Guild Wars 2

Sickle.6502:

No way a warrior can do that much damage with a sword and board set up…. 16k damage?
Cheating here or what?

This is sPvP, and I’m sure you could do higher. If it’s sword you’re interested in, you’re looking at around 10k sPvP crits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1do5naLmU

I do remember someone hitting 10ks on ranger greatsword in WvW at some point, though I have no idea if that’s been nerfed.

Fortus.6175:

but it isnt, because unlike most thieves, he isnt a bad player and knows how to use stealth, blinds, teleports and above all; common sense…… things that your average Joe thief player cant do and hence they think their class is “bad”

Wanna play a profession on tribulation mode? Try elementalists with full zerker, with no stealth, clones, aegis, mobility, heals, disengage on lower than 40 seconds CD and with cantrips on 70 to 90 secoinds CD for skills that other professions have on <30 secs CD, then come here again , we will all accept your apologies

I do that in sPvP, actually. I just wish my ele was level 80 for some WvW compilations

Practically every profession is capable of doing ridiculous burst when built for it, and I wouldn’t really say eles are any harder than a 4 signet thief. Warriors I feel are easier due to the ridiculous range, but maybe that’s just me.
Here are some quick videos, because I like linking stuff:

As for my survivability, I do indeed die, though not as much as you might think, partly due to the fact I used to main a zerker necro and thus learned to love my mobility, or anything that lets me not to facetank things for that matter. That being said, until you get used to it you probably would spend most of your time taking dirtnaps.

Fortus.6175:

yah, and thats what needs tuning down, specially the 16k backstabs every 4 seconds…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

45 seconds, if we are to do the full burst. Without popping all the signets the backstabs are about 10k, and sticking around if your burst fails is generally speaking not a good idea.

You are cherrypicking the best parts of different builds here. There are builds doing 16k crits and there are ones doing backstabs every 4 seconds, but no build I’ve heard of can do both at the same time.

Maestria of Strat.2974:

Where can I find the build?

If it’s my build you’re talking about, try the video description, or here now that I’ve copypasted it: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKOHcy5E/5Ex2je6Te6VAsaPoZLhJA-jkyAYLBRiCAZBiKAm8KiGbxtIasaHMVZSVuRW7CIFQEjBA-w

Running a 4 signet thief whose only source of stealth is Cloak and Dagger with no initiative regen or stealth traits. Still getting accused of permastealth :P

What: Cloak and Dagger
Why: Yski OP. Long range initiative free permastealth! Oh wait..

Fortus.6175:

(all of them were lvl 80s, no might stacks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

20 might stacks, actually. I had a trait that grants might on signet use.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Or a minion mancer but OP rolls dagger main hand so that wont cut it.

What’s wrong with dagger MM?

Agreed, immob is golden.

I’d advice against tanky specs though. It might allow you to live through the initial burst, but unless you can actually kill them, the thief can simply run, heal up and attack again, except this time you’re out of LF and cooldowns.

(I’m using a 30/10/…/30 build)
My advice is to go zerker, or as close to it as you’re comfortable with. Grab the thief, unload enough damage to down an elder dragon on it and do a little victory dance on your way out.

Things get a little tricky if the initial burst fails. The important part is to do as much damage as possible, as you’ll quickly run out of defenses if you play passively. Don’t give them an opportunity to go offensive!

When you can’t dagger them, DS them. Skill 1 has a huge range combined with amazing damage when traited for it, 2 slows them down while putting you in dagger range and 3 is an instant fear (use to burst and to avoid their burst). Finally you have 5 and 4, both of which do huge aoe all around you – even against stealth users. Use them once the thief stealths.

Another handy trick should they decide to go stealth and you happen to be carrying staff is to place a mark (an unimportant one!) at your feet and keep an eye on it. It’s easy enough to avoid by dodging through it, but it’ll give away their position. If the mark is triggered, either dodge or fear them with another mark.

Finally, I’d advice you give thieves a try in sPvP. It’s usually easy enough to predict what the thief will do once you know how they work.

Karolis.4261:

DeviLee.7384:

wait wha? O.o double sigil of agony?

Instead of listening what other ppl say, just try to stack second sigil on and see if your bleed time on skill tooltip change.

Not sure about bleeds, but generally speaking tooltips aren’t exactly reliable. You’re better off actually testing the bleed durations, just to be sure.

SrebX.6498:

So basically it’s only that good for sPvP? because sounds like it’s only good for 1v1

Well, if huge condition aoe from epidemic combined with the ability to burst people down when necessary isn’t good for WvW then I suppose you’re right.. :P

Burnfall.9573:

I always Appreciate an Honest thief for backing the Truth.

Once again, Thank You! for not being ashamed of the Truth.

Glad you like it, though as I’ve pointed out before, practically every profession is capable of similar bursts

Galandil.9641:

Why Executioner and not Hidden Killer? It would fit this build a lot better, since you rely mostly on backstab high damage, with full ascended (and zerker) trinkets/weapons, you have 62% crit chance, so better go for HK to land critted backstab, then you have 82% after the backstab almost all the times with Furious Ret.

Because executioner gives more damage, even if it makes the burst somewhat unreliable. I was sort of trying to maximize the damage for fancy videos here :P

For a slightly more sensible version, swap out signet of malice for Hide in Shadows and depending on the situation Executioner for Hidden Killer. Swap one of the signets for a stun breaker as well, and our build suddenly becomes almost viable!

Asura are superior in every respect. Anything else I can help you with?

Here we go again..

~16.5k backstabs are doable in real combat scenarios. You could take it even higher with blood lust stacks (I’m too lazy for them) and more ascended gear. Here’s a video, build is in the description.

Just reducing the cooldown would make me happy. I’m fine with using a skill that is essentially a self nerf, but 240 second cooldown? The last time I used that thing in WvW more often than not the enemy would simply run away while I sat on my reduced movement speed suit, leaving me with the gigantic cooldown.

Seriously, it does less damage than my normal skills, moves slower than I would without it and has average survivability at best. Just let me use it!

That being said, after 10 or so attempts I did manage to get one kill with the suit. The proudest moment I’ve ever had in WvW

(Suit action in the intro and 4:35)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzIWX-AQV8

Well, I admit I didn’t read all of that, but regarding the apparent lack of asuran mass production: what about WvW siege golems?

Going by the recruiters in the major cities, WvW does actually exist in the GW universe, and it’s hard to argue that the golems wouldn’t be asuran and mass produced.

Piogre.2164:

Shouldn’t be that hard- sell in the gem store a pass to enter some asura’s transmogrification experiment in rata sum. You have to enter naked, carrying nothing. Once entered, “transmogrification” occurs – select a race and you construct your appearance from scratch. Since personal story would still be canon for your character, that doesn’t change. All that changes is your character model and ability to use certain cultural armory. (Ideally any cultural armor soul bound to a transmogrified character would become account bound)

The thing is, there is probably a lot of things going on behind the scenes that we players don’t really know about. I doubt it’s as simple as swapping around some character models.

Take the fancy statistics we were shown at the anniversary post a while back, for instance: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-the-first-year/

I think it’s reasonable to assume we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg here. Looking at the statistics, they are even keeping track of things like WvW caravans killed and the amount of player kills each monster type has. It’s not that far fetched to assume they are also looking into PvE, PvP and WvW kills and deaths, average level and the amount of dungeons runs each race has, to name a few.

That combined with the problem of personal story (I can just imagine what mess dealing with that might be..) and personal story related achievements has the potential of making race change a very time consuming thing to implement, and when it comes to paid programmers, time really is money.

They’ll have to prioritize things, and being a relatively small feature that would take plenty of developer time to implement race change probably isn’t going to happen any time soon.

Any non asuran character is dumb, an asuran warrior is not. Next question!

Divinity.8041:

I like big numbers

I’m not really a top player, but there’s an entire thread dedicated to complaining about my burst. Does that count?

I think it’s mostly because your average thief is likely to have rather offensive stats. From what I’ve seen, berserker thieves are far more common than any other berserkers.

Anything can do big damage if it has berserker stats. My zerker necro, for instance, probably does more damage overall than my thief

Both are good.

There are certain things thieves can pull off that warriors can’t (things like 1v5+ where stealth makes a difference), but your average thief probably won’t be able to do it either, and it’s more of a sustain build thing anyway.

Basically, so long as you make no mistakes you can do practically anything on a thief, but warrior is a lot more forgiving when it comes to mistakes.

Kasama.8941:

—Why go through a lot of effort to make a Thief profession, if it just ends up playing like an Assassin anyway?—

I think the reason lies in gw1, actually.

In gw1 assassins were primarily there to burst. Some farming builds and occasional oddities aside, that’s what they did. In gw2, however, every profession is supposed to be able to perform multiple roles. Anet didn’t want everyone to see the word “assassin” and think of those gw1 burst builds, so they changed the name and added steal in order to make it a more generic sneaky profession.

Basically, they wanted a spiritual successor for gw1 assassin that’s capable of doing more than just bursting people down. As a result there’s quite a bit of assassin still in there when you scratch the surface a little bit.

If you mean viable as in the best option then overall the answer is no, but it’s not too terrible either. The only real issue would be D/P thieves.

There are a few cases where D/D is superior to everything else though. It’s great when fighting heavily outnumbered, and I mean 1vZerg kind of outnumbered (easy to land a CnD, yet impossible to smoke field + HS). I also find it the best for anti siege sneakiness (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umWpDwCu4Ts -Skip to around 1:30 if impatient), and it shines in burst damage.

Fortus.6175:

ok, seriously, this might not be sPvP, but perhaps you can show me an ele hitting harder than this thief: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

Im feeling lazy to take build to sPvP but I can ASSURE you that it will be 3-4 times more useful, bursty, survivable than any of you alleged “OP” scepter ele…

You’re welcome.

Hold on, are you complaining about thief burst builds or thieves in general?

To deal the kind of burst I’m dealing you give up so much it’s not even viable and definitely not OP. Most of the complaints I’ve seen are about D/P thieves (or S/D, though that’s not relevant for Backstab discussion), and that’s a far more defensive set than D/D.

It’s not the burst people have a problem with there, it’s the high damage combined with the high survivability in form of blinds, interrupts and stealth. Nerfing backstab wouldn’t really fix that but it would be pretty brutal to D/D builds.

As a side note, the threads you linked are both made by the same elementalist player.

Zach.3264:

—snip—

If it’s my builds we’re talking about, your list is slightly off..

Thief:
~ Uses the healing skill, all utilities, the elite and half of its initiative to do the spike.
~ Must NOT be in stealth at the beginning of the burst ( Steal -> CnD -> Backstab. And for the record, the only source of stealth on the build is CnD)
~ Takes 2 and 1/4 seconds to set up (Signet of malice 1 and 1/4 seconds + Basilisk Venom 1s)
~ Also has to get a crit. For that kind of damage you need executioner, so it is NOT an automatical crit.
~ Melee range
~ After popping the signets, has a 5 second window to burst

Warrior, on the other hand, has 1500 range and needs to sacrifice one skill to gain full adrenaline. Even if you fail the spike, you can simply wait ten seconds and shoot again.

You should also keep in mind it’s just the burst we’re talking about here. Not getting killed with a 4 signet d/d thief is a form of art..

Steelo.4597:

—snip—

There’s a 17k crit on a warrior in my video, and that’s sPvP we’re talking about. As for the video you linked, look at the date. Both backstab and Assassin’s signet have been nerfed since then.

Whoa, my video is suddenly all over the place

Anyway, here’s how you counter me: dodge, once. If the initial burst fails, I’ve just burned all 5 of my cooldowns and half my initiative for nothing. I have 12k health, no stunbreaks and my only source of stealth is C&D. Unless really caught off guard, there is no excuse for losing against a build like this.

Surviving and getting kills with a build that glassy is a form of art. I encourage anyone in doubt to see for theirselves; the build is in the descriptions and while the numbers are slightly lower, the burst is still more than enough in sPvP.

In the meanwhile, may I link you to this beautiful ele video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFLZeMQFaAQ
I believe the highest crit there was 18k ^^

Hi, I’m the backstab thief linked earlier. I just though you might want to take a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1do5naLmU

Basically, my warrior actually hits higher in sPvP than my thief does in WvW.

Kaizer.7135:

Well it those Backstabs are overkill, but it’s only good for one hit. If anyone saw him coming, they should know to dodge when he pops his signets. Stun->Dead. He has no escape tools.

^This.

One dodge, and I’ve just blown all my cooldowns and half my initiative. I also have the grand total of 12k hp, a weak (for this kind of build, anyway) healing skill and my only source of stealth is C&D.

Try playing a few hot joins with a 4 signet build. Bonus points for recording the whole thing, speeding it up and adding some goofy music on the background. The resulting video would be something beautiful..

Here’s the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKOHcy5E/5Ex2je6Te6VAsaPoZLhJA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNoYBxsAA

Just to add oil to the fire, 10k crits? Are you bunkers? :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

But seriously speaking, burst thieves haven’t really been a problem for ages. They still exist in WvW, but if you know what they’re doing you shouldn’t get hit by the burst unless really caught off guard. In sPvP both burst and stealth thives are an extremely rare breed at this point.

I’d personally go for axe instead of dagger, simply because that constant retaliation is too good to pass up. It’ll also make it easier to keep pressure on the target and, of course, vulnerability makes your minions hit even harder. Then again, dagger does more damage so it’s a matter of personal preference really.

Other than that the build Demonic linked seems pretty good. Generally speaking the traits you really need are Spite IX, Death X and Blood VII, the rest is optional. I’m not sure I’d go for Transfusion, but it’s not a terrible choice either.

I’ll just leave this here.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1do5naLmU
(Note that it’s sPvP we’re talking about here. In WvW 20k+ should be easy)

Just keep in mind 1HKO builds are sort of unreliable. Great fun for WvW and hot joins, but I wouldn’t use one for serious tournaments and the like.

As for thieves, they don’t do 1 hits, it’s more like hits 3 really quickly. The highest I’ve been able to go on normal level 80 targets are around 16k backstabs :P

Scoobaniec.9561:

I actually running gs+rifle with 1,6k toughness and based on target armor killshots tend to one shot glass thieves, down to 5k tanky guards/wars. Average damage i doing sits at 7,5k with bleeds on. As for rifle vs lb range i have bad news to u.. Due to arrow bug, real range of lb is 1250 untrained. Check by urself

Your numbers sound a bit lower than what I’m used to seeing, but could be. I’d personally go with sword/shield as a secondary weapon set, simply because it offers amazing defense and mobility while still having a handy finishing move. You complained about lack of survivability earlier, didn’t you?

I didn’t know about the range bug, +1 for that. That still doesn’t change the fact it’s difficult to hit moving targets with a longbow though. At any rate, I actually agree with you on that longbows probably are better than rifles overall, so let’s just leave it at that.

Anyway, what about that 1g you mentioned earlier? Does my 5 game proposal sound reasonable?

Scoobaniec.9561:

Try that in 1v1 or 5v5 (not against noobs) setting.. If u last longer than 10sec i give ya 1g.

Would a few solo arena games qualify? I like to think I’m rather good at keeping myself alive, and I could always use an extra gold or two
(Say.. 5 games in row with a total of 5 deaths or less using the same build I used in the hot join video? If I manage to do that and post a video to prove it I’ll get 1g?)

Anyway, even a non glass cannon warrior can do respectable long range damage, and your average WvW player (since the OP was talking about WvW) isn’t exactly skilled either. Your not against a noob scenario is unlikely to happen in WvW, and if you really need more survivability then go for it!

If I can get away with a 4 signet thief, you really shouldn’t be complaining about rifle warrior survivability :P

EDIT: As for longbow being better than rifle, that’s a different story, and I might even agree with you there. That being said, rifle does have a longer default range and is easier to hit moving targets with.

Anyway, the point was that warrior long range weapons are awesome. Longbows being better doesn’t really change anything there

The story here is that I wanted to demonstrate that WvW crits should indeed be higher than ~17k, so I did a few hot joins and ended up with a 18.7k crit

Wait, instant downs are not good enough? Warriors have the highest damage single hit ability in the game (as far as I know?) and it has 1500 range :P

Even a less extreme build should do just fine. Longbow has huge aoe and rifle deals some of the best single target long range damage in the game. How exactly are those worse than what other professions have?

Here’s a random sPvP killshot video because why not!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-1do5naLmU

Dyno.9467:

Happyfool.8951:

technically, it is possible, but will anet do it? nope.

They could do for 2k gem cost?

Doubt it.

Anet isn’t exactly huge, so they can’t afford to have someone spending such a long time on such a small feature. Not enough people want it enough to make it a priority.

JamboHammer.4397:

my thief chronic fangs.

Those daggers… I need them! Extraordinarily pixelated monsters, prepare to be stabbed!

About that one divinity rune, how often do you find yourself below 90% health? Íqnoring the +10 stats since they won’t be that noticeable anyway, so long as your healt is above 90% more than 20% of the time, going all scholar runes will give you more damage. With the + stats included, it’ll be slightly more than that.

Personally, I’d go with full scholar. Perhaps it’s because I run a slightly burstier build, but it does give you the highest potential damage.

There are never too many awesome skins in the game. You wouldn’t even need to bother the artists to get this one in the game!

His original post seems has been deleted, but it was basically profession choice difficulties.

As a side note, paying a little bit of attention to the readability of your posts really does make a difference. The post being a (admittedly very small) wall of text with no gaps in it (or proper grammar for that matter, though it’s ok if you really can’t do it) followed by a huge amount of hastags made me simply skip the question.

We’re happy to help, but try to format your posts so that a single glance tells us what the problem is. The original post looked like it was written by a grawl.

It would probably be possible, but odds are it would be simply too difficult to do to be worth the trouble.

There are lots of things going behind the scenes that we players don’t know about. Achievements, personal story, all those fancy counters (just look at their one year infographic), racial armor… We have no idea how all those things might interact with each other behind the scenes. If the game wasn’t programmed with race changes in mind, changing it afterwards is likely to involve a lot of re-coding.

With the limited amount of programmers Anet has at (<- avoiding juvenile cats->) its disposal, they simply can’t afford to have someone working on a minor feature like that for such a long time.

That being said, I’m always looking for willing test subjects for transmorphic experiments..

Thieves are equally matched or better than everyone else on even terrain.

Thieves are also equally matched or better than everyone else in terms of z-axis mobility.

None of the other professions are as good as thieves on both even terrain and z-axis mobility.

So, based on above I think it’s safe to conclude thieves have the best mobility in the game.

Mobility is more than just raw running speed. While we might be challenged in one specific part of mobility, no-one can challenge us in all of them. And if above wasn’t enough to convince you, what about in combat mobility? If you manage to catch a thief that doesn’t want to be caught, you’ve found a bad thief.

With DS 5 and 4 at my disposal, I don’t really need to see thieves in order to kill them. Knowing they are low on health and somewhere nearby is more than enough.

What about engineers? They have two..

Anyway, Fetid Ground is a decent ability, so I see no real reason to change it.

Fringilla Vigo.8594:

same here…
Funny thing – my wife on her laptop (using same wi-fi) keeps playing…

The log in servers are separate from the actual servers – so long as she doesn’t log out, she can keep playing, but if she does logs out, she won’t get back in

Holy… when I started typing that there were no other replies lol

Seems like the log in servers are down..

For the record, my error code is 42:0:9001:4131

If nothing else, I’d love to see the unnecessary roots and some of the delays removed, and the cooldown reduced. I’m willing to deal with the suit essentially being a self nerf, just let me actually use it!

The few times I’ve used it in WvW (yes, I’ve done that), usually the enemies would simply run away and leave me with the gigantic cooldown

How about making it an entirely separate form of stealth like the mesmer skill Decoy that is not affected by revealed and doesn’t (I think?) cause it? That would solve all our problems as far as I can tell.