Guild Wars 2

So far in sPvP it’s fairly similar to before with a few changes. We still shouldn’t 1v1 most people unless they’re depleted from a previous fight and they’re not a cele Scrapper. There’s so much cleave that stealth rezzing is generally not an option. Phase Traversal makes it harder to decap without using stealth or Shadowstep to get most of the way to the node. With Bound on D/P, we have A LOT more access to stealth, even when compared to the previous D/P SA build, and it’s much much more reliable than BP + HS. Condition builds are much less common, which makes Bountiful Theft generally more helpful than Trickster given the sheer number of boon-stacking builds.

Bound gives us much more use out of combo fields, like Chaos Armor without leaving D/P against Engineers by Bounding throw the gunk we steal from them, applying a longer duration weakness with Bound in our poison field, and doing a mini burst cleave by firing a Cluster-bomb on a group rezzing their teammate and detonating as we land on them with Bound. Hitting someone with Bound in a 1v1 without teleporting into them with Steal can be a chore, but with practice it can become incredibly easy to nail someone kiting in circles on a node.

Overall, the greater access to stealth, Backstab bursts, and the more sustainable damage provided by Daredevil makes Thief really fun to play so long as the other team isn’t completely made of Heralds, Druids, Dragon Hunters, and Scrappers. Our new abilities can be far out-shined by some of theirs, which is exactly why so many Thief players come here to express our bitterness.

IMO if we get the ability to steal endurance, it should probably come from a trait in Acro.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

It’s frustrating running around with an incomplete character.

The irony is you yourself are an incomplete character. We all are!

Thieves can handle it. (Doing one burst combo and running away is ‘handling it’ right?)

There is something amusing about playing a game against a guy who hasn’t learned the basics of conquest one game and someone like Magic Toker the next. (Although I suppose Toker did sorta usually play Unranked when he was solo queuing before the lock).

Roarkin.1068:

So first let me state I play a thief, far from the best but certainly ahead of the curve. I know the tricks of the class and what it can do.

So my question is, has anyone noticed thieves shadowstep stomping a teleported away enemy with almost godly reflexes.

I have had this happen from two different thieves on two different occasions in sPvP. I Always time my shadow escape for the very last possible second, and on these occasions these people shadow stepped to me so fast to not interrupt their stomp i couldnt believe it.

Now perhaps they are god tier players but it just felt fishy. Anyone else notice anything like this?

How to do this easily:

1) Down a Thief
2) Stealth yourself
3) Wait 2 seconds before beginning stomp
4) Prepare to shadowstep to where the Thief teleports. You will likely have almost 2 seconds to do so before your stomp finishes.

If there is a curve, we are too biased to correctly determine where we are on it. There is no God tier. There are only players who are much more experienced and practiced than yourself.

It’s a nerf for DD builds that don’t use physical skills.. which are all of mine. This sucks.

Maybe if we ask for nerfs, they’ll give us buffs?

I’m staying the course. In PvP, Thief is more of an art than the streamlined bludgeoning of practicality, and that’s why I’ll probably always prefer this class. I’m just going to have to get used to avoiding Dragon Hunters, looking out for Revenants almost like I would a Thief, and forcing more blocks and invulns than ever before.

Shadowstep.6049:

I am surprised you actually switched to buff thief side considering you were spamming in every thread “thief is fine” pre xpac.

Not sure if extra HP would really help when dmg mitigation is lacking and we still have to actively react to miriad passives.

Agree on ini increase though, it is just too mandatory.

To be fair, you have simplified what I said and taken it out of the context of the old meta. I said SA D/P was good as long as we were playing a support-ish role in a party. I said this in pre-expansion threads where players were noting how incredibly difficult it was to 1v1 people and how Thief, as a whole, was broken because of this limitation. I said this in regard to the meta before the expansion’s release. If I were to hold the same position in the current state of the game, I would probably be insane.

The main benefit of the HP increase is we could use a zerker amulet in sPvP and less valk gear in WvW. It’s a simpler way of increasing our damage than directly increasing damage because directly increasing our damage would lead to more gimmick insta-gib power builds that have gotten us overly nerfed in the past.

The two simplest, easiest, and necessary changes to Thief are the following:

Change Thief base HP from Light to Medium (11k base HP at level 80 to 15k base HP at level 80)

and…

Remove Thief minor Trickery trait Preparedness (increase maximum initiative by 3) and increase our base maximum initiative by 3

These are not my ideas. These are, among a great number of other proposed solutions, the ideas of many other Thief players. Among those ideas, these are the two simplest and most easy to implement. That makes them the perfect kind of changes to begin re-balancing Thief with. The purpose of this thread is to both highlight this starting point as well as give necessary direction to the immediate desires of us Thief players.

To begin a process of bringing Thief back up to par, we need more HP and we need more freedom to select a wider variety of viable trait-lines. Focusing on these very specific desires is the way to accomplish this beginning and we need to repeat our desire for it again, and again, and again!

We want to play this game. Help us not quit out of frustration.

It seems like Revenant was crafted with many of the ideas which would have otherwise made warrior, thief, and mesmer elites more desirable. Instead these classes received lines which are primarily redundant (berserker), gimmicky (daredevil), and lack the disengage and sustain to escape coordinated pressure (chronomancer). It would seem that they had plenty of cool ideas but not enough for every class.

Sweet, thank you! I had only been looking on YouTube.

Are there videos of the Go4?

As a Thief, DH is probably the scariest build ever created. I sometimes dodge roll onto nodes and through narrow choke points even when the other team doesn’t have a DH out of the paranoia that’s been habitually carved into my behavior from games against multiple trap guardians. I feel like I’m in a horror movie where no matter how fast I run, this slow moving monster is somehow keeping up with me… just waiting to huggle me to death with Dragon’s Maw…

What’s your cele p/d build look like? That sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Thank you for sharing!

I would rather have it remain how it is than go to 1/6th chance. In PvP, the physical skills are lackluster. Other than the boom moments on the boom-or-bust of the elite physical skill, I’d rather have more shadowstep and agility signet than skills like Bandit’s defense. If they could allow us to choose which 5 skill groups would be considered for reset, that would work.

What I’ve learned is there is seemingly something counter-intuitive happening when I use a stolen ability and Steal when I have the Hidden Thief trait. Mainly, if I time it right, I can hit someone with my Steal and a stolen ability, particularly Ice Stab and Mace Head Crack, and they’ll land without revealing me. (Despite Ice Stab not having a cast time, the length of the stabbing animation is long enough where we can pre-cast right before we use Steal and have it land).

This allows us Thief players to immediately follow-up a strong CC attack with Backstab. Against Elementalists, this puts them in a position where if I have saved an Ice Stab, they will have been dazed, chilled, and hit with a backstab in nearly the same instance. Generally against the Ele players I’m matched with, this is an immense amount of pressure in a fight I’m +1ing. It’s also made worse for them by the fact I’ve done this while still having two additional Ice Stabs left to play with (although I would ideally only use one Ice Stab to finish them and save the other to perform this trick again).

Try it. It makes Improvision a much stronger trait than it already is and gives more fighting potential to the somewhat support-oriented design of SA D/P builds. To do this with Mace Head Crack, you’ll need to wait til it’s nearly finished casting for it to land and not reveal you. I’ve never actively sought out +1ing fights against a d/d ele or burn guard as often as I have after realizing I could do this combo.

Negativity is kind of a paradox. By speaking about negativity, a person is often also being negative themselves and helping perpetuate the very social norm they’re trying to help get rid of. Even most problem solving strategies involve first identifying a problem which comes with a certain degree of language that can be interpreted as negativity in itself. It’s cruel how life must be so complicated when we want to stubbornly view it so simply. You all have been philosophized. You’re welcome. Now go work hard and be nice. We’ve got an entire culture to recreate!

It’s a crit build that doesn’t produce those obnoxiously big numbers over your opponent’s head. It hits like an SA build without all that goody-goody team support. Not sure when to use Steal and get the most out of Bountiful Theft? Tired of Vampirism Runes saving your life in critical situations? Not sure when to use signet of agility or blinding powder? Are you happy to lose but just don’t want to push as many buttons or die in several hits before the end arrives? I’ve got the selfishly crafted, moderately damaging build for you! AND IT’S GOT 25K HP!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVl0MhunYjTw0Jw/EHwElPMij2YfBL3gqTgAIDA-TpBFwACOEAEOBAYLDs4IAA4BAsb/BA

(Many animals were harmed within the several minutes spent in constructing this build. Mourn them. Mourn them hard.)

Farzo.8410:

Can you tell me about ANY game that doesn’t have a meta?

A meta like GW2’s meta?

Chess.

Great suggestions, Absconditus.

The “Cheesewars” you’re talking about is an extension of a tendency that’s been noted since the RTS games I played as a kid. Players from eastern cultures will tend to focus more heavily on mechanics while players from westernized cultures will tend to spend more time isolating a path of least resistance toward victory and attempting to milk it for all the wins its worth. Those of us who are from westernized cultures will often be very good at finding the quicker and easier ways to win and even unknowingly utilizing them at the expense of cultivating our own skills over the long term.

The developers’ mistakes in balancing the game have often made it easy for us to exploit their oversights but any cheesiness is also our responsibility for approaching the game without really defining our experience as much beyond just trying to win and win right now (regardless of how skilled or not we will become in the future). They haven’t made the game as balanced as it can be, but we also have had few qualms about using the “cheesy” builds. On the flip side, people from western cultures are also more prone to making excuses, and the cheesiness we complain about is sometimes just an excuse for getting outplayed, out-practiced, and out-dedicated.

Trapper Rune Thief is going to be garbage overall in sPvP. It’s also going to be unkillable and uncounterable (or seemingly uncounterable) for a minority of players attempting to fight it 1v1 on their team-fight-oriented power builds. The complaints will be few but stern and loud. The nerf will be swift, heavy, and uncaring of how balanced or unbalanced Trapper Runes are on other classes. We will wonder why they even bothered to add it when that day comes just as we should be wondering why they’re bothering to add it now.

This game is great. It’s our disposition that often sucks!

Hannibal.5739:

@rennlc.7346 Sorry but I wasn’t trying to sound rude all I was saying is that I play games for fun and i didn’t enjoy the play style of certain weap sets if that came off as rude well im guilty as charged. But if s/he didn’t feel i was being rude why do you feel as though you to be the one to tell me?

I also don’t have a problem with other players saying certain weapons or skills are strong/weak. It’s all a matter of opinion

I imagine your response did bother bliss. It may not have been enough to warrant a more defensive reaction from him or her than the slight poke at how you probably won’t become a decent Thief with D/D. Nonetheless, in the future you should still thank someone for taking the time to attempt to help you, even if the the advice isn’t consistent with your personal preferences.

Most Thief players don’t use venoms or traps because they’re very easy to avoid being hit by and you have to give up a defensive utility to have them. Venom-share builds can be good when there are enough people around to receive the venom charges, but that doesn’t happen much in sPvP and when it does happen it WvW there is often too much AoE for a thief to handle.. Most players don’t use tricks because Haste and RFI have too long of a CD, Scorpion Wire is easily avoided/misses/hits wrong target, and Caltrops is only good for condition builds (which are weak at the moment). The best utilities are shadow refuge, shadow step, blinding powder, and signet of agility. These are currently the best in large part because they add many defensive tricks necessary for surviving prolonged fights and escaping unwinnable situations.

I hope this has been helpful. I hope that even if it isn’t, you will still say “Thank you” so I may say “It’s my pleasure” and we may then complete this experience in a virtuous manner.

Hannibal.5739:

Call me odd but I play games for fun and won’t be forced into a play style I do not like. D/P is a play style i do not enjoy, in any rpg I’ve played I always make a duel dagger rogue (if the game allows it). I do not care if it’s considered viable or not I know it will be a challenge but I figure at least if i practice with it I can become decent enough in my mind.

I don’t wanna use a shortbow because I don’t wanna pew pew if i wanted to do that i would just roll a ranger. I might not use p/p as my sec set, i might use s/x depending on my mood but i know those other 2 sets wont be getting used. I was just looking for any tips about the weapon sets and the utilities i mentioned that can help me out a little.

Also I don’t play a sneaky char like a warrior. I use hit and run tactics because stealth chars are usually glass cannons.

If part of how you have fun involves a degree of winning against comparably skilled players, D/P is currently the way to go. You asked for tips. Informing you of the currently most optimal weapon-set for winning is one of the most potentially helpful places we can start. If our current limitations on strong weapon-sets bothers you, welcome to the club. Direct your objections about what is fun or not toward the game’s developers and not a player who has taken time out of his or her day to attempt to help you. You were not being odd. You were being rude.

Because you wanna spam your abilities, man. Ain’t nobody got time to wait for weapon skill CDs!

My suggestion for enhancing Weakening Strikes would be to make the trait also grant the user 1 stack of Might when applying weakness with a CD of 3 seconds. This buffs the trait for both power and condi builds.

Generally, the hardest 1v1’s to win for me are the players using high sustain builds who are quicker and more experienced than me. As far as specific classes and builds go, I don’t duel enough to want to name any definitively, but I suspect d/d ele, condi mesmer, and maybe minion necro would be among the hardest if I did duel more.

Within sPvP, though, there’s nothing more discouraging as a thief player than to be matched up against a d/p thief who seems to understand what I’m attempting to do against him better than I do. I can run from the sustain masters. I can even occasionally close some of the gap in the 1v1 capability of our classes and the gap in our current skill as players by building stacks of blood-lust off lesser players and/or timely +1ing. It’s much more difficult to disengage from a fellow thief and much less beneficial to leave a 1v1 against one when they can +1 whatever fight I disengage toward just as easily as I can.

2 weapon-sets with short bow would be really fun to play. In sPvP, this would really help crit builds scrounge up some utility as Shadow Arts only works really well with D/P and condi P/D.

What other specs have you tried, BlackBunny?

Some of their attacks will occur faster than you can blind them: Axe auto-attacks, Axe #2, Hundred Blades, and Whirlwind. They also have Berserker stance which will prevent Blind from being applied to them for a significant duration. Otherwise, blinding wrecks their mood.

Yes.

/15char

As a thief right now, it isn’t so much about cleansing conditions as it is about not allowing them to be applied to you in the first place. Thieves have to alternate between blinding peoples’ attacks, stealth, blinding peoples’ attacks, dodges rolls, kiting out of LoS, and yeah, blinding peoples’attacks. You don’t have enough options to negate every attack from a single player in most situations so it’s important to limit how much time you actually spend fighting. This also means you really really have to limit how much time you spend within striking range of multiple people in team fights.

Okay, I’m sorry. I wish you luck in your attempts to compel the developers to alter the meta more to your liking. If it makes the game more balanced and enjoyable for everyone, I’m all for it.

Jana.6831:

rennlc.7346:

snip

Wvw is something differently than pvp – we have the same goal but we need to do different stuff. I think if I’d ask my server whether or not they think I’m team oriented, they’d say I very much am. But to achieve that I need to be able to defend myself alone. x
And even if a 1 vs 1 in pvp is useless, we pretty much share the same abilities in both game modes. And that’s why I argue – because I can’t play my preferred game mode like I used to and like I need to.

Not sure if that covers everything – not in a good mood today, so I’m not really concentrated.

ETA: x I need to do so no matter my role in wvw, whether 1 vs 1, 5 vs 5, zerg vs zerg, zerg vs blob, blob vs blob.

On paper, it seems like Thief would be one of the strongest WvW solo roaming classes with a condi P/D trapper rune build. The burst combo of Needle Trap + Steal w/ confusion + Sneak Attack looks like it could be the kind of combo people would want nerfed. It also seems like everything that makes SA D/P great for coordinated play in sPvP, particularly the stealth rezzes and the ability to disengage from focus fire with the instant stealth from Steal or Blinding Powder, would be just as good (if not better) for coordinated play in WvW. Some builds are hurting in a bad way (and the way of playing them is hurt along with it) but it also seems like you’re pigeon-holing yourself into playing those builds and roles unnecessarily.

Jana.6831:

You annoy me because I don’t like hobby shrinks who pretend to know anything about me.
Wvw solo roaming is the hardest there is, sorry to burst your bubble, so if you meet a serious solo roamers (there still are some but they’re rare since June and were even before that) be prepared for a good fight.
It is far more effective if the whole server works as a team, you have to adapt from 1 vs 1 to 1 vs x. It’s not 5 vs 5 and you can call help whenever you need it – you have to do things on your own.
Pvp can’t be called balanced if one class is only taken in because of their mobility – the moment another class will get near equal mobility that class won’t be in pvp anymore.
Same with rangers who argue that their class in underpowered because pvp top teams don’t have them. Nobody seems to spare a thought at how pvp is set up and if it is for every class.
Try wvw harder, unfortunately we depend on what the “perfectly balanced game mode” spits out for us.

I didn’t mean to come off as insulting of WvW and those who roam in it. I was attempting to communicate that I have different priorities as a player than you do. I don’t care much for the heroic moments where I may win 1vX as much as I care about getting the little things right more consistently. sPvP is more steam-lined for offering regular opportunities to get the little things right than WvW and thus, I spend what time I can playing sPvP instead of WvW. If Thief were designed to once again be more a of dueling specialist and fighting roamer, I would play that style too, but I wouldn’t forego the numerous advantages of teamwork to do so.

I’m not a hobbie shrink. I’m a hobbie consultant! “Hardest” is relative to the player in question. If someone is really socially minded and team-oriented, the hardest activities are going to tend to be the ones they have to do by themselves because of how unrewarding it can be. Similarly, for the more expertise-oriented player, the hardest activities aren’t going to be the ones you take part in as a solo WvW player. The hardest thing for you would seem to be doing something that doesn’t seem to take as much perceived skill/practice but is really beneficially to a team, like a playing a Mercy Rune rez bot build. I would bet this would be harder for you because I imagine it would basically bore you to sleep. I know it would bore me to death, which is largely why I only play Thief. Even our support builds in sPvP have high offensive stats and a great capacity for taking advantage of the mistakes of others. Perhaps you should try it if you want to see first-hand what the current optimal Thief build and style is all about. At the very least, it would allow you to put your very valid arguments against Thief viability in a more proper context.

Kageseigi.2150:

bliss.4305:

The class is not viable the way you want to play it. And if you don’t have the patience to wait or rely on the developers to hopefully change that, you can choose to find yourself another class/game/activity.

I don’t believe it’s a matter of patience. It’s the ability to lobby for those changes without being told I shouldn’t do so… like it’s wrong to want to play the way I desire. I’m not out to play in the top-level tournaments. I’m just here to fight.

I started in WvW, but moved to PvP to learn how to fight better, because it was taking forever to find 1v1’s in WvW so I could improve. Hopefully, I’ll be able to enjoy it more when I return.

Again, my whole point is this… I hope ANet broadens the viability of the Thief. I don’t want to take away anyone’s playstyle… not a single one. I’m not against “+1 and decapping.” But I would prefer other viable playstyles and roles in addition to it, and I don’t see why that would be a bad thing. Until then, I’m still working to learn how to fight as a Thief, trying different builds and such, but I’m focusing on learning to succeed in combat, not to avoid it. It may not be meta, but neither am I.

I don’t mind people attempting to seek improvements to the class. I want a build I can solo less selectively with and even Rambo with too on occasion (I also don’t want to win because my class is overpowered). What I mind is the way people go about seeking those improvements. Many of us here are assuming DD won’t provide a viable build for more sustained fighting. Many of us are assuming the new reveal mechanics will get used regularly and be extremely difficult to counter or play around. We’re saying things along the lines of “Thief is broke” rather than “SA Thief is versatile support but everything else is weak at the moment”.

Collectively we haven’t yet realized we’re basically asking the developers to attempt to balance the game more accurately all while being very inaccurate ourselves when we attempt to communicate our current problems. If we’re truly weak overall, making an argument that acknowledges the strengths of the current Thief builds as well as their weaknesses will make a much more compelling case than an argument which focuses only on the weaknesses. They can’t dismiss the former argument for seeming biased anywhere near as easily as they can the latter. People would prefer to not take the time to do this, but if we’re right about the weaknesses of non-SA D/P builds, it’s very important for us to not seem incredibly biased when we say so. This is how that’s done.

Jana.6831:

rennlc.7346:

We don’t even know what the final anti-stealth traits will be, whether or not they will be used, and whether or not we will have a counter play to them (such as simply dodging a reveal the same way we dodge a Power Block or Fear Well while in Shadow Refuge). My arguments make no sense because you are currently unwilling to view your role as a Thief as what the present meta most heavily rewards. This is a role defined by teamwork and the versatility of how we’re able work in conjunction with other players. Thief, as a whole, is not weak. Thief is weak at how you’re currently attempting to play it. The meta changed and you didn’t change with it, Jana. If you are not willing to even consider the possibility of this being true, there is nothing more I can do to attempt to help you improve as a player. If so, I’m very disappointed in both your capabilities as a person to adapt and my capability as a person to be of assistance.

They are already being used and Lock on is really nasty – that skill completely shuts me down. (I still killed that engi because he forgot to L2P because he’s got such a nifty noob spam skill)
I’m a wvw thief, I don’t care about your “special roles” in pvp.

I personally find you annoying, so maybe work on that instead of taking pity in me- oh and play thief sometimes.

And if you think that pvp is “the end of it all and the best and stuff” try wvw – solo roaming – have fun.

Thieves are playing P/P DD builds in the beta too. It doesn’t mean they’re going to be a regular feature in the upcoming meta or that we won’t learn ways of effectively playing around such skills. I annoy you because I’m challenging you to be better and this requires you to acknowledge your own imperfections (which is very uncomfortable for people who are still currently highly egotistical). It’s not a special role. It’s just a role, and it’s one you are playing poorly because you aren’t even attempting to play it.

I have tried WvW. The opportunities to fight other players are less frequent, more dependent on the number of players involved, and the players are generally considerably less skilled at small engagements. I play sPvP not because I think the game should be balanced around sPvP but because it’s regularly been the most accessible and balanced form of PvP GW2 has to offer. I want challenges and sPvP currently provides them in a better quality and more frequently. If you’re set on only playing WvW, I would encourage you to realize that there are three teams in a given zone and you should attempt to work with some of the other players on your team. This is what Thief currently excels most at regardless of how you feel about it. Adapt, my friend. I know you can.

We don’t even know what the final anti-stealth traits will be, whether or not they will be used, or whether or not we will have a counter play to them (such as simply dodging a reveal skill the same way we dodge a Power Block or fear well while in Shadow Refuge). My arguments make no sense because you are currently unwilling to view your role as a Thief as what the present meta most heavily rewards. This is a role defined by teamwork and the versatility of how we’re able work in conjunction with other players. Thief, as a whole, is not weak. Thief is weak at how you’re currently attempting to play it. The meta changed and you didn’t change with it, Jana. If you are not willing to even consider the possibility of this being true, there is nothing more I can do to attempt to help you improve as a player. If so, I’m very disappointed in both your capabilities as a person to adapt and my capability as a person to be of assistance.

I’m not sure what issue you’re experiencing with a warrior conducting a stomp or cleave because you chose to not go into any detail about the problem you’re experiencing. If the class being stomped by the warrior is an ele, thief, or mesmer, an SA Thief can use Blinding Powder on the the downed player before they use their downstate escape ability and begin rezzing before it’s effects wear off. Thus, the downed player will have moved without giving any sign as to where he has moved and the warrior can only guess where he should attempt to cleave. If your problem with warrior is interrupting a stomp because he has stability, I would encourage you to play SA D/P (or maybe DD S/D Thief come HoT) with Bountiful Theft so your steal both removes his stability and allows the daze to interrupt the stomp. If the situation is considerably less ideal with your Steal being on cool-down and the downed player being a class that can’t escape a warrior’s stomp or cleave, then that’s unfortunate but it’s hardly game or class-breaking. Finishing downed players is a strength of stance warriors and we’re fortunate to counter them better than other classes.

If your issue is that these counters require a certain degree of team work and using a build centered more around teamwork, then that isn’t the game’s fault. It’s yours. I can’t make you a capable team-player. I can only encourage you to attempt to play more like one. To succeed in the current meta (and perhaps even future metas), you would need to choose to be more of a team player for yourself, Jana. I hope you will. This game is much more fun when we work together than when we fail, whine, cry, and rage.

Cynz.9437:

I love how whole l2p, get better, adapt is thrown around. Fact is, in HoT thief won’t have in meta spot due to absurd powercreep. Period. There will be nothing to adapt to when no team wants you. And no i am not talking about lack of ANY 1v1 viability, i am talking about thief completely losing it even at that supposed +1/roamer role.

Oh and it is so lovely how people try to justify current state of thief by Toker, Levin, Sinderer gameplay … I am glad to know that thief class is designed for top 3 players IN ENTIRE game that have best teams in the world to support them and allow them to be viable. Too bad for the rest of the mortals that don’t have luxury to have such teams.

You know what happens when you put those amazing thieves on normal teams in normal soloq or even pug tourneys? Take a guess.

People don’t reference the best Thieves because you need to be that experienced to make Thief viable. People reference them because they’re accessible through their streams and while you may not want to spend as much time playing video games as they do (or you want to and don’t currently have the option to), you can still watch what they do and learn from it. It takes some practice in learning to decipher what you should copy from them and what you shouldn’t. In the current meta, you can watch Toker beat d/d ele’s 1v1 with SA D/P and crit S/P but you’ll also never seen him fully commit to 1v1ing a d/d ele he knows is quite capable. Instead, he’ll go to a location where he can be more productive. To me, this disparity in decisions presents a rather simple rule of thumb. If you aren’t sure you can win a 1v1 and win it in a timely manner, most of the time it will be better for your team and yourself to not attempt it. You can watch Caed, an avid duelist, attempt to 1v1 just about everything in sPvP but even when he has finished decapping a point and a necro rolls up with full death shroud, he’ll pass on the fight and +1 something else. Rule of thumb: don’t 1v1 a necro with full death shroud. By watching the most skilled players, you can start getting a rule of thumb for everything. When to use shadow shot vs steal to connect a backstab, when to go after the forest creatures on Nifel, when to say “We lost this fight” and leave to go decap a node, etc.

When you put a top SA D/P on a worse team, the end result is the same as putting any top player of a class on a worse team. Thieves just get there in a slightly different way. Just watch players like Phantaram, Chaithh, and Tarcis when they play ranked/unranked queues. They’ll carry a team fight, hold a node while outnumbered, and even dominantly win a 1v1 for the far node, but they’ll still regularly lose games because even the builds most benefiting from the “powercreep” have limitations, especially with their mobility and ability to disengage from a losing fight. As for SA D/P, when we play very well, we won’t lose so much because every node we leave gets recaptured or because we get zerged out of every team fight without assistance from our teammates. We’ll lose because people will break the stealth we apply when rezzing, a lack of focus fire to make our single-target burst and CC powerful, or because most people don’t yet know when to team fight offensively (when their Thief is +1ing) versus defensively (when their Thief is decapping).

I’m not trying to tell you it’s a L2P issue over a balance issue. It’s both a L2P issue AND a balance issue. We’re very limited as far as viable builds go AND we have one build in SA D/P that is very powerful in the current meta. People tell you to learn and adapt because your complaints about the Thief class are focused entirely on the lack of build diversity and we’re interpreting this sole focus on what’s not working partially as you being ignorant about what currently does work. We’re trying to help you become a better Thief and we’re trying to encourage you to levee your arguments because it is also a COMMUNICATION issue. By acknowledging that SA D/P is in a relatively good place right now when played in a more supportive way, you’ll seem to be a much more rational and reasoned individual and your complaints about our lack of other viable builds will be taken more seriously and perhaps even heard by the developers. I can only show you the way. It’s up to you to grow and ultimately enhance the gaming experience of those you play with as well as your own. Good luck!

Kageseigi.2150:

If you wish to run around decapping and avoiding 1vX engagements, that’s fine. But why should everyone else who enjoys the Thief playstyle be limited to that?

Because as far as sPvP is concerned, that is the Thief play-style, and it’s a style that leaves us far from limited. My concern is less about pre-conceived notions about what the Thief class is supposed to be and more about doing the most I possibly can to help my friends, teammates, and myself succeed as a player of GW2. I’m going to play the game the way it ought to be played and as someone who has selected Thief as the class I wish to attempt to excel with, that currently means SA D/P. It also means a whole lot of running away, +1ing, rezzing, decapping, and using most of my attacks at key moments and in conjunction with other players. I appreciate your attempts to help refine the class but resent the naivety of how you cast aside what Thief currently does so well. Ultimately, Thief currently demands a certain degree of humility and it’s incredibly rewarding to those who embrace it. Adapt, quit, or continue to suffer the consequences for attempting to do something in a way that it really shouldn’t be attempted. The choice is yours to make. I hope my words have helped motivate you to adapt, learn, and experience many Eureka effect moments where you go, “Oh! THAT’S what I’m supposed to do in X situation!” Good luck. Thief has the most unique learning curve of all the classes in GW2 and most players give up before they’re able to realize this.

I think this actually exists. One of the dev’s linked to the website when a player made a post lamenting a loss streak of 10-15+ games.

This would open up so many options to potentially create new meta builds with, and everyone will take Vampirism’s Mist Form….

If I had to run an interrupt build, this is what I would run if Bound isn’t changed to work like Heart Seeker.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsaVn0MBFmiFOBmOBkmiFYCz7LsoGRzhwTYKULBEA2NA-TpxCwAAOCAU3fQbZAGnAgHPAAKHCAA

IMO P/P needs both SA and a version of Bound that works like Heart Seeker in order to survive conditions. Thus, S/P is the more viable choice at the moment if only because it has sword #2 for keeping on top of the burns from burn guardians. I took Bewildering Ambush even though it’s kind of counter intuitive. If they just wait out the confusion by idling, you’re screwed because the bulk of your damage comes off interrupts and you can’t interrupt someone who isn’t attacking. Still, most of the time Steal would be used with Pistol Whip and PW’s stun is redundant with the daze offered by Sleight of Hand. Regardless, stability will make this build almost completely useless, and it probably shouldn’t be used if winning is a concern.

Making steal less important would make thief easier to play, but it’s also one of the most rewarding abilities to use when players improve their timing and start recognizing the tells for when they should use or prepare to use steal. For example, if you’re +1ing a d/d ele your team is pressuring and he hasn’t dodged in the 3-5 seconds that have passed while you’re getting in range to strike, he’s probably going to use a dodge soon and you should wait for it.

Even with ranged weapons, it’s incredibly helpful. With p/p, thieves currently need steal to CC and get on top of players who counter their bursty range damage by LoSing. They also can save it to interrupt someone attempting to rez someone they’ve just downed with unload spam. With short bow, a player can time steal with the slight delay of the cluster bomb animation to port to a player and quickly hit them with a detonated clusterbomb. (Thieves who regularly duel other thieves use this latter maneuver a lot because it’s an almost instantaneous way of delivering a significant blow against squishy classes.)

But you aren’t differentiating between whether you’re killing players by yourself or killing them by coordinating your burst with the attacks of your teammates. We’re poor at the former, yes, but we’re great at the latter.

Arctarius, it seems you aren’t arguing that thief is broken. It seems you’re arguing that thief is broken for how you currently want to try to play it. Phrasing future complaints to account for this would make it much easier for someone in the position of a developer to decipher which complaints are more legitimate than others. (For the record, I agree most thief builds are poor. I disagree that thief as a whole is broken because we still do enough important aspects of the game so much better than others. Yes, this includes “+1ing and decaps”.)