Someone other than SC \LN give an example or answer to Thief and raids\strikes\etc. (pve)

[Joxer.6024]

Ok, have checked the SC and LN sites for a build over and over and while there is great info to be had from them, the focus really is on speed clearing and such and not so much your casual type person wanting to do raids and such.

One site says X class\build is great and viable while the other will say said same setup sucks for certain Bosses. So where can someone get some consistently in regards to what people are looking for and \or using? 

Wingman offers up some insight as well but figured I would ask here as well. I see that Condi DD is strong  for a lot of encounters from one source, so how true is that? Of the many Streamers I watch I really don't see many Thieves in their groups.  Is this due to the class sucking buttermilk or more just a luck of the draw sort of thing? I see a crapton of Necros, to the point where its almost silly, same with Renegades. So yea, I get those are the hot ticket atm, but what about other builds\classes?

Lots of FB\DH also...seems Thief is just that forgotten child?

And yea, all of this and anything forward may be obsolete in a few months but if I am going to invest the time into a "new" toon I don't want it to be a waste out the gate, like my Rev was (yea ouch, I went there and still don't feel Vindicated!) 😉

So after all this basic question is quite simply can one roll a Thief and not be excluded from half the Raids out the gate? I am looking more at Condi DD or maybe even Condi Deadeye? Power DD while kinda slick feels a tad to simples with the attacks. While I don't what piano lessons I do want to be engaged in some way. 😉

Cheers and yes, I realize a new Elite is comin soon but man, look what has happened so far, so not holding my breath and hopefully will be surprise!!

Edited September 23, 2021 by Joxer.6024

[Infusion.7149]

It's because it doesn't spit out boons for other people so you're "just DPS" as people like to say.

Condi deadeye was 45K before nerfs and condi daredevil you see on SC right now is problematic due to the over the boss leap (see Deimos, Sabetha, Twin Largos, etc.).

See also  https://discretize.eu/builds/thief/condi-deadeye

Quote

The Condi Deadeye is quite a selfish build, that will not provide your party with any form of support. Instead, the value of this build comes almost entirely from the pure damage that it will bring, which is inflated by the Condi Soulbeast's Vulture Stance, on top of Venom Skills which can be precasted on the Mistlock Singularity

 

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

I've always been ad amendment about the raiding community being wierdly worse than WoW (without being as nearly toxic), while most of the raids not being hard enough to justify the behavior.

 

In short.. the builds from SC/LN are largely speed runner builds. Its been proven that their builds are mostly unnecessary. Someone going as far as beating a raid with auto attacks only (not sure how the kitten they managed it) They keyword being mostly. But the community will always hold each other to this "Standard". Rather than how T4 Fractals are often treated, where no one cares and assumes you know what you are doing.

 

If you run your own raids, you won't get kicked out. And you can get by with some really weird builds going. But joining w public one, you can guarantee that you'll get kicked at some point if you don't have another toon.

 

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Zacchary.6183]

1 hour ago, Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

I've always been ad amendment about the raiding community being wierdly worse than WoW (without being as nearly toxic), while most of the raids not being hard enough to justify the behavior.

It may not be "toxic" but what you described is its own form of toxicity.

[DeceiverX.8361]

Almost anything is playable if you play it well. 

The problem is the community at large likes to only defer to optimized builds to get faster loot and skip hard content once the task of raiding becomes mundane, rather than becoming better players, and raids encourage this behavior significantly. 

[Infusion.7149]

19 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Almost anything is playable if you play it well. 

The problem is the community at large likes to only defer to optimized builds to get faster loot and skip hard content once the task of raiding becomes mundane, rather than becoming better players, and raids encourage this behavior significantly. 

Why play the game on hard mode when you can autoattack things to death with 20K+ DPS?

There's no reward for it other than if you are speedclearing for records or something. That is why when PUGing you want the most easy  reliable specs because you don't need to vet people for their ability (and no KP is not ability).

If people were after optimized builds as you say they would not run double healbrand or minstrel chrono ever where there are no splits, we'd have single druid double condi quickness firebrand or seraph firebrands. The majority of fractals are cleared with Healbrand which is why there has been a minor shift to celestial among people that want faster but not high risk clears (cele is ~20K benchmark and is about as robust as minstrel).

In the past week I have had a THREE thousand DPS condi hammer scrapper and a 4K DPS condi weaver (not sure how this is possible), along with a DH that did less than my quickness scrapper. So almost anything is playable is a lie if you care about any performance whatsoever versus being carried.

So how does this tie into the thread? Condi daredevil is reliant on the party for its damage due to venoms. If you don't have a full subgroup the benchmark is 33K as opposed to 40K.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[DeceiverX.8361]

1 minute ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Why play the game on hard mode when you can autoattack things to death with 20K+ DPS?

There's no reward for it other than if you are speedclearing for records or something. That is why when PUGing you want the most easy specs because you don't need to vet people for their ability (and no KP is not ability).

If people were after optimized builds as you say they would not run double healbrand or minstrel chrono ever where there are no splits, we'd have single druid double condi quickness firebrand or seraph firebrands. The majority of fractals are cleared with Healbrand which is why there has been a minor shift to celestial among people that want faster but not high risk clears (cele is ~20K benchmark and is about as robust as minstrel).

In the past week I have had a THREE thousand DPS condi hammer scrapper and a 4K DPS condi weaver (not sure how this is possible), along with a DH that did less than my quickness scrapper. So almost anything is playable is a lie if you care about any performance whatsoever versus being carried.

 

Most of those sites are not flaunted for their pug reliability and the raid community definitely dumps on slower, less-optimized builds.  That's why reaper suddenly went from bad to decent despite having almost 4x as much sustain prior to the DPS buffs they got. 

If those aforementioned players never went down, then your post just agrees with my statement even more.

Fact is those were probably just bad players with numbers that abysmally low, or you'll have to accept they're smart players if they ever went down by playing easy mode builds that focused on reliability than "performance." 

[Infusion.7149]

4 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

 

Most of those sites are not flaunted for their pug reliability and the raid community definitely dumps on slower, less-optimized builds.  That's why reaper suddenly went from bad to decent despite having almost 4x as much sustain prior to the DPS buffs they got. 

If those aforementioned players never went down, then your post just agrees with my statement even more.

Fact is those were probably just bad players with numbers that abysmally low, or you'll have to accept they're smart players if they ever went down by playing easy mode builds that focused on reliability than "performance." 

Reaper doesn't have good DPS unless you have adds because life force drains from incoming damage. It also has minimal support other than boon rip and CC. Also the condi weaver in question never went down and refused to gg, we ended up kicking them out of frustration instead of wasting 20 minutes with that nonsense.

Right now scourge is PUG meta not reaper. The only place you'd run reaper over scourge is KC + CA more or less.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[DeceiverX.8361]

7 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Reaper doesn't have good DPS unless you have adds because life force drains from incoming damage. It also has minimal support other than boon rip and CC. Also the condi weaver in question never went down and refused to gg, we ended up kicking them out of frustration instead of wasting 20 minutes with that nonsense.

Right now scourge is PUG meta not reaper. The only place you'd run reaper over scourge is KC + CA more or less.

Wait so you wiped but the "bad" condi weaver was straight soloing the raid and you decided to kick them rather than wait 20 mins?

If you were all running "bad" condi weaver x10 wouldn't that just indicate the raid might have only taken a few minutes longer to complete and nobody would have died? 

Which was literally my point in the first place and totally contradictory to your own? 

And if you think reaper isn't used in pug raids you're massively mistaken lol.  I'm pretty sure it has the highest play rate.

Because fact is, anything fna beat raids.  Them just not reaching your optimization scheme (PvE has no meta, it's a misnomer and misunderstanding of what a meta game is - it's JUST optimization) is precisely the nonsense I'm point out lol. 

[Infusion.7149]

46 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Wait so you wiped but the "bad" condi weaver was straight soloing the raid and you decided to kick them rather than wait 20 mins?

If you were all running "bad" condi weaver x10 wouldn't that just indicate the raid might have only taken a few minutes longer to complete and nobody would have died? 

Which was literally my point in the first place and totally contradictory to your own? 

And if you think reaper isn't used in pug raids you're massively mistaken lol.  I'm pretty sure it has the highest play rate.

Because fact is, anything fna beat raids.  Them just not reaching your optimization scheme (PvE has no meta, it's a misnomer and misunderstanding of what a meta game is - it's JUST optimization) is precisely the nonsense I'm point out lol. 

Wiped due to gg after failed mechanic.

They had toughness so they were drawing aggro off tank.

Also "soloing the raid" (or fractal even) doing 3K DPS is akin to the ranger that does no damage or support in WVW and thinks they are good because they "survived".

Edited September 23, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Zacchary.6183]

58 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

thinks they are good because they "survived".

Dying isn't an indication of "good" either.

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Dying isn't an indication of "good" either.

If you play fractals you would know that everyone gg just for mistlock. Not sure what you're getting at.

As for the topic , it's quite apparent that boon thief was taken when it was 10 man but nowadays you're more likely to see it only on Matthias (scrapper/healbrand work more or less as well now) because the reliability is lower now because it does not heal.

Edited September 23, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Tails.9372]

8 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

If you play fractals you would know that everyone gg just for mistlock.

Not necessarily, you only get this in higher difficulties but pretty much no one does it in T1.

[Joxer.6024]

12 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

 

In the past week I have had a THREE thousand DPS condi hammer scrapper and a 4K DPS condi weaver (not sure how this is possible), along with a DH that did less than my quickness scrapper. So almost anything is playable is a lie if you care about any performance whatsoever versus being carried.

 

Yea, pretty much why I ask....I do not want to be carried, would like to be able to play well enough to contribute to the group and to me a downed support is more of a loss to the whole than a downed dps. But then again not dying at all is sweet too! 😉

[Joxer.6024]

9 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

If you play fractals you would know that everyone gg just for mistlock. Not sure what you're getting at.

As for the topic , it's quite apparent that boon thief was taken when it was 10 man but nowadays you're more likely to see it only on Matthias (scrapper/healbrand work more or less as well now) because the reliability is lower now because it does not heal.

Cheers for that! thats what i was wondering about...why? Why am I not seeing many Thiefs, and this could explain some of it since they dont mention those factors on those benchmark sites...its all heres your numbers now go!!  😉

[Tails.9372]

56 minutes ago, Joxer.6024 said:

thats what i was wondering about...why? Why am I not seeing many Thiefs

The issue here is A-Nets content design, we have some more selfish specs / classes but they avoid designing content that favors them like the plague. As of right now "selfish classes / builds" only really work out well in solo play and "unorganised low skill environments".

[Tabootrinket.2631]

3 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

The issue here is A-Nets content design, we have some more selfish specs / classes but they avoid designing content that favors them like the plague. As of right now "selfish classes / builds" only really work out well in solo play and "unorganised low skill environments".

I had high hopes back then when they teased the "adventures". 
They turned out to be just forgettable mini-games unrelated to core game.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Tabootrinket.2631

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I've brought my thief to many raid encounters.  There's two big reasons why they aren't taken: lack of boon support and forced movement. 

 

Vale Guardian:  You can't kneel with power deadeye, or else you'll be teleported away or get hit by the red orbs.  Last phase of the fight is pretty mobile.  Using condi DD or power DD is likely to get you hit by the Vale's auto attacks, which will shred a 13k health thief.  Condi Deadeye will get teleported accidentally into red orbs.  No useful utility provided here, aside from good CC.  Overall the Daredevil specs work, but you have to watch yourself.

Gorseval:  All specs work fine here, but be careful with condi DE teleporting you into the wells.  Rifle DE can lock down an illusion with immobilize, as will the venoms you can use, but otherwise thief provides no useful utility.

Sabetha: Avoid Condi DE here, or else you'll draw flak or bombs.  You can make a decent P/P flak kiter build, and everything but Condi DE works fairly well.  Just slow your roll on the flame walls.   You're just a DPS here.

 

Slothosar:  Smoke Screen and Signet of Agility have some use here.  Can't use Deadeye here; not enough room for the condi build to work and too mobile/too many required dodges for the rifle build.  Power DD works fine here, but condi DD has a habit of nicking the friendly slubling with deadly conditions.

Bandit Trio: Too easy to bear mentioning

Matthias:  This boss has Detonate Plasma on a stole skill, so you'll boon your team with it.  Too much required movement for Rifle DE to work here.  Biggest strength for thief is the CC and mobility it provides (as well as signet of agility).  Daredevil specs work best, particularly condi ones.

 

Tower Escort:  There's a fun backwarg build that uses Rifle, and you get Detonate Plasma here on DD.

Keep Construct: Another fight with Detonate Plasma.  Both DD and DE work fine here.  Biggest utility is Scorpion Wire for the soccer phase.

Xera: One of the few fights where you'll want to go with Rifle DE over other specs.  Because Xera is fought on the edge so much, all Daredevil specs have a habit of flinging themselves off a cliff.  You say it won't happen to you, but I keep seeing Thieves plummet to their death here.  Otherwise, thief is fine for this fight.  No particular utility, though.

 

Cairn:  Most daredevil builds will automatically fling themselves into portals or agony.  Condi DE works alright if you don't mind catching the agony portals.  Too much movement required for Rifle.

Mursaat:  Another boss with Detonate Plasma.  This guy is almost a complete golem so nearly anything works... except for Condi DE which will warp itself into dangerous tiles.

Samarog:  There's too much movement for Rifle.  Daredevil specs work perfectly fine.  Just be sure to bring extra CC over the signets.  Condi DE needs to watch itself, since it will frequently warp into spears.

Deimos:  Rifle DE would be my go-to build, since you can camp at a fairly safe distance while maintaining competitive damage.  DD specs have a habit of flinging themselves into the oils, which wipes the whole raid.

 

Souless Horror:  Thief is very bad here.  The fight is too mobile for Rifle, and every other spec will flip into damage patches, death walls, or its dangerous auto attacks.  No particularly useful utilities, either.

River of Souls: Nothing special here.

Statues:  These are detonate plasma fights.  Everything can technically work, but the Broken King's ice attacks makes playing DD against him extremely risky and death-prone.  Rifle does well against him, though.

Dhuum:  Too mobile for Rifle, and too dangerous to use condi DE here.  DD works alright, you just have to be careful to avoid dhuums attacks and not to draw too many undead.  You'll need to sacrifice some damage for shadowstep, otherwise the final phase will keep killing you.  No particularly useful utility.

 

Conjured Amalgamate: This fight is pretty easy.  Everything works, but there's no useful utility.

Sorting: Thief provides good CC, otherwise nothing special.

Twin Largos:  Another fight that is bad for thieves.  The platforms are very small but very dangerous, so nearly any form of animation locking or forced movement can spell doom.  Thieves will frequently kill themselves here no matter what spec they're using.

Qadim:  Deadeye is excellent here.  They're one of the best Qadim Kiters, they can pull the magma elementals away, they can place their preparations to destroy the lamp when needed, and they provide much needed CC.  There's limited space, and you fight Qadim on the edge, so Rifle Deadeye is the way to go.  

 

Adina:  Another fight with Detonate Plasma.  Everything works here, just be wary of the environment.

Sabir: Another fight where everything works, just be careful not to die in the final phases when jumping through the boss.

Qadim the Peerless:  Deadeye's have a niche role as a pylon kiter.  Qadim himself is largely a DPS golem, so everything works for the non-pylon builds.

 

Take all of these together, and you'll see that thieves have 3 roles they fulfill:  DPS monkey, Detonate Plasma user, and niche roles against Qadim.  For a lot of these fights, the particular mechanics of the thief just makes them cumbersome and dangerous to use.  There's always the threat of jumping into an attack, or off a cliff, or being too immobile to avoid ground AoEs.  

[Infusion.7149]

You can dodge while kneeling by the way. In fights with need for power-based cleave deadeye is not a strong choice over staff daredevil.

 

[Salvatore.3749]

To answer your question, meta condi/power daredevil or play another profession.

My problem with raids is the same problem I had with dungeons. You are gatekeeped by other players who want you to have the most optimal for efficiency because people only want to do what works best and not think outside the box or try something new.

There are several reasons for this that I do understand:

1. Life - people have to go to work, sleep, take care of families, etc. 

2. Trying something new takes time and GW2 is already very disrespectful of players' time with how long it takes to setup a build if you do not have build slots for it. Crafting ascended and legendary gear takes time. So no one wants their time wasted in this game. 

3. Raids, Fractals, and even some dungeons have bosses that deal immense amount of damage with odd attack patterns, and require players to dodge mid-combat and still provide strong support and damage In this case, a thief, DE, or DrD is primarily condi or dps, and the sustain is mostly for ourselves. Nothing is more annoying than the entire party dying and the thief being the only living player, which essentially wastes people's time. 

 

Edited September 27, 2021 by Salvatore.3749
Grammar and punc

[Joxer.6024]

20 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I've brought my thief to many raid encounters.  There's two big reasons why they aren't taken: lack of boon support and forced movement. 

 

20 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

 

 

I SNIPED IT FOR SPACE BUT OMG MATE, THE INFO HERE WAS AWESOME!! This is the stuff i have been looking for!! Any chance you have the gumption to do for each class...lol!!!?

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

10 hours ago, Joxer.6024 said:

 

I SNIPED IT FOR SPACE BUT OMG MATE, THE INFO HERE WAS AWESOME!! This is the stuff i have been looking for!! Any chance you have the gumption to do for each class...lol!!!?

For awhile Snowcrows had a little box that showed how good each build was on each boss.  I don't know where it went, but now I'm wishing it was still there.  Anyway, there are very few professions that I know as well as thief, and also there are very few professions that have the ubiquitous problem of forced movement on damage rotations.  That said, in general everything works everywhere except for when your damage rotation is based on the boss either doing something, or the boss not doing something.  The biggest difficulty most professions will have is with restricted engagement distances.

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

For awhile Snowcrows had a little box that showed how good each build was on each boss.  I don't know where it went, but now I'm wishing it was still there.  Anyway, there are very few professions that I know as well as thief, and also there are very few professions that have the ubiquitous problem of forced movement on damage rotations.  That said, in general everything works everywhere except for when your damage rotation is based on the boss either doing something, or the boss not doing something.  The biggest difficulty most professions will have is with restricted engagement distances.

You can find it on archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20201113181457/snowcrows.com/benchmarks/

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

On 9/23/2021 at 11:03 AM, Zacchary.6183 said:

It may not be "toxic" but what you described is its own form of toxicity.

I might have misunderstood, but I can agree that I'm toxic. I genuinely hate GW2s raiding community, or rather what it became and the behavior it inspired. And I don't think any amount of conversation can change that opinion till I see the general atmosphere change.

Edited September 26, 2021 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Zacchary.6183]

1 hour ago, Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

I might have misunderstood, but I can agree that I'm toxic

You did misunderstood a bit :P. I was talking about the community too.