Watching videos like this helped me when I first started playing. If you’re doing more, here are some suggestions:
1) Shadowshot backstab
2) Impairing daggers + backstab: casting impairing daggers in stealth from ~500+ range and starting backstab + steal before the daggers hit)
3) Shadowstep fake disengage: shadowstep away from opponent then shadow return + steal to get back to the opponent for a surprise burst and interrupt
4) Timing heartseeker to hit an engi as soon as his passive elixir S runs out
5) Blinding powder + backstab (for a faster, much less telegraphed backstab)
6) Shadow step + return safe stomp
7) Swapping to shortbow with superior sigil of speed (1s of quickness) in stealth from near 900 range. This allows thieves to fire 2 surprise shots before being revealed for double the immob.
Marauder gear and scholar runes. Even if you won’t do marauder, it’s still the best.
If it’s an invoc rev, I’d say thief typically has the advantage in a 1 v 1. If the rev is ret, then the thief should just run.
But regardless of how a 1 v 1 goes with a rev, revs have the advantage in terms of overall usefulness in PvP since they’re so much more useful in team fights while also having decent roaming abilities.
^ This is the answer, OP.
Yeah I don’t like the new Lead Attacks. There was some eloquence to maintaining your initiative to obtain the buff, whereas now you just get it by doing what you were going to do anyway. ‘Just attack to do more damage’ is such an uninteresting buff. I’m really not a fan of what Thief is becoming.
Indeed. I miss those little situations of having to choose between whether or not to shadowshot + backstab someone for lower damage and a blind or just go for the kill with a backstab.
Even if thief doesn’t take the most skill, we probably have one of the stranger learning curves because of how much the class’s abilities and balance revolve around playing off of what other people do and don’t do.
GW2 is just not an interesting eSport to watch
I agree. This is currently correct. However, I think part of Helseth’s issue and the reason why GW2 is so uninteresting is he, as well as all the other top streaming players, want to both gain viewership while generally keeping some of the most interesting parts of their playing, the duels, 2v2 tournaments, practicing of 2v1/1v2 situations, and 5v5 scrims, off of twitch and YouTube.
Of course, they don’t share this because it would sometimes put them at a competitive disadvantage to have their strategies and tendencies so openly documented. While this is understandable, it’s also sad. They all want to win so badly that they inadvertently hurt how entertaining GW2 can be for everyone as a regular form of entertainment. To address this issue, everyone involved would have had to put the growth of the PvP aspects of the game and its community ahead of their potential to win tournaments and pro-league. I have no idea how that could have been or can be accomplished.
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I really enjoyed your post, Ghotistyx. I agree there are certainly illusionary balance issues which will be addressed through adaptations by the players. Hambow is an excellent example. The original D/P and S/D builds would also be examples of this kind of innovation. However, it seems you’re also assuming there’s something new waiting to be discovered that might address some of the issues thief players have been having. This is possible but not a certainty.
Similarly, you broke down the relationship between player experience and class balance as something more simple than it is. In other words, it’s not a “you” problem or a “class” problem as you put. It’s a “you” and “class” problem. I imagine part of the reason this forum is generally biased towards addressing the class problems is because those of us who do embrace the “you” part of our issues will be doing so in game instead of on here.
I hope you’ll come to understand that pleas for class improvements are not coming fully at the expense of trying new builds and becoming more skilled at using what’s currently available. This is just a part of a bigger pursuit for improvement and addressing the full “you” and “class” problem with both practice and promoting better balance.
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Haste should be 3-4 seconds of quickness on a 30-40 second cooldown.
I’m afraid it isn’t that simple when using bound against dash thieves of a higher skill level. Dash limits the ability to sustain stealth, yes, but what dash can allow is for a thief to use blinding powder for one medium or longer duration stack of stealth and use the mobility of dash to more aggressively pursue the other thief’s smoke field. If they do this and fail to backstab or make me reveal myself from hitting them with HS or bound, it’s as you say and I will likely win the fight from getting an opener from stealth on them.
snip
A thief of a higher skill level should win…that’s how its supposed to be.
Anyways, it seems that you need to boost your defenses. Outstealth and dodge at the right times, ez as pie to get the advantage. After your opponent blows backstab+steal combo, that’s your chance.
The fact that you’re revealing yourself by hitting the other player with your skills while trying to stealth tells me more about your situation. I don’t mean this offensively, but I would just say you need more practice fighting thieves.
Higher level compared to most thieves most of the time and not just me. The current setup actually allows me to more effectively fight thieves who are considerably more experienced than me because I can nearly one shot them after camping stealth. My issue is not with how playable the current patch is in regard to fighting other thieves but with how enjoyable it is to play against other thieves compared to previous patches. I’m asking you and other thief players if you like how thief vs thief is currently more than how it’s been in various patches in the past.
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Dueling a thief when he or she is using dash while you use bound, means you the advantage. Simply out stealth them. Use BP, dodge 3 times + 1 HS, then cast BP again and use HS on it. You will out stealth them. Additionally, during the fight you have the ability to go into stealth more frequently and longer than them. And don’t be so predictable when in stealth, make sure to always wait a bit while they waste dodges or inis trying to mitigate your stealth burst.
I’m afraid it isn’t that simple when using bound against dash thieves of a higher skill level. Dash limits the ability to sustain stealth, yes, but what dash can allow is for a thief to use blinding powder for one medium or longer duration stack of stealth and use the mobility of dash to more aggressively pursue the other thief’s smoke field. If they do this and fail to backstab or make me reveal myself from hitting them with HS or bound, it’s as you say and I will likely win the fight from getting an opener from stealth on them. It’s generally better for the dash thief to run to another node at this point. With bound, I have advantages, yes, just as dash has some of its own. If this were a request for an introduction to how to manage this match-up, then, man, I would have worded it as just that!
However, this is not the problem I’m asking other thieves about. What I’m wondering is if you’re having more or less fun with how thief vs thief has changed with the lead attacks alteration. For me so far, it’s been less.
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Tl;dr version:
More thief vs thief fights end by steal + backstabbing someone after camping stealth now and it’s a less interesting way to both kill and die to other thieves than previous patches. This can addressed, as well as addressing other deficiencies with our class, by increasing thief base hp from “light” (~11k hp at level 80 with no +vitality) to “medium” (~15k hp at level 80 with no +vitality).
While there is arguably an RPS presence between classes or even specs (a thought that I certainly agree with), it doesn’t mean that Rock is inherently inferior just because it loses to Paper. Rock also happens to beat Scissors. Also, because classes are classes and we aren’t all playing the same character, differences will exist. Thief is, honestly, quite poor at healing allies. However, the game is not designed around how well classes can heal their allies. Having deficiencies in one area does not preclude you from having strengths in another.
From this post you’ve gotten me really curious about what type of player and/or person I seem to be to you and what you estimate my current skill-level (or lack thereof) to be. I was curious enough to read through your post history and see if this, the dispensing of analogies and heuristics a parent might teach to their kid, is just the way you’ve learned to communicate with people online. Since it doesn’t seem to be, I wonder what makes us here in this thread such an exception. I wonder what makes you look at what I wrote and think “Okie dokie then! This guy should be educated on the concept of a trade-off!” rather than seeing me as someone who disagrees with general results of the current trade-offs the thief class is presently prescribed with. If you wish to truly educate me on something, here’s your chance!
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Trick Shot and Cluster Bomb need modest buffs to both the direct damage and bleed stacking, but I think otherwise the set is fine.
My sentiments exactly.
I don’t want functional changes nor do I want to play armchair developer with numerous redesigns. I want the damage shortbow was once capable of dealing to the brawler builds of old in cleave situations back.
But there are many times when the Thief itself is the limitation, not the player.
Considering the variance of results when using the same tools, I’m inclined to say that its the userbase, not the creator, that needs to first improve. Good players will make classes look good, and bad players will make classes look bad. And then, there are those who just seem to mesh with one class better than the other. In no case is one class explicitly inferior to the other.
This is the kind of post that would benefit from supporting arguments for your statements. If the thief class is not explicitly inferior at, for example, dueling for a side node than a condi mesmer, why does Sindrener, one of the best current thief players, never 1v1 them? Does he just not “mesh” with thief well enough to perform this task?
Despite thief being buffed and several other meta classes being nerfed, it’s funny that we feel weaker. A big part of that seems to be because it’s sometimes become harder to maintain bloodlust stacks which could really carry us throughout a game against more defensive classes.
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My 2 cents on the topic (bear in mind I’m new to the profession)
- Thief is already one of the classes with the biggest burst damage – high single target damage. Adding high AoE damage as well (especially from ranged) would be kind of OP IMO
- you are not meant to cleave. You are meant to down someone and stomp him if the cleave is not enough/not possible. For that you have plenty of options: Shadowstep, stealth stomp, hell, Impact Strike cannot be countered at all if you time it well.
- you are the best for staggering rez’s in small skirmishes. Plenty of access to dazes with Head Shot, Steal, Reflexive Strike, etc.
- Shortbow #4 is an AoE poison field, which is quite underestimated IMO. Put that down on a downed body – if your team is not able to finish the downed player in an even situation, the problem is not with you (or with the Shortbow)
- if the situation is so dense that everyone is stacking on that body, you are better off getting decaps/caps anyway
Shortbow wasn’t always the wet noodle it is today. Detonated cluster-bombs used to inflict considerably more damage on players than our better auto-attacks currently do. You say it would OP but prior to HoT this capability for AoE damage was there, it was pretty good, and it was not OP even during versions of GW2 where other classes had fewer counters to cleave than they do now. I respect your opinion and also understand that it is mathematically inaccurate.
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With the recent thief buffs, a multitude of relatively highly skilled players now playing thief again, and these players continually being with matched with me, I’m getting more thief vs thief than I ever have before. Compared to the previous patches in 2015 I mostly learned this game during, the new changes to lead attacks have made this match-up frustratingly simple because of how much easier it has become to take someone from full hp to zero from stealth.
I usually play D/P with bound while most of the other thieves who are comparable and currently more skilled than me generally play D/P with dash. This isn’t new. It’s always been fun to attempt to outplay and out-contribute a more mobile player with greater bursts and stealth access. Now, however, once a thief player learns to consistently time their steal between evade frames and burst me whenever I become visible (even if I’m just using a bound through pistol #5), they can kill me with ease whenever my shadowstep is down. Similarly, if I correctly anticipate where a dash thief is going to rotate toward, I can stack stealth before they arrive and kill them almost instantly everytime they don’t immediately shadowstep away.
The problem here, in my opinion, is the changes to lead attacks have made the thief vs thief match-up less about outplaying another thief 2-4 times in a fight to secure a kill and made it even more about outplaying someone only once. The new lead attacks hasn’t made this match-up less skillful but it does seem to have biased it toward being a less interesting and dynamic match-up. Among other problems, this is a huge reason why our base HP should be increased. Has this been anyone else’s general experience after the changes?
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One huge limitation of thief is our current ability to contribute to “cleave” situations where an opposing player has been downed and must be hit with as much damage as possible to prevent a revive (particularly from a druid or scrapper). A big part of this problem is the shortbow, our most reliable way of dealing AoE damage while avoiding dazes from detonated gyros, the weakness applying passive proc from druids, reaper AoE, etc., has remained the same while everything else in the game has gotten progressively stronger. It needs to hit harder or be able to sustain its AoE pressure for longer for thieves to not regularly be a liability in these situations.
Yes, buffing shortbow is a continuation of power creep and while I dislike this, it also seems like the only kind of solution ANet developers will utilize at this point for thieves.
Marauder gear would be better now. Otherwise, you’re correct.
If they’re going to do one balance patch per season, they should do it the day after the finals and not just before the finals.
I enjoy watching player streams of scrims and tournaments but pro-league is generally boring. The difference? A player stream features one player and how they rotate and manage their abilities throughout the match. Pro-league has more overhead views of team fights and more commonly switches to player point of views after something interesting has already happened, like a 1v1. In pro-league, we get to see a little bit of a lot but the thing the current format skips is directly showing the use and timing of specific abilities. They try to show us everything and show us almost nothing.
If my problem with pro-league is like other peoples’, then ideally they would stream from several players point of view and we could choose who we want to follow during a game. If they can only do one stream per match, let players volunteer to be featured, let us vote for the point of view we want to watch from, or simply pick at random and stick with the players, classes, and roles that correlate more strongly with increased viewership.
Yea, but before, you could use dash to move and save up your ini so that you could do something after the initial burst. If you use Inf arrow up until you engage, you may get the same +15% damage, but then you’ll be struggling to get the ini you need to head shot, shadow shot, or even blinding powder on a downed enemy afterwards.
Either way it’s a nerf.
You’re right but only when we’re opening with steal and our bigger/biggest burst(s) when we first arrive at a fight. I think this change favors a slightly more patient and deliberate approach which is generally required against the other meta builds and this game’s better players anyway.
If you’re talking about PvP, which I assume you are, it also depends on match-up. I.E. withdraw can be better against thieves with pulmonary impact since it can’t be interrupted, mesmers running gravity well since you can withdraw out of it during the first couple pulses, etc. There also used to be a class called reaper that did incredible damage with chill which made withdraw more optimal as well.
Channeled vigor, on the other hand, can be more more helpful against classes with really high sustain and with lots of telegraphed evade+burst abilities that force us to use multiple dodges, like scrapper and retribution revs. The additional heal and dodges can help us get to the part of the fight where their defense is lower. On a D/P build with bound, the endurance refill can make it so we can stack more stealth, stack it longer, and/or stack it while saving more initiative infiltrator’s arrow for decaps and +1’s from stealth on maps where it’s easy to us coming (Foefire, outer nodes on Khylo, etc.).
HiS doesn’t heal for enough to justify its longer cool down.
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…I don’t think a three year old build would be useful now with how much everything has changed.
I don’t play much, just getting back into it, haven’t really played since it first came out.
He’s just taking a snarkier route to saying D/D is bad and has been bad since 2013. If you want to play a more viable backstab build, check out the D/P builds.
I don’t play PvE but it seems like going with marauder gear would provide a better balance of damage and vitality than any mixture of zerker, valk, and/or soldiers. Marauder gear has more stats per piece than those sets.
Random thoughts:
-If we could take a 4th trait line in addition to DA/TR/DD in sPvP, acro might be better than CS for S/D and maybe staff now. Horay for acro!
-ANet doesn’t seem to understand that Thief sPvP meta is to take all the % damage modifiers possible. Acro and SA will always be lacking as long as they lack a means of directly increasing damage.
-The changes to lead attacks and bountiful theft are awesome for D/P. Against the tourney competing players and tourney hopefuls, it’s been more necessary for me to stack stealth when +1ing to ensure they don’t retreat to ground where ports have no path. Before this sacrificed damage for a chance at a non-telegraphed burst. Now it’s going to increase damage to burn all that initiative on stealth.
-The change to lead attacks means more evade spamming d/d condi thieves…
-P/P changes have no bearing on sPvP Thief meta but I think these changes are for the PvE guys and gals who enjoy the unload animation.
-Not bad overall!
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I have never been a D/P thief.
ETA (pic) and: I don’t need your help if you think that you can make the perfect build for me – I’m as fine as a thief can be.
I don’t think you need help either. Some players, however, do want help understanding why people say they might want to use X and coming up with builds of their own. Some of these players are going to try things based on what people like us are saying here. I was hoping to ask you some questions about various choices because, if I recall correctly, you’ve generally been against what might be considered "meta"for any PvP game-type whether it’s DD, DA, and apparently D/P as well.
Are you still playing the CS/TR/SA D/P build you’ve mentioned before, Jana? And with zerker/valk gear instead of marauder?
Fire.
A condi d/p build without PI would deal less damage and deal it more slowly than a power d/p build with PI.
If someone refuses to play in premades when you suggest they play in a premade, it might not actually mean they’re not going to do it. Basically, he’s not “refusing” because he’s an idiot; he’s “refusing” because he doesn’t want to seem weak and in need of your assistance. If he’s still playing, he probably took your advice. He just needed to go about it in a way that would make it seem like it’s his idea and not yours.
Ways to get more stealth without gimping a build with SA:
-Use blinding powder in a smoke field for 6s of stealth (it’s also a blast finisher)
-Use bound through smoke field (it’s a leap finisher)
-Use traited channeled vigor to refill endurance previously used to stack stealth for more stealth stacking
In other words, we can stack more stealth and stack it more easily than ever before – provided you take Daredevil.
There are no divisions. There is only the love and peace between the atoms….
….
Wait, what?
Team>skill? Skill>team? Teamwork is a skill!
RomOnCoke – Druid, some Warrior, and others
Phantaram – Condi Mesmer and Revenant
Red Levin – Revenant and Thief
Caed – Thief
Sindrener – Thief
Chaith – Scrapper
Nos – Necro
It’s a S/P build with Merc Amulet, both interrupt traits, a bunch of random choices to get a decent crit %, and a complete identity crisis about whether this is a power or condi build. There is absolutely no reason to play this.. so play it.
Guide to the meta:
Do you play A) a meta class and build or B ) a non-meta class and/or build?
If you answered A, proceed to ridicule all non-meta players for damaging the chances of winning. If you answered B, proceed to ridicule all meta players for using builds that don’t require more skill and effort to overcome a handicap.
Congratulations! You’ve now learned that no matter what, how, and why you play, there is always an option for thinking you’re purposefully insulting other players. You may now play GW2 PvP as a contributing member of our often intolerable community!
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Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Sure. Turn 180 degrees and go play power.
You’re welcome!!!
It does help…
…as long as the goal is to quit.
If only the fear we got from necromancers didn’t have a target limit… Thanks for sharing your video. I enjoyed the footage and the music.
I think Caed’s D/P build is pretty much the best overall for solo/duo que on NA. Sindrener’s D/P build would be better under certain circumstances such as playing in more coordinated games both with and against skilled players.
When condi rev was meta last patch, I played a bound build with channeled vigor, condi clear on dodge, and revealed training for a pseudo-sustain/1v1 build. This build basically used the additional dodges from channeled vigor to help repeatedly re-enter stealth for additional backstabs and maintaining the power bonus from revealed training. I imagine it would still be really good in certain matches like fighting multiple revs.
Other classes even gripe better than we do.
I would love this. Right now I only watch PvP league videos to see what builds people are using, to see who wins, and to watch matches that people compliment for being really interesting for one reason or another. I would watch more if I could actually follow my favorite players through the duration of a match.
Even if they can’t follow every player, they could do this for 3-4 players during a match and have us vote for which players we want a POV from here on the forums. The games would be more watchable and this would promote more involvement from the fans.
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Just say no to P/P!
Why say no to a potentially valid weapon set? Are you in favor of limiting options on thief?
I’m not saying no to a potentially valid weapon set. I’m saying no to P/P. If it makes the game easier to balance (as it should) and reduces the number of significantly sub-optimal builds my potential teammates may be running, then yeah, please, limit those options. Build diversity is overrated when it comes at the expense of quality game-play. Staff can be our beginner weapon-set now.
Just say no to P/P!
It seems you’re suggesting I am committing the logical fallacy of “moving the goal posts” for the purpose of winning an argument rather than attempting to assist you and anyone else reading this thread about when, why and how certain trait lines may typically out-perform each other. If you presume my goal is to win a debate rather than assist, then you’re probably going to continue to assume I’m deliberately fudging facts in my attempt to win. As a result, it seems unlikely anything I say will be perceived as a possible truth rather than a lie in your mind.
In other words: As long as you think I’m attempting to defeat you, I cannot help you. If I cannot help you, then there are places I would prefer to be than in this conversation.
cant get it
you say 2 sec immobilize (which with most classes is 1 sec or even none) and mug which is 1.5k-2k dmg every 20 sec and 20% below 50% hp more dmg are utilities which not gimmick?
if enemy react slower he wont dodge the steal from a thief?? and if done fewer dodge wont get hit from executioner
again cant get it as you take the whole argument to a different placethe fact is the same, CS bring more dmg to the fight and with good hands can be better than DA . same experience thief can handle both DA and CS the same way but atthe end check the dmg log and you will see CS did more dmg
Messiah, your argument is a fantastic case for why CS can outperform DA in PvE. However, if critical damage were in fact the end-all be-all for an optimal Thief build in the current sPvP meta, we would all be running Berserker over Marauder. In your own videos, you are in fact running a Marauder amulet which seems to suggest you’re similarly aware that trading some damage for more utility can be more optimal over the course of multiple sPvP matches. There is a similar difference between DA and CS and that’s what you currently appear to be unaware of.