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Balance: Thief vs Ranger


Eventine.8024

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I just want to say that I made a Thief tonight and geared it up in Marauder/Valkyrie with Eagle runes. Using a core build with Critical Strikes/Trickery/Deadly Arts and taking Executioner I'm frequently hitting 10k Backstabs and Heartseekers as well as 5 - 7k Shadow Shots. The build I made is here.

Despite how it might sound, I'm not complaining about this. Other classes/builds can also do very high damage and Thief is slightly leaning toward the "not so great" side right now, but still good. I just think some of the people here, and OP especially, need to understand that Thief is still perfectly capable having survivability and doing damage without doing a full zerk gimmick build, you just have to take actual damage related traits. Shadow Arts doesn't give you damage (go figure, it's a defensive tree) and neither does Improvisation (although with like 2 Stolen skills yes, this does add good damage).

I think Thief could use a small boost in some areas, but in general it isn't nearly in as bad a state as some are claiming. I understand I haven't been playing Thief for years so I don't know all the nuances, but it isn't my first time playing it either, and I keep up with balance patches so I don't think what I'm saying is totally uneducated.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

6k backstab @ 4k armor (screenshot)Possible with this build (max. potential is 7k damage at a 4k armor target):

At the base armor of ~2k, this build deals 14k backstabs (I've witnessed these already, they exist!). Add the heartseeker to the typical D/P 5, 2 steal, hit combo and you've got your 20k opener. To make that clear: no prebuilt might, no prebuilt vulnerability! An opener in a 1v1 situation!

No, it does not. Remember, even max glass cannon Deadeye with malicious backstab barely cracked 14k backstabs on squishies
pre-patch
. This build not only has lower damage than that build would have, backstab damage has since been reduced by 25%. This build probably does around 7k backstab on a squishy target, and a fractio nof that on a 4k armour target without nonsense setups.

Did you actually play deadeye pre patch? My average malicious backstab pre patch hit for 17k, enough to one shot most thieves and any glass mesmer, ele, rev or ranger. That was from the old mark>signet>backstab combo so only 1 malice. A 3 malice DJ would hit about the same, you'd get the three malice from mark and precasting spotter's shot before the DJ which also gave fury for no quarter. A pre patch malicious backstab with full malice would hit between 19-26k damage depending on the opponents armor, and that was on full valk with hidden killer so full zerk with no quarter would hit even harder. The highest single hit I have achieved was a 7 malice DJ that hit some poor ele for 31k, that was on a mara/zerk build.

The big differences post patch are;1) While you can still delete a glassy player easily, you now cannot one shot a character that is built to tank. Pre patch you could.2) In order to do more than 10k damage, you must either chain attacks with a CC as I do on power P/D, or build malice and go for a malicious backstab. No more 17k hits from stealth with only half a second's warning.

All of these things are good for the health of the game, no? What has changed the most is the upfront damage when starting combat, and while this is the thief's strongest point it absolutely needed a nerf. Even post patch, I can get 15k DJ's on full malice (so malicious backstab will likely be around this mark too), 8-12k total damage from pistol sneak attack and 7-10k hits on shadow strike (P/D 3), and that's just the damage from the shot, with the stab you're looking closer to 12k max. Deadeye is still far from useless after these changes, it just requires you to play in a totally different way to daredevil, and that's what causes most people to write off the spec as weak. It really isn't.

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@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

6k backstab @ 4k armor (screenshot)Possible with this build (max. potential is 7k damage at a 4k armor target):

At the base armor of ~2k, this build deals 14k backstabs (I've witnessed these already, they exist!). Add the heartseeker to the typical D/P 5, 2 steal, hit combo and you've got your 20k opener. To make that clear: no prebuilt might, no prebuilt vulnerability! An opener in a 1v1 situation!

No, it does not. Remember, even max glass cannon Deadeye with malicious backstab barely cracked 14k backstabs on squishies
pre-patch
. This build not only has lower damage than that build would have, backstab damage has since been reduced by 25%. This build probably does around 7k backstab on a squishy target, and a fractio nof that on a 4k armour target without nonsense setups.

Did you actually play deadeye pre patch? My average malicious backstab pre patch hit for 17k, enough to one shot most thieves and any glass mesmer, ele, rev or ranger. That was from the old mark>signet>backstab combo so only 1 malice. A 3 malice DJ would hit about the same, you'd get the three malice from mark and precasting spotter's shot before the DJ which also gave fury for no quarter. A pre patch malicious backstab with full malice would hit between 19-26k damage depending on the opponents armor, and that was on full valk with hidden killer so full zerk with no quarter would hit even harder. The highest single hit I have achieved was a 7 malice DJ that hit some poor ele for 31k, that was on a mara/zerk build.

I played the kind of class the Deadeye tried to kill. 14k was what Id take at worst. For me to get hit for 17k, Id probably have to have been playing my Mesmer in rare gear. Which, yknow, not the greatest idea for WvW anyway. Also why do you think Zerk would hit harder than Valk? The only difference is that you pick hidden killer over no quarter, which isnt much, especially because youd probably not even have fury by that point after it gets ripped once.

The big differences post patch are;1) While you can still delete a glassy player easily, you now cannot one shot a character that is built to tank. Pre patch you could.2) In order to do more than 10k damage, you must either chain attacks with a CC as I do on power P/D, or build malice and go for a malicious backstab. No more 17k hits from stealth with only half a second's warning.

The big differences is that damage got reduced from multiple angles. You couldnt oneshot a character that was built as a tank. In fact, you couldnt oneshot anything but squishies. Thats why permastealth one-shot MBS memes was, well, a meme build. It killed squishies and failed miserably against anyone else. It was a very bad build. Frustrating, yes. Unhealthy, certainly. But bad.

All of these things are good for the health of the game, no? What has changed the most is the upfront damage when starting combat, and while this is the thief's strongest point it absolutely needed a nerf. Even post patch, I can get 15k DJ's on full malice (so malicious backstab will likely be around this mark too), 8-12k total damage from pistol sneak attack and 7-10k hits on shadow strike (P/D 3), and that's just the damage from the shot, with the stab you're looking closer to 12k max. Deadeye is still far from useless after these changes, it just requires you to play in a totally different way to daredevil, and that's what causes most people to write off the spec as weak. It really isn't.

Yes, and no. While the MBS one-shot meme build was a meme and not a balance issue, it was incredibly frustrating and unhealthy, and needed to go. What I disagree with is how they went about doing it. By lowering damage across the board, now thief just doesnt really do damage unless you go for crit strikes, in which case you do damage ... until the enemy hits you once and all your modifiers turn off. Which is why crit strikes isnt viable outside of Rifle (which has other issues). Thieves damage now is jut too low to be a threat to a decent player. You wont get 8-12k hits from sneak attack or 7-10k hits from shadow strike (or anywhere near either of those) unless youre hitting a rare gear necro. With a non-CS build (CS is unplayable) against a normal enemy, the former will hit for around 3.8k, the latter for 4k.

Deadeye actually does reasonable damage, its issue is that its too easily killed and the damage too easily avoided. Sure you get a bunch of skirmishers shot, but you cant reset your malice without hitting DJ. And DJ never hits. So once your initial barrage fails to kill the enemy (which it will), youre just kinda screwed. Worse yet if the enemy can prevent the initiative reset. People are correct to write off the spec as weak or useless (even as someone who sometimes plays it in WvW because thief is my PvE character I can see its both of those), even if their reasoning may be incorrect.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

6k backstab @ 4k armor (screenshot)Possible with this build (max. potential is 7k damage at a 4k armor target):

At the base armor of ~2k, this build deals 14k backstabs (I've witnessed these already, they exist!). Add the heartseeker to the typical D/P 5, 2 steal, hit combo and you've got your 20k opener. To make that clear: no prebuilt might, no prebuilt vulnerability! An opener in a 1v1 situation!

No, it does not. Remember, even max glass cannon Deadeye with malicious backstab barely cracked 14k backstabs on squishies
pre-patch
. This build not only has lower damage than that build would have, backstab damage has since been reduced by 25%. This build probably does around 7k backstab on a squishy target, and a fractio nof that on a 4k armour target without nonsense setups.

Did you actually play deadeye pre patch? My average malicious backstab pre patch hit for 17k, enough to one shot most thieves and any glass mesmer, ele, rev or ranger. That was from the old mark>signet>backstab combo so only 1 malice. A 3 malice DJ would hit about the same, you'd get the three malice from mark and precasting spotter's shot before the DJ which also gave fury for no quarter. A pre patch malicious backstab with full malice would hit between 19-26k damage depending on the opponents armor, and that was on full valk with hidden killer so full zerk with no quarter would hit even harder. The highest single hit I have achieved was a 7 malice DJ that hit some poor ele for 31k, that was on a mara/zerk build.

I played the kind of class the Deadeye tried to kill. 14k was what Id take at worst. For me to get hit for 17k, Id probably have to have been playing my Mesmer in rare gear. Which, yknow, not the greatest idea for WvW anyway. Also why do you think Zerk would hit harder than Valk? The only difference is that you pick hidden killer over no quarter, which isnt much, especially because youd probably not even have fury by that point after it gets ripped once.

Well, all I can say is that your build was not fully optimised for damage, because the numbers I've quoted were the average experience if you built for it. These damage numbers were from builds with full ascended/legendary gear, full WvW power infusions, using a writ of masterful strength and using bloodlust & night sigils to boost damage further. The damage also depended on if you managed to burst while the 10 might from M7 was still active.

Zerker hits harder than valk partially because of No Quarter, but also because of Practiced Tolerance converting precision into ferocity, something that valk doesn't make good use of. Full valk with scholar runes and CS 321 will give you 241% crit damage, full zerk gives you 251% crit damage because of the precision. This becomes 267% crit damage when taking No Quarter. Add impact & severance sigils with binding shadow for an interrupt and you can probably see how you will be dealing far more damage on zerk than you would on valk.

Spotter's shot gives you fury on hit as well as immobilising the enemy, so that on top of Unrelenting Strikes and the fury from M7 gives you as much fury as you want in a rifle build. Valk is more reliable when bursting from stealth because of Hidden Killer, that plus the health boost makes it preferable if you want to deal the best damage with dagger. Taking Hidden Killer over No Quarter means fury access is irrelevant, so it's a trade off depending on whether you're building for rifle or for dagger based bursts.

The big differences post patch are;1) While you can still delete a glassy player easily, you now cannot one shot a character that is built to tank. Pre patch you could.2) In order to do more than 10k damage, you must either chain attacks with a CC as I do on power P/D, or build malice and go for a malicious backstab. No more 17k hits from stealth with only half a second's warning.

The big differences is that damage got reduced from multiple angles. You couldnt oneshot a character that was built as a tank. In fact, you couldnt oneshot anything but squishies. Thats why permastealth one-shot MBS memes was, well, a meme build. It killed squishies and failed miserably against anyone else. It was a very bad build. Frustrating, yes. Unhealthy, certainly. But bad.

You could one shot a tanky build like a trailblazer mirage pre patch, but you would have to build malice with rifle and go for the backstab. It's not a one shot from stealth by that point though as the enemy will be fully aware of your presence, so I concede that point at least.

All of these things are good for the health of the game, no? What has changed the most is the upfront damage when starting combat, and while this is the thief's strongest point it absolutely needed a nerf. Even post patch, I can get 15k DJ's on full malice (so malicious backstab will likely be around this mark too), 8-12k total damage from pistol sneak attack and 7-10k hits on shadow strike (P/D 3), and that's just the damage from the shot, with the stab you're looking closer to 12k max. Deadeye is still far from useless after these changes, it just requires you to play in a totally different way to daredevil, and that's what causes most people to write off the spec as weak. It really isn't.

Yes, and no. While the MBS one-shot meme build was a meme and not a balance issue, it was incredibly frustrating and unhealthy, and needed to go. What I disagree with is how they went about doing it. By lowering damage across the board, now thief just doesnt really do damage unless you go for crit strikes, in which case you do damage ... until the enemy hits you once and all your modifiers turn off. Which is why crit strikes isnt viable outside of Rifle (which has other issues). Thieves damage now is jut too low to be a threat to a decent player. You wont get 8-12k hits from sneak attack or 7-10k hits from shadow strike (or anywhere
near
either of those) unless youre hitting a rare gear necro. With a non-CS build (CS is unplayable) against a normal enemy, the former will hit for around 3.8k, the latter for 4k.

All I can tell you is to try it. I get those kind of hits hits on reapers, revenants, eles, rangers, thieves, warriors, anything that traditionally builds zerk or marauder. I actually one shot an ele not long back just from the pistol sneak attack, that did 12.5k damage across the 5 hits. Yes, you're not going to one shot a tanky build post patch, but you can sure rip a chunk of health off them if you choose to, and frankly I think that's a lot more balanced than it was given that if someone is tanky enough to shrug off my burst, odds are they can't chase me down and kill me either. Before the Feb balance patch, I have been hit for 20k vaults and backstabs from daredevil with no warning, so yes, I would actually consider the universal damage decrease a good thing.

Deadeye actually does reasonable damage, its issue is that its too easily killed and the damage too easily avoided. Sure you get a bunch of skirmishers shot, but you cant reset your malice without hitting DJ. And DJ never hits. So once your initial barrage fails to kill the enemy (which it will), youre just kinda screwed. Worse yet if the enemy can prevent the initiative reset. People are correct to write off the spec as weak or useless (even as someone who sometimes plays it in WvW because thief is my PvE character I can see its both of those), even if their reasoning may be incorrect.

Like I say, I use power P/D for the burst on my glass CS build. This has two benefits; firstly, the burst on P/D builds malice that allows me to have a second spike with DJ after they blow defensives to survive the first burst. Second, the pistol sneak attack allows for much easier malice resets as it's harder to avoid the pistol sneak attack than it is a DJ, but that is also irrelevant as I'm currently using BQoBK over M7. Yes, it is easily killed, but I am building to deal the maximum damage in a short burst (hence not taking M7), if I target something I aim to kill it before it's friends can help. If I wanted to skirmish, I'd build with Hidden Killer in CS, take M7 for the initiative, and take soldier gear instead of zerk to get a decent defence along with similar damage to a marauder build. Or take my celestial build and troll the hell out of everyone.

TLDR; if you just stick to marauder gear, standard weapon sets and standard traits, yes, thief damage might feel underwhelming. You now need to invest into damage lines like CS or DA, sacrificing utility to get the really big hits, and that IMO is a good thing for the class as it makes more viable builds, depending on purpose.

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@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

6k backstab @ 4k armor (screenshot)Possible with this build (max. potential is 7k damage at a 4k armor target):

At the base armor of ~2k, this build deals 14k backstabs (I've witnessed these already, they exist!). Add the heartseeker to the typical D/P 5, 2 steal, hit combo and you've got your 20k opener. To make that clear: no prebuilt might, no prebuilt vulnerability! An opener in a 1v1 situation!

No, it does not. Remember, even max glass cannon Deadeye with malicious backstab barely cracked 14k backstabs on squishies
pre-patch
. This build not only has lower damage than that build would have, backstab damage has since been reduced by 25%. This build probably does around 7k backstab on a squishy target, and a fractio nof that on a 4k armour target without nonsense setups.

Did you actually play deadeye pre patch? My average malicious backstab pre patch hit for 17k, enough to one shot most thieves and any glass mesmer, ele, rev or ranger. That was from the old mark>signet>backstab combo so only 1 malice. A 3 malice DJ would hit about the same, you'd get the three malice from mark and precasting spotter's shot before the DJ which also gave fury for no quarter. A pre patch malicious backstab with full malice would hit between 19-26k damage depending on the opponents armor, and that was on full valk with hidden killer so full zerk with no quarter would hit even harder. The highest single hit I have achieved was a 7 malice DJ that hit some poor ele for 31k, that was on a mara/zerk build.

I played the kind of class the Deadeye tried to kill. 14k was what Id take at worst. For me to get hit for 17k, Id probably have to have been playing my Mesmer in rare gear. Which, yknow, not the greatest idea for WvW anyway. Also why do you think Zerk would hit harder than Valk? The only difference is that you pick hidden killer over no quarter, which isnt much, especially because youd probably not even have fury by that point after it gets ripped once.

Well, all I can say is that your build was not fully optimised for damage, because the numbers I've quoted were the average experience if you built for it. These damage numbers were from builds with full ascended/legendary gear, full WvW power infusions, using a writ of masterful strength and using bloodlust & night sigils to boost damage further. The damage also depended on if you managed to burst while the 10 might from M7 was still active.

I was the one being hit, not the one doing the hitting. Im not big on that playstyle. And yeah, unless youre suggesting every enemy I met wasnt optimised, I gotta disagree, because I was not hit that hard. Or even remotely. The 10 might might explain it, because there is no way to have 10 might for an out of stealth oneshot.

Zerker hits harder than valk partially because of No Quarter, but also because of Practiced Tolerance converting precision into ferocity, something that valk doesn't make good use of. Full valk with scholar runes and CS 321 will give you 241% crit damage, full zerk gives you 251% crit damage because of the precision. This becomes 267% crit damage when taking No Quarter. Add impact & severance sigils with binding shadow for an interrupt and you can probably see how you will be dealing far more damage on zerk than you would on valk.

Oh. Yeah thats a good point actually. Its not the biggest increase, but it does matter. Something like, relative to zerkers, an extra 4% or so?

Spotter's shot gives you fury on hit as well as immobilising the enemy, so that on top of Unrelenting Strikes and the fury from M7 gives you as much fury as you want in a rifle build. Valk is more reliable when bursting from stealth because of Hidden Killer, that plus the health boost makes it preferable if you want to deal the best damage with dagger. Taking Hidden Killer over No Quarter means fury access is irrelevant, so it's a trade off depending on whether you're building for rifle or for dagger based bursts.

You dont want to use spotters shot though. Its bad. Its slower and does half the damage of skirmishers shot. It also forces you to kneel, which is really bad. You just dont use it.

The big differences post patch are;1) While you can still delete a glassy player easily, you now cannot one shot a character that is built to tank. Pre patch you could.2) In order to do more than 10k damage, you must either chain attacks with a CC as I do on power P/D, or build malice and go for a malicious backstab. No more 17k hits from stealth with only half a second's warning.

The big differences is that damage got reduced from multiple angles. You couldnt oneshot a character that was built as a tank. In fact, you couldnt oneshot anything but squishies. Thats why permastealth one-shot MBS memes was, well, a meme build. It killed squishies and failed miserably against anyone else. It was a very bad build. Frustrating, yes. Unhealthy, certainly. But bad.

You could one shot a tanky build like a trailblazer mirage pre patch, but you would have to build malice with rifle and go for the backstab. It's not a one shot from stealth by that point though as the enemy will be fully aware of your presence, so I concede that point at least.

Oh yeah if were talking malicious backstab at max malice with all the multipliers inexplicably still active, its probably possible. I question what the hell the Mesmer was doing then though.

All of these things are good for the health of the game, no? What has changed the most is the upfront damage when starting combat, and while this is the thief's strongest point it absolutely needed a nerf. Even post patch, I can get 15k DJ's on full malice (so malicious backstab will likely be around this mark too), 8-12k total damage from pistol sneak attack and 7-10k hits on shadow strike (P/D 3), and that's just the damage from the shot, with the stab you're looking closer to 12k max. Deadeye is still far from useless after these changes, it just requires you to play in a totally different way to daredevil, and that's what causes most people to write off the spec as weak. It really isn't.

Yes, and no. While the MBS one-shot meme build was a meme and not a balance issue, it was incredibly frustrating and unhealthy, and needed to go. What I disagree with is how they went about doing it. By lowering damage across the board, now thief just doesnt really do damage unless you go for crit strikes, in which case you do damage ... until the enemy hits you once and all your modifiers turn off. Which is why crit strikes isnt viable outside of Rifle (which has other issues). Thieves damage now is jut too low to be a threat to a decent player. You wont get 8-12k hits from sneak attack or 7-10k hits from shadow strike (or anywhere
near
either of those) unless youre hitting a rare gear necro. With a non-CS build (CS is unplayable) against a normal enemy, the former will hit for around 3.8k, the latter for 4k.

All I can tell you is to try it. I get those kind of hits hits on reapers, revenants, eles, rangers, thieves, warriors, anything that traditionally builds zerk or marauder. I actually one shot an ele not long back just from the pistol sneak attack, that did 12.5k damage across the 5 hits. Yes, you're not going to one shot a tanky build post patch, but you can sure rip a chunk of health off them if you choose to, and frankly I think that's a lot more balanced than it was given that if someone is tanky enough to shrug off my burst, odds are they can't chase me down and kill me either. Before the Feb balance patch, I have been hit for 20k vaults and backstabs from daredevil with no warning, so yes, I would actually consider the universal damage decrease a good thing.

I mean, I play Deadeye occasionally. With Crit Strikes. Even Max Malice DJ rarely hits above 12k, let alone the 19k itd have to do if your sneak attack did 12.5k. And 20k vaults are extremely impossible.

Deadeye actually does reasonable damage, its issue is that its too easily killed and the damage too easily avoided. Sure you get a bunch of skirmishers shot, but you cant reset your malice without hitting DJ. And DJ
never
hits. So once your initial barrage fails to kill the enemy (which it will), youre just kinda screwed. Worse yet if the enemy can prevent the initiative reset. People are correct to write off the spec as weak or useless (even as someone who sometimes plays it in WvW because thief is my PvE character I can see its both of those), even if their reasoning may be incorrect.

Like I say, I use power P/D for the burst on my glass CS build. This has two benefits; firstly, the burst on P/D builds malice that allows me to have a second spike with DJ after they blow defensives to survive the first burst. Second, the pistol sneak attack allows for much easier malice resets as it's harder to avoid the pistol sneak attack than it is a DJ, but that is also irrelevant as I'm currently using BQoBK over M7. Yes, it is easily killed, but I am building to deal the maximum damage in a short burst (hence not taking M7), if I target something I aim to kill it before it's friends can help. If I wanted to skirmish, I'd build with Hidden Killer in CS, take M7 for the initiative, and take soldier gear instead of zerk to get a decent defence along with similar damage to a marauder build. Or take my celestial build and troll the hell out of everyone.

Hm, thats actually a thought. If it werent for the fact that pistol doesnt have anything good to dump initiative into, its easy resets would make it a decent M7 spammer. Its a shame they nerfed unload into complete unviability. Anyway, your build should still fail to burst hard at all against properly geared players, and fail to 1v1 as your damage modifiers are quickly turned off one by one. You dont kill, and you might well die.

TLDR; if you just stick to marauder gear, standard weapon sets and standard traits, yes, thief damage might feel underwhelming. You now need to invest into damage lines like CS or DA, sacrificing utility to get the really big hits, and that IMO is a good thing for the class as it makes more viable builds, depending on purpose.

I play Zerker Crit Strikes DE sometimes (its my PvE character and I got the gear anyway). The damage is still underwhelming against a good player who knows that you can dodge DJ. Or avoid my skirmishers shot. And thats the highest damage potential. Anything below that does even worse damage. Its just not good, thats why when people complain about thief, they say that thief is annoying, not threatening.

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@UNOwen.7132 said:

6k backstab @ 4k armor (screenshot)Possible with this build (max. potential is 7k damage at a 4k armor target):

At the base armor of ~2k, this build deals 14k backstabs (I've witnessed these already, they exist!). Add the heartseeker to the typical D/P 5, 2 steal, hit combo and you've got your 20k opener. To make that clear: no prebuilt might, no prebuilt vulnerability! An opener in a 1v1 situation!

No, it does not. Remember, even max glass cannon Deadeye with malicious backstab barely cracked 14k backstabs on squishies
pre-patch
. This build not only has lower damage than that build would have, backstab damage has since been reduced by 25%. This build probably does around 7k backstab on a squishy target, and a fractio nof that on a 4k armour target without nonsense setups.

Did you actually play deadeye pre patch? My average malicious backstab pre patch hit for 17k, enough to one shot most thieves and any glass mesmer, ele, rev or ranger. That was from the old mark>signet>backstab combo so only 1 malice. A 3 malice DJ would hit about the same, you'd get the three malice from mark and precasting spotter's shot before the DJ which also gave fury for no quarter. A pre patch malicious backstab with full malice would hit between 19-26k damage depending on the opponents armor, and that was on full valk with hidden killer so full zerk with no quarter would hit even harder. The highest single hit I have achieved was a 7 malice DJ that hit some poor ele for 31k, that was on a mara/zerk build.

I played the kind of class the Deadeye tried to kill. 14k was what Id take at worst. For me to get hit for 17k, Id probably have to have been playing my Mesmer in rare gear. Which, yknow, not the greatest idea for WvW anyway. Also why do you think Zerk would hit harder than Valk? The only difference is that you pick hidden killer over no quarter, which isnt much, especially because youd probably not even have fury by that point after it gets ripped once.

Well, all I can say is that your build was not fully optimised for damage, because the numbers I've quoted were the average experience if you built for it. These damage numbers were from builds with full ascended/legendary gear, full WvW power infusions, using a writ of masterful strength and using bloodlust & night sigils to boost damage further. The damage also depended on if you managed to burst while the 10 might from M7 was still active.

I was the one being hit, not the one doing the hitting. Im not big on that playstyle. And yeah, unless youre suggesting every enemy I met wasnt optimised, I gotta disagree, because I was not hit that hard. Or even remotely. The 10 might might explain it, because there is no way to have 10 might for an out of stealth oneshot.

Sorry, I keep forgetting that you don't play thief as a main haha. The thing is, you might be running a build that is not the average insert profession here build, so if you play more tanky than the average player you will have a systemic bias in one direction based on that. And yeah, I am describing hits from builds that are optimised for particular attacks. If someone is playing a more rounded build, you'd expect the damage to be lower as a result.

Zerker hits harder than valk partially because of No Quarter, but also because of Practiced Tolerance converting precision into ferocity, something that valk doesn't make good use of. Full valk with scholar runes and CS 321 will give you 241% crit damage, full zerk gives you 251% crit damage because of the precision. This becomes 267% crit damage when taking No Quarter. Add impact & severance sigils with binding shadow for an interrupt and you can probably see how you will be dealing far more damage on zerk than you would on valk.

Oh. Yeah thats a good point actually. Its not the biggest increase, but it does matter. Something like, relative to zerkers, an extra 4% or so?

I'm not actually sure how much damage it adds overall, but given that damage % modifiers like scholar runes, force/night/impact sigil and traits all stack multiplicatively and given the fact DJ and malicious backstab have such high damage numbers, even a relatively small % damage increase can add 1-2k to the strike. More so pre patch, where the numbers were even higher.

Spotter's shot gives you fury on hit as well as immobilising the enemy, so that on top of Unrelenting Strikes and the fury from M7 gives you as much fury as you want in a rifle build. Valk is more reliable when bursting from stealth because of Hidden Killer, that plus the health boost makes it preferable if you want to deal the best damage with dagger. Taking Hidden Killer over No Quarter means fury access is irrelevant, so it's a trade off depending on whether you're building for rifle or for dagger based bursts.

You dont want to use spotters shot though. Its bad. Its slower and does half the damage of skirmishers shot. It also forces you to kneel, which is really bad. You just dont use it.

Depends how you use it. I was using one spotter's shot to set up the DJ with a fury proc and an immob on the target, thet damage was nice (seen it hit 7k pre patch) but it was secondary to the 17k DJ it allowed me to hit. Also, it actually does more damage per hit but less damage over time, so again, how good it is it depends on what the goal is. If I just want to damage down something quickly I'd use skirmisher's shot, but in the context of using the skill once before a DJ, spotter's shot is better.

As for kneel, because of the flight time of DJ, by the time it hits/misses I am already going to be halfway through the self reveal applied at the beginning of the skill. Add to that the fact that stealth from Silent Scope is applied at the end of the dodge (meaning I can dodge just under 0.5s before reveal expires and still stealth at the end of the dodge), then add to that the dodge from the other player, and you have less time being vulnerable than you might think from the 3s reveal timer. Yeah, kneel is a risk, but used wisely it is still useful.

The big differences post patch are;1) While you can still delete a glassy player easily, you now cannot one shot a character that is built to tank. Pre patch you could.2) In order to do more than 10k damage, you must either chain attacks with a CC as I do on power P/D, or build malice and go for a malicious backstab. No more 17k hits from stealth with only half a second's warning.

The big differences is that damage got reduced from multiple angles. You couldnt oneshot a character that was built as a tank. In fact, you couldnt oneshot anything but squishies. Thats why permastealth one-shot MBS memes was, well, a meme build. It killed squishies and failed miserably against anyone else. It was a very bad build. Frustrating, yes. Unhealthy, certainly. But bad.

You could one shot a tanky build like a trailblazer mirage pre patch, but you would have to build malice with rifle and go for the backstab. It's not a one shot from stealth by that point though as the enemy will be fully aware of your presence, so I concede that point at least.

Oh yeah if were talking malicious backstab at max malice with all the multipliers inexplicably still active, its probably possible. I question what the hell the Mesmer was doing then though.

The mesmer I had in mind actually played excellently through the whole fight, he was a total pain in the butt to build malice against and I backstabbed into distortion several times before eventually landing it. Unfortunately for him, when it did land it did 25k damage, so it ended the fight there and then. He whispered me afterwards and was pretty cool about it despite being frustrated initially haha.

All of these things are good for the health of the game, no? What has changed the most is the upfront damage when starting combat, and while this is the thief's strongest point it absolutely needed a nerf. Even post patch, I can get 15k DJ's on full malice (so malicious backstab will likely be around this mark too), 8-12k total damage from pistol sneak attack and 7-10k hits on shadow strike (P/D 3), and that's just the damage from the shot, with the stab you're looking closer to 12k max. Deadeye is still far from useless after these changes, it just requires you to play in a totally different way to daredevil, and that's what causes most people to write off the spec as weak. It really isn't.

Yes, and no. While the MBS one-shot meme build was a meme and not a balance issue, it was incredibly frustrating and unhealthy, and needed to go. What I disagree with is how they went about doing it. By lowering damage across the board, now thief just doesnt really do damage unless you go for crit strikes, in which case you do damage ... until the enemy hits you once and all your modifiers turn off. Which is why crit strikes isnt viable outside of Rifle (which has other issues). Thieves damage now is jut too low to be a threat to a decent player. You wont get 8-12k hits from sneak attack or 7-10k hits from shadow strike (or anywhere
near
either of those) unless youre hitting a rare gear necro. With a non-CS build (CS is unplayable) against a normal enemy, the former will hit for around 3.8k, the latter for 4k.

All I can tell you is to try it. I get those kind of hits hits on reapers, revenants, eles, rangers, thieves, warriors, anything that traditionally builds zerk or marauder. I actually one shot an ele not long back just from the pistol sneak attack, that did 12.5k damage across the 5 hits. Yes, you're not going to one shot a tanky build post patch, but you can sure rip a chunk of health off them if you choose to, and frankly I think that's a lot more balanced than it was given that if someone is tanky enough to shrug off my burst, odds are they can't chase me down and kill me either. Before the Feb balance patch, I have been hit for 20k vaults and backstabs from daredevil with no warning, so yes, I would actually consider the universal damage decrease a good thing.

I mean, I play Deadeye occasionally. With Crit Strikes. Even Max Malice DJ rarely hits above 12k, let alone the 19k itd have to do if your sneak attack did 12.5k. And 20k vaults are extremely impossible.

Yeah, DJ is one of the hardest hitting single strikes, but it's not always the hardest hitting single skill. Pistol sneak attack will do that 8-12k damage regardless of malice on my build because it's based on the power multiplier, not malice, so while I do have to follow it with a shadow strike (P/D 3) and sometimes repeater (rollover skill for P/D 3) to get the kill, if you set it up with a binding shadow knockdown you'd be surprised how effective it actually is. This is my build, if you're interested;http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAQpjlFwgYbMLmJW2O/vSA-zVZYBhZF0nYUvALmmSgwigMLqaDheDUbPAB83SVKYA-w

As for the vault damage, yeah, I'm talking pre february patch for those numbers. I used to be able to get 10-12k pretty easily on a balanced build back then, and even now it can hit for 6-7k on a balanced build so you'd be surprised how much it could actually do.

Deadeye actually does reasonable damage, its issue is that its too easily killed and the damage too easily avoided. Sure you get a bunch of skirmishers shot, but you cant reset your malice without hitting DJ. And DJ
never
hits. So once your initial barrage fails to kill the enemy (which it will), youre just kinda screwed. Worse yet if the enemy can prevent the initiative reset. People are correct to write off the spec as weak or useless (even as someone who sometimes plays it in WvW because thief is my PvE character I can see its both of those), even if their reasoning may be incorrect.

Like I say, I use power P/D for the burst on my glass CS build. This has two benefits; firstly, the burst on P/D builds malice that allows me to have a second spike with DJ after they blow defensives to survive the first burst. Second, the pistol sneak attack allows for much easier malice resets as it's harder to avoid the pistol sneak attack than it is a DJ, but that is also irrelevant as I'm currently using BQoBK over M7. Yes, it is easily killed, but I am building to deal the maximum damage in a short burst (hence not taking M7), if I target something I aim to kill it before it's friends can help. If I wanted to skirmish, I'd build with Hidden Killer in CS, take M7 for the initiative, and take soldier gear instead of zerk to get a decent defence along with similar damage to a marauder build. Or take my celestial build and troll the hell out of everyone.

Hm, thats actually a thought. If it werent for the fact that pistol doesnt have anything good to dump initiative into, its easy resets would make it a decent M7 spammer. Its a shame they nerfed unload into complete unviability. Anyway, your build should still fail to burst hard at all against properly geared players, and fail to 1v1 as your damage modifiers are quickly turned off one by one. You dont kill, and you might well die.

That's why I use P/D over P/P; repeater is actually really, really good damage for what it is and a very cheap way to build malice. As for the build, I'd just say try it and see. It's probably pretty obvious, but you want to mark>binding shadow>pistol sneak attack>shadow strike>repeater. Engaging like this means by the time the enemy has recovered (if they don't die before the first repeater, you'd be surprised the damage the combo does) you can dodge, swap weapon mid dodge to rifle for stealth, port into the enemies' blind spot with shadowstep and DJ, more often than not it will catch them out. Portal is there because it's too good not to, and I swap to a tanky D/P build to apply stealth to set up the initial attack. You have one or two bursts before you need to disengage, and enemies with plenty of reflects will just /laugh, but every build has downsides, and I'm fine with these ones given the potential damage it can do.

TLDR; if you just stick to marauder gear, standard weapon sets and standard traits, yes, thief damage might feel underwhelming. You now need to invest into damage lines like CS or DA, sacrificing utility to get the really big hits, and that IMO is a good thing for the class as it makes more viable builds, depending on purpose.

I play Zerker Crit Strikes DE sometimes (its my PvE character and I got the gear anyway). The damage is still underwhelming against a good player who knows that you can dodge DJ. Or avoid my skirmishers shot. And thats the highest damage potential. Anything below that does even worse damage. Its just not good, thats why when people complain about thief, they say that thief is annoying, not threatening.

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@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

6k backstab @ 4k armor (screenshot)Possible with this build (max. potential is 7k damage at a 4k armor target):

At the base armor of ~2k, this build deals 14k backstabs (I've witnessed these already, they exist!). Add the heartseeker to the typical D/P 5, 2 steal, hit combo and you've got your 20k opener. To make that clear: no prebuilt might, no prebuilt vulnerability! An opener in a 1v1 situation!

No, it does not. Remember, even max glass cannon Deadeye with malicious backstab barely cracked 14k backstabs on squishies
pre-patch
. This build not only has lower damage than that build would have, backstab damage has since been reduced by 25%. This build probably does around 7k backstab on a squishy target, and a fractio nof that on a 4k armour target without nonsense setups.

Did you actually play deadeye pre patch? My average malicious backstab pre patch hit for 17k, enough to one shot most thieves and any glass mesmer, ele, rev or ranger. That was from the old mark>signet>backstab combo so only 1 malice. A 3 malice DJ would hit about the same, you'd get the three malice from mark and precasting spotter's shot before the DJ which also gave fury for no quarter. A pre patch malicious backstab with full malice would hit between 19-26k damage depending on the opponents armor, and that was on full valk with hidden killer so full zerk with no quarter would hit even harder. The highest single hit I have achieved was a 7 malice DJ that hit some poor ele for 31k, that was on a mara/zerk build.

I played the kind of class the Deadeye tried to kill. 14k was what Id take at worst. For me to get hit for 17k, Id probably have to have been playing my Mesmer in rare gear. Which, yknow, not the greatest idea for WvW anyway. Also why do you think Zerk would hit harder than Valk? The only difference is that you pick hidden killer over no quarter, which isnt much, especially because youd probably not even have fury by that point after it gets ripped once.

Well, all I can say is that your build was not fully optimised for damage, because the numbers I've quoted were the average experience if you built for it. These damage numbers were from builds with full ascended/legendary gear, full WvW power infusions, using a writ of masterful strength and using bloodlust & night sigils to boost damage further. The damage also depended on if you managed to burst while the 10 might from M7 was still active.

I was the one being hit, not the one doing the hitting. Im not big on that playstyle. And yeah, unless youre suggesting every enemy I met wasnt optimised, I gotta disagree, because I was not hit that hard. Or even remotely. The 10 might might explain it, because there is no way to have 10 might for an out of stealth oneshot.

Sorry, I keep forgetting that you don't play thief as a main haha. The thing is, you might be running a build that is not the average
insert profession here
build, so if you play more tanky than the average player you will have a systemic bias in one direction based on that. And yeah, I am describing hits from builds that are optimised for particular attacks. If someone is playing a more rounded build, you'd expect the damage to be lower as a result.

Used to, but long gave up. And eh, I mean I do have some defenses in my Engineer build, but no passive damage reduction I can think of. Elixir E gives protection, but you dont get the elixir effect until after its popped, so it cant affect backstab. Unless I changed something and forgot about it. Not impossible, just seems unlikely.

Zerker hits harder than valk partially because of No Quarter, but also because of Practiced Tolerance converting precision into ferocity, something that valk doesn't make good use of. Full valk with scholar runes and CS 321 will give you 241% crit damage, full zerk gives you 251% crit damage because of the precision. This becomes 267% crit damage when taking No Quarter. Add impact & severance sigils with binding shadow for an interrupt and you can probably see how you will be dealing far more damage on zerk than you would on valk.

Oh. Yeah thats a good point actually. Its not the biggest increase, but it does matter. Something like, relative to zerkers, an extra 4% or so?

I'm not actually sure how much damage it adds overall, but given that damage % modifiers like scholar runes, force/night/impact sigil and traits all stack multiplicatively and given the fact DJ and malicious backstab have such high damage numbers, even a relatively small % damage increase can add 1-2k to the strike. More so pre patch, where the numbers were even higher.

Well, it increases ferocity, so the damage increase is Zerk ferocity/Valk Ferocity -1. I got 4%. Since the rest is multiplicative, you can just re-order them so that ferocity is last, bracket everything else and treat it as constant, so its just that difference. 4% is not nothing, but with 10k damage is 400 damage. So not that big.

Spotter's shot gives you fury on hit as well as immobilising the enemy, so that on top of Unrelenting Strikes and the fury from M7 gives you as much fury as you want in a rifle build. Valk is more reliable when bursting from stealth because of Hidden Killer, that plus the health boost makes it preferable if you want to deal the best damage with dagger. Taking Hidden Killer over No Quarter means fury access is irrelevant, so it's a trade off depending on whether you're building for rifle or for dagger based bursts.

You dont want to use spotters shot though. Its bad. Its slower and does half the damage of skirmishers shot. It also forces you to kneel, which is really bad. You just dont use it.

Depends how you use it. I was using one spotter's shot to set up the DJ with a fury proc and an immob on the target, thet damage was nice (seen it hit 7k pre patch) but it was secondary to the 17k DJ it allowed me to hit. Also, it actually does more damage per hit but less damage over time, so again, how good it is it depends on what the goal is. If I just want to damage down something quickly I'd use skirmisher's shot, but in the context of using the skill once before a DJ, spotter's shot is better.

No it does less damage per hit too. Its 0.4 scaling vs 0.8 scaling, with a 50% longer cast time. Youre probably thinking of the PvE damage number, which is 1.3, but that was always exclusive to PvE.

As for kneel, because of the flight time of DJ, by the time it hits/misses I am already going to be halfway through the self reveal applied at the beginning of the skill. Add to that the fact that stealth from Silent Scope is applied at the end of the dodge (meaning I can dodge just under 0.5s before reveal expires and still stealth at the end of the dodge), then add to that the dodge from the other player, and you have less time being vulnerable than you might think from the 3s reveal timer. Yeah, kneel is a risk, but used wisely it is still useful.

Kneels issue is that kneeling and unkneeling is slow, and there is nothing to be gained from it. Its low damage. Spotters shot is not good enough as a setup, because cleanses (especially for immob) are ubiquitous, and the enemy can still block (Which is also fairly common) or use a non-dodge evade.

The big differences post patch are;1) While you can still delete a glassy player easily, you now cannot one shot a character that is built to tank. Pre patch you could.2) In order to do more than 10k damage, you must either chain attacks with a CC as I do on power P/D, or build malice and go for a malicious backstab. No more 17k hits from stealth with only half a second's warning.

The big differences is that damage got reduced from multiple angles. You couldnt oneshot a character that was built as a tank. In fact, you couldnt oneshot anything but squishies. Thats why permastealth one-shot MBS memes was, well, a meme build. It killed squishies and failed miserably against anyone else. It was a very bad build. Frustrating, yes. Unhealthy, certainly. But bad.

You could one shot a tanky build like a trailblazer mirage pre patch, but you would have to build malice with rifle and go for the backstab. It's not a one shot from stealth by that point though as the enemy will be fully aware of your presence, so I concede that point at least.

Oh yeah if were talking malicious backstab at max malice with all the multipliers inexplicably still active, its probably possible. I question what the hell the Mesmer was doing then though.

The mesmer I had in mind actually played excellently through the whole fight, he was a total pain in the butt to build malice against and I backstabbed into distortion several times before eventually landing it. Unfortunately for him, when it did land it did 25k damage, so it ended the fight there and then. He whispered me afterwards and was pretty cool about it despite being frustrated initially haha.

I meant more that that kinda number relies on the multipliers being active, but just being hit below 90% hp (with that kind of a build not exactly hard) is enough to turn off a bunch of them.

All of these things are good for the health of the game, no? What has changed the most is the upfront damage when starting combat, and while this is the thief's strongest point it absolutely needed a nerf. Even post patch, I can get 15k DJ's on full malice (so malicious backstab will likely be around this mark too), 8-12k total damage from pistol sneak attack and 7-10k hits on shadow strike (P/D 3), and that's just the damage from the shot, with the stab you're looking closer to 12k max. Deadeye is still far from useless after these changes, it just requires you to play in a totally different way to daredevil, and that's what causes most people to write off the spec as weak. It really isn't.

Yes, and no. While the MBS one-shot meme build was a meme and not a balance issue, it was incredibly frustrating and unhealthy, and needed to go. What I disagree with is how they went about doing it. By lowering damage across the board, now thief just doesnt really do damage unless you go for crit strikes, in which case you do damage ... until the enemy hits you once and all your modifiers turn off. Which is why crit strikes isnt viable outside of Rifle (which has other issues). Thieves damage now is jut too low to be a threat to a decent player. You wont get 8-12k hits from sneak attack or 7-10k hits from shadow strike (or anywhere
near
either of those) unless youre hitting a rare gear necro. With a non-CS build (CS is unplayable) against a normal enemy, the former will hit for around 3.8k, the latter for 4k.

All I can tell you is to try it. I get those kind of hits hits on reapers, revenants, eles, rangers, thieves, warriors, anything that traditionally builds zerk or marauder. I actually one shot an ele not long back just from the pistol sneak attack, that did 12.5k damage across the 5 hits. Yes, you're not going to one shot a tanky build post patch, but you can sure rip a chunk of health off them if you choose to, and frankly I think that's a lot more balanced than it was given that if someone is tanky enough to shrug off my burst, odds are they can't chase me down and kill me either. Before the Feb balance patch, I have been hit for 20k vaults and backstabs from daredevil with no warning, so yes, I would actually consider the universal damage decrease a good thing.

I mean, I play Deadeye occasionally. With Crit Strikes. Even Max Malice DJ rarely hits above 12k, let alone the 19k itd have to do if your sneak attack did 12.5k. And 20k vaults are extremely impossible.

Yeah, DJ is one of the hardest hitting single strikes, but it's not always the hardest hitting single skill. Pistol sneak attack will do that 8-12k damage regardless of malice on my build because it's based on the power multiplier, not malice, so while I do have to follow it with a shadow strike (P/D 3) and sometimes repeater (rollover skill for P/D 3) to get the kill, if you set it up with a binding shadow knockdown you'd be surprised how effective it actually is. This is my build, if you're interested;

What I meant is, max malice DJ has a 2.255 scaling, which is just over 50% more than Sneak Attacks 1.5 scaling. So if you managed to hit a 12k sneak attack, that would mean 19k Deaths Judgments are possible. I have yet to get one, even with 25 might off of M7. So unless youre getting flat per hit damage, I dont think its possible.

As for the vault damage, yeah, I'm talking pre february patch for those numbers. I used to be able to get 10-12k pretty easily on a balanced build back then, and even now it can hit for 6-7k on a balanced build so you'd be surprised how much it could actually do.

Even pre-february patch that seems impossible. Vault scaling was below regular backstab, let alone MBS backstab. For it to hit 20k, idk, youd probably need rare gear necro and max vuln/might.

Deadeye actually does reasonable damage, its issue is that its too easily killed and the damage too easily avoided. Sure you get a bunch of skirmishers shot, but you cant reset your malice without hitting DJ. And DJ
never
hits. So once your initial barrage fails to kill the enemy (which it will), youre just kinda screwed. Worse yet if the enemy can prevent the initiative reset. People are correct to write off the spec as weak or useless (even as someone who sometimes plays it in WvW because thief is my PvE character I can see its both of those), even if their reasoning may be incorrect.

Like I say, I use power P/D for the burst on my glass CS build. This has two benefits; firstly, the burst on P/D builds malice that allows me to have a second spike with DJ after they blow defensives to survive the first burst. Second, the pistol sneak attack allows for much easier malice resets as it's harder to avoid the pistol sneak attack than it is a DJ, but that is also irrelevant as I'm currently using BQoBK over M7. Yes, it is easily killed, but I am building to deal the maximum damage in a short burst (hence not taking M7), if I target something I aim to kill it before it's friends can help. If I wanted to skirmish, I'd build with Hidden Killer in CS, take M7 for the initiative, and take soldier gear instead of zerk to get a decent defence along with similar damage to a marauder build. Or take my celestial build and troll the hell out of everyone.

Hm, thats actually a thought. If it werent for the fact that pistol doesnt have anything good to dump initiative into, its easy resets would make it a decent M7 spammer. Its a shame they nerfed unload into complete unviability. Anyway, your build should still fail to burst hard at all against properly geared players, and fail to 1v1 as your damage modifiers are quickly turned off one by one. You dont kill, and you might well die.

That's why I use P/D over P/P; repeater is actually really, really good damage for what it is and a very cheap way to build malice. As for the build, I'd just say try it and see. It's probably pretty obvious, but you want to mark>binding shadow>pistol sneak attack>shadow strike>repeater. Engaging like this means by the time the enemy has recovered (if they don't die before the first repeater, you'd be surprised the damage the combo does) you can dodge, swap weapon mid dodge to rifle for stealth, port into the enemies' blind spot with shadowstep and DJ, more often than not it will catch them out. Portal is there because it's too good not to, and I swap to a tanky D/P build to apply stealth to set up the initial attack. You have one or two bursts before you need to disengage, and enemies with plenty of reflects will just /laugh, but every build has downsides, and I'm fine with these ones given the potential damage it can do.

I can see the logic, though your damage is a lot lower than Unload (but I guess you can use it more often). My other issue is that you have to get into melee to be able to repeater spam in the first place, and without a teleport on steal to get that. Seems too easily punished.

TLDR; if you just stick to marauder gear, standard weapon sets and standard traits, yes, thief damage might feel underwhelming. You now need to invest into damage lines like CS or DA, sacrificing utility to get the really big hits, and that IMO is a good thing for the class as it makes more viable builds, depending on purpose.

I play Zerker Crit Strikes DE sometimes (its my PvE character and I got the gear anyway). The damage is still underwhelming against a good player who knows that you can dodge DJ. Or avoid my skirmishers shot. And thats the highest damage potential. Anything below that does even worse damage. Its just not good, thats why when people complain about thief, they say that thief is annoying, not threatening.
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Most ranger burst roots them to the ground you can ignore their imob as unlike ranger you have shadow step you can use shortbow 5 to outrun essentially every class. Ranger has issue it lose alot of dmg for sustain a death judgement can kill un weary ranger no a druid ranger is weaker as pets is hardly working well as their ai is poor so yes a ranger could burst if you just stand still auto attacking a slb can atleast lb has 2 ok skills rapid fire cant follow very well then you move and you got a projectilr block on rifle in sniper mode . A theif can actually oneshot many classes. Rangers are easy to counter as most play same way . Same or similar builds due to the limits a ranger cant hurt you while moving but you can still teleport faster you also gain movement speed in stealth and can perma stealth wich ranger cant they can max stealth 12 seconds or so if i am not wrong with trapper runes and cele and hunters vs you 30sec stealth and trap rangers wont deal bursts

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The following points to adress:

Ranger has more mobility: Wrong, Thief has the highest number of shadowstep abilities and dodge abilities in the game.

Ranger has more stealth: Wrong , ranger has one stealth ability on LB, one on a porcine pet skill and they can combo finish in one smokefield also geberated by 1 single pet.Thief has a plethora of pure stealth skills and smokefields they can easily combo with. Thief is the only class were perma stealth is possible.

Ranger has more healing: Somewhat true. Druid for sure. Ranger has good sustain in general. But thief has a lot of self heal in shadow arts so they can keep up easily when build right.Ranger has more burst? Depends. Ranger has good and strong burst but also predictable at that. Thief can deal tons of damage from stealth. I would argue they are on oar with eachother but this is something that has to be tested.

LB does autotrack stealth: This is true and should be fixed.

LB is better than riffle at range: Also true. LB is more mobile than riffle and has a higher range if you look at projectile drop off. But this is not a problem with LB but rather riffle. If you balance the riffle capabbilities with the theifs stealth capabbilities it can still outshine a ranger. It is just harder to pull off, but not less potent and has a differnet playstyle than just pewpew from range. It needs setup.

Ranger has 2 small invulnerability skills that can be easily avoided by not plastering your CDs on an invulnerable ranger.

Ranger has a pet: Fantastic observation. It is useless in PvP except the utility it brings. Kill it first (which is pretty easy to do) that forces any soulbeast to merge and prevents them from smokefielding and stealthing.

Ranger has a good amounts of stability yes. Stab that can easily been ripped by boonrip of the thief which is a firect counterplay.

I understand your frustration, but i advice to get more experience with both classes for a better understanding of how to counter each.

Sincerely.

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