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Intra-Class Balance Dynamic - My Perspectives - Things I'd Like To See Happen - 8/29/2020


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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"Dantheman.3589" said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.
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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth6 Boonrip and fear.Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

Oh no I have already answered the question. But I know why you wont. Because you cant. Youd have to admit its purely picked for damage, which you clearly dont want to.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use

1 second. The currently used healing skill is Hide in Shadows. This trait does basically nothing.

2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )

Used for quick backstabs mid-combat. The cooldown reaction is nice, but its not really defensive, since you dont use them twice in a single fight.

3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth

Pointless since you already max out on swiftness and rarely stealth up while still in combat (And you dont stay in combat for long even if you were still suffering from the reduced speed since those rare situations are when you already disengaged but havent broken the in-combat thing yet).

4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

6 Boonrip and fear.

Well, boonrip or fear. Its a utility trait used for offense.

Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

And yet, the only traits its picked for are leeching venoms, shadow siphoning and to a lesser degree rending shade. The former 2 are exclusively damage traits, since the healing gets wasted while youre at full hp. SA may conceptually be a utility/defensive traitline, but its picked as a damage traitline with every defensive trait being completely ignored. If you wanted defense, youd use Flickering Shadows, not leeching venoms. And yet, no one ever does. Its a similar concept to Valor for burning guard. Its supposed to be a defensive traitline, and you even pick one defensive trait as burn guard. But you pick the traitline purely for Permeating Wrath. A damage trait.

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use

1 second. The currently used healing skill is Hide in Shadows. This trait does basically nothing.

2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )

Used for quick backstabs mid-combat. The cooldown reaction is nice, but its not really defensive, since you dont use them twice in a single fight.

3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth

Pointless since you already max out on swiftness and rarely stealth up while still in combat (And you dont stay in combat for long even if you were still suffering from the reduced speed since those rare situations are when you already disengaged but havent broken the in-combat thing yet).

4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

6 Boonrip and fear.

Well, boonrip
or
fear. Its a utility trait used for offense.

Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

And yet, the only traits its picked for are leeching venoms, shadow siphoning and to a lesser degree rending shade. The former 2 are exclusively
damage
traits, since the healing gets wasted while youre at full hp. SA may conceptually be a utility/defensive traitline, but its picked as a damage traitline with every defensive trait being
completely
ignored. If you wanted defense, youd use Flickering Shadows, not leeching venoms. And yet, no one ever does. Its a similar concept to Valor for burning guard. Its supposed to be a defensive traitline, and you even pick one defensive trait as burn guard. But you pick the traitline purely for Permeating Wrath. A damage trait.
  1. Wrong, it gives a total of 2 becuz the trait that gives +1 sec to all stealth skills 2.) Wrong. It’ll reduce your defensive cds and gives stealth which is defensive. You’ll see streamers like bluri use it all the time for defense or just stealth. 3.) Wrong. It gives more MS than swiftness, which is useful. Again I see players like bluri use stealth all the time just for the MS increase. 4.) Wrong. It gives up to 2 poison stacks. Which is useful to prevent healing and for sustain + damage that wouldn’t be present without the siphon trait since your power 5.) wrong. You even pointed out stealth is mid combat yet this isn’t for sustain? You contradicting yourself. 6.) Yeah. But the other 2 options for grandmaster are still very common and the other most used 1 is purely sustain.

7.) wrong. You’ve probably been spending to much time just attacking golems if you think this trait line is for damage. Considering that a whole match you are constantly using stealth whenever out of combat and even going into and out of stealth in combat. If you go a whole match staying at full hp the whole time you are either already winning by a lot of just being a decap bot or afk

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use

1 second. The currently used healing skill is Hide in Shadows. This trait does basically nothing.

2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )

Used for quick backstabs mid-combat. The cooldown reaction is nice, but its not really defensive, since you dont use them twice in a single fight.

3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth

Pointless since you already max out on swiftness and rarely stealth up while still in combat (And you dont stay in combat for long even if you were still suffering from the reduced speed since those rare situations are when you already disengaged but havent broken the in-combat thing yet).

4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

6 Boonrip and fear.

Well, boonrip
or
fear. Its a utility trait used for offense.

Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

And yet, the only traits its picked for are leeching venoms, shadow siphoning and to a lesser degree rending shade. The former 2 are exclusively
damage
traits, since the healing gets wasted while youre at full hp. SA may conceptually be a utility/defensive traitline, but its picked as a damage traitline with every defensive trait being
completely
ignored. If you wanted defense, youd use Flickering Shadows, not leeching venoms. And yet, no one ever does. Its a similar concept to Valor for burning guard. Its supposed to be a defensive traitline, and you even pick one defensive trait as burn guard. But you pick the traitline purely for Permeating Wrath. A damage trait.
  1. Wrong, it gives a total of 2 becuz the trait that gives +1 sec to all stealth skills 2.) Wrong. It’ll reduce your defensive cds and gives stealth which is defensive. You’ll see streamers like bluri use it all the time for defense or just stealth. 3.) Wrong. It gives more MS than swiftness, which is useful. Again I see players like bluri use stealth all the time just for the MS increase. 4.) Wrong. It gives up to 2 poison stacks. Which is useful to prevent healing and for sustain + damage that wouldn’t be present without the siphon trait since your power 5.) wrong. You even pointed out stealth is mid combat yet this isn’t for sustain? You contradicting yourself. 6.) Yeah. But the other 2 options for grandmaster are still very common and the other most used 1 is purely sustain.

Why ruin the formatting, cmon. Lets see. 1) thats a seperate trait, dont conflate 2 traits. Also still not useful. 2) the reduction in CD is nice, but it will rarely end up used for defense. Also, stealth is offensive, not defensive. The stealth on steal is used pretty much only to either A, get a quick backstab in combat, or B, to prolong your stealth out of combat to burst with a backstab. 3) movement speed has a max cap. Out of combat, that max cap is 400, which is reached with Swiftness. The swiftness you have permanently. So the movement speed does absolutely nothing. 4) If you cared just for the poison, DA has you covered. You pick it for damage. 5) I didnt. I pointed out specifically stealth isnt used mid-combat other than exactly with hidden thief. 6) theyre very uncommon. They get picked, but not much.

7.) wrong. You’ve probably been spending to much time just attacking golems if you think this trait line is for damage. Considering that a whole match you are constantly using stealth whenever out of combat and even going into and out of stealth in combat. If you go a whole match staying at full hp the whole time you are either already winning by a lot of just being a decap bot or afk

You use stealth out of combat, correct. This however is accomplished without any benefit from SA, as the stealth you use does not get increased duration (combo finishers dont count as skills) and the movement speed is wasted due to the cap. You do not go in and out of stealth in combat. The only time you enter stealth in-combat is either hidden thief backstab, or HiS/Blinding powder. In all 3 cases you exit stealth ASAP, so you do not gain any benefit from SA either, other than possibly some healing and obviously damage. Except, even healing-wise, if you want that, Mug completely outpaces all healing SA provides. The traitline is for damage.

But let me just ask you one very simple question. If Shadow Siphoning and Leeching Venoms were both removed from the traitline (lets say venoms gets put in DA, and Siphoning just gets removed), and get replaced by very strong defensive traits. Do you think the traitline would be picked? I know the answer, but lets see what you think.

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also many high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without ever using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

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@Leonidrex.5649 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth6 Boonrip and fear.Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

Without deadly arts nerf thiefs wouldnt run shadoe arts

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@wevh.2903 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth6 Boonrip and fear.Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

Without deadly arts nerf thiefs wouldnt run shadoe arts

Well, theyd drop either SA or Daredevil, whichever adds less damage.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth6 Boonrip and fear.Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

Without deadly arts nerf thiefs wouldnt run shadoe arts

Well, theyd drop either SA or Daredevil, whichever adds less damage.

U cant drop daredevil , it was dropped before february cuz core could spike for 8k or 10k easily and pretty much one shot , not the case righr now after power creep nerf

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use

1 second. The currently used healing skill is Hide in Shadows. This trait does basically nothing.

2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )

Used for quick backstabs mid-combat. The cooldown reaction is nice, but its not really defensive, since you dont use them twice in a single fight.

3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth

Pointless since you already max out on swiftness and rarely stealth up while still in combat (And you dont stay in combat for long even if you were still suffering from the reduced speed since those rare situations are when you already disengaged but havent broken the in-combat thing yet).

4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

6 Boonrip and fear.

Well, boonrip
or
fear. Its a utility trait used for offense.

Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

And yet, the only traits its picked for are leeching venoms, shadow siphoning and to a lesser degree rending shade. The former 2 are exclusively
damage
traits, since the healing gets wasted while youre at full hp. SA may conceptually be a utility/defensive traitline, but its picked as a damage traitline with every defensive trait being
completely
ignored. If you wanted defense, youd use Flickering Shadows, not leeching venoms. And yet, no one ever does. Its a similar concept to Valor for burning guard. Its supposed to be a defensive traitline, and you even pick one defensive trait as burn guard. But you pick the traitline purely for Permeating Wrath. A damage trait.
  1. Wrong, it gives a total of 2 becuz the trait that gives +1 sec to all stealth skills 2.) Wrong. It’ll reduce your defensive cds and gives stealth which is defensive. You’ll see streamers like bluri use it all the time for defense or just stealth. 3.) Wrong. It gives more MS than swiftness, which is useful. Again I see players like bluri use stealth all the time just for the MS increase. 4.) Wrong. It gives up to 2 poison stacks. Which is useful to prevent healing and for sustain + damage that wouldn’t be present without the siphon trait since your power 5.) wrong. You even pointed out stealth is mid combat yet this isn’t for sustain? You contradicting yourself. 6.) Yeah. But the other 2 options for grandmaster are still very common and the other most used 1 is purely sustain.

Why ruin the formatting, cmon. Lets see. 1) thats a seperate trait, dont conflate 2 traits. Also still not useful. 2) the reduction in CD is nice, but it will rarely end up used for defense. Also, stealth is offensive, not defensive. The stealth on steal is used pretty much only to either A, get a quick backstab in combat, or B, to prolong your stealth out of combat to burst with a backstab. 3) movement speed has a max cap. Out of combat, that max cap is 400, which is reached with Swiftness. The swiftness you have permanently. So the movement speed does absolutely nothing. 4) If you cared just for the poison, DA has you covered. You pick it for damage. 5) I didnt. I pointed out specifically stealth
isnt
used mid-combat other than exactly with hidden thief. 6) theyre very uncommon. They get picked, but not much.

7.) wrong. You’ve probably been spending to much time just attacking golems if you think this trait line is for damage. Considering that a whole match you are constantly using stealth whenever out of combat and even going into and out of stealth in combat. If you go a whole match staying at full hp the whole time you are either already winning by a lot of just being a decap bot or afk

You use stealth out of combat, correct. This however is accomplished without any benefit from SA, as the stealth you use does not get increased duration (combo finishers dont count as skills) and the movement speed is wasted due to the cap. You do not go in and out of stealth in combat. The only time you enter stealth in-combat is either hidden thief backstab, or HiS/Blinding powder. In all 3 cases you exit stealth ASAP, so you do not gain any benefit from SA either, other than possibly some healing and obviously damage. Except, even healing-wise, if you want that, Mug
completely
outpaces all healing SA provides. The traitline is for damage.

But let me just ask you one
very
simple question. If Shadow Siphoning and Leeching Venoms were both removed from the traitline (lets say venoms gets put in DA, and Siphoning just gets removed), and get replaced by
very
strong defensive traits. Do you think the traitline would be picked? I know the answer, but lets see what you think.

Stealth by definitiontion is defensive. cautious and surreptitious action or movement. Cautious movements are not generally offensive. You clearly have the entire role of thief confused and for some reason you seem be to be out of combat 24-7 and yet going to backstab ppl. Again you are probably staying up late farming bots if that’s the case.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Its specced almost entirely for
damage
. You pick Daredevil because its the traitline that gives the most damage (after DA, the traitline previously picked over it, was nerfed hard). You pick SA because its the most reliable damage (it does basically
nothing
for your sustain, especially now that people are using hidden thief). And you pick Trickery because its mandatory (though it also gives a lot of damage). And ontop of that it runs Berserkers amulet.

And for how all-in it goes on damage, it hits pretty poor. Backstabs on a squishy class hit for 5k. If the enemy has any toughness, it hits for less. Heartseeker can hit for 5.5k on a squishy class at <25%, less on toughness again. Thats very little. I do close to that damage on core engineer just using grenades. While actually picking an entire traitline purely for defense (Id hit harder if I used Firearms, but core engineer cant run away with ease, so I cant exactly lower my survivability to as low as thieves).

Shadow arts is and has been a defensive trait line since gw1 are u such an online miracle that you can change the definition of the trait lines since before the game was created? I think not, there are some damage modifiers but the #1 reason for these lines are mobility(DrD) intiative(trickery) and stealth(shadow arts). None of these traitlines are specifically taken to improve damage it’s just in the long run they add some, mostly from modifiers though that are not even close to 100% guaranteed to be present.

Shadow arts was a defensive traitline. Keyword
WAS
. While it was a defensive traitline, it was largely unpicked. Then a while back they changed it around a bit, and now its not used as a defensive traitline. In fact, the reason its picked now is because of shadow siphoning, leeching venoms and Rending Shade. 3 traits with no real defensive value. In fact, lets look beyond that. The remaining 3 traits are the 2 minor traits (stealth when using healing skill. Redundant since HiS is used anyway. Provides no defense. Increased stealth duration from skills. Also pointless, no defense.) And Hidden Thief, which gives Stealth on steal (used for quick backstabs) and cd reduction. So tell me, where in this pile of traits do you see
any
defense. Its used as a damage traitline with minor utility.

Daredevil is picked 100% for damage, dash is just gravy. Remember, it wasnt so long ago that the meta thief build was DA/SA/Trickery. The only reason Daredevil was picked again over DA was because DAs damage was hard nerfed, and now Daredevil gives more damage. If Daredevil was picked for mobility, why was it ignored in favour of DA? And Trickery is the only one that isnt picked for damage. Its picked because its mandatory for initiative. But even so it provides a decent chunk of damage. In order, the #1 reason to pick these traitlines is damage (Shadow Arts), damage (Daredevil) and initiative with a bit of damage (Trickery). Its more damage-focused than most classes.

Daredevil is taken for mobility and shadow arts for stealth. Comparing to an old build is well redundant since that build was used for like a month and basically absent for like 5 years. Shadow arts is still by definition a defensive traitline. It has options of stealth or defensive traits and then life shipon which is still fairly defensive. Only offensive one is basically rending shade which isn’t always picked so yeah no.

You cant just repeat a wrong thing until it turns true. It will stay false. Shadow Arts is not taken for defense, or stealth, its taken for
damage
. Why do you think it went unpicked entirely (Even while providing boosts to stealth) all the way up until they added leeching venoms and shadow siphoning? In fact, lets take a closer look, shall we? It does actually have a few defensive traits. Shadow's Embrace. No longer picked. Flickering Shadows, not picked (despite being a
33%
damage reduction while revealed). Shadow Saviour, not picked. Instead, its only picked for traits that have
no
defensive value and are purely offensive. Like the siphon traits (that you only proc when you engage a fight 95% of the time, and as such the healing goes to waste). Shadow Siphoning is an offensive trait. Leeching Venoms is the only offensive trait in a slot that has 2 defensive traits, and its picked 100% of the time. Rending Shade is offensive and picked 90+% of the time. Hidden thief is offensive and used 90+% of the time.

I dont know how I can simplify it further for you, but the simple fact is that its purely taken as a damage traitline. Oh and as for the "oh its picked for stealth thing", D/Ps primary stealth source is black powder + heartseeker, which doesnt benefit from SA. Meld with Shadows
theoretically
would, but you already have swiftness. The stealth on heal does nothing, since your heal stealths anyway (And you only use your heal in combat, where you want to drop stealth ASAP, so the duration does nothing). The increased stealth from skills does nothing for similar reasons.

As for Daredevil my point still stands. Of course I can compare it to the build that immediately preceded it. Especially because that build followed from a Daredevil build, where Daredevil was dropped in favour of DA because DA did more damage. And of course it was absent for 5 years, Shadow Arts used to be a
defensive
traitline after all. Which meant no one ever picked it. But after it was changed to a damage traitline, it replaced DA originally, before people figured out "hey, DA also adds more damage than Daredevil, so lets just drop Daredevil". But then DA was nerfed hard, and people went back to Daredevil. Mind you, when the patch that obliterated DA dropped, Sindrener explained why DD D/P is now recommended over DA D/P, and he specifically said its because DA was nerfed so much it just does less damage. Dash is just gravy.

You didn’t simplify anything just make it more complicated by mixing stuff up from over the course of many years. And no daredevil isn’t taken for more damage it’s taken becuz the additional mobility is very worth the trade off of slightly higher damage and yeah I’ve seen sinderners argument he said even if you took DA it would only ever be slightly more damage. The additional stealth and mobility are just so huge on this build that the trade offs are barely present and the damage like wise is good enough without these things as well as being incredibly simple and effective with all the stealth and mobility on top.

Please dont try to evade answering my question. So tell me once again. Which part of SA is supposed to be defensive? Why was it only picked after its defensive capabilities were nerfed, and it instead got several offensive traits added? Why is it that only the
offensive
traits get picked instead of defensive alternatives in the same slot? Go ahead, answer it.

No, Daredevil is taken because its
more
damage than DA. There is no trade-off, DA just adds less damage because it was nerfed. Thats why when DA
did
provide more damage, you picked it over Daredevil. Because the additional mobility of dash is pretty minor considering you have shortbow 5. There is no additional stealth. Full stop. You could make hidden thief and concealing restoration both do
nothing
for stealth, and people would still pick SA 100% of the time, because those traits are irrelevant as they are. You pick SA for
damage
.

No ones going to answer your question. It’s not the point of a forum. I know you think calling ppl out with your gold facts is cool, but I see no need since this isn’t a thread for that. Feel free to disagree with the op though

I will give him answer for you :D

@UNOwen.71321 Concealing restoration -> 2s stealth on healing skill use

1 second. The currently used healing skill is Hide in Shadows. This trait does basically nothing.

2 Hidden thief -> stealing grants stealth ( 3s ), deception skills reduced recharge -> that includes ( healing skill for stealth/healing, shadowstep for condi cleanse, 2x stunbreake and mobility along with BP for another Stunbreake and stealth )

Used for quick backstabs mid-combat. The cooldown reaction is nice, but its not really defensive, since you dont use them twice in a single fight.

3 meld with shadows -> movespeed in stealth

Pointless since you already max out on swiftness and rarely stealth up while still in combat (And you dont stay in combat for long even if you were still suffering from the reduced speed since those rare situations are when you already disengaged but havent broken the in-combat thing yet).

4 Spider venom -> steal hp 650 each time you stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

5 Shadow siphoning -> another 500 siphon from stealth

At the start of the fight where the healing goes completely to waste. Used exclusively for damage.

6 Boonrip and fear.

Well, boonrip
or
fear. Its a utility trait used for offense.

Legit every single trait gives mobility or utility or healing. You pretend its take for the damage since siphons hit for 1k out of stealth every time, its chip damage that adds up but SA is made for utility.

And yet, the only traits its picked for are leeching venoms, shadow siphoning and to a lesser degree rending shade. The former 2 are exclusively
damage
traits, since the healing gets wasted while youre at full hp. SA may conceptually be a utility/defensive traitline, but its picked as a damage traitline with every defensive trait being
completely
ignored. If you wanted defense, youd use Flickering Shadows, not leeching venoms. And yet, no one ever does. Its a similar concept to Valor for burning guard. Its supposed to be a defensive traitline, and you even pick one defensive trait as burn guard. But you pick the traitline purely for Permeating Wrath. A damage trait.
  1. Wrong, it gives a total of 2 becuz the trait that gives +1 sec to all stealth skills 2.) Wrong. It’ll reduce your defensive cds and gives stealth which is defensive. You’ll see streamers like bluri use it all the time for defense or just stealth. 3.) Wrong. It gives more MS than swiftness, which is useful. Again I see players like bluri use stealth all the time just for the MS increase. 4.) Wrong. It gives up to 2 poison stacks. Which is useful to prevent healing and for sustain + damage that wouldn’t be present without the siphon trait since your power 5.) wrong. You even pointed out stealth is mid combat yet this isn’t for sustain? You contradicting yourself. 6.) Yeah. But the other 2 options for grandmaster are still very common and the other most used 1 is purely sustain.

Why ruin the formatting, cmon. Lets see. 1) thats a seperate trait, dont conflate 2 traits. Also still not useful. 2) the reduction in CD is nice, but it will rarely end up used for defense. Also, stealth is offensive, not defensive. The stealth on steal is used pretty much only to either A, get a quick backstab in combat, or B, to prolong your stealth out of combat to burst with a backstab. 3) movement speed has a max cap. Out of combat, that max cap is 400, which is reached with Swiftness. The swiftness you have permanently. So the movement speed does absolutely nothing. 4) If you cared just for the poison, DA has you covered. You pick it for damage. 5) I didnt. I pointed out specifically stealth
isnt
used mid-combat other than exactly with hidden thief. 6) theyre very uncommon. They get picked, but not much.

7.) wrong. You’ve probably been spending to much time just attacking golems if you think this trait line is for damage. Considering that a whole match you are constantly using stealth whenever out of combat and even going into and out of stealth in combat. If you go a whole match staying at full hp the whole time you are either already winning by a lot of just being a decap bot or afk

You use stealth out of combat, correct. This however is accomplished without any benefit from SA, as the stealth you use does not get increased duration (combo finishers dont count as skills) and the movement speed is wasted due to the cap. You do not go in and out of stealth in combat. The only time you enter stealth in-combat is either hidden thief backstab, or HiS/Blinding powder. In all 3 cases you exit stealth ASAP, so you do not gain any benefit from SA either, other than possibly some healing and obviously damage. Except, even healing-wise, if you want that, Mug
completely
outpaces all healing SA provides. The traitline is for damage.

But let me just ask you one
very
simple question. If Shadow Siphoning and Leeching Venoms were both removed from the traitline (lets say venoms gets put in DA, and Siphoning just gets removed), and get replaced by
very
strong defensive traits. Do you think the traitline would be picked? I know the answer, but lets see what you think.

Steal by definitiontion is defensive. cautious and surreptitious action or movement. Cautious movements are not generally offensive. You clearly have the entire role of thief confused and for some reason you seem be to be out of combat 24-7 and yet going to backstab ppl. Again you are probably staying up late farming bots if that’s the case.

>Steal by definition is defensive

What? No seriously, what? How is teleporting ontop of an enemy in order to backstab them "defensive"? Are you trolling me? Am I being trolled? Ive seen your bad takes before, but this is the first time I see a take where I cannot even begin to understand what your logic is, for lack of a better word.

The role of theif is simple. Decap and +1. In the former case, you dont fight. In the latter case, you quickly help your teammate take them out before moving on. In neither case do you fight for long periods of time. On the off-chance that does happen, you switch to shortbow to lay down some AoEs. So where is it supposed to help?

Also, answer my question. If the damage traits were replaced by very strong defensive traits, would thieves still pick Shadow Arts?

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because every build uses shortbow. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because
every build uses shortbow
. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

If that’s what everyone says than get 1 high rated thief in here to agree. But no one would would they? No where on metabattle did it say that. No one who rates a build says “it doesn’t matter what weapon you take as long as you have short bow it’s meta”. There has been like 1 shortbow meta, never since than. Rn it’s a dp DrD meta. Not a short bow stealth meta.

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because
every build uses shortbow
. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

If that’s what everyone says than get 1 high rated thief in here to agree. But no one would would they? No where on metabattle did it say that. No one who rates a build says “it doesn’t matter what weapon you take as long as you have short bow it’s meta”. There has been like 1 shortbow meta, never since than. Rn it’s a dp DrD meta. Not a short bow stealth meta.

Of course not, but lets take a look at the flipside. "It doesn't matter what weapon you take, as long as you dont have shortbow, you will be useless". I think even you will have trouble saying that this isnt the undeniable truth. And then, if youre useless if you dont have a specific weapon (and also useless if you dont use a specific skill on that specific weapon), Id call that pretty defining. Thats what everyone says. Im not sure if youre trolling or trying to use semantical tricks to cover up your mistake, but either way, youre wrong.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because
every build uses shortbow
. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

If that’s what everyone says than get 1 high rated thief in here to agree. But no one would would they? No where on metabattle did it say that. No one who rates a build says “it doesn’t matter what weapon you take as long as you have short bow it’s meta”. There has been like 1 shortbow meta, never since than. Rn it’s a dp DrD meta. Not a short bow stealth meta.

Of course not, but lets take a look at the flipside. "It doesn't matter what weapon you take, as long as you dont have shortbow, you will be useless". I think even you will have trouble saying that this isnt the undeniable truth. And then, if youre useless if you dont have a specific weapon (and also useless if you dont use a specific skill on that specific weapon), Id call that pretty defining. Thats what everyone says. Im not sure if youre trolling or trying to use semantical tricks to cover up your mistake, but either way, youre wrong.

No what that is is backwards logic. That’s why no thief main with a brain says that.

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because
every build uses shortbow
. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

If that’s what everyone says than get 1 high rated thief in here to agree. But no one would would they? No where on metabattle did it say that. No one who rates a build says “it doesn’t matter what weapon you take as long as you have short bow it’s meta”. There has been like 1 shortbow meta, never since than. Rn it’s a dp DrD meta. Not a short bow stealth meta.

Of course not, but lets take a look at the flipside. "It doesn't matter what weapon you take, as long as you dont have shortbow, you will be useless". I think even you will have trouble saying that this isnt the undeniable truth. And then, if youre useless if you dont have a specific weapon (and also useless if you dont use a specific skill on that specific weapon), Id call that pretty defining. Thats what everyone says. Im not sure if youre trolling or trying to use semantical tricks to cover up your mistake, but either way, youre wrong.

No what that is is backwards logic. That’s why no thief main with a brain says that.

Trolling it is then. No, its not "backwards logic", its just logic. What defines a class? The things it cannot go without. The things that make it at all viable. Thief is viable only with shortbow. The rest of the class changes, you can go for different traitlines, different weapons, different gear and runes. But you cannot go without shortbow 5. Thats why it defines thief. And thats why every thief main with a brain says that shortbow 5 defines thief. Well, every one that isnt trolling, I suppose.

Also you have still not answered the SA question. If SA lost its damage traits and had them replaced with very strong defensive traits. Would thieves still pick SA? Go on.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because
every build uses shortbow
. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

If that’s what everyone says than get 1 high rated thief in here to agree. But no one would would they? No where on metabattle did it say that. No one who rates a build says “it doesn’t matter what weapon you take as long as you have short bow it’s meta”. There has been like 1 shortbow meta, never since than. Rn it’s a dp DrD meta. Not a short bow stealth meta.

Of course not, but lets take a look at the flipside. "It doesn't matter what weapon you take, as long as you dont have shortbow, you will be useless". I think even you will have trouble saying that this isnt the undeniable truth. And then, if youre useless if you dont have a specific weapon (and also useless if you dont use a specific skill on that specific weapon), Id call that pretty defining. Thats what everyone says. Im not sure if youre trolling or trying to use semantical tricks to cover up your mistake, but either way, youre wrong.

No what that is is backwards logic. That’s why no thief main with a brain says that.

Trolling it is then. No, its not "backwards logic", its just logic. What defines a class? The things it cannot go without. The things that make it at all viable. Thief is viable only with shortbow. The rest of the class changes, you can go for different traitlines, different weapons, different gear and runes. But you cannot go without shortbow 5. Thats why it defines thief. And thats why
every
thief main with a brain says that shortbow 5 defines thief. Well, every one that isnt trolling, I suppose.

Also you have still not answered the SA question. If SA lost its damage traits and had them replaced with very strong defensive traits. Would thieves still pick SA? Go on.

That’s definitely backwards logic. Shortbow is mandatory for most builds so why would u go without shortbow 5. You don’t take short bow 5 you take an offensive weapon and short bow as an offhand. That why any thief main with a brain says short bow is mandatory on builds like DP DRD and no thief main with a brain or in high elo has ever said shortbow 5 defines thief

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because
every build uses shortbow
. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

If that’s what everyone says than get 1 high rated thief in here to agree. But no one would would they? No where on metabattle did it say that. No one who rates a build says “it doesn’t matter what weapon you take as long as you have short bow it’s meta”. There has been like 1 shortbow meta, never since than. Rn it’s a dp DrD meta. Not a short bow stealth meta.

Of course not, but lets take a look at the flipside. "It doesn't matter what weapon you take, as long as you dont have shortbow, you will be useless". I think even you will have trouble saying that this isnt the undeniable truth. And then, if youre useless if you dont have a specific weapon (and also useless if you dont use a specific skill on that specific weapon), Id call that pretty defining. Thats what everyone says. Im not sure if youre trolling or trying to use semantical tricks to cover up your mistake, but either way, youre wrong.

No what that is is backwards logic. That’s why no thief main with a brain says that.

Trolling it is then. No, its not "backwards logic", its just logic. What defines a class? The things it cannot go without. The things that make it at all viable. Thief is viable only with shortbow. The rest of the class changes, you can go for different traitlines, different weapons, different gear and runes. But you cannot go without shortbow 5. Thats why it defines thief. And thats why
every
thief main with a brain says that shortbow 5 defines thief. Well, every one that isnt trolling, I suppose.

Also you have still not answered the SA question. If SA lost its damage traits and had them replaced with very strong defensive traits. Would thieves still pick SA? Go on.

That’s definitely backwards logic. Shortbow is mandatory for most builds so why would u go without shortbow 5. You don’t take short bow 5 you take an offensive weapon and short bow as an offhand. That why any thief main with a brain says short bow is mandatory on builds like DP DRD and no thief main with a brain or in high elo has ever said shortbow 5 defines thief

Why is shortbow mandatory? Youre so close to realising why youre wrong, but it seems you just dont take that last step. So answer me, why is shortbow mandatory? And if SA lost its damage traits, would it still be picked? Go on. Answer.

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Trevor I agree with your points. I think there are 2 issues beyond just "Passive CC" that are issues on that front: 1) CC skills have too many targets/CC is too prevalent on skills and 2) Certain traits encourage CC spam by saying "deal X damage, apply X condition, and/or gain X boon when disabling your foe." If there are skills that encourage CC, they need to encourage specific gameplay associated with it such as interrupting a foe or knocking them into a wall.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I think thief damage is fairly busted. The dp build is almost entirely specced for mobility, stealth and sustain- granted it uses berserker amulet but it still hits insanely hard granted what it’s specced for. It can get by just spamming backstabs and heartseekers etc which I’ve seen hit like 6-7k per at times. It’s not 100% necessary as some suggest, but it might as well be since it has no boundaries due to mobility and stealth and has instant high impact and also insanely high passive impact due to the idea that “o they can stealth for 10s and get across the map in that time”.

Yes, thief damage is a huge problem. The fact they can run zerker and still have 15k hp due to daredevil is one of the issues.

Its not, its quite low.

UNOwen I recommend you play other classes for a few months so you can get a better perspective on why people(including top players) think thief is the best class in the game next to holo.

I have been playing core Engineer and only core engineer for about a year now. I know why thief is good, but its the same thing its always been. Thief is not "the best class next to holo" (especially because Scrapper is arguably better than Holo as is). Thief is a mandatory 1-of due to its superior mobility that makes up for its inferior everything else. But you
never
want more than one thief on your team, else you will lose. Does that sound like a best class to you?

The truth is that Thieves damage is pretty pathetic. Its enough to win +1s, but you need very little to win +1s. If you compared it to any other roamer, every single one blows thief out of the water. Same with defense, same with CC, same with utility. But it doesnt matter because Thief gets to the +1s fast than anyone else. Thats also why, if you took away shortbow 5, thief would instantly become unplayable. Because suddenly thief
doesnt
get to them faster than anyone else. And then its inferior everything else just makes it trash tier.Is that why legendary rated streamers have been calling thief “the most busted ranked carry next to holo”. This obsession over shortbow 5 is incredibly bizarre too, but u also think thief’s team fight with short bow and swap to dp to decap.

Yes, the obsession with the one weapon skill all theif mains have known for year defines their class and is literally the only reason it functions is "bizarre". Also, why are you just saying a simple truth as if its supposed to mean anything?

No that skill does not define the class neither does the short bow weapon it’s self. What thief mains say about shortbow is that it’s mandatory- saying just 1 skill in a mandatory weapon defines the class is a huge falsification. Considering have a weapon besides short bow is also mandatory means that short bow it’s self doesn’t define thief let alone 1 skill. Again there are no high rated thief’s that I’ve ever seen that say that nor anyone on metabattle or on streams. Most would say that’s actually bizarre in my experience.

Of course it defines the class, and by extension so does shortbow. Now you mightve tuned out when people were discussing it, but thieves say that its mandatory because of shortbow 5, and shortbow is the reason thief is viable. The second weapon is honestly not that important. Thats why thieves change their main weapon between builds, change everything around, but one thing stays unchanged always. Shortbow is the second weapon you use, and shortbow 5 is why youre viable. Also
many
high rated thieves have said this multiple times, and metabattle says that thief is picked primarily for its insane mobility, which is synonymous with shortbow 5. No, what people would say is bizarre, is acting like shortbow 5 isnt the defining aspect of thief. What youre doing right now.

But just for fun, try the following: Play thief without
ever
using shortbow 5. You can keep shortbow if you want, but no shortbow 5. And do it in a MAT to ensure that the competition is good. See how effective you will be. Spoiler: Youll be useless. There is a reason why Thief was the worst class in 2v2/3v3, and that reason is because shortbow 5, their defining skill, isnt useful in it.

No there are no high rated thief’s that say that. Metabattle does not say it either, in fact the builds are named after the main hand weapon which isn’t shortbow becuz short now is a utility weapon not the offensive one that defines the build. The metabattle moderator has said before that short bow mandatory just like I said and like every high rated thief says. Maybe u got some random person on the forum to agree with you but no there are no high rated thief’s that say and I’m telling you that as probably the highest rated thief in this discussion at least on NA since I don’t know everyone here from Eu

Ok now I am convinced you are just hard trolling here. Because I cant believe that even you would believe the nonsense youre writing here. Everyone says it (except you apparently). The builds arent named after shortbow because
every build uses shortbow
. Youd just have 4 thief builds called "shortbow thief" in that case. You dont see Ranger builds named after GS because every build uses GS, do you? Yes, shortbow is a utility weapon, but its that utility weapon that defines the entire class. Thief is picked because it moves faster than everyone else. It moves faster than everyone else because of shortbow 5. Thief is picked because of shortbow 5. The rest changes and doesnt really matter. Thief stays the same. A class defined by shortbow 5.

If that’s what everyone says than get 1 high rated thief in here to agree. But no one would would they? No where on metabattle did it say that. No one who rates a build says “it doesn’t matter what weapon you take as long as you have short bow it’s meta”. There has been like 1 shortbow meta, never since than. Rn it’s a dp DrD meta. Not a short bow stealth meta.

Of course not, but lets take a look at the flipside. "It doesn't matter what weapon you take, as long as you dont have shortbow, you will be useless". I think even you will have trouble saying that this isnt the undeniable truth. And then, if youre useless if you dont have a specific weapon (and also useless if you dont use a specific skill on that specific weapon), Id call that pretty defining. Thats what everyone says. Im not sure if youre trolling or trying to use semantical tricks to cover up your mistake, but either way, youre wrong.

No what that is is backwards logic. That’s why no thief main with a brain says that.

Trolling it is then. No, its not "backwards logic", its just logic. What defines a class? The things it cannot go without. The things that make it at all viable. Thief is viable only with shortbow. The rest of the class changes, you can go for different traitlines, different weapons, different gear and runes. But you cannot go without shortbow 5. Thats why it defines thief. And thats why
every
thief main with a brain says that shortbow 5 defines thief. Well, every one that isnt trolling, I suppose.

Also you have still not answered the SA question. If SA lost its damage traits and had them replaced with very strong defensive traits. Would thieves still pick SA? Go on.

That’s definitely backwards logic. Shortbow is mandatory for most builds so why would u go without shortbow 5. You don’t take short bow 5 you take an offensive weapon and short bow as an offhand. That why any thief main with a brain says short bow is mandatory on builds like DP DRD and no thief main with a brain or in high elo has ever said shortbow 5 defines thief

Why is shortbow mandatory? Youre so close to realising why youre wrong, but it seems you just dont take that last step. So answer me, why is shortbow mandatory? And if SA lost its damage traits, would it still be picked? Go on. Answer.

Your right I’ll just “listen to my self”- a thief main. From now on no more trolls on forums.

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