Jugglemonkey.8741

Think you might have goofed the build link there. Clicking on it opens Gmail?

Yep, it's a build that's been floating around in some form since the Heart of Thorns expansion, it's quite effective as long as your opponent is aggressive. The point where you're going to find it painful is when you run into an opponent that understands that if they force you to chase them that they have the advantage (your offensive mobility compared to a daredevil running D/P dash is quite low), and if they aren't aggressively spamming skills at you so your evades cleanse you they can time ranged condi application to the end of your dodges to chip you down without triggering your traits. You'll be having more success on it at the moment as you run into a player running this build once in a blue moon, and especially in outnumbered situations people tend to be more aggressive than they should. Not criticising, it's just important to know the limits of a build so you know what to avoid. A good deadeye, condi thief (if they time pistol 2 for the end of your dodges to force you to eat condis) condi immob druid or anything with a lot of immob and a brain to use it well will give you a lot of trouble. Shortbow used to be a good offhand for your daggers before choking gas got bumped up to 6 ini, as impaling lotus is a projectile finisher and choking gas used to spam daze as long as the target had more than 4-5 poison stacks (I forget, was a long time ago now). The main advantage to taking it now would be for downed pressure, choking gas and auto spam will stack poison, bleed and torment on the downed and the guy ressing if you take the torment on interrupt trait. Not much use in a duel but something to be aware of if you're roaming solo. Depending on how much you're weapon swapping in a fight, taking celerity sigil on shortbow/P/D with impact strike (daredevil elite skill) is also a fun way to secure a kill, as the quickness will ensure that the evade from instant reflexes lasts for the duration of the skill, effectively giving you an invuln stomp (not perfect, as some skills will interrupt evade, and the evade runs out a hair before the end of the skill, but I've stomped peeps in the middle of their zerg doing this). Costs you your dagger storm and a sigil slot on your offhand but you can use it every 30s, so again it's a tradeoff. Also bear in mind that escapist's fortitude has a 1s internal cooldown, so in WvW for a 4s evade the most healing you'll get is 4x150=600 in full trailblazer. The bulk of your healing will be coming from assassin's reward. If you take the signet heal that can be significantly higher because of the bouncing daggers from daggerstorm, but not taking withdraw in WvW for the immob break is usually unwise.

The thing about the meta is that you have to know the purpose that the build was made for. Most meta PvP thief builds aren't duellists, they are +1 builds. Sure, you can duel on it if the other guy doesn't know how to shut you down, but it's primary role is to move between points and to chunk something that's already fighting an ally, either downing it outright or forcing it to burn enough cooldowns that your ally can kill it after you leave. So in that sense it's not surprising that you lost to a tempest, a spec that is typically played as a duellist/support role and that packs a LOT of projectile hate. Thinking about this is important as thief typically has next to no sustain, so you have to control the flow of a fight or you will lose. The other problem with the meta is that everything gets balanced around those builds. I'm not loving the game at the moment as a lot of my off meta builds have recently been patched out of existence through trait and skill reworks. So yeah, you can be more effective in individual matchups by playing off meta, but be prepared to change your build completely after a patch.

I was a male sylvari thief main for nearly 10 years before changing to male charr. Any race can work tbh, my sylvari I was told looked more like a warrior than a thief and my charr looks goofy, I have a fairly silly sense of humor tho so the /surprised etc emotes on male char just fit my personality better. I actually found I was using outfits more often than not on my sylvari which is one of the reasons I wanted to change. Edit: First pic below is my current look, second more armoured looks is a look I've had since vanilla on various charr characters. Like I say, just gotta find something you like and roll with it. https://imgur.com/a/fhmG5mU

For sure, knowing people's builds would help. I've long said that if you're a bad player for bringing a roaming build to a zerg fight, you're also bad for doing the opposite. People keep on taking their group builds into small scale/1v1 and wonder why they get steamrolled tho, you can't balance a class around other people's poor decisions. I don't mind stealth being debated. Honestly I'd be fine with it not existing at all, if things were properly balanced to compensated for the loss. What I have an issue with is the inherent motte-and-bailey fallacy where people say that stealth gameplay is degenerate from the perspective of the one fighting it (which is something I actually agree with), and then using that as justification to propose ONLY thief nerfs. By all means, change how stealth works to make it a healthier mechanic, or rework/remove it entirely. I'd just appreciate it if people stopped using it as a springboard for their personal vendetta and treat all classes that utilise stealth tactics the same way.

Tbh there isn't much point arguing with thief haters. They will justify their tears by saying that stealth is degenerate, then when it's pointed out that engi, ranger and mesmer also have stealth they just complain that thief is a special case because it's designed around it, despite thief not having close to the same one shot burst potential as the other classes. Would people complain about mesmer stealth if thief didn't exist? You can't have your cake and eat it. Stealth is either an issue on everything or it's not an issue at all. Propose changes to ALL stealth on ALL classes because the stealth mechanic itself is degenerate or just admit that you hate thieves and move on already. By the way: nerfing thief stealth access without compensating that by increasing sustain or damage in other areas will just result in MORE of the "run away and wait for cooldowns" behaviour that you find so degenerate. Think about it.

You're not wrong, but I have a feeling that guild wars 3 will come out before that happens.

Did... Did you just say that because thief has initiative, shroud needs to be kept weak? That would be like me saying that necro shroud needs a nerf because it also has skills with cooldowns it can rely on instead. If that sounds daft, we're on the same page.

I've been advocating for critical strikes to give either unblockable or ignore armor for a while now, it's the perfect line to put it in as taking CS for unblockable and trickery for stability/protection strip would force you to either play core or not take shadow arts. Unblockable is obviously strong, ignore armor would be a way of increasing a thief's damage to a tank build without enabling the instagibbing of a zerker build any harder than we already do.

True. Short of reverting a couple expac's worth of changes tho, it's hard to see how we can pin the limbs back on the dying guy lol

What if poison/demon queen relic also reduced barrier application? AFAIK it currently doesn't do this, and given barriers are affected by healing power it would make sense that they're also affected by healing reduction. It also has counterplay unlike the current situation by forcing the support to prioritise cleansing poison, while punishing supports that just spam mindlessly. Edit: just read that barrier isn't affected by outgoing healing modifiers. Might be that this idea is also a can of worms lol xD

See, I don't like this argument because while it's true thief is the stealth archetype, it's not the only class that has stealth. Ranger, engi and mesmer all have stealth, they have decent mobility, decent tankiness when built for it and critically they can all build to one shot people with much higher damage than thief cranks out these days. So what's the difference? Frankly I don't have a problem with this either.

It's too glassy for the present state of the game, for sure. In HoT daredevil was considered unplayable in sPvP on release (I remember people saying reroll or they'll go AFK for that match, it was genuinely that bad) but by the time PoF was released it was considered one of the strongest builds in the meta. Nothing changed with daredevil in this time, in fact it was repeatedly nerfed, but when every other elite spec was nerfed to the same level daredevil found it's place again. At present we have not one expac but two expac's worth of power creep that hasn't been balanced down yet. There's a good chance that specter would be in the right place if the rest of the specs weren't still doing crazy stuff, but at the moment it feels weak because of that. We also have been balanced around one build (D/P daredevil) for so many years that most other options on thief are borderline unplayable. Basically one of two things needs to happen: Either bring all specs down to the old baseline, or accept that this present level is the new baseline and bring thief up in line with it.

I get what you're saying, and I've said myself that a spec should have at best meta damage, mobility or sustain, a combo of two of these but not all three in one build. This argument would have held more weight before willbender and basically all the EoD specs were a thing though. Now that virtually any class seems to have mobility comparable to base thief while retaining their classes' sustain and damage, thief players are starting to wonder why we can't have better damage and sustain too.

Tbh the reason I chose the 25% movement speed was partially that it's always been a pet peeve of mine that we don't have a trait for it and 7/9 other professions do, partially that it would help core thief, and partially it's so innocuous that basically nobody could argue it was too much. The fact that it's a no brainer change makes it much more likely to happen because there are no balance implications whatsoever for a dev to think about. I'm more than happy to hear suggestions for something else tho, just try to keep power creep out of it etc.

We had that once in cursed bullet, if I remember right. Might not remember right.

Hey Devs. If you're reading this, this would be a super easy change that would make a LOT of thief players happy. Change Preparedness from "Increases maximum initiative by 3. Gain increased expertise" to "Increases movement speed by 25%. Gain increased expertise" and just increase the base initiative to 15 already. Effects: Easier for devs to balance weapon ini costs without making trickery required in every build which leads to more choices, more tradeoffs and more fun for thief players. Meta PvP and WvW builds remain unchanged. PvE builds gain the extra 3 ini assuming your're not playing specter, but none of those builds would overperform because of it. Specter can keep the -3 ini penalty if you really want to do that without being locked into trickery. This means you can do interesting things in WvW like make healer builds using shadow arts for group sustain and acrobatics for personal sustain, which in my opinion would make the spec much more viable in WvW zergs (see my sig for similar idea using deadeye). It annoys me that necro is the only other class besides thief that doesn't have 25% move speed as a trait. Yes, I am that guy that plays critical strikes, shadow arts and trickery on core thief. Sure, there could be something "better" here, but this is QoL not power creep, right?

Yeah, I'm not denying any of that. It's just a little off topic when people are discussing how axe pistol 3 needed to be/ended up being changed, since bound wasn't the problem with that. That said, I actually like the interaction it has with sword pistol builds (I might be the only one, I admit) and without redesigning daredevil again I don't see how it would be fixed, as without the leap finisher nobody would take bound outside of PvE.

So does willbender and a bunch of other things that hit harder than thief while being as mobile and tanky asf. Just cause you or I don't like something isn't a reason to nerf it tho, and given bound wasn't even the reason axe pistol got changed it's kinda off topic don't you think? Axe pistol got nerfed/fixed/whatever you want to call it. It was fun while it lasted, they went overboard in fixing it and now it's useless. That's pretty much the end of the thread.

I really miss the old shadestep with old sanctuary runes effect to spread rot wallow venom in a group while focussing on healing, it made plaguedoctor builds at least contribute something to DPS while keeping everyone on their feet though barrier and targeted revives. I haven't really run specter since that was removed, it generally feels a lot weaker and less fun now. There's builds that peeps from EcK have made that work, but it's not the same for me lol.

It's only a luxury to use those tactics when it's a choice. Thief is explicitly designed to rely on those tactics and does not have access to other mechanics that make other tactics possible. When thief can facetank damage like a warrior or necro you'll have a point, but calling a deliberate class design a luxury while ignoring what they don't have is a little rich otherwise.

It's more for me about getting through the actual skills and ensuring I have quickness for impact strike. For context, I'm a solo roamer in WvW and my attack pattern is usually to throw a couple autos while out of range, steal/cloak and dagger, stealth axe point blank, axe 2, axe 3, impact strike chain, so the quickness speeds up the animations between the stealth axe and axe 3 which boosts my survival. Axe 3 and impact strike proc roughly 2s of evade combined, impact strike and relic of the wizard tower gives a bunch of cc and some projectile reflect, and with quickness you get through the whole impact strike chain before the evade finishes. Hence why it feels like willbender with boomerangs, you can play hyper aggressive with forward ports and rely on evades to keep you safe, and you get a faster stomp to boot. That said, this is the best it feels mostly because it apes a build I already played. It has the feel of willbender but it doesn't have the same burst, I feel like I lack damage vs well played condition roamers like mesmer as they can mitigate virtually all my damage if they play right, and some builds can straight up outheal the damage without needing to avoid it. Power feels the best so far, I have yet to try cele but I have a feeling that celestial is not going to work well due to needing deadly arts and deadeye, which means it's going to be slow and super vulnerable to reveal. I'm finding it fun, but when the novelty factor wears off I'm not sure if I'm going to continue playing it. Edit: tested cele. Kinda mixed bag. Can have good damage, or no effect whatsoever.

Yeah, quickness is def a must for axe. On topic, I've been playing this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PayAciVlNwuYbsOWJmSXntSA-DWRYBR3bO4SJsEIzIo1Co3QQqFgA+bpKlNA-w Basically S/D impact strike just with axe over sword. Kinda feels like playing a willbender with boomerangs, but the damage could def be better.

Countering stealth builds? As far as WvW goes I use my minstrel healer deadeye build when moving across the map (link in sig). First defence is to use rifle ports to open distance as soon as they stealth (forcing them to burn more resources to get in damage range) and make sure to dodge gap closers like shadow shot. Dodging drops target and gives ini to fuel more ports, and if I do get caught I use Shadow step and heal. Most thieves have burned everything at this point and give up chasing, engi mostly only one shots if you chase into grenades, power mesmers are rare and the burst easily dodged if you watch for the greatsword 2 projectile and rangers tend to use stealth more defensively than offensively. That's how I'd do it on thief. The real answer is knowing what stealth builds tend to do and knowing your kit well enough to know what you can do to prevent the stealth user from having an easy day.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with anything you're saying here, but I think you're picking the wrong hill to plant your flag. I run minimal stealth on sword builds and have no problem getting out of combat without shadow portal, and it's not lost any of it's functionality as a port by not being a stunbreak (if it's still instant cast, you can still use it while stunned, just like signets etc). Honestly it is debatable whether giving thief a 5 man port was a good idea in the first place, so losing the stunbreak was a fair change.