectly! I made a thief to learn how to counter them, and compared to the other classes i play (engineer and mesmer), this is absolute faceroll.
L2P has nothing to do with it most of the time because of the culling issue being so heavily abused by alot of thieves. Lets just hope they fix that soon.

Its not face roll. I have a mesmer and it was my main till I started playing thief. Thief is definitely harder to play than a mesmer. I never had to worry about a 100bs warrior I didn’t even know what it was till I kept dying to it on my thief since I had to go into melee combat. On a mesmer you really only go in for ileap swap, blurred frenzy basically your burst portion of combo. Other than that everything else you do is ranged you don’t have to get in close. There is so much stuff you don’t have to worry about as a mesmer that you do as a thief lol

Blinds yea its stops your cast of a phantasm since they patch. If your phantasm is already out do you care if you get blinded really? GS auto attack only going to affect 1 hit of your auto attack. Blurred frenzy only going to affect 1 hit of your multi hit combo. I didnt care to much or need to really avoid blinds, or blocks or retaliation my clones ate all that for me.

lol I love the I predict the future threads you preface everything by saying the aoe/burst/bunker nerf is incoming. This is like the December 23 prepper doomsday theory. Everyone thought the last big balance patch thief was getting a nerf and they didn’t.

Did you read the class balance philosophies from ANET? You couldn’t have based on your suggestions

Thief
Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.

Tank vs spike vs physical DPS vs condie DPS. We want to keep making balance changes that allow all classes to have various builds they can use. We don’t want tanks dominating the game, and we don’t want spike builds dominating. It’s healthy to have multiple types of builds in the meta, so we’ll be improving the balance to facilitate a healthy meta.

Balance not eliminate if your class is already good with a tanky type of build but also has burst build and a condi build then your class is good to go.

Read thief class philosophy does that sound like a thief currently? Pretty much. Fragile but able to have some of the highest SINGLE target burst in the game. Masters of stealth? Yup

Then your suggestions don’t make sense your idea of balance is to nerf something so that it forces people into other choices. Your suggestions do not address survivability or the low starting HP pool that thieves begin with compared to other professions which is the reason they have access to stealth to off set that.

You say cap stealth at 8 secs mention p/d griefing. You Pistol main hand suggestions you say anything because you don’t use it. Well thats obvious because you don’t need 8secs when your running P/D. Capping stealth at 8 secs like people are running around stacking it like crazy because if they are then they aren’t fighting.

Albane.8367:

You are not doing a ton of healing, just a lot of regenerating, which is why Toughness is more valuable than Vitality. For this reason, your best option is to run Toughness/Precision/Condition gear.

Combine Krait, Afflicted and Centaur 2 piece Rune for 45% Bleed duration. You will see a huge difference in your damage. Use a Sigil of Agony for another 10% to make your 4 seconds bleed last 7 seconds.

I keep making very small changes to my build and gear. Might on dodge is one of my new favorites with how much I dodge. I pretty much always have 4+ stacks from this, which is 140 condition/power damage. Combined with the Hidden Assassin trait, you will be able to keep up 6+ mights indefinitely.

With this build, everytime I CnD and sit in stealth for 4 seconds between Sneak Attacks, I regen 3000 health. (Assassin’s Reward only heals for 400 for 6 initiative, not worth it, imo)

CUT AND PASTE
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cR333;0RwkZ0J5VOkd0;9;6TT9;423A1582;0KZF48;1dZm9fRk02Vp

BTW, this build will probably be getting nerfed soon, since you are immortal against less than 4 players, if you play smart.

Oh I love when ppl add this as in they have the best build out there. I highly doubt this will get nerfed its pretty much the thiefs version of bunker in wvw. There is no Stun Breaker in there and though blinding powder acts similar to a stun breaker in some ways it is definitely not one. A straight GC BS thief can still wreck you.

Incoming bask venom you pop BP they are heartseeker which since its channeled will still follow you. Fighting a 100bs warrior and BP will only blind 1 hit of the multi hit combo. Shadow Step is much better than BP. Bunker Ele’s fight 4 people all day long easily didn’t get a nerf and p/d has been around for a while.

OGDeadHead.8326:

brunohstein.9038:

3. The main source of stealht of a thief will be Cloak and Dagger. For it to works, you have to be hit by it. It is avoidable. You also have 3 seconds to burst the thief the way you want after he came out of stealth.

Vs ranger, they will next to always have an easy to hit target for CnD – the pet.
Also, 3 seconds to burst… for rangers, burst comes in the form of the pet. It will take the pet time to understand to attack the target, time to get in position and more time to try and actually land an attack which is easily avoidable by all classes. By this time it will be too late and the thief is cloaked again.

Pets in general are very slow getting back on target, and not easily pulled away from CnD attacks either, so I’d say CnD is a bit unbalanced currently.

You say this like a person that plays a ranger. Pets can get on top of keeps and destroy siege why doesnt the pet have to go through the door like a person does and also take the stairs?

Karolis.4261:

XZERO.3014:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ

Hello! this will answer your question. Also to all thieves who say “its cause thieves destroy noobs” i gotta tip for you, if you cant 2 shot people with heart seeker, remember you press 5 so you can flee for combo points.

You realize this was before the nerf right ? And its hard to press 5 when fighting player that is aware of what is 5 and what does it do. And how does this video shows thiefs OPness ? finishing outmaned ppl with <50 % hp while runing with a zerg? yea zergs OP, nurf zergs!

Dat bold text!!

WvW objective points, cap, defend, supply, etc.

Anyone seen in the objectives for WvW 1v1, 1vX?

I havent at all and that is whats silly about all these overpowered threads lol. Even the OP talking about ashamed when he plays his thief in wvw. Why would you feel ashamed about playing a class lol. The people that think it overpowered don’t know what they are talking about. You can kill someone fast as in down them. That is what the thief is designed to do if you go into deadly arts and critical strikes. The traits speak for themselves. Its suppose to put out that dps quickly its in the class design philosophy that Anet put out.

The problem is people think if you see person you should kill person. Warriors are hard for me to catch on my thief sometimes and they put out as much burst as a thief. If they don’t have a gs then they lose that mobility but why wouldn’t you want mobility in WvW?

TAC was really active on Ehmry Bay I haven’t seen them much anymore.

Did you even think about this before you posted it? You can’t compare class A with class B. Classes in GW2 can be in multiple rolls some classes are better than others at those roles.

Flip the argument does 100bs give a secondary life bar auto and auto cast every 6-8 seconds? Does the sword fly out of the warriors hand and follow the target around until its ready to cast again? Can you in a best cast scenario cast 3 100bs from a warrior each doing any of the above? NO.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Nate Rush, bless his soul, has already summed up my general opinion. I don’t necessarily want a “nerf”, per se, but I want Stealth Thieves to have to do a modicum of work to get their results. When a class mechanic has such high reward for basically no risk, it makes me sad.

I want counter-play. That’s all. When there’s counter-play mechanics involved in a fight, the fight is infinitely more fun. Fighting other good Warriors is amazingly enjoyable. The act of fighting a Guardian is also highly enjoyable. Fighting Mesmers if often extremely enjoyable. D/D Elementalists are an intense fight, even if I think their ability to regen and keep Prot up is a little on the lame side. I haven’t fought as many Rangers/Engis, but they can both be enjoyable as well.

Fighting a Thief is either the easiest thing in the world, or impossible. The ability to spam stealth would be fine if, and only if, the game were designed around detected and revealing stealthed enemies. It isn’t. There’s no reveal mechanic that I know of or have. There’s no detection mechanic besides randomly throwing abilities around and just hoping they hit. Counter-play is a complete guessing game with almost no reward.

At the end of the day, they’re simply frustrating to the point of being nonsensical to fight when they spam stealth. As someone else mentioned, it’s only fun for the Thief, really. Or other Thieves, from what I’ve heard. I want to respect a Thief that I fight because of intelligent use of mobility and counter-play. I don’t want to feel no respect whatsoever for Thieves because of a mechanic that just feels abused.

If a Thief goes stealth in front of me, and I anticipate his direction and Earthshaker on top of him, I want some sign other than losing Adrenaline that I landed the hit. If I guess properly and counter-play the stealth, what’s my reward? Knowing I did some damage that will be shrugged off because there’s no strong follow-up. Even if I land it, and know I land it, I have no idea if the Thief is within range of a Staggering Blow, or where to aim a subsequent Hammer Shock or Backbreaker. Why shouldn’t I be rewarded for appropriately countering the stealth escape with an anticipatory attack? Why shouldn’t the Thief be punished for stealthing directly in front of enemies instead of just being able to frolick around even if damaged?

I want to see Thieves dancing through a fight, bouncing from enemy to enemy or appearing, harassing, drawing attention, and then bounding away. I want to say kitten that was a clever use of stealth" instead of “Well, he stealthed for the 5th time using (Shadow Refuge OR Hide in Shadows OR Steal -> CnD OR just Stealing (traited) OR Blinding Powder OR hitting 25% health (5 point minor, traited) OR Leap Finisher in a Smoke Field (both available to the Thief)), I guess that’s nice. I’ll just keep using abilities into the air and running in directions praying I’m correct.”

If it takes buffing other areas, then good. Go for it. Buff Thieves, make their other weapons viable, but please redesign Stealth so it isn’t completely unenjoyable for everyone except the Thief. Aegis has counter-play, and rewards good timing. Blind has counter-play, and rewards good timing. Shattering can be spotted and dodged, as can Burst abilities. Eles have all sorts of visual cues for when you need to counter-play. Ranger pets can even involve counter-play.

So please. Let me have some semblance of rewarding counter-play against a Thief.

Oh Yea them visual cues that reward good play like INVULNERABILITY rofl. Come on lets get real here. You named all those things about fighting a d/d ele that is being beat on by 5 ppl. Then you see them turn into mist and start jumping away. Splash a heal then RTL back into 5 ppl lmao are you serious. I like the challenge of fighting D/D ele’s on my thief because I know its going to be a good fight probably with no winner. Come on though naming all these good things in your opinion but leaving out invulnerability etc that isn’t some reward for good play its pressing a button. Blind and aegis I agree but some of these abilities you named are pretty easy to pull off.

You named mesmer I’m in trouble i press 4? Im traited for illusiionary persona so I can get my 4 seconds of invulnerability. That took skillz!!!!!

Pope.1469:

frans.8092:

Pope.1469:

… He lost the fight, he should be finished off after he exhausts all his downed skills _like any other class.

He planned his escape, good player skill and use of his resources, I’d say.
PvP’s goals are not in killing PC’s, so there is no ‘should be finished’, all that counts is meeting the format’s objectives and while killing pc’s can be a means to complete these objectives, it’s not an objective in itself.

Yep, I agree with your summary of PvP objectives completely.

Now, if thieves actually did plan their escapes ahead of time and with skill, I wouldn’t have a problem with a good thief getting away repeatedly. The problem is Shadow Refuge has become a sort of knee-jerk, low-skill cap reaction among a good amount of thieves that I’ve tried to argue provides too much benefit for a single utility slot.

Your point doesn’t even make sense many classes have get out of jail free cards.

How can you not be monitoring the health of the thief your fighting? How can you not see if he used his heal or not. If you play a thief then I don’t understand your complaints because they sound like someone that has never played one. Your complaint is right before you killed a thief he happened to pop refuge obviously he did it because he was about to die.

You never seen a mesmer running around with a torch, veil, decoy, and mass invis before?

You never fought a ranger and they pop the stability buff and you can’t CC them as they get away. The only difference is you see them leaving the fight either way they got away. At the point in the fight where a thief pops refuge because he is about to die you should have already figured out what kind of thief your fighting.

Karolis.4261:

Okay i will tell you the example of so called thief OPness. Create full exotic condition thief. Find a group of ppl. Use Shadow refuge, aproach those ppl and spray caltrops all over the place then leave. In 15 s some bags of drop will drop behind that tree where you stand and giggle. What hapens is most of them wont even notice that its a huge pile of caltrops on the ground and they are standing in the middle of it, circling around trying to understand who the hell is attacking them, might as well start swinging their swords and aoe the place they stand in trying to find that invisible vilain.

This example is an example of players not undersanding the big red circle under their feet. The fact that they die from 10 stacks of bleed with out healing, and have no condi removal.

Might as well used an example of the golem in the mist not attacking back. Nothing op in your example.

Coffeebot.3921:

In relation to pistol MH; I’d love to see Sneak Attack have its physical damage raised to be halfway between the two sides of Backstab damage and the bleed lowered proportionally, take the bleed of Vital Shot and add it to Body Shot while taking the vulnerability of Body Shot and adding it to Vital Shot.
End result:
Vital Shot does extra direct damage + 1 stack of vulnerability
Sneak Attack does less bleeding damage and more physical damage
Body Shot becomes a bleed based initiative dump
P/D and P/P become viable for both burst and condition damage

Also… fix culling so that people have less to complain about for thieves in WvW, maybe then people will realize that thieves aren’t the “easy god-mode” they’re made out to be.

Vital shot just needs to be fixed but I rather have bleeding on it than 1 stack of vulnerability. Who even traits anything to do with vulnerability unless its like really good. Adding bleed to body shot is not going to make a P/D use it because of the init cost.

Not to seem trolling but do you even know how condi works in this game?

Bleed damage lowered on Sneak attack what? Your bleed damage is based on YOUR condi damage you know? If you have no condi damage on your gear at all you can make your bleeds do 56 damage just with only like 15 points in trickery. You want less bleeding damage don’t where condi gear o.O.

Pope.1469:

No, dropping stealth on damage would make it useless in combat. Unless, of course, that’s your intention.

Extend the reveal debuff timer, and implement a hard cap of around 5 seconds for all stealth. There’s no justification for having 10 seconds of stackable stealth from Blinding Power + C&D + etc, or from Shadow Refuge. Even if the thief dies from all the AoEs and random attacks thrown at him, that’s still 10 seconds of guesswork the other players have to sit through. Which, in PvP, isn’t acceptable.

Plus, Ranger traps and Necro marks (I think) don’t even trigger on downed opponents.

You can’t stack stealth of blinding powder —> CnD. You can stack CnD —> Blinding powder. 10 seconds of guesswork? Really that impatient? We should also make it so we don’t have to cycle targets anymore either. We should also put big arrows over top of the real mesmers so that we don’t have to figure out which one is which anymore.

Stop chasing the thief and your problem is solved. Not everything is a D/D glass cannon. If you run away from a P/D thief I have to use init to catch you if I want to kill you which means I either pop a invis skill just to suprise shot for imob or devourer venom or I blow my heal just to immob you. If you run away from a P/D thief before you have 12 stacks of bleeds and you didnt burn your condi removal there isn’t much the theif can do to you.

ShaunZ.1098:

Negated.4105:

I don’t really struggle against other thieves, and thieves are best harasses due to the amount of players in that area, more targets to pull of CnD. If you want to beat him, you need to party up, and watch your surroundings, people complain about theifs, but I am a thief with low defence and I still down backstab or condition thieves..

blablabla tl:dr party up and watch for the squiggly black smoke when a thief reappears that is the only thing that renders on time.

So the answer to beating a thief is partying up? How many people should it take to be able to beat 1? Isn’t that the definition of over powered?

Beating someone =/= kill. I can troll 5-6 people 10 for just a few moments if I don’t have everything on cooldown. There is no way 1 thief kills 10 people they might down 1 maybe 2 but an actual stake is so hard to pull off with just 3-4 ppl around as soon as the person goes down you rez there is no way the stake lands unless ppl are really slow.

Jaytee.9513:

So High damage output+ high survivability are ok with class balance. You wonder why so many complaints arise from theives abilities. I always thought the two traits were trade offs.

Use your logic.

A single class of character should not dictate what other classes “have” to have in order to survive more than a few seconds. That is ridiculous in a game.

So everyone has to Max defensive abilities because they will die in 1 sec if not? Everyone has to place max toughness on every piece of gear to even have a chance against a thief?

What is the problem here……..

And don’t say L2P because that is insulting to people.

All those people who claim thieves are not a problem please post your gear build…….
Chances are you have stacked toughness and vitality to the point that you’ve limited your offensive capabilities….

Tell me again is it right for a single character class to dictate playable builds?

This is the question that developers must ask themselves when designing a competitive game where classes has different abilities.

Let me ask thieves this…..what if RTL caused instant 7-9k damage without being able to dodge? Would that be fair? Well that is what a steal/mug/backstab does. Then follow with a spammable skill doing 4-6k damage that is a gap closer.

All other class burst skills can be seen and dodged so why allow thieves the ability to do so without fear of missing. It is basically a free hit that places others at a serious disadvantage. Stealth should be a defensive ability not an offensive one.

The suggestions I made have pointed out viable fixes to this imbalance though i feel base skill damage reduction is in order. No one should get a free 9k hit……….

You didn’t see the thief before he got to 900 meters? If he bask you use a stun breaker. Keeping a stun breaker is not specing your character just for a thief a stun breaker works against all classes. I havent seen one utility skill or stun breaker in game that says keep this for thieves.

Why would you not have a stun breaker(guess thieves are only ones with stuns) you use a stun to set up burst or you use it to catch a fleeing target. So if you are going to be bursted or you are fleeing why wouldn’t you have a stun breaker?

That line of thinking is like I don’t need condi removal because only necro’s deal condi right?

Shouldn’t compare it with other elites and think about how it fits withing the class of the Thief. Thief puts out some of the highest single target dps in the game. This elite facilitates that but at the same time isn’t so I press button and AI does work for me. You still have to land your bask and get behind for max damage.

You can make the venom last for 2 strikes if you trait 30 pt deadly arts might wanna research that.

Bask is basically a way to get you a “chance” at good damage but it isn’t guaranteed unless someone is not running a stun breaker.

The only thing I don’t like about baslisk venom is that it doesn’t seem to fit in other type of builds its more of a D/D burst build or a P/P burst them down build. As a P/D thief I tried bask but doesnt seem to be better than taking thieves guild or dagger storm when using P/D.

Has been a fun matchup this week I have to say. Shout out to nonofyourbusiness from borliss pass and the other p/d guy he runs with. Partied up with him roamed a bit. Talked about builds etc met another guy from borliss really cool.

Shout out to [WE] Guild from Darkhaven and the Commander Big Norn Guardian that had a small zerg chasing me.

jan.9745:

Lol and the only one class can anoyed thief is mesmer but they nerf mesmer and i love this no one can match me yes yes yes thanks arena net for nerfing mesmer! I lov it! i feel the power!

What? They nerfed portal. I don’t even understand your post since everything else a mesmer normally did hasn’t changed.

sachiel.8051:

Direct, aoe or dot’d, being damaged should take anybody out of stealth.

There are a few classes that have attacks that can pull, push, fear a thief out of stealth if they are under refuge.

You people complaining really need to make a thief seriously. People are starting to realize that when your fighting a thief in WvW channeled skills still hit and follow the thief so you get a idea of where the thief is in stealth.

I see rangers all the time pop that fast arrow attack and I get hit by every single one. Then said ranger adjusts because he has a general idea of where I am. I run p/d if I see another p/d user you know what I do when I see them use hide in shadows? Sneak attck cause it still hits.

Here when you guys are fighting a thief as soon as you see them about to go into stealth use a channeled ability.

I bet most of the people complaining dont use a mesmer. If you see a mesmer with a scepter you know what alot of people use it for? Scepter 3 easy as all day to see channeled spell that lets them know where a thiefs general area is.

Omnione.5928:

Kain.3485:

im mixing valk and serk and my stats are at
~2000 power ~3k attack
~1600 pres ~40 chance, 105 damage
~1000 tough ~200 armor
~idk vit, 20k hp though
i couple shot most people and don’t die, check it out

Are you running acrobatics traits? i can’t seem to understand how people are getting such high health….

Yea like the person above me said. 105 crit damage on 40% chance isn’t really good. You can get more realible damge numbers getting some precision somewhere.

For damage Power is the best then its precision and then crit damage. In your case you need more precision and less crit damage or get some toughness somewhere.

If you like your setup cool but if you wanna optimize your stats you definitely have some free stuff to add by reducing that crit damage some.

JCWolf.1674:

Everyone can see thief’s do too much damage except players playing thiefs…mmm why is that?

No what you can’t see is that everyone can get insane damage numbers in full glass gear. Think about this +50 crit damage is +200% damage. That is not a thief trait anyone can get this. Just go put all your points in crit and crit damage put some points in power. Grakittenerker and watch big numbers.

Anyone can do it. Thief gets a bit more burst because of its traits but honestly if you just went to any site and looked at the thiefs traits in critical and power lines and you will see this is one of the things they are designed to do.

Doing some number crunching on guardian.

If as the op says he has those stats and all knights armor and all pvt trinkets not sure what jewels he has if its valk then my numbers are right. If its knights then I have to change a few things.

here is what the OP should have if he is running valk trinkets even with knights weapons which offer no HP at all.

HP should be : 17,895

Armor should be: 3405

Tough should be: 2194

Vit should be: 1625

So something is off in the OP’s gear claims. If he is using knights then his HP is gonna be lower and toughness higher obviously. Then the OP’s problem is he has alot of Tough and no HP pool at all. I have like 1.3k vit and 16.1k hp on my thief so something is off here.

There seriously has to be some kind of computer issue here. I have seen invis players and not all of them are thieves. If you run into a zerg everyone is invis at first. What doesn’t need to render is your character turning into stone you know all gray and not moving.

Pretty much every d/d thief will not engage a fight if their bask is not up. What Im trying to figure out is how 2 thieves jumped you and you didnt see the big house on top of refuge or hear the noise from refuge. There if you don’t have any kind of mobility then yea they are gonna catch you so is ranger which moves just as fast.

There is no way they where stealth and caught with infiltrator arrow since that breaks stealth. Where they close to the keep like up top? Im trying to figure out how you didnt see them unless you never look around when your running solo in wvw which is bad on your part.

If it was eternal then its easier to get the drop if your higher up and there are more nooks and cracks to hide in. If it was just a regular border land though then I can’t see how around the keep you got jumped.

Even if it was a regular borderland how do you not see them?

What server are you on kurow?

Malicious.6742:

I’d rather watch some skillfull tPvP gameplay than boring and repetitive P/D WvW Vids :/

Comes in the thread with WvWvW in title to share he doesn’t lke WvW vids lol.

K watched it. Anyone can do this honestly in WvW I know alot of people like wild bills videos but what makes bills videos so good is not that he is using a p/d. Its that he is using p/d and no additional stealth except for CnD.

Just my critique it wasn’t spectacular. Not discouraging just offering feedback.

Scootabuser.4915:

Why do people keep trying to make Death Blossom/Condition thieves good?

They’re just terrible. P/D is better in almost every single way, trying to go D/D condition build is just sad and I don’t understand people’s fascination with it.

Sounds like you are comparing a D/D condition thief vs a P/D condition thief. I think any thief that has any semblance of playing skill it is a wash on the matchup.

A D/D condi thief and P/D condi thief probably both have remove conditions on stealth so the matchup then becomes skill. Though I think in this matchup a P/D comes out ahead since they are blowing less init. Its all style though play what you like. Some find P/D boring and same can be said with D/D condi.

OP loses a duel to above poster using D/P and makes a thread asking if they are gonna nerf it because HE perceives it be OP because HE lost to it lmao. Example of many threads in thief forum.

XII.9401:

I keep posting them. Check my posts. Pics, Videos etc. I encourage everyone to post screenshots and videos displaying the broken mechanics.

And for a previous thief poster: Stop using the gear difference in wvw as a crutch for why thieves are imbalanced.

The main issues are entering and leaving fights -repeatedly- on a thieve’s terms. Have you seen a warrior rush a group of 3-4 people? How about A necro?A ranger? No..Know why? Because they don’t have a broken mechanic that lets them get away like a thief. Worst broken stealth mechanics in any game so far.

If your a glass cannon you should be punished if you miss your chance..not rewarded by allowing you to repeat the attempt repeatedly unhampered.

If the thief class was ok..then why do we see this thread 23 pages long and growing filled with complaints and no similar ones in any other class forums? Sheekitten’s a petition now..

Im willing to bet that there aren’t a ton of unique posters in this thread.

You can’t compare classes since its not based on 1v1. I see you didn’t include mesmers in your post cause you know they have stealth. Also rangers get a free escape from immoblize. Engi’s get stealth also.

Glass cannons do get punished rushing into a group of 5 people they kill 1 person and probably proceed to die. Its called blinds and aegis really if a thief comes in and downs 1 person among 5 then they didnt see that house from 900-1200 meters away. Or the puff of smoke or the big glowy heal that turns the thief invis. A bs is popped in stealth a thief isn’t perma stealthing if they are bs 5 people.

I have seen warriors jump in a group of 5+ people then proceed to block everything on their way out. I have seen necro get focused fire from like 10 people but since they have stability while in plague and take less damage they don’t die then as they exit plague they pop deathshroud for even less damage.

There are videos of necro’s running into a zerg applying conditions and gettng out. I can grab that if you like.

Jefzor.7145:

We’re most likely going to get nerfed, like it or not.
Here’s some ideas to nerf thieves properly (I’m not suggesting they should all be implemented, they’re just some separate ideas, also, they’re based on WvW) :
-Remove damage from Mug and make it a knockdown/knockback instead.
-Put a cooldown on Cloak&Dagger
-Let Steal interrupt attacks that are in progress (like Cloack&Dagger)
-Lower the damage on heartseeker when hitting targets above 25% Hp.
-Increase revealed debuff to 5s duration.
-Add 2s revealed debuff when leaving stealth without attacking.
Fix culling, obviously.
-Increase clusterbomb initiative cost to 4, give it 50% extra projectile speed to compensate.

I hope any future nerfs will be coupled with buffs in other areas, to compensate.
I hope Arenanet will be careful with nerfs, thieves are currently very strong against new players and mediocre against experienced players.

What? These are a total nerf into the ground. Also this has to be based on nothing but a D/D thief. I don’t run a D/D thief my CnD doesn’t hit for more than 1.5k on crit my Mug hits for about the same a little bit more like 1.7k. My clusterbomb is lol laugh at me damage. Mug as a knockdown or knockback is redundant with bask venom and or devourer but yea sure. Mug a knockdown tied with devourer and bask venom ok.

There is no way you thought any of of your proposed nerfs through at all. Yea thats all not thought through at all. Also its based on WvW. Where 99% of these complaints come from.

If you want to offer a good suggestion against the thief how about you think umm PvE,sPvP, and WvW. Then you would at least be doing half of what a real balance team would be doing. Offering silly suggestions based on 1 game mode (the one you probably play the most is silly)

Chakuna.6325:

• Thief

• Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.

Trait IV – Shadow’s Embrace: Remove one condition every 3 seconds while in stealth – Trollolool

Extremely disappointing patch in terms of xPvP and WvW imo. Whatever, let ANet dig their own grave.

This guy never looked at any other class except his own. Menders purity and there is a food that will remove condi on heal. There is a guardian trait that turns condi in to boons so yea. You should go look at the other forums for the professions.

When looking at my bleed durations in the tool tip if I unequip either the afflicted or krait bleed duration doesnt change. It is still rounding up on duration so at 6 3/4 I am still getting a 7 second bleed but I am wondering if they changed this somewhere.

The ravens will also proc anything you have on your weapon like fire or air. they aren’t bad on a low cd elite. I used them on my mass invis for mesmer is very fun. I usually saw 1.5k and I don’t have alot of power not sure what they scale from or if they are just capped on the damage.

That said I run P/D condi thief and Im using runes of adventurer for the extra power and condi damage. If you feel like your condi damage is getting wiped quick now Direct damage is always always good. So mad kings arent to bad since it will give you more direct damage if you feel you have decent condi damage already with decent duration I would say adding some direct damage is a good thing.

XII.9401:

Check it out: 21715 damage on a 1681 toughness/2032 hp from a thief in 2 seconds.

3 armor pieces vitality and 3 pieces toughness all exotics with 300 toughness from the defense line. No..quickness wasn’t up..didn’t get a chance to =D

Are we supposed to go all toughness /vitality to survive a 2 second burst? Not really..toughness won’t protect you from over the top damage -unless you can buff protection in time-.

I wouldn’t mind this damage if I could see someone coming instead of them blinking instantly towards me and being able to get away whenever they wanted.

Sheesh..I can’t imagine what the other classes have to do with their lower base toughness and vitality.

Pic attached.

Shutdown again XII I’ve seen your posts so many times and this combat log again and people keep telling you that your wrong.

Why is it so hard for you to go make a level 1 thief take him to the mist and actually SEE with your own eye what cloak and dagger is and how it works how much initiative it costs its really not hard.

Mug 900 range if not traited thats instant combo with CnD.

The next attack from a P/D is sneak attack then 2 auto attacks maybe more depending on spacing you know what the next attack is? Every thief or person that played a thief can tell you what that is.

If you stop the second CnD you pretty much have the fight they will waste initiative because you blinded them, or blocked it. They can refuge or blinding powder if they have it or use the heal. If you stand there waiting for him to come out of stealth lie hur dur then yea your gonna get spanked again. It takes a p/d thief a long time to kill a bunker guard/warrior.

Also you can’t count either.

Its all personal opinion but I just finished incinerator on my thief it is without a doubt one of the top designed legendaries. I had my doubts but when you really look at the detail it is really good.

If you have it off hand you get all the effects but you don’t get the flame aura when you switch to it everything else is there. When you throw it there is a different sound its really cool.

I have twilight on my mesmer also and I feel like incinerator is definitely a Top Legendary.

The bow is meh I think its girly but its all taste.

Krathalos.3461:

I don’t think anyone’s complaining that a thief is spawn camping them.

i don’t think you read it.

Loading.4503:

Ive been running a P/D build already, but wanted to change it up and came up with

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqYVlUm6OHfy5E/5EB3Dnm0m6p4rjtTBW1KA;TsAg2CrosxYjwGrNObk2sOYEw8AA

I gave up just a little bit of condition dmg for more heals. I was testing this in the some spvp matches and pretty much theres a whole lot of toughness but only 13k hp. the thing is pretty much everytime you stealth before your sneak attack, you lose conditions and pretty much healed to full health everytime. Even with the low hp i had alot of the survival even from burst.

I was testing this out to try and use for WvWvW but i realized that the gears in the TP Has Vit/Healing/Condition dmg instead of Toughness/Healing/Condition dmg, was wondering if anyone has tried anything similar to this and how it went.

There is toughness/healing/condition gear its called apothecary. The jewels for it are expensive though so I would vest in the armor instead and put your p/v/t jewels in there.

Take the the sigil of poison off the dagger your not running venoms or even have poison on still and you have no points in power for duration or runes for duration. That sigil is a waste 10% isn’t doing anything for you. Take the 20% with 2 agony on your main and off hand. On bow put whatever you like but I wouldn’t use poison duration really 10% isn’t doing much for you unless you use SB really often in WvW.

Suralin.3947:

You’re pretty much running the same thing I am.  I’m a P/D Condition thief and one of the things that I need to do is stack bleeds as often as I can.  My advice for you, regardless of WvW,PvE,PvP is to get rid of Roll for Initiative and Blinding Power for Caltrops & Shadow Refuge.  I rarely use all of my Initiative as I stealth as often as I can to get the Might stacks and to constantly use Sneak Attack (which lays even more bleeds).

Take a look at this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqYVlUmKP3ey5E/5EB3Dnm0m6p4rjtTBW1KA;TsAgyCuomxAjAGrPuZk+sOYEw8AA

There’s also a video around of a P/D thief using this build in sPvP.  So forgo toughness when getting your gear.  You want Power/Vit/Condition.  The key to this build is stacking might from dodging/stealth and increasing bleeds via caltrops/sneak attack.  You can easily stack up 20 bleeds with over 100dmg each.

You have the link to that vid? I am wondering why you would run basilks venom for an elite.