Is power thief dead in Raids?

Okay, so... Power thief (Both Staff Daredevil and Dagger/Dagger Deadeye) was already sitting at the bottom of the DPS ladder, and that was assuming stacks of GotL helping them with DPS. They bring no real utility to a fight (Deadeye's new might share doesn't give enough might stacks on a long enough cooldown or large enough radius to counter the fact that it is tied to the cooldown on Deadeye's Mark: 25s, and even then you're losing a sizable amount of DPS against your marked target by not having the extra malice stacks) and only really offer DPS which already made them less desirable to higher DPS specs... now their damage will be lower, period. Is ranger stance share enough to make up for the loss of GotL? I don't feel like that's likely. Is power thief dead in Raiding?

Daredevil and Deadeye are both DPS builds.... the former for high sustain, the latter burst oriented, and tuned for PvP health pools. But to say Thief is dead in raids, when it hasn't really lost any DPS, is a sign of a bigger problem.

Thiefs are incredibly hard to balance outside of single target damage, because all of its utilities are ridiculously powerful of shared. Most people should still be able to remember venom share thief, and the high impact it had in PVP when they all went active at once. Raids don't really respect what core thief is designed for, and thats explosive damage and controls. Even their light CCs would be game changers, if not for the Breakbar nullifying its effects on the target.

The serious solution boils down to the Encounter design. Situations where small scale burst damage (which a lot of classes can do, but thief excels at) is useful to the raid mechanics. But if we're stuck with stacking meta..... what fits the thief as a group share besides the venom?

As for the DPS situation in POF...... its because the other classes power creeped when they shouldn't have. Weaver I can understand happening because of how it works (though the scale is ridiculous), but the Firebrand is just over the top. If you compare the DD DPS benchmark in August and then in POF, its DPS "DID NOT CHANGE". So its disingenuous to act like Thief got nerfed on DPS, when in reality other classes gained a larger margin for no apparent reason.

@starlinvf.1358 said:Daredevil and Deadeye are both DPS builds.... the former for high sustain, the latter burst oriented, and tuned for PvP health pools. But to say Thief is dead in raids, when it hasn't really lost any DPS, is a sign of a bigger problem.

Thiefs are incredibly hard to balance outside of single target damage, because all of its utilities are ridiculously powerful of shared. Most people should still be able to remember venom share thief, and the high impact it had in PVP when they all went active at once. Raids don't really respect what core thief is designed for, and thats explosive damage and controls. Even their light CCs would be game changers, if not for the Breakbar nullifying its effects on the target.

The serious solution boils down to the Encounter design. Situations where small scale burst damage (which a lot of classes can do, but thief excels at) is useful to the raid mechanics. But if we're stuck with stacking meta..... what fits the thief as a group share besides the venom?

As for the DPS situation in POF...... its because the other classes power creeped when they shouldn't have. Weaver I can understand happening because of how it works (though the scale is ridiculous), but the Firebrand is just over the top. If you compare the DD DPS benchmark in August and then in POF, its DPS "DID NOT CHANGE". So its disingenuous to act like Thief got nerfed on DPS, when in reality other classes gained a larger margin for no apparent reason.

I'm not saying that thief got specifically nerfed... it didn't. Its kit didn't change at all in terms of damage, in fact. That's not the fundamental problem here that I'm trying to highlight. Every class got their DPS nerfed in a sideways manner with the loss of Druid's Grace of the Land. The removal of the trait in general is healthier for diversifying team composition, but when you nerf DPS of everyone across the board by removing this trait and its interactions with DPS, the class with the lowest DPS spec is the one that is ultimately going to get dropped from the meta. Because some other classes actually got buffs despite the GotL nerf, the gap is even wider between thief and every other DPS, with thief falling further behind because it brings barely any usable party utility on power setups.

Condi thief will probably be fine through its higher damage and unique ability to solo things other classes cannot... but power thief losing damage from the loss of GotL without any seeming compensation feels a lot like it's going the way of, say, power Reaper... it can hit respectable damage numbers, but because it will not be optimal for anything, most PUGs and no speed runners will allow it on the team.

That's a generall problem with power thief in PvE. You can't (or better: are not supposed to) sustain your damage because "power is supposed to be burst" which is useless vs. most of the relevant PvE content and they're not going to give this playstyle the buffs it needs to be efficient either cause A-Net doesn't care.

Power thief excels @ blowing trash mobs away (one at a time) which is usually quite unefficient cause having other classes spamming their AoE would often times be a better solution. Support options are limited to say the least (which is understandable I guess) and vs. boss mobs you're just a vastly inferior version of your condi conterpart (not just in terms of DPS but game mechanics as well, for example: fighting the Manifestation of Self-Doubt with a condi thief vs. fighting against it with a power thief).

I'm one of those commanders that will ask you to swap from power thief to something more effective, if I am pugging. If you don't, you get replaced. I hope that answers your question.

I should clarify. I started doing this since last patch. Why? Simple. Hurt ANet's metrics in any way possible in an attempt to wake their balance team up from their ignorance. There's no reason for me to take a power thief over something that's clearly over-performing and was completely overlooked in balance patch.

@starlinvf.1358 said:Daredevil and Deadeye are both DPS builds.... the former for high sustain, the latter burst oriented, and tuned for PvP health pools. But to say Thief is dead in raids, when it hasn't really lost any DPS, is a sign of a bigger problem.

Thiefs are incredibly hard to balance outside of single target damage, because all of its utilities are ridiculously powerful of shared. Most people should still be able to remember venom share thief, and the high impact it had in PVP when they all went active at once. Raids don't really respect what core thief is designed for, and thats explosive damage and controls. Even their light CCs would be game changers, if not for the Breakbar nullifying its effects on the target.

The serious solution boils down to the Encounter design. Situations where small scale burst damage (which a lot of classes can do, but thief excels at) is useful to the raid mechanics. But if we're stuck with stacking meta..... what fits the thief as a group share besides the venom?

As for the DPS situation in POF...... its because the other classes power creeped when they shouldn't have. Weaver I can understand happening because of how it works (though the scale is ridiculous), but the Firebrand is just over the top. If you compare the DD DPS benchmark in August and then in POF, its DPS "DID NOT CHANGE". So its disingenuous to act like Thief got nerfed on DPS, when in reality other classes gained a larger margin for no apparent reason.

Honestly, thieves will start flexing their muscles when Raids introduce different circumstances.

A swarm of enemies that needs to be slowed down or stopped? Thief got your back with caltrops.A boss that is vulnerable for a very small period of time but takes massive damage? Thief is a bursty mother jammer.A very mobile boss, or a mechanic that requires mobility? Thief.

It's weird to me that power thief, which was already pretty mediocre before and fighting with CPS in terms of dps (lol), got no changes at all. Staff, daggers, AND rifles are all below the 30k marker which is.. pretty bad. Especially for a class with basically nothing but squishy damage.

Condi thief continues to be good, and while its AMAZING on certain encounters, it's not really usable on others. A small buff to something power wise would be nice >_>

I can't remember: Did GotL buff all damage or just direct damage?

Anyway, yeah this is one of the biggest issues with the thief. It is good at blinds, has good self defenses, and it has good CC, but overall a thief is just a body that fills a spot in the roster. I hate that they nerfed the support power of the Deadeye right after they said that they expect people to use it.

... you mean, thieves are allowed in raids?!

I never seen a thief in raid except escort may be...

Power Thieves? In raids? Hah!

@Asur.9178 said:I'm one of those commanders that will ask you to swap from power thief to something more effective, if I am pugging. If you don't, you get replaced. I hope that answers your question.

I should clarify. I started doing this since last patch. Why? Simple. Hurt ANet's metrics in any way possible in an attempt to wake their balance team up from their ignorance. There's no reason for me to take a power thief over something that's clearly over-performing and was completely overlooked in balance patch.This is exactly me too. And you might want to call me an elitist or whatever you want, but trust me it hurts me so much to kick you because power dagger thief was the first class I played and it's still easily my favourite. It might be viable, but it's no longer good enough to do competitive dps. Just as a perspective, a healing renegade deals more dps than a power dps thief.

I am reading this from the last year because I decided to make a research on thief. Since mirage came out I am playing mesmer as main and I have no complaints. Although I always loved thief and it was my first class. Going raids with my mirage mesmer I get no complaints because of its high dmg, but when I went with my thief people said it was pretty bad dmg. And I got sad and since then I stopped going to raids.

I don't want to have to pick determined class or build to be able to be in raids. I don't want to be everyone else, I want to be me. This game gives so many features for our classes play the way that we want and feel better, but makes content that we can only play if we are like robots following the same build and rotation. I am not a f..ing robot. If that is the case I wont be there at all. What do I miss? Some gears that I can also get from other ways without the need of changing my build or playstyle.

As a thief I refuse to go to Raids in any other character or have the need to go condi dps, because they don't make it possible to all builds be effective on their content.

@OlsenSan.2987 said:I am reading this from the last year because I decided to make a research on thief. Since mirage came out I am playing mesmer as main and I have no complaints. Although I always loved thief and it was my first class. Going raids with my mirage mesmer I get no complaints because of its high dmg, but when I went with my thief people said it was pretty bad dmg. And I got sad and since then I stopped going to raids.

I don't want to have to pick determined class or build to be able to be in raids. I don't want to be everyone else, I want to be me. This game gives so many features for our classes play the way that we want and feel better, but makes content that we can only play if we are like robots following the same build and rotation. I am not a f..ing robot. If that is the case I wont be there at all. What do I miss? Some gears that I can also get from other ways without the need of changing my build or playstyle.

As a thief I refuse to go to Raids in any other character or have the need to go condi dps, because they don't make it possible to all builds be effective on their content.

Thief is one of the best dps options in raids now so you'll have no problems raiding on it.

Makes me feel comfortable picking Thief as my main.

Hasn't the Viper Daredevil been one of the thief cornerstones for like a long long time?

@"saloja.7920" said:Hasn't the Viper Daredevil been one of the thief cornerstones for like a long long time?

Well, this post was almost year old, but yes the viper daredevil was considered a "viable" raid build for thief... on two of the raid bosses total (Matthias and Cairn), and on anything else was considered a sub-optimal DPS compared to basically anything else. Basically unless you were doing those two bosses specifically, you weren't raiding on a thief for a little while.

@Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

@starlinvf.1358 said:Daredevil and Deadeye are both DPS builds.... the former for high sustain, the latter burst oriented, and tuned for PvP health pools. But to say Thief is dead in raids, when it hasn't really lost any DPS, is a sign of a bigger problem.

Thiefs are incredibly hard to balance outside of single target damage, because all of its utilities are ridiculously powerful of shared. Most people should still be able to remember venom share thief, and the high impact it had in PVP when they all went active at once. Raids don't really respect what core thief is designed for, and thats explosive damage and controls. Even their light CCs would be game changers, if not for the Breakbar nullifying its effects on the target.

The serious solution boils down to the Encounter design. Situations where small scale burst damage (which a lot of classes can do, but thief excels at) is useful to the raid mechanics. But if we're stuck with stacking meta..... what fits the thief as a group share besides the venom?

As for the DPS situation in POF...... its because the other classes power creeped when they shouldn't have. Weaver I can understand happening because of how it works (though the scale is ridiculous), but the Firebrand is just over the top. If you compare the DD DPS benchmark in August and then in POF, its DPS "DID NOT CHANGE". So its disingenuous to act like Thief got nerfed on DPS, when in reality other classes gained a larger margin for no apparent reason.

I said the same thing about Raids, Spell Breakers and Boon strip...... and the SB's big role in the Dhuum fight is to spam winds of disenchantment, because the boss pulses retal as fast as it could normally strip it, and Winds is the only reliable way to suppress it. I was seriously hoping for more.