Showing Posts For theanders.5681:
A bit’s changed in the last 6 months, main thing for thief being that it’s not horrible any more – with the buffs to auto attacks, Basilisk Venom, Bountiful Theft and Lead Attacks and the nerfing of almost everything else, thief has its place in PvP again.
Dagger/pistol remains the most popular set, but staff is also rather good.
Here’s the build I use:
This is what you’ll probably see a lot of thieves running – it has high mobility and spike damage, good CC and can break through almost anything if you engage as a +1.
Thief still fits into the role of a mobile roamer – your job is to run around the map, decapping and earning caps for your team where you can, and +1ing any team fights that are going on.
Oh boy, here we go…
My stats:
Started the season in sapphire
Played a mix of solo queue and team queue, occasionally with a full party
Played thief, rev, necro and occasionally ele
Matches played: 257
Matches won: 118
Win percentage: 45%
Finished diamond tier 3
Longest loss streak: Around 8 I think, wasn’t really counting
Longest win streak: About 6 or 7
Feedback and suggestions:
I think this season was probably the worst one yet. The sheer amount of luck and RNG that goes into matchmaking was seriously highlighted this season. I was almost constantly teamed with players who were definitely in the wrong division, and not in a good way. This was only made worse after losing, because it meant that I’d get teamed with another set of people who acted like they’d never played before, and lose again, and again, and again. Now, I can understand this if I were in amber, but the fact that this was a problem in diamond (and even in legendary, from what I’ve heard) had me wondering what exactly went into the matchmaking this season. It made the entire season really frustrating for me, especially after hearing that some people breezed through the divisions all the way to legendary. Not that it mattered much, since I got my wings well before I even got out of sapphire, but it would have been nice to have received that legendary badge and title. Shame it was ruined for me by the matchmaking system.
Balancing was actually decent this time around. Almost everything felt balanced enough. Healer ele was kind of ridiculous, guardian was a bit underpowered, and engi is still utter nonsense, but otherwise, pretty much everything was fine.
Closing thoughts/summary:
Matchmaking needs work – trends towards long streaks of either kind needs to be checked. Clarification on what goes into the matchmaking would also be appreciated. Balancing was mostly decent, though. Maybe tone down ele heals and condi warrior. Engi is still nonsense.
It depends what game mode you’re going to be using it in.
In PvE, dagger/dagger is fairly decent, with respectable single target damage; however, staff does have a couple of things over it – AoE cleave in the form of Vault, higher vuln stacks, possible reflects and better mobility. Still, d/d has its uses, so I wouldn’t count it out.
In PvP and WvW though, well…
As a power set, d/p outclasses it in almost every way, with better stealth on demand, interrupts on demand, and far better ability to chase people. There isn’t really much d/d does that d/p does far better, unfortunately. Except…
d/d has actually seen more use these days in these game modes as a condi set, but it’s a bit situational. Death Blossom applies good amounts of bleeding to multiple targets, and since it evades, you’re pretty hard to pin down. Combine this with the condi dodge and caltrops on dodge and you’re pretty annoying to deal with. In single target situations though, d/d condi isn’t so great – p/d condi is better at that – but d/d condi definitely has its place as a super annoying condi build in WvW and PvP.
When using Cluster Bomb, splitting it is totally up to you – by not splitting it, it stays as a blast finisher for combo fields, but splitting it does more damage over a wider area (depending on how high up it is before you split it), or it can do more damage to a single target if all 3 smaller bombs hit them. If for some reason you’re forced to go ranged, spam Cluster Bomb and split it when it’s close to the ground for the most damage.
Vault isn’t all that situational, so you can use it whenever you have the intiative to spare. Try not to spam it too often though, as you might get caught out without any initiative.
1 – Shortbow is really only used for the extra mobility – but said mobility is very strong. The damage it puts out is passable at best, so you’re not really going to be using it for damage. In PvP and WvW, it’s nice for applying poison to groups of people to restrict their healing, but in PvE this doesn’t really matter.
2 – Use anything, really. I’d say staff is better than d/d, since you can help apply vulnerability stacks consistently, reflect projectiles in melee range, and Vault is basically an AoE backstab.
3 – Shadowstep and Signet of Agility are nice for extra mobility, and Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge can help you get through packs of mobs. For extra damage in instanced content, Assassin’s Signet, Fist Flurry and Impairing Daggers are good choices.
So ever since the April 19 patch I’ve been experiencing this bug where some of my settings change even if I don’t have them on. The free camera, show all player and NPC settings turn themselves on at random, and the team colours setting turns itself on in WvW. I don’t have these settings on normally so it throws me off a bit when it happens and it’s generally quite annoying. Turning them off and on again doesn’t work, and exiting and re-entering whatever map I was in doesn’t always work either. What gives?
Ah, I see. Thanks!
Hello,
I recently completed training in daredevil on my thief. As far as I know, you’re meant to receive a recipe for whatever rune your elite spec’s gear piece comes with, so I had a look through my leatherworking to see if I had a recipe for daredevil runes. I didn’t get a recipe for daredevil runes… but I got a recipe for dragonhunter runes? How does that work?
Hmm, I have the zerker-valk trinkets already, but marauder ones would be nice. I kinda want to shy away from exotic trinkets, but if it’s all there is for now, I might go for it. I’m hoping the legendary fractal back piece or the legendary PvP back piece (whenever that comes out) will have marauder stats as a selectable combination, so there’s that to look forward to.
Hey guys,
So HoT introduced craftable marauder stat gear and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve changed over most of my gear on my thief to it, and it’s working really well. I would like to get marauder stat trinkets at some point, but the only ones I know of that currently exist are the amulets from doing all the achievements in the HoT story. Are there rings and accessories with marauder stats yet (preferably ascended), and if so, how do I get them?
Here’s some sweet shots of my sexy main, complete with dual Incinerators.
I don’t actually use d/d all that much, I just like having dual Incinerators, haha. Looks cool, though.
So me and a friend have been coming up with an idea for a new thief ability over the past couple of days and we’d like to share it and see what everyone thinks.
Basically, it’s a hidden blade. When used on a target under the health threshold, it instantly defeats them. We were thinking around 10-20% for the health threshold, as any more than 20% would be pretty broken and any less than 10% would be too hard to hit. 1/4 second cast time, 45-60 second cooldown, doesn’t appear to activate until you select a target under the health threshold.
Obviously it needs a bit of work but we like what we’ve come up with so far. What do you guys think?
So a few weeks ago I upgraded my PC to Windows 10. I was fairly certain I had updated all my drivers and programs, and everything on my PC runs like it did when I was running Windows 7, except for GW2. After upgrading to Windows 10, I’ve had very noticeable latency issues, with very frequent ping spikes, skill lag and generally higher average ping. Literally nothing has changed on my end except for the fact that I upgraded to Windows 10. What’s going on here?
IGN: Jacob Lester
Playstyle: PvP (primary playstyle), PvE, WvW
Server: Crystal Desert
Experience with thief: Been playing thief since I picked up the game in April 2013 and haven’t put it down since. I have experience across all game modes, though most of my experience nowadays is in PvP. I consider myself to be a good thief, being able to do my job pretty well in matches and winning 1v1 fights. I often tutor newer thieves, giving them tips on how to play with what they have and I show them how I play if they want to know.
Behold, my human male thief!
I wanted to make a look centered around the glorious chest piece and use skins that complimented it very well. Even though every other thief is doing it now
I’m quite happy with it, and don’t see it changing for a very long time. I’m interested to see what new armour skins HoT brings to the table.