Guild Wars 2

Archaon.6245:

noone uses haste with BS combo…if he does he can’t reach very high damage cause you need all your utilities for might stacking….so OR 1.5 sec burst (But only able to kill, maybe, another glass cannon) OR very high dmg burst without haste you can’t go with both…..other questions? And…are you talking about frenzy HB? Because with war you can go with both high dmg and haste…so Hb hasted is 4 secs? Really?

I doubt you read my post.

Steal + CnD + Backstab (unhasted) = 0 + 1/2 + 1/4 = 3/4
Hundred Blades (unhasted) = 7/2 (3 + 1/2) = 7/2
Steal + CnD + Backstab (hasted) = 0 + 1/4 + 1/8 = 3/8
Hundred Blades (hasted) = 7/4 (1 + 3/4) = 7/4

BS combo hasted < BS combo unhasted < HB hasted < HB unhasted

Plus, you are not considering the casting time of Bull’s Charge.

Archaon.6245:

Primo.4385:

Yes, if you manage to find somebody willing to stand still and facetank a full hundred blades.

…or somebody who wants to stand and take a full steal c&d and BS burst aswell as hb or other glass bursts…i can counter them just like lots and lots of ppl out there, if you can’t it’s your problem not ours

Steal + CnD + Backstab = less than 1 second without quickness (1/2s CnD + 1/4s backstab + 0s Steal)
Hundred Blades = at least 1 3/4s seconds with quickness

So, there is quite a difference between the two things.

Archaon.6245:

Bohab.7825:

Isn’t the “insta-kill” Thief a counter to a Bunker spec’d player? I mean once the burst is done the Thief pretty much dies while possibly not even killing the bunker spec…

IMO the problem isn’t these alleged “OP” builds it’s players not being able to deal with the fact they die. Everyone gets killed, get over yourself.

no they can’t…crying on forums is much more easy that learn how to counter someone

Probably it isn’t a matter of countering?
There are people here, also myself, who found their skill incredibly improved when they rerolled a thief. That’s the point.
Is that thieves have the innate ability to 10x your skill level or are them overpowered?

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Flesh Golem Charge.

Again, this is exactly what I’m talking about. While I probably should’ve gone into more detail initially, it’s not like this is some sort of unheard of build. It’s even one of the top viewed threads in the necromancer discussion forums.

Also, when you say you’ve used this build before, it implies that you know what exactly the build is that I’m talking about. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask. Don’t assume.

I know the build, of course, I’ve just understood that with AoE blind you was talking about WoD. AoE blind is pretty generical and it is open to any misunderstanding.

Well bombing build doesn’t came around in this early time, but they were posted in the Necro forum at least other 2-3 times ages ago.
Any Necro knows well bombing way before that topic came out as the only viable Power Necro spec.
I’ll say again, when you are talking about well bombing, you are not talking about a specific build, but about a build which relies on wells to deal damage. This isn’t the old Build Wars.

Also, if you actually played Necro, you should now that Charge is pretty unreliable because it is binded to the position of the golem in that specific moment and, since Minions don’t look to attack always your target and sometimes don’t attack at all, the knockdown can be delayed also for 1 second, giving you all the time you need to escape the spike.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Do you even know what we were arguing about? Because I think you misunderstand the entire thing.

The entire thing was about why you still need a stunbreaker despite having a lot of stealth. Saying “he can use roll for initiative” is changing the build shown on the previous page, and basically proving my point.

It’s also clear that you’ve never actually used the build, because despite there being a topic about it on the first page of the necro forum, you don’t seem to know a thing about any of the abilities used in the build until I spell out exactly what they are despite it being very cookie cutter.

I know that build and I’ve played it, there are obviously some variants, this isn’t Build Wars again. Since you talked about AoE blind, it was quite easy to misunderstand and think you was talking about Well of Darkness, so there is no reason you act that arrogant.

I came into the argument because you gave the wrong example, since bombing Necros can be easily countered without the need of a stunbreaker.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

You have literally no idea what you’re talking about. The AoE blind is cause by blast finishers from putrid explosion inside the wells as part of the burst. You’re not giving up damage for the extra conditions at all.

The chances that you’ll escape the burst with this build are way too low to be considered a reliable counter. Period. If you brought roll for initiative instead of blinding powder, you could get out of this 100% of the time with roll for initiative, which would be much more useful than another stealth skill overall, giving more initiative, and better escape potential on the exact same cooldown.

I thought you talked about Well of Darkness, not the combo field + putrid explosion. Anyway that effect isn’t that much useful.

Still, you have great chances to escape the burst since it takes places in more than 3 seconds to deal decent damage. You are able to shadowstep, you are able to stealth, you are able to use also Roll for Initiative.

Again, try that build out, than come back here again and say to me how many people you succeded to kill with that build (sacrificing every utility) compared with the backstab combo.

Well, Rune of the Mesmer increases Daze duration, Sigil of Paralyzation increases stun duration.
Since they increase 2 differen things, I think they won’t stack each other.

If you meant 2 Sigil of Paralyzation, I think they won’t stack also as many Sigils do.

Asmodean.5820:

The life leeching mechanic is a part of what makes this class an attrition class (well, JP said that its design philosophy is to be an attrition class type).

Considering that most regular attacks hit somewhere for between 800-1000 those 28 points I get back per hit (if I spent traits) really realy reeaaaally will save me – especially when I take the real hard hitting stuff into account.

I didn’t understand what you said.
Did you mean that average enemy attacks hit for 800-1000? Because if you meant that, I think we aren’t playing the same game.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

You do realize that there’s also AoE blindness, and vulnerability from the wells to deal with, right? Have you even seen how these builds work? Heck, hide in shadow’s regeneration would turn into another condition.

Who cares?
I main as a Necromancer and trust me, that build is half or a third as effective compared to any Thief build (excluding some).

You won’t use AoE blindess because it has no damage output at all and doesn’t help the burst. No one is going to use it during the well bomb.

Who cares that regeneration will turn into Poison? You escaped the burst and you are stealthed. All the wells are now on their 45s cooldown and you have all the time you need to kill your squishy enemy.

stof.9341:

Well, we could have 100 stealth skills we are still limited to 3 utilities and one healing.

Let’s see :

- Dagger 5 skill Cloak&Dagger
- Healing skill Hide in Shadows
- That fancy shadowstep + 5s stealth trap utility
- Blinding powder utility
- Shadow Refuge utility

Hmm, that’s 5 skills. What are the 3 other?

- Steal (when traited with Hidden Thief)
- Istinctual Response (Trickery T1 trait)
- Last Refuge (Shadow Arts 5 traitpoint minor trait)
- Smoke Bomb (downed skill)
- Blinding Tuft (when stealing from Clones/Illusions or Thieves)

Rottaran Owain.6789:

As for sorrow. Stealing fear doesn’t work when death shroud comes with stability and the typical well bomb has at least +10% condition duration from power. There’s also good ol’ master of terror trait that’ll make it 1.5 seconds.

Also note that there’s a 66% chance you’ll have at least one bleed on you from dark pact alone, let alone factoring in if the thief can’t react in time for the first well to hit, making your escape chances questionable at best.

Death Shroud comes with 3 seconds stability with a master trait.
I don’t think it is that much of a problem, since Death Shroud is on a 10s recharge.

Anyway you still are in time to counter the whole combo with a single shadowstep or a single condition removal (which can fail on a 66% chance).
The whole combo, also, needs at least 3 seconds to deal enough damage to kill someone (~10k damage from wells ticks + ~4k coming from autoattack on a low toughness character) , which is more than enough to use your Hide in Shadows to remove both bleeding (skill effect) and Immobilized (trait).

Madian.4059:

I’ll give you a big plus for this post. Totally sick of this endless nerf-whine cascade. As an old gamer I can surely say that some people just forgot what it means to master a class. Or it’s just a recent mmo trends to give an endless power ti player in easy ways via gear or whatever.

(I have thief too, but play engi and necro mostly)

Dear old gamer, you said you play Necro, right?
I would like to know why while I’ve spent hours and hours on my Necro, I’m hardly getting wins at an insane effort given and why when I’ve just rerolled Thief I’ve found my gameplay and score greatly improved without having any experience in it.
Don’t try to hide that, if you have played both Necro and Thief in competitive PvP, you have surely noticed that.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Wouldn’t matter how much healing you have. You’d be dead against many of them long before you could escape.

For example, well bombing necros, if you’re visable for more than half a second.

1)Deathshroud
2)AoE instant cast fear for one second
3) Leave deathshroud, and use Dark Pact to immobilize for 3 seconds
4) Well bomb.
5) You’re downed before you can move, and even if you could, you’ve got half a dozen conditions on you.

All it takes is for you to be visible long enough for the necro to press three (F1, tab, 3) buttons, and you’re toast. This means you can never attack out of stealth because of the revealed debuff, and thus your best chance of survival is running away.

This isn’t even going into what your build is actually useful for. In terms of tPvP, you’d be dead weight. Defending a point? Stealth is the last thing you want for that. Assaulting a point? Dragging out the battle with stealth regenerations is handing the opponents free points. WvW? Have fun dying to every warrior that doesn’t render in the enemy zerg.

Wow, looks like you have a deep knowledge about both Necro and Thieves.

Doom is an 1s fear, Dark Pact is an 1s casting time, so, assuming that Necro is that fast to not have any delay between the 2 skills, you are still able to stealth yourself.
Anyway any condition removal or shadowstep is an hard counter to the whole build.

Blinding Powder is instant and can be traited to remove one condition for every 3 seconds while stealthed, so 2 conditions removed in the whole Stealth time.
Steal is also instant and grants you a free 3s fear on the Necro which can be casted while in Stealth. Can be also traited to stealth you for 3 seconds.
Shadow Refuge is on a 1/4 casting time.

If you get caught and killed by a well Necro this means that either you have a bad build or you are completely bad.

I would like to see multiple Death Shroud.
They should be based on what you want in that moment, so they will encourage players to wisely spend their Life Force into a specific shroud depending on the situation, shifting up the skill ceiling of the Necromancer (with the overall effectiveness) and giving them more skill variety.

There should be an offensive death shroud which drains life force faster but grants you powerful skills and offensive buffs, than a defensive death shroud which drains your life force slower but gives you powerful damage mitigation spells and defensive skills.

Krathalos.3461:

Yes, I watched the first 4 minutes of a 24 minute video. SPvP in this game doesn’t progress. It’s pretty much the same throughout, with different encounters. I’m not going to watch a 24 minute video of a thief losing encounters in sPvP.

Yes, a roaming class should be able to beat people in 1v1. That’s the entire point of roaming. If you can’t do that, you’d be better off sticking with your team. This is why people claim their class is UP: they try to roam with a build not meant to roam with.

I also find it hilarious that you think I’m the “typical thief” and all these other assumptions of me. I actually agree with a thief burst nerf – but not on Backstab. This is why I also think Pistol Whip was wrongly nerfed. Arenanet nerfed Pistol Whip where it wasn’t needed (not the stun, but rather the damage, when the stun is the real problem), and they will more than likely also nerf D/D where it isn’t needed (Backstab, rather than Mug).

I’m still confused as to how this post proved me wrong that that video was poor to back up your claim that Pistol Whip thieves are still good. He did nothing in that video except lose and run away. All you did was sit on your high horse, as if you’re somehow better than those players who play thief.

You have watched 4 minutes of video and claimed that the thief playing lost all the encounters, which actually didn’t happen since I’ve seen him getting downed only 2-3 times in the whole 24 minutes footage. It happens that sometimes you lose an encounter, but if you paid attention not every time he left the battle was because of low hp, but many times was because he wanted to help his teammates to defend another point.

If you don’t want to watch a 24 minutes video, than don’t talk about it, that’s all. If you do, your judgment will be most likely superficial or wrong.

I didn’t said you are the typical thief, I said that your post summarize the typical thief attitude in this forum, which are different things. Maybe you are, who knows?

If you watched the entire video, you’d realize that he succeded to sustain enough damage and being alive for a long time keeping one or more member of the enemy team entertained when his teammates were capping other points and also succeded more than one time to clear a node all by himself going in and out of the battle when he wanted.
He wasn’t running a glass cannon build, but a more defensive spec and S/P helped him with its great mobility and defensive capability while having still sweet damage.

Pistol Whip damage nerf was fair. It has and evade and a stun in it, it can’t have also heavy damage as it had.
You should keep in mind that not every build of the thief must focus on heavy damage and S/P is objectively the CC/Defensive set and right now it is doing his job quite good.

Who said roaming is about killing people in 1vs1? Roaming is about having high mobility in order to move from a point to another to help people when needed or to keep enemy team occupied to defend a point. He did his job fine.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Clusterbomb is horrible at long range, unless you’re firing from, or up a wall in WvW.

Hardly comparable to Eles AoE.

It isn’t quite horrible.
It deals massive damage + bleeding at the cost of a slow flying speed and adjustable AoE, but it doesn’t matter that much since you are able to use other skills in the meantime.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t said that thieves don’t need buff in that area, I wanted to say that ANet has stated many times that every profession can match any role with the same effectiveness and that is the philosophy behind profession design. It isn’t a valid argument saying that thieves have massive damage because they have weak AoE and it is fair like it is now.

They just need to get nerfed in the area they are too strong and buffed in the area they are weak.

Kuroin.1703:

I don’t know why you expect to make as much damage with a class like elementalist which is built completely different, but hey give me aoe spells at 1200 range and you can remove backstab completely for my thief. Oh that is not relevant? Actually it is, every class is built differently and a thief is viable for one thing currently. High single target burst damage. On the other hand other classes are able to do high single target burst damage also like warrior but that is still not the warriors strongest point. The strongest point of a warrior is that it is a kitten train and you should spec it for that. People thing every class should be equally good at everything at this forum and that is not what makes a good game.

You have Cluster Bomb. Now what?
Every profession have AoE, close range and long range weapons.

Gluttony.2017:

A while ago i read trough the D3 forums and noticed that everyone QQed about barbs being way to op, and that monks and Demon Hunters need a buff.
Which reminded me of a few months ago, where they had the same situations, just the other way around, with Demon Hunters being OP and Monks having some ability that made them immortal if it was linked with other monks, while barbs had it extremly difficult in inferno.

Just thought it would be hilarious if this would happen to GW2 when suddenly after the patch necros would be extremly OP (having all bugs fixed and abilites buffed) and warriors and thieves get nerfed to the ground.
~wishfull thoughts.

Never stop dreaming, son.

ShadowBorn.7106:

Oh my god!Necromancers and Elementalists have so many weapons that i can’t choose which one to use!

Actually, Elementalists have x4 skill for each weapon set, a total of 60 (15*4) terrestrial weapon skills and 20 (5*4) underwater weapon skills.
Necromancer have a laughable amount of 20 terrestrial weapon skills (24 if you want to consider also Death Shroud) and 10 (14 with Death Shroud) underwater skills.

So sad…

The fact is simple.
Necromancers are weak, you don’t need to be a genius to notice that, you just have to try out another profession.

Traitlines lack of synergy, making most of power builds unviable, and most of them are bugged or useless.
Death Magic is a real mess.
Blood Magic and Life Siphon is weak as hell.
Soul Reaping is bugged.
Spite traitline is laughable in PvP.
Most of minor traits are completely useless.
Axe is the worse weapon in the game, its autoattack is a joke, but I can’t decide if it is better of the Staff autoattack or not.
The only “viable” power build rely only on the damage output of dagger autoattack and 2 wells, just saying.
Signets are ridiculous, they are on incredibly high cooldown and their passive/active effects are worthless.
Minions are stupid and weak, also traits about minion are spread among 3 traitlines.
We have the least build variety in the game, having access to the lowest number of skills.
Death Shroud doesn’t fit with our only viable build (conditions).

And this is what comes in my mind at the moment.
Necromancer need a huge revamp.

Krathalos.3461:

I’m pretty confused as to why you linked this video. I watched the first four minutes. He lost every encounter (every single 1v1, he lost) and was downed in a fight that his team won. All that video showed was how easy it is to juke by using Shadowstep and Infiltrator’s Strike.

If anything, that video showed how bad Pistol Whip is. If he’s supposed to be a good player, yet he couldn’t beat others 1v1.

You watched the first 4 minutes of a 24 minutes video and came to a conclusion which you consider to be valid.
Seems legit.

Your post summarize the typical thief (average pubstomper) forma mentis.
1. Every build should deal heavy damage and kill everyone on its road, otherwise you can’t consider it decent.
2. Knowing a minimum part of something is more than enough to split universal judgments (like “that warrior dealt 20k+ damage in WvWvW! Warriors are op!” without trying the profession).

That’s why I gave up on arguing with those kind of people.
Good thieves know when nerfs are fair, bad FotM players will always rant about nerfs and are always ready to move up to the next FotM profession to abuse till the next nerf. Enough said.

Thank you to have supported my argument.

Oldgrimm.8521:

http://youtu.be/t-H1zpdg7dU

tho those who said that it was not viable in spvp., think again

Jump to 1:00 than compare damage and execution time.

Phantom.8130:

numbers have never been your strong suit, as you’ve been completely wrong every time you’ve attempted to use them. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kill_Shot

1 3/4 second cast time. 10 second cooldown. and, unless you just saw that it was WvW and ignored everything else beyond that, you would have noticed HOW the guy was playing. he wasn’t rushing up into melee. he was playing like a sniper. hanging back at his extended range, waiting for his opportunity and then using his deadly ability. he was playing smart. if what you’re looking for is for everyone to just clump up in a giant ball and mash buttons until only one person is left standing, you’re always going to be disappointed when people actually put some thought into their actions.

1 3/4 seconds cast time differs from 1/4 second from 2 seconds casting time. So much difference, don’t you say?

So what? If you have tried kill shot you will realize that against full geared with base toughness character it won’t never hit above 10-13k damage. Never.
Your Cluster Bomb (3 initiative and 1200 range) would have hit for about 10k AoE damage against player geared like those shown in the video, plus bleeding. Thank me later when you feel like a AoE sniper when playing thief.

Phantom.8130:

you do realize that those videos were nothing more than cherry picked highlight clips, right? zero relevant data was included. nothing about the defenders gear or build was even hinted at. nor was anything regarding their skill level. so, for all we know, those were people who just bought the game the day before who didn’t put any thought toward defense whatsoever, and got smashed like they should be. it’s not a valid sample to base anything on.

But that WvWvW footage is a valid sample, right?
At least in those video you know that people have at least full exotic armor and you don’t have any buff from Orbs/Consumables/Fort bonuses.

Phantom.8130:

as opposed to warriors who enter a fight and have to spend 10 minutes picking daisies?

Building adrenaline, maybe? Warriors have to use 10 attacks to build up full adrenaline in order to use killshot.

Phantom.8130:

yes, but much longer cooldown times. that’s the tradeoff for lower casting times.

Seriously? Once Steal is on cooldown you can still use CnD+Backstab each 3 seconds and deal 10k+ damage. Where is the tradeoff, so?

Phantom.8130:

thieves are a stealth based class. they’d be absolutely useless if they were visible while in stealth. then it wouldn’t even be stealth. it would be “shiny happy kill me time”. your clear bias against stealth itself is showing.

So? Every high damage skill/combo in this game have huge visibility, thieves don’t. So the damage should be adjusted according to low visibility. Stealth is intended as a defensive mechanic, not offensive. That’s why Shadow Arts give toughness and most stealth skills heal you.

Phantom.8130:

i think that it’s been proven time and again that a glass cannon thief’s damage is actually on par with the damage any other glass cannon class can put out, and currently even less than what some others are capable of, including warriors.

I haven’t yet any s/tPvP footage of any profession except thieves dealing 18k+ damage in that time without using bugs.

Phantom.8130:

once again, another push for easy mode. so once again, WoW has pandas. they’re soft and cuddly, just like how you want thieves in GW2 to be.

Tell me any high damage burst skill/combo which isn’t easy to counter in Guild Wars 2, just one.

Phantom.8130:

no, if you have to wage a personal war for easy mode, that’s what you’re going to do. and that’s what you are doing, and have been doing.

Your argument is just stupid.
If I was struggling for easy mode, I would have better rerolled thief and not complaining at all. I’d rather defend thieves from nerfs like many people are doing in order to keep safe their opness and keep abusing of it.

SFtheWolf.5179:

I would argue that Bountiful Theft makes the boon stripping not that important any more. It’s nice to be able to do consistently, but how many boons is a person going to have at the start of a fight? Taking 2 off the top and giving it to yourself and all allies is all I’ve felt like I needed. The fights are usually short enough that I kill them and get out, or I decide it’s not worth it and slip away before they manage to start applying a bunch more.

I think you know that S/D isn’t a hit-n-run set, you are not going to kill someone in seconds like you do with backstab, so yes, consistent boon stripping makes a bunker (like Guardian or Elementalist with consistent boon application) much much easier to kill and, most important, it doesn’t force you to put 20 trait points in a traitline you won’t use if you aren’t specced for conditions.

stof.9341:

PW has a cast time and a channel time. The 3/4s is the cast time. During that part, we can still move and nothing of worth happens. Then the attack with the stun procs, a little delay happens and the “cannot move while evading and doing a flurry of sword strikes” part starts.

All in all, you do more or less two PW in a single Haste duration so I’d say as a rough guess that the total PW duration from start to finish is around 4s or slightly more.

You can do 3 pistol whips in an haste. You can’t do the third due to lack of initiative.
The PW channel is about 1 second when unhasted, the casting time of the stun is 3/4 of second. I’ve misured it out with a cronometer, it is more or less 2 seconds.
Still, it is less than Hundred Blades and has an evade in it.

Eduardo.4675:

You and ur friend merciless have been completely biased towards thieves since begining of the game,and this post its the adamant proof of that… in another thread, i read u say that “from my experience, PW is a 3/4 secs (0.75 secs) channel skill, whereas Hblades is 3 secs and 1/4 channel”, and now this, im speechless… you lie while you smile, u should be ashamed of the gamer you infact are. I have one advice for you: disable the S key on your keyboard, ull see vast improvements in ur game play.
Nuff said on this topic, the “biasement” of people is pretty clear, its cristal clear.

Sorry sir, but… what?
PW is 3/4-1s channel skill, just sayin. In fact while the stun lasts 1/2 seconds, it last about half or more of the channel.
The wiki also agrees with me.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip

The other part about the S key is completely extraneus to me, what are you talking about? Have I posted any gameplay of me abusing of the S key?

Grimwolf.7163:

Correction; that Warrior was actually dealing significantly more than a Thief can.
And it was at 1500 range from on top of walls.
And it hit multiple targets…
I’m pretty sure in at least one part of that video, he 1-shot three separate people with a single shot.

Nope, he was dealing the same exact amount of damage a thief can deal on a regular armor, regular level character with the backstab combo (Assassin Signet + Steal + CnD + Backstab) on up-leveled people.
In sPvP/tPvP you won’t see any killshot dealing more than 13k damage, on the other hand, you can see many thieves dealing 18k+ damage with the backstab combo which takes less time compared to killshot to be executed.
The only downside about the thief combo is that it is “only” 900 range, it doesn’t pierce and ends with you into close range with the target (which I can’t consider as a downside, because puts you in condition to stomp him).

But don’t worry guys, once thieves gets fairly nerfed, you’ll find another unbalanced profession to abuse in order to get your easy wins, probably Warrior itself.

There are plenty of sPvP/tPvP footages of thieves dealing 18k+ damage with their backstab combo.
You guys are actually justifying this posting WvWvW videos showing high numbers against up-leveled players with hell amount of buffs saying “Hey! Look! That warrior dealt the same damage I make with my backstab combo! Thieves are fine! Warrior need nerfs!”.

LOL

Aziff.3248:

Just give us prec/tougness/condition damage jewerly and I’ll be in heaven.

True.
I feel that having that jewel in PvP but not in PvE is a kind of bad joke.

Anyway, remember that Critical Damage+Precision > Power in any situation. You can deal pretty decent damage without that much power.

On the other hand, Condition Damage doesn’t need precision to deal decent damage.
So, Condition Damage + Vitality + Toughness would be hell unbalanced.

Phantom.8130:

your initial point, was that it took all of their skills, in a specific sequence, and depended on the situation. i countered your point with the truth that the same conditions apply to the thief, and now you’re moving the goalposts to complain about something else entirely.

Nope, my initial point was that the combo/sequence depends on situations, not the case of thieves though. CnD+Backstab is always the combo. You won’t have the problem to daze someone who is rezzing, stripping stability to a guardian, immobilize a thief, fear someone who is bursting you down, pump the damage with Life Blast and so on. CnD+Backstab is more, more than enough to burst down anyone if coupled with Heartseeker.

At least get the point before answering in that rampant manner.

Phantom.8130:

3 seconds is all you need to kill a glass cannon thief. they have no defense and the lowest HP possible. just use your auto-attack and you’ll get them down to near death.

Seriously? No profession can kill someone in 3 seconds unless when using some burst combo which usually are on long cooldown. But it doesn’t matter, since as far I know, thieves have dodge too.
If you couple this with the rendering issues going around, then you see the full picture.

Phantom.8130:

no. YOU won’t see a thief getting behind you. i have positional awareness and know how to keep my back safe. coincidentally, i do fine against glass cannon thieves, while you wage a war against them on the forums.

As I stated before, I can also survive to bad backstab thieves.
But it doesn’t mean that bad backstab thieves aren’t harder to counter compared to bad necromancer, bad elementalist or bad engineer and that bad thieves are way more effective as they should compared to bad x profession.

Balancing isn’t about counterability.
Overpowered doesn’t mean unbeatable.
Get this straight before arguing.

Phantom.8130:

so you’re arguing just for the sake of arguing? good to know.

Have you seen the post I was answering before entering in the argument?
It doesn’t look like.

Phantom.8130:

with no defense and the lowest HP possible, 3 seconds is an eternity. and once again, you’re comparing them to necromancers, which are considered to be UNDER powered.

3 seconds is low also if you have an HP pool of 5k. A dodge is more than enough to mitigate the damage and survive for 3 seconds.

Read above.

do you know how much intiative a thief gets? 12, that can be traited up to 15. CnD costs 6. HS costs 3. 6+3+3=12. thief is out of initiative. if they’ve traited, they have —- cut

If you are healing, you aren’t dodging HS.
So, what is best, dodge spamming and getting killed anyway by some lucky HS or being killed because you tried to heal? Anyway you can’t dodge while under immobilization, so…

The player is still under immobilization.
Devourer Venom immobilizes for 2 seconds for 2 hits. Since Immobilization stacks in duration, there is a total of 4 seconds immobiliziation.
Does the time between Steal and HS spamming more than 4 seconds? I think no.
Also if Immobilization was bugged, 2 seconds are more than enough to get at least 1 hs landed.
You should stop lying.

Phantom.8130:

oh. so they’d have even LESS initiative to work with, meaning they couldn’t even get off the extra heartseekers. so their initiative runs out sooner, making them even easier to kill.

Have you actually played tPvP where thieves are roamers? They enter already engaged fights with full initiative and clean out for sure one of the pretenders of a node.
Considering also that thief profession encourage hit-n-run gameplay, there are so few the situation you are starting a combo with less than maximum initiative.

Phantom.8130:

bs

You are joking right?
You have taken a video of a guy hitting for high numbers in WvWvW against upleveled people using a skill that requires at least 15 seconds (way more in reality) to be built up and has 2 seconds casting time in which you are clearly visibile to prove thieves bursts are fine?

Have you at least any idea on how much does backstab combo hits in sPvP/tPvP, not that WvWvW with 10+ buffs in the same moment?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plkM40HP54U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El8VchCccDs

You can see here many 13k+ bursts, just to say. And this is sPvP.

So, at the end, thieves have, compared to warrior:
- Less skill preparation: once you entered a fight you are able to use your combo
- Less casting time
- Less visibility
- Higher damage
- Less ease to counter

So if I have to struggle for balance sake, I’m going to fight my war here.

Ignicity.7938:

I’m not sure which I’m more stunned by: the fact that a fix is reportedly coming for Necro’s or the fact that a red post found its way into the Necro forums.

Either way, please fix the rest of our profession!

(updates on where you guys are with all these fixes that are needed, would be nice too)

The most stunning fact to me is that I’ve put all my trait points on Soul Reaping to be the final Necromancer according to JP but that was a waste.
I knew that something was wrong, I still felt underpowered.

Phantom.8130:

basilisk venom->assassin’s signet->CnD->mug->backstab, while being behind your target. all their skills, in a specific sequence, depending on situations. your point here is invalid.

You don’t get the point.
As a Backstab thief, the combo is always that. You can vary it using CnD->Backstab when other skills are on cooldown, but there isn’t so much variation about that.
I hope that before you came here to say that my point is invalid you have at least tried the build in question. Using skills in the same exact sequence in every situations make the build uneffective. This is not the case of Backstab.

a thief can’t rely on stealth, because of the cooldown period after dealing damage from stealth. your point here is invalid, and a flat out lie

So, 3 seconds of revealed means that Thieves can’t rely on Stealth at all? They can easily leave the fight if the burst doesn’t kill the target by using just one skill, which is kinda OP when used on an instant-kill build.
Necros haven’t that option, once they engaged a fight, they have no way to leave it.

Phantom.8130:

if a thief gets behind you, it’s extremely easy to predict what will follow, and after they finish of their first target, that target’s buddies will kill the thief. your point here is invalid

See above.
You won’t see a thief getting behind you. The time which passes between Steal and CnD is almost non-existent. Then you’re immobilized and you have no way to avoid the backstab.
You haven’t neither the time to figure out the weapon set of the thief that you are dead or with less than 30% hp.

If you failed the burst, anyway, you just have to survive for 3 seconds and then you are able to stealth again and leave the fight. Otherwise you are still able to use Infiltrator’s Arrow.

Phantom.8130:

as has been stated countless times, the necromancer is considered to be UNDERpowered. which is the level you wish to bring thieves down to. not balanced. under powered. which means……. your point here is invalid, and extremely transparent.

I don’t get it.
I know Necromancer is underpowered, but looks like people here want to compare him to thieves, thats why I’m arguing here.

Phantom.8130:

there is a cooldown period on stealth. apparently, you never got the memo. so a theif can’t just keep CnD+backstab after their first strong burst. your point is invalid, and once again, a flat our lie.

3 seconds? So 3 seconds of revealed can be considered an actual cooldown?
That build posted has at least 38 seconds of cooldown, more if untraited, thanks to Wells, which are the main source of damage.
38 >> 3, you know.
Still, CnD+Backstab only can deal ~11k damage, which is more than the damage both the wells can deal in 5 seconds.

Phantom.8130:

dodge? you have two of them, since you obviously didn’t use one to avoid the backstab combo. use them. thief’s drained of initiative, and is a sitting duck. go kill him. so once again, your point here is invalid.

Do you know how much initiative does HS cost? 3. You are going to have 6 initiative after the combo, 8 if you used the minor Shadow Arts trait. You can use 2-3 heartseeker in a row.
Do you know which is the casting time of HS? 3/4
It is just a matter of time, you are going to die from an heartseeker. You can dodge the first, but 2-2-2 will still hit you.
Don’t forget that you are still under immobilization thanks to venom.

Obviously you are considering the case you are with full initiative when the fight against the thief starts, probably an 1vs1, which rarely happens in GW2.

Phantom.8130:

cut

It is a matter of balance, dude. We are talking about balance, not about how to deal with a specific profession. I played 2+ months, I’ve found the way to counter thieves, of course.

The point is Thieves have the better effectiveness/effort ratio. Their damage is outstanding compared to other professions and it is all concentrated in few, fast casting skills. This is unbalanced.
Most high-damage skills are on an high casting time, high drawbacks, high requirements, high visibility. Only thief stands out for its burst which have no negative aspects.
People who have forced them to get better into their profession have rerolled thief and found an easy route to win, that what I’m waging a personal war against.
I want that every professions requires practice to be good at and that a good player will always wins against a bad player, which clearly isn’t the case of Guild Wars 2 at this moment. Is this asking too much?

Of course people here feels offended by those nerfs, because most of them found out that thief is the only profession they are good at and, once the nerf bat has spoken, they will realize that all their goodness is gone.

Daecollo.9578:

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

A video of a necromancer killing someone from ranged in 1.0 seconds with nearly 0 telegraph.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pK6M5rf_8I&feature=BFa&list=HL1352314833

The target is also completely dazed. (cannot do anything.)

This made me laugh.
That build takes way more than 1 second to kill someone, is close ranged and wastes all the skill slots to deal damage. Still, you can see the Necro coming.

Thieves don’t have the dazes/interrupts a necromancer does. (unless they are not a backstab thief.)

What does it mean?
Daze can be stunbreaked, thief burst can’t.

STRanger.5120:

sorrow.2364:

Saying that a Necro has better bursts is most ridiculous excuse you have heard to justify BS damage.

I didn´t saw anyone say that, so don´t make things up buddy ;-)
Also this burst performed by the necro is pretty awesome, blindness and daze is really great and totally worth the slightly longer burst time. I bet that Thieves would like to have a daze/blind in their combo for that price (it´s much more difficult to avoid than the actual Thief combo).
Also it works very similarly to the Thief combo (burn the CDs, get a kill and wait until they are back up to repeat). I really don´t see much difference between this and the Thief combo in terms of OPness.

So why did he posted that video?

You should try to run that build and then make comparisons.

1. It is way harder to use because you have to use all your skill in a specific sequence depending on situations
2. You are completely defenseless. A backstab thief can still rely on Stealth which is way better as defensive mechanic compared to DS.
3. It is easy to predict. As you can see in the video, only the first warrior died fast. The others succeded to survive the burst.
4. It puts all your skills on cooldown. You have absolutely no way to do something except autoattacking.
5. It isn’t repeatable. As a Backstab Thief you can still perform CnD+Backstab after the first strongest burst.
6. You don’t have Heartseeker to finish off people with 6k+ damage.

So yes, they are different in terms of opness.

Daecollo.9578:

A video of a necromancer killing someone from ranged in 1.0 seconds with nearly 0 telegraph.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pK6M5rf_8I&feature=BFa&list=HL1352314833

The target is also completely dazed. (cannot do anything.)

This made me laugh.
That build takes way more than 1 second to kill someone, is close ranged and wastes all the skill slots to deal damage. Still, you can see the Necro coming.

Now you thieves have tried everything.
Saying that a Necro has better bursts is most ridiculous excuse you have heard to justify BS damage.

Which amulet goes with this build?
You can try to build a Power/Conditions hybrid.

Nickczh.6341:

sorrow.2364:

The final solution to every Necro problems.

Curses: + power + Condition Damage
Spite: + precision + critical damage
Death Magic: + toughness + condition duration
Blood Magic: + vitality + healing power
Soul Reaping: + LF pool + boon duration

Let all traits work and we’ll finally see a viable Necro.

From your solution, I only see ONE type of Necro coming about. If I had such a distribution, I would go 30/0/30/0/10, but it would just be a power-conditionomancer.

Reasoning:
1. There’s a recent post talking about toughness or vitality – I would go more toughness since we already have the highest base HP pool.
2. Going toughness also increases condition duration.
3. Power and condition damage together – who wouldnt want that?

Rather OP IMO. The last ten points.. Spite for the burst DPS people, Blood Magic for the tank-lovin’ people, Soul Reaping for the rest.

Where are the other builds (Minion Master)? Do enlighten me because I don’t see it.

Minion Master is in Death Magic. A Minion Master apply more conditions than boons, so, overall, Boon Duration on Death Magic make not that much sense as it makes on Soul Reaping (see Spectral Armor, for instance).

You are seeing a power-conditionmancer, I can see a Burst Necromancer (20-30-0-0-20), a tanky MM (0-0-30-20-20) and lots of other viable builds.
Right now you can’t build an effective raw damage Necro because of the strange trait distribution.
You are forced to put points on Spite, Curses and Soul Reaping to have decent damage, leaving you defenseless. Other professions like Elementalists, which have Precision and Critical Damage in the same traitline, can build up with decent bursts while having nice defenses, since Power isn’t really needed to burst builds like Precision + Critical Damage is.

To answer what you said:
1. Well, we are basically the same situation now. If you are going to spec into Conditions, it is quite hard you are going to put points into Blood Magic as defensive traitline.
2. A nice plus, don’t you think? Anyway I don’t see it unbalanced.
3. Me. Power isn’t that good in condition specs, it doesn’t pump up your damage that much like Precision + Critical Damage does. Just try to run Spite + Curses now and you’ll see that damage isn’t so good as it would when putting points in Curses + Soul Reaping. Keep in mind also that the Curse traitline retain most of its traits, which only few boost the damage output.

Esturk.2183:

Simple fix: First strike stuns

And then give it Backstab damage, Death Blossom evade time, Stealth on second hit, 5 stacks of bleeding and gives you protection and retaliation.

Seriously guys, the skill is fine. Just move after your target and you’ll see the second strike will land too.

Moa kills only MM?
It also kills every Necro elite and can empty your LF bar.

But don’t worry guys.
We’ll get an update soon.
I see the future patch notes.

Added “This skill is cancelled and put on cooldown by Moa Morph” to Summon Bone Minions, Summon Shadow Fiend, Summon Flash Wurm, Summon Bone Fiend, Summon Blood Fiend, Summon Flash Golem, Lich Form and Plague descriptions.

Mrbig.8019:

S/P is a perfect set, only NOOBS spam pistol whip, and only WORSE NOOBS get beaten by it.

With S/P every move is functional, and every move has its use.

This is not the case with S/D: FS basically has no use and no tactical advantage over C&D+ tactical strike if not in those situations when you want to rip off stability ( kinda funny with dagger storming thieves).

Again, the boon ripping is great. But since the rest of the move is unreliable ( evade+ damage) it’s not a solid investment to use 4 ini for it.

In order to make it viable, S/D should

1) evade more reliably (full evade like DB)
2) be faster, in order to make the second hit to, well, actually HIT.

OR

1b) be completely rehauled into something else.

Otherwise the trade off is not fair, especially since you have C&D+ tactical strike for the same cost.

It’s actually rather easy, since Swork skills and Dagger skills melt perfectly, and they would redo only the dual.

Let’s try to stay in topic. I don’t care if people who spam Pistol Whip/Backstab/Heartseeker are noobs or not, the fact is that you can be more effective than you should when relying on only one skill.

FS has lots of advantages over CnD + Tactical strike when the target has at least one boon.
Do you know what stripping one boon means? Depending on the boon stripped:
- Aegis: the attack is unblockable
- Fury: your target has -20% critical chance
- Might: your target has -35 power per stack.
- Protection: you deal 50% more damage
- Regeneration: you deal ~150 damage per second
- Retaliation: you don’t take >267 damage per hit
- Stability: you can CC your enemy which is otherwise uncontrolled.
- Swiftness: your enemy moves 25% slower
- Vigor: your enemy’s endurange regenerates 50% slower.

Now you’ll see that only one of those effects makes FS worth using over CnD + Tactical Strike at the cost of 4 initiative, also considering that is the only easy to access way for thieves to strip boons.
You shouldn’t care about the evade, which is a nice plus, or the 2nd sword attack, which is also a well accepted extra.

The evade is also a great thing. Just imagine you are in a fight against more people focusing on you and, to survive, you finished your endurance. Now imagine that a burst is coming to you, like Dragon’s Tooth or BC+HB combo. If you have 4 initiative with S/D left you can survive and manage to leave the battle. CnD won’t save your kitten in this situation, FS can.

Who cares if the second hit doesn’t land? If you are good (because it is about being good) and succed to land it, fine, if not, you invested your initiative well anyway IF you used it on a target with a boon.

CnD doesn’t cost 4 initiative. It still cost 6 initiative, but if you trait, when you stealth you gain 2 initiative. This means that if you have 4 or 5 initiative left, you can’t use CnD while you can use FS. Also, to make CnD “costs 4 initiative”, you have to invest precious trait points on Shadow Arts while FS doesn’t need it.

They are two different skills useful in different situations. There are some situations where CnD + TS is better than FS and some other when FS is better than CnD + TS.
It is absolutely untrue that CnD + TS is always better.

Mrbig.8019:

sorrow.2364:

1. Chain dazing and what? Dealing no damage? Also the chain daze uses 6 initiative, Flanking Strike only needs 4 and also have a great use, as you said, because it allow you to strip stability, strip protection to improve your damage, remove might/fury to reduce damage output and so on. Other than that, it is a free dodge when you are out of endurance, like I said hundreds of time, and you shouldn’t understimate this feature. It also deal more damage than the daze chain.

2. The pathing of FS is fine. The first strike always land if you are in melee range, the second one needs you to get closer to enemy if he moved, not to hard anyway. I don’t see any problem here.

3. There will always a situation when you have to dodge to avoid damage. You can’t, of course, avoid all bursts with just two dodges, so extra damage mitigation coming from FS isn’t that bad. Also, unlike DB, it doesn’t need that you spec into condition damage, forcing you to use Rabid or Carrion amulet, to deal good damage. You can still hit for 1k+ damage with your autoattack and 5k+ damage with flanking strike.
When you are running D/D with conditions, you are probably sacrificing raw damage to have condition damage, making all other D/D skills, like backstab or heartseeker less powerful. It is not the case of FS, of course.

So 4 initiative to stip a boon, evade and deal decent damage are more than enough.
Still, it is better than 5 initiative to apply 3 bleed stack, have a longer evade and having a good damage only if specced into conditions or using 6 initiative to have 2s of daze, less damage and 3 stacks of vulnerability.

1. With infusion of shadow ( 1st tier in shadow arts) the combo costs 4 ini.

You’re comparing an unreliable evade+ unreliable damage+ boon stripping to a reliable damage+3 secs daze+stealth ( that traited can restore more than 1k health+ remove conditions and even more)+ 3 secs vulnerability.

All while dealing about the same damage ( if not more) not counting the damage you can do while your opponent is dazed and can’t react.

Sorry, i’ll take C&D+ tactical strike ALL THE TIME.

2. You’re the only one thinking the path is fine. I’ve never been hit by flanking strike second hit if not when i was not paying attention ( while fighting someone else), and i were secretly laughing since that guy used it instead of dazelocking me to death.

If people allowed you to land the second strike, they were so bad they’re not even able to press the “strafe left” keybind.

3. The argument is absurd. “you’re not forced to build for condition damage to use FS, unlike DB” is the same as saying " you’re not forced to build for power to use DB, unlike FS".

Fact is DB evade is more reliable than FS, making it an overall better evasive move ( perma-evade thieves build for condition damage in order to MAXIMIZE the damage from DB, not viceversa, evading a lot more than with FS).

If they build for condition damage with D/D they know perfectly they won’t use backstab or heartseekeer, but 4/6 of D/D attacks are perfectly viable ( Dancing dagger, C&D and auto-attack).

Not for casualty i said D/D is a special set, with a double specialization.

On the other side, when i build for S/D, since S/D is not a strange case at all, i would RELLY LOVE if all my moves worked well, like with S/P and shortbow.

Please stop this nonsense, especially since no one agrees ( and will ever) with you.

None agrees with not because my logic makes no sense, it’s because you have your point of view extremely spoilt by some bad designed weapon sets which rely on only one skill/combo, like s/p and d/d. FS has an use, also of it stripped just one boon without the evade or the damage it would be good. You can’t say that a combo in the same build is preferred in most situations so FS is unbalanced. It’s like saying that stunbreakers are weak because you can use protection. This makes absolutely no sense. I think that every other profession would be very happy to have that skill on their bar, because it is very, very useful.

Daecollo.9578:

I edited it 7 minutes ago, your right.
Of course, since it does 2 times less damage its rediculous, you would run out of int using it 3 times.

Pistol Whip shouldn’t stun, should do more damage or cost 1 less int, and be usable while moving.

Or it should be like it is now, which is fine.
It doesn’t deal too much damage, neither too low damage, costs the right amount of initiative to prevent hasted spamming and has some utility built in.

Not every skill of the thief should be full damage oriented.

SFtheWolf.5179:

Where did I say I didn’t play Guild Wars 1? I did, a lot.

In fact I’m surprised you don’t remember Smiter’s Boon, or smiting at all, or Shroud of Silence getting a dramatic nerf when it was already laughably bad, or touch rangers. There were plenty of really bizarre balance decisions.

Not that I’m saying they’re not devoted to long-term balance. I wouldn’t question their sincerity on that for a second considering the support they’ve given the first game. They’re pretty much the anti-Capcom that way.

I remember those build, but I also remember bspike, iway, palm strike, seeping wound, backbreaker and so on.
Guild Wars was a really hard game to balance consider the huge amount of skills and the unexpected combinations that would grow popular on a skill change, but still they have done a great job.
I don’t think they will do bad balancing on a game which is that easy to balance like Guild Wars 2 is.

Daecollo.9578:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pistol_Whip – 3, 1/4 Second Channel.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hundred_Blades – 3, 1/4 Second Channel.

Hundred Blades can be traited to be 6 second cooldown, which means if you use the skill, it has a 2 and 3/4 second cooldown and you use it.

Damage of Pistol Whip: 1,026
Damage of Hundred Blades: 2030 (Almost double the damage.)

They.
Have.
The.
Same.
Channel.
Time.

They have the same channel time? Where do you read it?
The wiki, and also experience tbh, says that Pistol Whip channels for 3/4 seconds while Hundred Blades channels for 3 + 1/2 seconds.
Just create a Warrior, go in the Mists and use Hundred Blades unhasted.
Then pick up your thief and use Pistol Whip.
The difference in the channel time is evident, if you say they have the same channel time it is clear that you haven’t played one of the two.

Kurow.6973:

sorrow.2364:

The main difference is:
You can see the warrior coming with Bull’s Charge.
You can’t see a thief coming before backstab comes.

Anyway Quickness is op, that’s true. But BS thieves are op the same.

So you can’t see a pistol whip coming and dodge it…like hundred blades, and thieves are always in stealth so you never see them…didigetthatright?

Shut up with your broken logic. You can see a thief coming from a mile away and predict what they’re going to do…just like a warrior…unless you’re blind.

A nerf to PW should have carried over to the warrior, and mesmer class with their duplicate skills. Not so much mesmers because they need to be nerfed in other areas, instead of their damage.

Dude, chill out.
Pistol Whip casts in 3/4 seconds, Hundred Blades casts in 3 seconds and an half.
Pistol Whip can be casted repetitely, Hundred Blades can be casted one time every 8 seconds.
Pistol Whip has a stun in it, Hundred Blades doesn’t.
Pistol Whip evades attacks while channeling, Hundred Blades leave the caster exposed.

So, yes. The Pistol Whip nerf was fair.

Anyway I was talking about BS in comparison with HB, which I thought is the subject of the topic.

eXs.6210:

sorrow.2364:

The main difference is:
You can see the warrior coming with Bull’s Charge.
You can’t see a thief coming before backstab comes.

Anyway Quickness is op, that’s true. But BS thieves are op the same.

Can you guys already make up your mind what you’re complaining about? Why is our backstab damage getting nerfed when the problem is as you said the stealth bug? Shouldn’t we just fix the stealth bug then and leave our backstab alone?

It isn’t the stealth bug. It is the massive damage dealt with in a short window of time without any visual clue. You won’t have any visual clue also if they fix the stealth bug anyway.

The nerf ways are:
- Reduce Mug damage
- Reduce CnD damage
- Reduce Backstab damage
- Reduce trait bonuses damage

I think that reducing Backstab damage is the way which hits other builds less.

stof.9341:

sorrow.2364:

So 4 initiative to stip a boon, evade and deal decent damage are more than enough.
Still, it is better than 5 initiative to apply 3 bleed stack, have a longer evade and having a good damage only if specced into conditions or using 6 initiative to have 2s of daze, less damage and 3 stacks of vulnerability.

Using 6 initiative to get 2s of daze gives you more damage than using Flanking Strike. Don’t forget that C&D hurts quite a lot by itself. It does supposedly as much damage as FS second hit.

But the damage is still less.
Anyway you are comparing 2 skills which are in the same bar.. This doesn’t make so much sense.
Also, when dazing your opponent, you are going to get the revealed debuff for 3 seconds, which make you exposed for that amount of time while, with FS, you get about a second of evade without drawbacks.
Plus, while you can use FS for 3-4 times in a row, you can use the daze combo only 2 times with your initiative bar, dealing also less damage and, most important, without stripping any boon.
Don’t understimate the boon stripping effect.

Seriously DanH.
Stop with this, you are only looking ridiculous.

stof.9341:

Backstab does less damage than an axe warrior third autoattack chain skill, Tripple Chop. Why would you want to nerf it even more?

Because Triple Chop:
1. Cannot be use in sequence with Mug and CnD making a combo which deal 16k+ damage in less than a second.
2. Casts in 1 1/2 seconds, not 1/4 second. So it casts in 6x the time than backstab needs to be casted.
3. Can be used only after Chop and Double Chop.
4. Is easy to figure it out, because the warrior isn’t invisible before Triple Chop lands neither it is 600+ away.
5. Needs the warrior to be exposed and defenseless for the whole casting time plus the amount of time needed to cast Chop and Double Chop.
6. has to crit for the whole 3 chop in order to deal the same backstab damage. So if you have 50% to crit, you’ll have 12,5% chance to crit all the chops, while with backstab, when traited, you have 100% chance to crit and deal maximum damage.

It isn’t all about numbers. It is also about ease to counter, casting time and preparation.

The main difference is:
You can see the warrior coming with Bull’s Charge.
You can’t see a thief coming before backstab comes.

Anyway Quickness is op, that’s true. But BS thieves are op the same.

Mrbig.8019:

1. I don’t want to use it over and over, i want it to be EFFECTIVE, in order to be a solid alternative to my other moves.

A perfect example ( maybe the only one, along with the shortbow) is S/P:
you use your auto-attack to deal damage when you’re out of ini/you’re controlling the situation;

you can use Inf Strike to close the gap ( and trigger the Shadow Return to escape bad situations/remove a condition);

you use Pistol Whip to nuke your opponent;

you use Head Shot to interrupt heals/stomps/rez/nuke moves;

you use BPS in melee fights with auto-attacks, waiting for the nuke, and to support your allies.

EVERYTHING is equally useful. When everything is equally useful, it’s a symptom of good design.

In S/D ( and D/P , and P/P and P/D, basically all our sets aside D/D, which is kinda particular due to possible double specialization) this is not the case: C&D + tactical strike is almost ALWAYS better, if not in some particular situations against particular builds ( with “lulz boons” guardians the only one you really want to remove is the stability one, in order to keep on chain-dazing, since other ones, like retaliation, are being reapplied almost instantly).

This is the symptom of bad design.

2. Absolutely. A simple side-stepping can totally screw FS pathing, sometimes sending you out of nowhere.

This is not happening with skills with even longer animations, like Dragon’s tooth.
This also happens to Shadow shot, due to the root problem.

3. Using your ini to dodge is a waste, unless you’re doing it RELIABLY ( like DB) and you’re dealing RELIABLY tons of damage ( like DB).

If you’ve wasted your dodges to evade auto-attacks, you were outplayed.
If your opponent has more nukes than you can evade, than something in your build is wrong.

I never use FS if not in extremely specific situations, yet my opponent can’t hit me. I never run out of endu, because i dodge WHEN I NEED IT, i don’t spam my dodges.

And still there’s a wide time frame with FS when you’re hittable ( unlike DB), and you WILL BE HIT, since auto-facing turns the opponent exactly where you’re positioning yourself.
No positioning advantage, no reliable damage, only a boon strip.

For 4 ini.

Way too much, even more since with 4 ini i can deal good damage+ stealth+vulnerability+3 secs daze.

1. Chain dazing and what? Dealing no damage? Also the chain daze uses 6 initiative, Flanking Strike only needs 4 and also have a great use, as you said, because it allow you to strip stability, strip protection to improve your damage, remove might/fury to reduce damage output and so on. Other than that, it is a free dodge when you are out of endurance, like I said hundreds of time, and you shouldn’t understimate this feature. It also deal more damage than the daze chain.

2. The pathing of FS is fine. The first strike always land if you are in melee range, the second one needs you to get closer to enemy if he moved, not to hard anyway. I don’t see any problem here.

3. There will always a situation when you have to dodge to avoid damage. You can’t, of course, avoid all bursts with just two dodges, so extra damage mitigation coming from FS isn’t that bad. Also, unlike DB, it doesn’t need that you spec into condition damage, forcing you to use Rabid or Carrion amulet, to deal good damage. You can still hit for 1k+ damage with your autoattack and 5k+ damage with flanking strike.
When you are running D/D with conditions, you are probably sacrificing raw damage to have condition damage, making all other D/D skills, like backstab or heartseeker less powerful. It is not the case of FS, of course.

So 4 initiative to stip a boon, evade and deal decent damage are more than enough.
Still, it is better than 5 initiative to apply 3 bleed stack, have a longer evade and having a good damage only if specced into conditions or using 6 initiative to have 2s of daze, less damage and 3 stacks of vulnerability.

Mrbig.8019:

It feels like discussing with a wall.

1. I don’t spend initiative to do an auto-attack. I spend 4 initiative ( 1/3 of my ini pool) to deal RELIABLY less damage than my auto-attack and to strip a boon.

DB doesn’t deal less damage, with a condition build it deals A LOT MORE damage than FS, even more since it bypasses toughness.

Even more, i don’t want to go specific because players playing tourneys know perfectly those situations when you REALLY need to strip a boon ( note: FS boon stripping works on the last one applied): this means that 95 % of the time, you’re better off with C&D+ tactical strike ( more damage, more utility, no bad positioning).

If you’re not doing so, you’re basically playing sub-par and wasting initiative.

If a move is sub-par 95% of the time, than something is wrong.

2. Again, i’m not wasting initiative for my “general” melee skill. In this case i’m wasting initiative.
FS is THE ONLY SKILL IN GAME ( along with shadow shot, due to the root problem) that gets totally screwed by simply stepping aside, due to its long, slow and unreliable animation.

3. Dodge is your friend. You don’t need to waste 4 ini to avoid “root ability” like those.
And if you want the damage, hey pro-tip, you can also dodge+ auto-attack.
Amazing !!!.
Keep on using FS if you like it so much, i’ll keep on dazelocking my opponent.

TL:DR;

FS is currently good only for the boon stripping part. The rest makes the skill only worse and unreliable.

Since the boon stripping part is good, they could totally remove any kind of damage (like they did with headshot) and that horrible animation and make the skill to cost 2-3 ini, maybe with it stealing the boon.

FS is not competitive, if you think it is you’re simply delusional.

1. … and to evade. Anyway Flanking Strike doesn’t deal less damage than your autoattack.
You have access to CnD and Tactical Strike also, but you won’t use it against a Guardian with tons of boon on it. It depends on the situations, of course. If it has a real use and it’s worth using, it is balanced. If you want FS to be changed so you can use it over and over again and probably base your whole build around it, like some thieves to with DB, then you have a weird idea of balance.

2. Are you joking, right?

3. What if you are out of endurance? Anyone else have to take all the damage, but you, if you are running FS, have one or two extra dodge if you have initiative left.

STRanger.5120:

sorrow.2364:

kineticdamage.6279:

So, history of Rogue archetypes repeats itself …

Seems like we won’t see any MMO dev who will assume the “cannon” part of glass-cannon, after all.

(because yeah, actually if I don’t spec full Toughness/Healing with my Thief, I just die in 3 hits)

Like every other profession!
It’s not only thieves who die really fast if they don’t invest in toughness or defensive skills, but thieves have also another advantage: Stealth.

Just take, for instance, the Elementalist. If you don’t put any point in Earth Magic or Water Magic, you are going to die in a couple of hits anyway. Necromancer are in the same situation, same for Warrior, Guardians, Rangers and Engineers.

But Thieves have stealth and high mobility to leave a fight you are going to lose or to get better positioning.

The point is that BS build damage right now is too high also for a glass cannon.

There´s some differencies between classes, you know? :-)
For example the health pool (Warrior, Necro), the armor (what, again Warrior? + Guardian), healing abilities (f.e. Elementalist, Guardian)

Thieves has stealth instead, it doesn´t reduce dmg, doesn´t heal without traits, doesn´t enlarge our HPs. It makes us harder to hit though (which sounds fair to me, because player with brain can still hit you if you´re a noob like everyone says about the most of Thief players). The rendering bug is the only problem in this mechanic, and it wasn´t created by Thief players, but gues what? It´s Anet´s responsibility, so let them fix it for you and don´t you dare to suggest anything else, don´t be unreasonable, please.

I haven’t said that Stealth should be removed or nerfed to thieves. Read the post I was answering, he stated that thieves have worse survivability compared to other professions, so they have high damage to compensate which is absolutely untrue, as you also stated.
I know that Stealth is the cause of thieves’ low health, but looks like many thieves think that high damage is the reason of their low hp pool.

FrozenLuv.6017:

sorrow.2364:

kineticdamage.6279:

So, history of Rogue archetypes repeats itself …

Seems like we won’t see any MMO dev who will assume the “cannon” part of glass-cannon, after all. It will at least take 1 more hit than against an medium/light armour users.

(because yeah, actually if I don’t spec full Toughness/Healing with my Thief, I just die in 3 hits)

Like every other profession!
It’s not only thieves who die really fast if they don’t invest in toughness or defensive skills, but thieves have also another advantage: Stealth.

Just take, for instance, the Elementalist. If you don’t put any point in Earth Magic or Water Magic, you are going to die in a couple of hits anyway. Necromancer are in the same situation, same for Warrior, Guardians, Rangers and Engineers.

But Thieves have stealth and high mobility to leave a fight you are going to lose or to get better positioning.

The point is that BS build damage right now is too high also for a glass cannon.

Well, saying a warrior will die a couple of hits if they don’t have any traits in toughness/vit is stretching it.

Have you tried playing a Warrior?
You die really fast if you don’t have any toughness/vitality.