As a Thief main, I would like to be of more use in group play in WvW

[bettadenu.5483]

Title.

 

I rarely post on forums but I would like to be more of use for my team in WvW. I've recently come back to playing the game and Thief is my oldest and most played character. I feel like nearly all of our abilities are narrowly designed into a single use. My groups don't want me in zergs and I can only pick off stragglers outside of the main blob. Doing that is extremely hard in massive fights such as in Stonemist. I find that a mix of venomshare and staff Daredevil works to a playable degree to help out the main blob, but pales in comparison to the powercreep of other classes.

 

With the upcoming expansion I've read rumours that we will have more group play spec which is amazing, but doesn't change the fact that core Thief, Daredevil and Deadeye to a certain extent is selfish. 

 

In my perspective venoms outside of immob and basi are really not worth it, unless speccing massively into condition damage and duration. I would propose that instead of using charges they are a timed buff that have a chance to apply it's effect on hit.  Resulting over time more venom output but less instant on demand effect. I also feel Skale and Ice Drake venom are not on par with the other venoms. In my opinion there is great opportunity to give the Thief unique and niche utility to bring to a group where some venoms can either rip boons and or prevent affected targets from receiving (or a certain ripped) boons. As well as steal % healing received through the use of venoms. I.e. target affected uses healing skill and heals for 20% less and you receive a % of that amount. affects both healing from skills as well as passive healing effects.

 

I feel acrobatics could have way more team oriented play where the Thief could share endurance regain to allies around him, (fatal) damage mitigation or very short evade frames. Basically themed to survival not just for the Thief but for the group.

 

Daredevil Staff feels extremely weird to me on Staff #2, #3 and #4. The animation on Weakening Charge locks you into the funky spin that feels unnatural to me to use in my opinion. I'd personally advocate for the the animation lock to disappear and be able to move around freely. Take the reflecting missiles out of the base attack rotation and add it to weakening charge so you can use this skill both offensively as well as defensively.

 

Debilitating Arc is such a small funky arc in front with a super small and short evade frame roll back that I wonder how many people really use this and if they do give me advice on how to succesfully use this. I'd like to see the either roll further back or give it a larger, possibly cascading arc forward. 

 

On my wishlist for the next xpac is that our new elite spec we have more interaction or a broader scale. Rather than a superior version of a base traitline and our new assets of skills both as utilites as well as weapon skills are not a linear single use kind. More complexity for a higher skill level and bigger reward.

 

What are your thoughts? Just throwing some wild ideas out there without any game balancing in mind.

 

 

 

[Dadnir.5038]

It's hard to say that thief and DE are selfish nowaday. The way they are played sure is, but in term of abilities close to a third of the thief's utilities provide some kind of team support (10 out of 27 exactly). Shadow art provide healing support (not quite yet enough but still in an intersting amount) and trickery provide boon support (might/fury/vigor/swiftness are always usefull). DE got a nice might stack burst.

 

More than support, Thief's main issue in zerg is that he lack ranged aoe (shortbow isn't up to task due to it's 900 range and relatively limited aoe damages) and it's boon ripping abilities mainly focus on single targets. Make trick shot and shocking gaz 1200 range and thief instantly become more attractive in zerg. Make shadow flare and signet of shadow active remove boons on top of their effects and thief find himself in a good spot (not to the point of being required but at least not unwanted).

[Axl.8924]

So i got a question for you thief mains.

 

I saw this post from dadnir in necro thread:
 

It's not that they don't have the material for teamplayer builds, it's that it's mostly inexploited. Between bountiful theft, thrill of the crime and Fire for effect, DE got a nice amount of boon sharing up it's sleeve (might/fury/swiftness/vigor are always useful and you can luck it out with bountiful theft). Traited venoms aren't transcendental but they can still net a nice amount of damage increase, control and healing to your allies. (I'd add preparations but the arming time make them worthless).

 

How much can you actually heal for when traited?

How easy is it to give boons like might fury swiftness and vigor?  Has anyone tried to be support in WVW just to see what it would be like?

[Strider.7849]

2 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

So i got a question for you thief mains.

 

I saw this post from dadnir in necro thread:
 

It's not that they don't have the material for teamplayer builds, it's that it's mostly inexploited. Between bountiful theft, thrill of the crime and Fire for effect, DE got a nice amount of boon sharing up it's sleeve (might/fury/swiftness/vigor are always useful and you can luck it out with bountiful theft). Traited venoms aren't transcendental but they can still net a nice amount of damage increase, control and healing to your allies. (I'd add preparations but the arming time make them worthless).

 

How much can you actually heal for when traited?

How easy is it to give boons like might fury swiftness and vigor?  Has anyone tried to be support in WVW just to see what it would be like?

I would take his advice with a grain of salt. Most of his posts have very strange opinions or advice. I remember a post a while back of some curried Herald build for PvE that used hammer and staff with a focus on condi and healing power to boost up Regen ticks. A build so trash you can neither DPS or support with it. It's not even able to adequately support itself. If you browse through the forum you'll find equally garbage advice from him on the Ele forum and other profession forums. His posts are written out well but the logic is flawed - which kind of leads to intelligently written stupid statements.

 

I should mention I often confuse him with aged gnome, so the build might of been from him.. but they are both along the same lines of thinking - don't take my word for it though just look up their advice and compare it to reality.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Strider.7849

[kash.9213]

2 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

So i got a question for you thief mains.

 

I saw this post from dadnir in necro thread:
 

It's not that they don't have the material for teamplayer builds, it's that it's mostly inexploited. Between bountiful theft, thrill of the crime and Fire for effect, DE got a nice amount of boon sharing up it's sleeve (might/fury/swiftness/vigor are always useful and you can luck it out with bountiful theft). Traited venoms aren't transcendental but they can still net a nice amount of damage increase, control and healing to your allies. (I'd add preparations but the arming time make them worthless).

 

How much can you actually heal for when traited?

How easy is it to give boons like might fury swiftness and vigor?  Has anyone tried to be support in WVW just to see what it would be like?

Something that's not quite settled yet on this forum is what support should look like from thieves. When I get to log in I play mostly support, or cover, because I can get into stuff quickly and fill my time better. On my main basic build I'm running interception and my 2nd DE and my Core builds switch to SA for  SA 1- probably 1 but whatever - mostly 3 but sometimes 1 but everything else is the same. I'd try out a totally dedicated support build if it's not sluggish. 

 

[Infusion.7149]

You want to see a superspeed nerf on scrapper in WVW before this is even going to happen.

In core days one of the commanders I ran with used to have venomshare thieves just on the players that did not want to swap class. It was more potent due to the shock potential than the actual damage/CC.

For now, try to run staff daredevil.
 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[itspomf.9523]

Don't do any PvP/WvW, so take this as you will, but if you're looking for support from Thief, Deadeye does it rather handily.

 

You could run pistols for self Might generation and a dazing interrupt, or sword/dagger for better offense a handy dodge (with a quick combat reset via access to stealth).  As for traits, Trickery and the bottom row of Deadeye grant the following:

 

Trickery

 

• Thrill of the Crime:  grant Fury, 3x Might, and Swiftness to yourself and 5 nearby allies when you Steal (~11s without further Concentration).
• Bountiful Theft:  using Steal now steals 3 boons and grants Vigor to yourself and 5 nearby allies (~11s here, too).
• Sleight of Hand:  your Steal now inflicts Daze (1s) and has a 20% cooldown reduction.

 

Deadeye

In addition to the following, your Steal ability also automatically resets each time the target dies while under the effect, allowing you to mark a new target immediately.

 

• Premeditation:  +180% Concentration, +1% bonus damage per unique boon on yourself (that's +4% right at the start of combat).
• Fire for Effect:  when you use your stolen skill (F2), yourself, 5 allies around you, and 5 allies around your target all gain 8x Might and Fury (~13s without further Concentration).

 

If you can mark targets that are about to drop or which the group is focused on, you can continuously spam boons for yourself and your allies.  Potentially not the greatest against a Scourge or someone with boon stripping, but hopefully your WvW group can take them down before they're too much of a problem!

Edited May 31, 2021 by fluffdragon.1523

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

That's the curse of the thief.  Their support skills don't scale well with groups:

 

Shadow Refuge:  Extremely powerful with 5 or less, approaches nigh useless as group size grows.

Venoms:  Same problem.  Basilisk Venom in 5 vs 5 is epic.  In 25 vs 25 it is barely noticeable.

Signet Agility:  Same problem.

Scorpion Wire: Only valuable if you can snag the commander of the enemy zerg.  Fun, though.  

Shadow Portal: Same thing.

 

There are some skills that do scale up.  Smokescreen, Seal Area, and Caltrops come to mind.  Though they usually have placement issues.  The weapons suffer from similar scaling issues, which is why staff frontline is recommended for zergs.  As for what I'd play... I don't actually know.  I haven't done a deep dive into thief WvW builds, but if I were to suggest something other than selfish assassin or small skirmisher, it would be

 

Weapons: Staff + Shortbow

Utilities: Withdraw, Smoke Screen, Seal Area, Shadow Refuge, Basilisk Venom

Traits: Trickery, Daredevil, and a third line I haven't decided on yet.  

[anduriell.6280]

2 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

That's the curse of the thief.  Their support skills don't scale well with groups:

 

Shadow Refuge:  Extremely powerful with 5 or less, approaches nigh useless as group size grows.

Venoms:  Same problem.  Basilisk Venom in 5 vs 5 is epic.  In 25 vs 25 it is barely noticeable.

Signet Agility:  Same problem.

Scorpion Wire: Only valuable if you can snag the commander of the enemy zerg.  Fun, though.  

Shadow Portal: Same thing.

 

There are some skills that do scale up.  Smokescreen, Seal Area, and Caltrops come to mind.  Though they usually have placement issues.  The weapons suffer from similar scaling issues, which is why staff frontline is recommended for zergs.  As for what I'd play... I don't actually know.  I haven't done a deep dive into thief WvW builds, but if I were to suggest something other than selfish assassin or small skirmisher, it would be

 

Weapons: Staff + Shortbow

Utilities: Withdraw, Smoke Screen, Seal Area, Shadow Refuge, Basilisk Venom

Traits: Trickery, Daredevil, and a third line I haven't decided on yet.  

I plenty agree with this, i feel likeShadow_Portal would be such a  fantastic utility for zergs if it would have higher limit, unfortunately it would not be enough. 

 

Blessing Seed is a good example of what the thief could achieve with stolen skills. We need a trait which changes the Stolen skill to a group support version. 

 

Also Sharing Venoms could be fantastic as zerg utility. Issues is right now 4 additional friendlies is not enough

Instead baseline i would like better to have a trait that works like this: 

 

Sharing Venoms :

Venom share effects with up to 10 friendlies in a short radius around the thief. Life steal from Leeching Venoms will also apply to the stacks  if the trait is equipped.   

 

The balancing is the short radius, make it very short ( like Leader of the Pack ) so it needs a good positioning. 

 

I don't understand why anet is so hesitant to give Thief or Ranger some utility for Squads when it could do so easily. 

Edited May 31, 2021 by anduriell.6280
corrections

[Dadnir.5038]

17 hours ago, Strider.7849 said:

I would take his advice with a grain of salt. Most of his posts have very strange opinions or advice. I remember a post a while back of some curried Herald build for PvE that used hammer and staff with a focus on condi and healing power to boost up Regen ticks. A build so trash you can neither DPS or support with it. It's not even able to adequately support itself. If you browse through the forum you'll find equally garbage advice from him on the Ele forum and other profession forums. His posts are written out well but the logic is flawed - which kind of leads to intelligently written stupid statements.

 

I should mention I often confuse him with aged gnome, so the build might of been from him.. but they are both along the same lines of thinking - don't take my word for it though just look up their advice and compare it to reality.

 

I never got a high opinion on revenant hammer nor the use of sustain in PvE, so that probably wasn't me. Also, I'm mainly giving context to posts that ask for arguable buff, because people often have a narrow minded point of view that stop at their own build and is restricted to the rotation they are used to.

 

20 hours ago, Axl.8924 said:

How easy is it to give boons like might fury swiftness and vigor?  Has anyone tried to be support in WVW just to see what it would be like?

 

How easy it is? It take you to use a single skill: F1.

[anduriell.6280]

There is no need for more might, fury or vigor, other classes share plenty of those. I think medium armor classes should do with unique mechanics in opposition to the boon heavy heavy armor classes (Revenant guardian.. even warrior) 

 

That would be the only reason why you would bring medium armor to a zerg, look the conversion mechanic or superspeed application on engi for example. If it would be plain cleanses it would have been replaced by the tempest. 

Edited June 1, 2021 by anduriell.6280

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

On 5/30/2021 at 8:55 AM, Axl.8924 said:

So i got a question for you thief mains.

 

I saw this post from dadnir in necro thread:
 

It's not that they don't have the material for teamplayer builds, it's that it's mostly inexploited. Between bountiful theft, thrill of the crime and Fire for effect, DE got a nice amount of boon sharing up it's sleeve (might/fury/swiftness/vigor are always useful and you can luck it out with bountiful theft). Traited venoms aren't transcendental but they can still net a nice amount of damage increase, control and healing to your allies. (I'd add preparations but the arming time make them worthless).

 

How much can you actually heal for when traited?

How easy is it to give boons like might fury swiftness and vigor?  Has anyone tried to be support in WVW just to see what it would be like?

thrill of the crime doesnt do really much in terms of might but the vigor and fury can help...but then again all other classes do it better.  swiftness is meh, other classes do it better AND can do it out of combat more effectively. preparations are just that, you have to plan fight locations, drive the enemy(s) in to the area and pray you are effective...Stability spam makes Seal Area pointless even if it were 20 player capped. the venomshares got nerfed as far as charges go and there are so many condi cleanses during a fight that it doesnt matter and the HEAL from venoms dont matter either as the heal venom has a low coefficient anyway...thief itself's healing coefficient is utter low so dont expect to see a heal thief despite Vallun's efforts because anyone getting stealth revived is an idiot and intends on attacking when stealthed unaware you are trying to help them...no one else plays thief because they are kittening meatheads with a greatsword :/. so despite our efforts as thief mains the only viable in a zerg to SOME extent is a staff thief but good luck bringing anything valuable to a zerg where they let a thief join.

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Psycoprophet.8107]

On 5/30/2021 at 8:40 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

It's hard to say that thief and DE are selfish nowaday. The way they are played sure is, but in term of abilities close to a third of the thief's utilities provide some kind of team support (10 out of 27 exactly). Shadow art provide healing support (not quite yet enough but still in an intersting amount) and trickery provide boon support (might/fury/vigor/swiftness are always usefull). DE got a nice might stack burst.

 

More than support, Thief's main issue in zerg is that he lack ranged aoe (shortbow isn't up to task due to it's 900 range and relatively limited aoe damages) and it's boon ripping abilities mainly focus on single targets. Make trick shot and shocking gaz 1200 range and thief instantly become more attractive in zerg. Make shadow flare and signet of shadow active remove boons on top of their effects and thief find himself in a good spot (not to the point of being required but at least not unwanted).

Ur right on both accounts, thief has 0 significant ranged aoe's that would have any real impact on a zerg conflict and its supportive capabilities fall under the same issue even considering all the supportive traits within thiefs traitlines. Anets all classes can do all is part of the reason and was a bad idea to try and implement this by adding conflicting traits within the same traitlines. It would have been far better if thief gad a supportive traitline for those players who wanted to do something off brand with thief and do some support. A full traitline just for support could have resulted in a far better chance of a impactful supportive role instead of the mostly selfish designed traitlines with a few support traits scattered in here and there. The way traitlines for thief are now result in a class thats being held back in the role of the selfish skirmisher by having low impact supportive traits in its traitlines which could have had more traits to aid in what 90% of what the traitlines supposed to achieve....selfish instead of also including a few useless supportive traits. They should have just relegated 1 traitline and put all supportive traits into it, be easier to balance as well.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Psycoprophet.8107

[Axl.8924]

12 hours ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

thrill of the crime doesnt do really much in terms of might but the vigor and fury can help...but then again all other classes do it better.  swiftness is meh, other classes do it better AND can do it out of combat more effectively. preparations are just that, you have to plan fight locations, drive the enemy(s) in to the area and pray you are effective...Stability spam makes Seal Area pointless even if it were 20 player capped. the venomshares got nerfed as far as charges go and there are so many condi cleanses during a fight that it doesnt matter and the HEAL from venoms dont matter either as the heal venom has a low coefficient anyway...thief itself's healing coefficient is utter low so dont expect to see a heal thief despite Vallun's efforts because anyone getting stealth revived is an idiot and intends on attacking when stealthed unaware you are trying to help them...no one else plays thief because they are kittening meatheads with a greatsword :/. so despite our efforts as thief mains the only viable in a zerg to SOME extent is a staff thief but good luck bringing anything valuable to a zerg where they let a thief join.

 

So then how would you fix the problem to make it bring something to WVW?

 

Maybe the newest spec will answer that by bringing a spec  related to team effort instead of roaming.

[vilkanor.3072]

I am by no mean an experienced thief player, but equipping the short bow and building for sharing venom/poison seems to increase the amount of lootbags collected

[felix.2386]

pick low hp players, pick 10 in every zerg fight and you got some value

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

make deadeye stolen skills always apply boons to allies with Fire for Effect in addition to the might. add more boons

[Phantom.8130]

As I just mentioned in another thread, I run a S/P daredevil build with mostly sentinel's gear.  It doesn't do much damage, but it's extremely tanky and it's all about interrupts and disrupting enemy zergs.  That gives it a unique function that doesn't really translate well when theorycrafting or number crunching.  What it would really benefit from is more stability and better boonsharing.  Rather than adding a new specialization trait line, however, they should focus on just improving the core pieces as specializations are already helpful but it's the core pieces where it's mostly lacking.   

 

Some examples would be to buff the portal to bring it more in line with the mesmer portal, adding stability and sharing to Bountiful Theft, all 3 tiers of the acrobatics tree could be improved dramatically, aside from Bandit's Defense the rest of the physical skills could be improved, aside from the portal the rest of the preparation skills could be improved, and giving Infiltrator's Strike 1 stack of shared stability instead of swiftness.

[Salvatore.3749]

Long reply! In short, learn when to engage and disengage combat, and figure out how you want to participate. 

 

All I ever play anymore is pvp and wvw. Someday, I'll actually play living world seasons again on my thief, ele, or rev lol. 

Anyway, so you posed a good question, I have played GW and GW for a very long time (since '06). One thing I have learned is that there are certain game mechanics integral to certain classes, we all know this, but some classes in different environments do better than others. Some classes are far better suited to certain methods of game play.

 

In WvW, Thief is a class that is much more suited to roaming, defending structures, taking flag points, taking out caravans, and taking camps. The key is knowing when to engage in combat and disengage. You want to learn how to be useful to your zerg, well stopping an enemy supply line is useful. DD and core thief can do this well. Targeting stragglers is something that core thief and DD do well. As for Deadeye, the rifle has good range and the cloaking that comes with it is helpful, I haven't played Deadeye in WvW or at all since it released (I took a long break from GW2 after path of fire, like a 3 year break), but I am certain Deadeye could defend structures very well. I'm also certain that using it offensively in a zerg targeting castors or the tower lord during a zerg rush would be effective. I am not certain of it's 1v1 capabilities, but DE in PvP has always given my core thief trouble since it has more firepower (pun intended), and I'm certain that fire power could easily translate to WvW.

 

 

In PvP,  Thief's job should be capping nodes and fighting as needed. While my core thief build in PvP can throw down with Guardians, Spellbreakers, and Mirages, doing so is a waste of time and forces my skills to recharge (Thief's weakness is length of recharge on utility skills). I got 15 kills this weekend in a PvP and the team still lost the match because I wasn't capping nodes as often as I should have been. We lost by 30 points because the team held more nodes for longer.

I hope that provides some insight and answers your question. If you want to full on zerg rush, try elementalist, necro, or revenant. These classes can be very tanky or helpful to groups of people. As far as thief in WvW, there is decent sustain for the class and you can join in zerg rushes, but recognize you won't have the firepower and defense that a spellbreaker or guardian may have so you will need to frequently disengage often and focus on other targets to not die. I strongly suggest you work your way up to particpating in zerg rushes by capping camps and learning the nuances of thief in WvW. 

 

[Vornollo.5182]

Yes, Thief  struggles in such settings.

No, that's not a bad thing.

 

Different professions, builds and specializations fill different roles and niches, I'm fine with the fact that Thief isn't able to do everything.

I also honestly just love the playstyle of moving in and out of a fight to pick off the right targets at the right time.

Don't forget that it's often enough to just scare a backline by popping in, dealing minor damage and leave. If the backline gets scared and yells out they're being jumped by a thief, you're going to force movement, which creates opportunity for you own commander.

You approach the situation form a different angle. If you're only in it for the bags of loot and WXP, you're probably going to have more "fun" on a different profession and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

[Shinjiko.1352]

Would love a venom target cap increase with the trait or something, like how other classes can up their caps picking a trait.

 

Would also love rifle to have its auto baseline pierce like engi rifle which would be such a qol buff for pve as well rather than having to spam 2 to hit multiple things. Would at least make me seem more useful in zergs while I am picking people off, can do damage to those trying to save my downed target  etc.