Tips on how to be a better thief player?

[Dido.9148]

LOSS:

WIN:

Hi everyoneI started playing this game on August 2020 and I've been playing DD Thief exclusively, mostly PvP. I've been getting increasingly frustrated the last few days specially today, after going on a 8-game losing streak on ranked conquest right when I was on the cusp of hitting platinum. My mechanics are not top-notch, obviously, although I feel like the biggest struggle right now is not always knowing what to do in certain situations. I'm a poor evaluator of my own gameplay so I have posted 3 games from today-- 2 losses and 1 win. I don't expect everyone to watch the whole thing, but if you guys could maybe watch some here and there, and point out flaws and areas of my gameplay that needs improvement, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

How to be a better thief, in one video:

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Sorry, had to lol.

Actual serious help; in all three games, you went close at the start solo. In the first clip, that meant there was a 4v5 in the enemy's favour on mid while you capped close and far, which meant you got the points but because your team wiped you couldn't hold them, the enemy was ahead on points because of the kills, and the match started to snowball in their favour.

The second clip with the holosmith is a prime example of why thief shouldn't go close; you can't hold the point if anyone comes to contest, meaning if the enemy sent one to far you will likely have to leave them to cap the point. By the time you left close in the second clip, the enemy who capped far has gone mid making it a 4v4 there, and you move to far for the full cap. After that I would personally have gone mid; someone from your team had gone for the decap on close at 1:01 as you started to cap far, so going mid would have helped more. As it turns out there was a 2v2 on close, meaning you left mid a 2v3 and lost it shortly after.

In the third fight, you got close fine, and your team got mid. At 1:59 you can see the other 4 of your team on mid, two enemies on mid, one off point to the left and the guy who capped far on the wall opposite. But then you stayed too long at mid, tried to shortbow when D/P would probably have got the down on that rev, and got cleaved down shortly after. What you should have done was to steal and spike the rev on D/P to down him/keep him low, then port to the far wall when shadowstep came off cooldown and shortbow to far to decap. You already held mid, there was no advantage to be had fighting there when you could have peeled one guy back to far and got a decap instead.

A much better thing to do at the start is to go mid. Assume that the other team did the same thing every match, one close one far three mid. Send someone else close and go mid with the other 3, give them stealth, call a target and get a +1/down then leave mid as a 3v2 and decap far when the guy who capped that comes to help mid. That way your team gets close with one guy holding it against one enemy, you get an uneven fight in your favour on mid and you denied the other team the cap on far. After decapping far go back to mid, what happens next depends on the enemies who went close and far; if they stay close and far to recap/1v1, you have a 4v2 on mid and close is yours, +1 on mid and wipe them. If the guy from far stays mid and the guy on close keeps the 1v1 there, get a +1 on mid then go to close and +1 that guy, so you can create yet another uneven matchup on mid. Remember that the guys you killed are likely to run far if it is decapped, so don't bother trying to cap it unless you can see they won't respawn in time, just decap it when you get chance unless one of your guys went there, in which case +1 and let them cap.

This is assuming your team aren't just dying at a fart, but if they do their jobs you'll find going to mid first soooooo much better.

P.S; if you're attacking for more than 3-4 seconds and the target isn't dead, you're usually better off moving to another point. Don't tunnel vision on getting a kill, just chunking someone and forcing their heal is often enough if your team can pressure them afterwards.

[saerni.2584]

Your biggest issue that pops out to me is a lack of fight presence.

You rotate well enough but you don’t do any damage. Your enemies who should die to a plus one don’t take more than a little chip damage. When you should show up, spike the opponent for 5-10k and then move on. You shouldn’t take that many 1v1s but you should be able to stand up in a fight. That was missing for me here. Note, you don’t need to even finish them if you can push the opponent over the edge and let your teammate do the rest.

The other big issue to me is that you use BP a LOT. Which isn’t a bad thing always. But you use it with no enemies around and you don’t stack stealth beyond that initial BP-HS combo. So it’s a lot of initiative and you aren’t always using it effectively because BP is a lot of initiative for only one combo, especially when you aren’t under pressure so you have time/initiative to spend. If you use your stealth access efficiently it will help you to fight. But if you mess that up it will cut into your fight pressure and damage, which is where you were facing the most significant difficulties.

Feel free to message me in game if you are on the NA servers. Happy to help in game where it is easier to give mechanical feedback.

[Dido.9148]

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:Sorry, had to lol.

Actual serious help; in all three games, you went close at the start solo. In the first clip, that meant there was a 4v5 in the enemy's favour on mid while you capped close and far, which meant you got the points but because your team wiped you couldn't hold them, the enemy was ahead on points because of the kills, and the match started to snowball in their favour.

The second clip with the holosmith is a prime example of why thief shouldn't go close; you can't hold the point if anyone comes to contest, meaning if the enemy sent one to far you will likely have to leave them to cap the point. By the time you left close in the second clip, the enemy who capped far has gone mid making it a 4v4 there, and you move to far for the full cap. After that I would personally have gone mid; someone from your team had gone for the decap on close at 1:01 as you started to cap far, so going mid would have helped more. As it turns out there was a 2v2 on close, meaning you left mid a 2v3 and lost it shortly after.

In the third fight, you got close fine, and your team got mid. At 1:59 you can see the other 4 of your team on mid, two enemies on mid, one off point to the left and the guy who capped far on the wall opposite. But then you stayed too long at mid, tried to shortbow when D/P would probably have got the down on that rev, and got cleaved down shortly after. What you should have done was to steal and spike the rev on D/P to down him/keep him low, then port to the far wall when shadowstep came off cooldown and shortbow to far to decap. You already held mid, there was no advantage to be had fighting there when you could have peeled one guy back to far and got a decap instead.

A much better thing to do at the start is to go mid. Assume that the other team did the same thing every match, one close one far three mid. Send someone else close and go mid with the other 3, give them stealth, call a target and get a +1/down then leave mid as a 3v2 and decap far when the guy who capped that comes to help mid. That way your team gets close with one guy holding it against one enemy, you get an uneven fight in your favour on mid and you denied the other team the cap on far. After decapping far go back to mid, what happens next depends on the enemies who went close and far; if they stay close and far to recap/1v1, you have a 4v2 on mid and close is yours, +1 on mid and wipe them. If the guy from far stays mid and the guy on close keeps the 1v1 there, get a +1 on mid then go to close and +1 that guy, so you can create yet another uneven matchup on mid. Remember that the guys you killed are likely to run far if it is decapped, so don't bother trying to cap it unless you can see they won't respawn in time, just decap it when you get chance unless one of your guys went there, in which case +1 and let them cap.

This is assuming your team aren't just dying at a fart, but if they do their jobs you'll find going to mid first soooooo much better.

P.S; if you're attacking for more than 3-4 seconds and the target isn't dead, you're usually better off moving to another point. Don't tunnel vision on getting a kill, just chunking someone and forcing their heal is often enough if your team can pressure them afterwards.

Thank you for your feedback, specially the bolded part, that really stood out to me and didn't even realize that

[Dido.9148]

@saerni.2584 said:Your biggest issue that pops out to me is a lack of fight presence.

You rotate well enough but you don’t do any damage. Your enemies who should die to a plus one don’t take more than a little chip damage. When you should show up, spike the opponent for 5-10k and then move on. You shouldn’t take that many 1v1s but you should be able to stand up in a fight. That was missing for me here. Note, you don’t need to even finish them if you can push the opponent over the edge and let your teammate do the rest.

The other big issue to me is that you use BP a LOT. Which isn’t a bad thing always. But you use it with no enemies around and you don’t stack stealth beyond that initial BP-HS combo. So it’s a lot of initiative and you aren’t always using it effectively because BP is a lot of initiative for only one combo, especially when you aren’t under pressure so you have time/initiative to spend. If you use your stealth access efficiently it will help you to fight. But if you mess that up it will cut into your fight pressure and damage, which is where you were facing the most significant difficulties.

Feel free to message me in game if you are on the NA servers. Happy to help in game where it is easier to give mechanical feedback.

In terms of damage, am I doing my rotations wrong? or am I just engaging the wrong targets?I definitely will add you in-game. Thanks

[saerni.2584]

@Dido.9148 said:

@saerni.2584 said:Your biggest issue that pops out to me is a lack of fight presence.

You rotate well enough but you don’t do any damage. Your enemies who should die to a plus one don’t take more than a little chip damage. When you should show up, spike the opponent for 5-10k and then move on. You shouldn’t take that many 1v1s but you should be able to stand up in a fight. That was missing for me here. Note, you don’t need to even finish them if you can push the opponent over the edge and let your teammate do the rest.

The other big issue to me is that you use BP a LOT. Which isn’t a bad thing always. But you use it with no enemies around and you don’t stack stealth beyond that initial BP-HS combo. So it’s a lot of initiative and you aren’t always using it effectively because BP is a lot of initiative for only one combo, especially when you aren’t under pressure so you have time/initiative to spend. If you use your stealth access efficiently it will help you to fight. But if you mess that up it will cut into your fight pressure and damage, which is where you were facing the most significant difficulties.

Feel free to message me in game if you are on the NA servers. Happy to help in game where it is easier to give mechanical feedback.

In terms of damage, am I doing my rotations wrong? or am I just engaging the wrong targets?I definitely will add you in-game. Thanks

It’s the timing I think. You do 4k ish on Heartseeker, so your damage isn’t terrible from a stat perspective. Although, you could potentially get more damage output. The thing is that you need to be able to pop in and apply your damage and then jump out.

Thief can hit like a wet noodle or like an unstoppable machine. But a lot depends on the timing of your strikes.

Part of that is the need to finish your autoattack rotation because the coefficient is stacking more on the end rather than the first few strikes.

[DeceiverX.8361]

I watched the first loss and most of the win. For having started two months ago, it's a good start, so take solace in that you're doing well for being so new.
I'm going to break down game 1. In your win, most of these issues translated, but they didn't actually manifest because your opposing thief played... well... really badly.

Macro:You're staying for fullcaps in most instances you don't need to be. It takes much Edit: longer less time to neutralize a node (decap) than to have it go from neutral to captured. Your goal for nodes is mostly just to set the opposition back and avoid the sustained teamfight rather than fullcapping (decap + cap) and then opting to gank. It's only really when your team is stuck and unable to contest/hold cap anything at all and/or if the enemy team lacks a thief themselves that you should be staying to cap full, so it should really only be done when necessary and your team can't seem to regroup as to pull their sides. You generally seem to know where to be - though game 3 you stayed mid and probably shouldn't have - I'm guessing you've watched some guides and done some homework which is good - but haven't figured out for how long yet. This is emphasized a lot in game 1, since your teammates were also just weaker individually than the opponents since you had double thief. This let you staunch a lot of bleeding, but didn't help you turn the tables that much. In instances where your team is struggling to control home and rotate between it and mid or give up a fight and fullcap far, you need to be just routing the decap to even the point score and then +1'ing a fight quickly. Backstab and heartseeker or shadow shot a few times (it does more damage with targets at half HP than HS, and has an unblockable blind to even up some damage or generate a down, and move on. This is particularly noticeable around the 8:00 mark where you stay to teamfight a point where you already had an advantage, and honestly, contributed very little as a whole. Instead of AA'ing with shortbow, you could have potentially turned the gank on the thief which was attacking your thief to get the immediate +1 and kill their decapper without having to move. At 9:30 when the enemy team collapsed and won the fight, you ended up getting chased by lingering too long as to try and hold (which thief just simply does not have the capacity to do as a class), and this was nearly a minute of time lost as the enemy team held the point advantage during your allies' respawn timers and maintained a foothold, and while all your cooldowns were burned and unable to kill the enemy thief and decap far while they held 2 and decapped home. The thing about thief is there's very little set-strategy for how to perform on it match-to-match, because the crux of it really is node management and +1'ing. Sometimes this pattern is harshly different game-to-game depending on what your enemies and allies are doing. If your own team is doing really, really well, there's little purpose on trying to hold or decap far when a constant stream of enemies is pouring in from respawn.

TL;DR: Haze offnode more and decap whenever possible rather than trying for full captures. Your entire goal is disruption; the thief is not designed to be a killing machine but rather something hard to lock down that can lay some quick damage in to turn the table on a fight and hold an enemy's points offline rather than yours online.

Micro:Your play in terms of raw combat needs improvement on the class itself. Dealing with the DH in video 1 at 2:30 shows you panicked pretty heavily by burning IArrow well-under max range and then Shadowstep after that, then wasted BP twice before tunneling to a point and unnecessarily using HS without checking corners or what was going on behind you, as the enemy daredevil disappeared on map shortly prior. Big thing on thief is resource management. You CAN cast things repeatedly, but it's not always the right move. In this case, you could have gotten ready for the DH pull and shadowstepped during the pull itself to stunbreak it mid-cast and get away while maintaining initiative, or used IArrow twice to get out of range. In the death at 4:30, you stayed too long after losing a bunch of health, and you could have dodged out of the DH traps; you instead walked through the Test of Faith and tried running around while crippled within the SoJ. ISignet also had come up and was available to use its active to both remove conditions and refund an extra dodge even if your endurance wasn't available for a dodge at that moment. Throughout the video, you often let yourself get taken really low on-point from DH traps. Dodging OOC is okay to negate most of the damage, and you can also use shortbow 3 for a smaller evade line to stay on-point. If the enemy thief was smarter on their macro having known their team was better than your team, they'd be rotating into YOU to kill you as to deny decaps, too. Thief is a class which can very much cannibalize meaning it's extremely potent into mirror-matches when played well. If you rotate the decap, +1 the teamfight for an advantage/win, rotate back to cap, and then fringe roam and kill the enemy thief where it's decapping, you effectively win 3 fights in a very limited amount of time while contributing very few resources. Know your skills EXACTLY. Memorize how far they cast without even needing to look at the indicators. Understand relative movespeed differences and leverage Shadow Shot to be a more reliable closer than HS. Blind before securing a spike, either from Shadow Shot, a BlaP/BliP fields, CiS proc, or IArrow.

Don't res teammates on-point during a teamfight like at 6:50 because you're too squishy and can't handle the AOE's, and you never will being a thief. If their thief is downed off-point but also really close to a fight, it's usually best to leave it in downed state and move on. Them trying to deal with downed state not only delays their respawn, but also means if an ally of theirs comes to res, it delays their point capture or teamfight presence as well. Perfect example at 8:40. If they're far away from a fight/allies, obviously best to finish to prevent a res or self-res.

Make sure you double-HS the same BP; the stealth duration stacks up to 5 times via any means, and it's a waste of initiative to use it for just one cast if using it to travel the map, as the enemy will see you by the time you leave point.

Shadow Shot. It's legit what makes D/P as strong as it is, especially other thieves. If they're disengaging, odds are SShot will keep you absolutely glued to them and the blind lasts a long time and prevents a turn-and-burn of their own.

Tl;DR:I'd say start learning combat on the class better. There's too much there to break down in one forum post. Find some groups and other thieves to practice dueling with and maybe even WvW roaming for getting better with faster-speed engagements since you deal and take a lot more damage than in sPvP. Things will seem a lot slower in sPvP after that, letting you put more focus on the nodes and your enemies rather than your own skills and timers. While the node management is what makes the class strong in sPvP, you really can't truly carry without knowing the class's combat limits and how to just downright duel/disrupt other thieves when the moment arises. Force their cooldowns during their traverse or force them to lose a decap while burning relatively little of your own resources, and they suddenly lose all their agency for potentially minutes at a time depending on the state of the map, as they'll be unable to duel you, +1 effectively, nor mirror your decap if your allies can hold.

[Dido.9148]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:I watched the first loss and most of the win. For having started two months ago, it's a good start, so take solace in that you're doing well for being so new.

I'm going to break down game 1. In your win, most of these issues translated, but they didn't actually manifest because your opposing thief played... well... really badly.

Macro:You're staying for fullcaps in most instances you don't need to be. It takes much longer to neutralize a node (decap) than to have it go from neutral to captured. Your goal for nodes is mostly just to set the opposition back and avoid the sustained teamfight rather than fullcapping (decap + cap) and then opting to gank. It's only really when your team is stuck and unable to contest/hold cap anything at all and/or if the enemy team lacks a thief themselves that you should be staying to cap full, so it should really only be done when necessary and your team can't seem to regroup as to pull their sides. You generally seem to know where to be - though game 3 you stayed mid and probably shouldn't have - I'm guessing you've watched some guides and done some homework which is good - but haven't figured out for how long yet. This is emphasized a lot in game 1, since your teammates were also just weaker individually than the opponents since you had double thief. This let you staunch a lot of bleeding, but didn't help you turn the tables that much. In instances where your team is struggling to control home and rotate between it and mid or give up a fight and fullcap far, you need to be just routing the decap to even the point score and then +1'ing a fight quickly. Backstab and heartseeker or shadow shot a few times (it does more damage with targets at half HP than HS, and has an unblockable blind to even up some damage or generate a down, and move on. This is particularly noticeable around the 8:00 mark where you stay to teamfight a point where you already had an advantage, and honestly, contributed very little as a whole. Instead of AA'ing with shortbow, you could have potentially turned the gank on the thief which was attacking your thief to get the immediate +1 and kill their decapper without having to move. At 9:30 when the enemy team collapsed and won the fight, you ended up getting chased by lingering too long as to try and hold (which thief just simply does not have the capacity to do as a class), and this was nearly a minute of time lost as the enemy team held the point advantage during your allies' respawn timers and maintained a foothold, and while all your cooldowns were burned and unable to kill the enemy thief and decap far while they held 2 and decapped home. The thing about thief is there's very little set-strategy for how to perform on it match-to-match, because the crux of it really is node management and +1'ing. Sometimes this pattern is harshly different game-to-game depending on what your enemies and allies are doing. If your own team is doing really, really well, there's little purpose on trying to hold or decap far when a constant stream of enemies is pouring in from respawn.

TL;DR: Haze offnode more and decap whenever possible rather than trying for full captures. Your entire goal is disruption; the thief is not designed to be a killing machine but rather something hard to lock down that can lay some quick damage in to turn the table on a fight and hold an enemy's points offline rather than yours online.

Micro:Your play in terms of raw combat needs improvement on the class itself. Dealing with the DH in video 1 at 2:30 shows you panicked pretty heavily by burning IArrow well-under max range and then Shadowstep after that, then wasted BP twice before tunneling to a point and unnecessarily using HS without checking corners or what was going on behind you, as the enemy daredevil disappeared on map shortly prior. Big thing on thief is resource management. You CAN cast things repeatedly, but it's not always the right move. In this case, you could have gotten ready for the DH pull and shadowstepped during the pull itself to stunbreak it mid-cast and get away while maintaining initiative, or used IArrow twice to get out of range. In the death at 4:30, you stayed too long after losing a bunch of health, and you could have dodged out of the DH traps; you instead walked through the Test of Faith and tried running around while crippled within the SoJ. ISignet also had come up and was available to use its active to both remove conditions and refund an extra dodge even if your endurance wasn't available for a dodge at that moment. Throughout the video, you often let yourself get taken really low on-point from DH traps. Dodging OOC is okay to negate most of the damage, and you can also use shortbow 3 for a smaller evade line to stay on-point. If the enemy thief was smarter on their macro having known their team was better than your team, they'd be rotating into YOU to kill you as to deny decaps, too. Thief is a class which can very much cannibalize meaning it's extremely potent into mirror-matches when played well. If you rotate the decap, +1 the teamfight for an advantage/win, rotate back to cap, and then fringe roam and kill the enemy thief where it's decapping, you effectively win 3 fights in a very limited amount of time while contributing very few resources. Know your skills EXACTLY. Memorize how far they cast without even needing to look at the indicators. Understand relative movespeed differences and leverage Shadow Shot to be a more reliable closer than HS. Blind before securing a spike, either from Shadow Shot, a BlaP/BliP fields, CiS proc, or IArrow.

Don't res teammates on-point during a teamfight like at 6:50 because you're too squishy and can't handle the AOE's, and you never will being a thief. If their thief is downed off-point but also really close to a fight, it's usually best to leave it in downed state and move on. Them trying to deal with downed state not only delays their respawn, but also means if an ally of theirs comes to res, it delays their point capture or teamfight presence as well. Perfect example at 8:40. If they're far away from a fight/allies, obviously best to finish to prevent a res or self-res.

Make sure you double-HS the same BP; the stealth duration stacks up to 5 times via any means, and it's a waste of initiative to use it for just one cast if using it to travel the map, as the enemy will see you by the time you leave point.

Shadow Shot. It's legit what makes D/P as strong as it is, especially other thieves. If they're disengaging, odds are SShot will keep you absolutely glued to them and the blind lasts a long time and prevents a turn-and-burn of their own.

Tl;DR:I'd say start learning combat on the class better. There's too much there to break down in one forum post. Find some groups and other thieves to practice dueling with and maybe even WvW roaming for getting better with faster-speed engagements since you deal and take a lot more damage than in sPvP. Things will seem a lot slower in sPvP after that, letting you put more focus on the nodes and your enemies rather than your own skills and timers. While the node management is what makes the class strong in sPvP, you really can't truly carry without knowing the class's combat limits and how to just downright duel/disrupt other thieves when the moment arises. Force their cooldowns during their traverse or force them to lose a decap while burning relatively little of your own resources, and they suddenly lose all their agency for potentially minutes at a time depending on the state of the map, as they'll be unable to duel you, +1 effectively, nor mirror your decap if your allies can hold.

Wow, this really was an amazing breakdown, thank you for taking the time to do this!

[DeceiverX.8361]

Edited - It takes less time to decap from enemy-owned->neutral than to cap neutral->owned.