Who needs weapons anyways? A report of my single pistol thief escapade into top 250

[blue class best class.8632]

I thought I'd take the time to share my adventure of playing 158 ranked games last season on E X C L U S I V E L Y a core thief with 1 pistol and a shortbow.

Record: 87W-71L including DCs

Rating: 1547

Rank: 192 NA

Build: [&DQUUGyw+HCsMAYUAWQEAAD4BAABYAAAAKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=]; carrion/krait, agony / cleansing/energy

The game plan: move around the map, get cheeky 1 shots by abusing the low initiative cost of repeater (why is there a unique upside to not playing a full build???) and the interaction between smoke screen, repeater, and cloaked in shadow for frankly stupid burst and sustain potential, and you can spam repeater for like 12s at 4 bullets/second.

The additional challenge: only allowed to speak in keyboard smashes. who needs to communicate anyways.

 

So, I get my thief rolling. To make things very clear: I am not, nor do I masquerade as, a good thief player. My mains are guard/ranger/engi/ele. I took the build straight into ranked, and refused to swap regardless of who else was on the team (my usual ranked principles revolve heavily around multiclassing effectively). As I started spam q'ing, the strangest thing happened: I was winning. I was utterly decking people in fights with quicknessed, venomed stealth attacks and repeater spam. I even went back and forth setting repeater as autoattack, but it kept revealing me so I eventually decided against it, and had no autoattack at all. The burst potential: annoyingly passable. 20+ bleed stack burst with ample cover condis and insane damage mitigation from perma-blind. The mobility: spending almost no initiative means you can devote much more to moving around instead of saving initiative for fights like a good thief, because your burst is so low of a burst initiative cost.

I decided new account, let's do my hardest title run yet (the one before that was titling a f2p acct, that one got baron cause valk ranger OP). I was taking matches off of the best of the best players, including a match off helio & jaden, ckod & albert, zyn & emdrix duos. And well, I already included the result at the beginning, the title run was a success, almost too easy of one for a player with no mechanical skill on thief.

 

I'd like to end this post with the question: WHY????

Why is something like this possible? It's not a handicap, but a meme choice that actually has unique upside compared to a 'proper' condi thief, where your damage output per initiative is way higher, and the venoms make it burst just about as hard by literally holding 1 button.

Repeater, and thief single mainhand skills need to be looked at again, this shouldn't be possible.

 

Last but not least, an album of fun images: https://imgur.com/a/GbNOLh1

[Moody Soul.5617]

Mega Sus

[Sunshine.5014]

Lovely story!

 

Any comments about what classes give your build trouble, and what builds are free food?

[Crab Fear.1624]

meh, not impressed.

 

Trevor already mentioned this build, and so did I.

 

He thinks the DE version is better, IDK.

 

I want you to know why no one is impressed anymore.

 

It's because of the quality you get in matches, it is wonky honky.

 

Everyone here knows I am garbage.

 

So, explain this:

 

https://i.imgur.com/TgcYpk2.jpg

 

no, need...I already did.

[Leonidrex.5649]

I dont get it, are you flexing getting 55% winrate while stomping noobs in low gold or something?
because if you make a new acc there is where you start, I honestly think you could grab almost any build that isn't utterly kitten and do the same, like plat 1 as something impressive from someone that multi-classes? my friend with kittening 150 games and no pve experience gets into gold 3 while making his own off meta holo build, if anything you getting ONLY into p1 should be a testament to the fact this build isnt all that great, expecially since due to its burst it SHOULD be shitting on low ranked players to begin with.

[Unknown.6851]

1 hour ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

I dont get it, are you flexing getting 55% winrate while stomping noobs in low gold or something?
because if you make a new acc there is where you start, I honestly think you could grab almost any build that isn't utterly kitten and do the same, like plat 1 as something impressive from someone that multi-classes? my friend with kittening 150 games and no pve experience gets into gold 3 while making his own off meta holo build, if anything you getting ONLY into p1 should be a testament to the fact this build isnt all that great, expecially since due to its burst it SHOULD be shitting on low ranked players to begin with.

I was curious and looked at the screen shots, that’s when I realized he’s just trolling.

Edited July 31, 2021 by noobfest.2180

[Generic Player.6452]

last time i had you in a game i was 100% sure you were wintrading......

 

this post ruled out my previous scepticism.

Edited July 31, 2021 by La belladone.6579

[blue class best class.8632]

4 hours ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

I dont get it, are you flexing getting 55% winrate while stomping noobs in low gold or something?
because if you make a new acc there is where you start, I honestly think you could grab almost any build that isn't utterly kitten and do the same, like plat 1 as something impressive from someone that multi-classes? my friend with kittening 150 games and no pve experience gets into gold 3 while making his own off meta holo build, if anything you getting ONLY into p1 should be a testament to the fact this build isnt all that great, expecially since due to its burst it SHOULD be shitting on low ranked players to begin with.

I mean I came to meme, and succeeded while having no mechanical skill on what I was playing. WR% isn't the main thing I was tryna flex, it was more that an awful meme build was succeeding in top 250 of all players, when the pilot of the build was very far from skilled at it.

Also, the gap between gold 3 and plat is pretty large; gold 3 is 14% of playerbase, plat 1 is 5%, plat 2 is less than 1%.

Is this build meta in any way? no, and I'm not pretending it is LOL I just find that being able to get some kind of tangible reward (title) from a bad meme build from a player with no skill on thief is hilarious.

11 hours ago, Sunshine.5014 said:

Lovely story!

 

Any comments about what classes give your build trouble, and what builds are free food?

What was food:

A rev on shiro

A reaper

A DH

A holo if not paying attention

90% of warriors

Any glass build

Other thieves

Anyone who let me stand on the side of a teamfight and freecast repeater

Anyone dumb enough to stand and eat a venomed thieves guild in a 1v1

 

What farmed me:

Fire weaver

MM necro

most prot holos

a rev paying attention to me

 

I was able to slip away from almost every bad matchup except rev, making them the scariest to me

Just about everything else was a toss-up

[Vancho.8750]

7 hours ago, blue class best class.8632 said:

I mean I came to meme, and succeeded while having no mechanical skill on what I was playing. WR% isn't the main thing I was tryna flex, it was more that an awful meme build was succeeding in top 250 of all players, when the pilot of the build was very far from skilled at it.

Also, the gap between gold 3 and plat is pretty large; gold 3 is 14% of playerbase, plat 1 is 5%, plat 2 is less than 1%.

Is this build meta in any way? no, and I'm not pretending it is LOL I just find that being able to get some kind of tangible reward (title) from a bad meme build from a player with no skill on thief is hilarious.

What was food:

A rev on shiro

A reaper

A DH

A holo if not paying attention

90% of warriors

Any glass build

Other thieves

Anyone who let me stand on the side of a teamfight and freecast repeater

Anyone dumb enough to stand and eat a venomed thieves guild in a 1v1

 

What farmed me:

Fire weaver

MM necro

most prot holos

a rev paying attention to me

 

I was able to slip away from almost every bad matchup except rev, making them the scariest to me

Just about everything else was a toss-up

First of all why is top 250 in low plat? 

Second you are playing most of your games in G3 or lower, low population and all the jazz with that. 

The third thing is using new account, you are actually reducing your difficulty not raising it, the matchmaker judges you on prior results and on new account you don't have it, while being experienced player, so smurfing.

But yes it is quite funny that thief is better with less skills and kinda proves that spamming attacks on thief is the way to go, 5/7 design there. Also it might have something to do with Arenanet forgetting to nerf bat it along with everything else just because no one used it, nades, Lich, conjured weapons come to mind.  

Edited July 31, 2021 by Vancho.8750

[Generic Player.6452]

6 hours ago, blue class best class.8632 said:

I mean I came to meme, and succeeded while having no mechanical skill on what I was playing. WR% isn't the main thing I was tryna flex, it was more that an awful meme build was succeeding in top 250 of all players, when the pilot of the build was very far from skilled at it.

Also, the gap between gold 3 and plat is pretty large; gold 3 is 14% of playerbase, plat 1 is 5%, plat 2 is less than 1%.

Is this build meta in any way? no, and I'm not pretending it is LOL I just find that being able to get some kind of tangible reward (title) from a bad meme build from a player with no skill on thief is hilarious.

What was food:

A rev on shiro

A reaper

A DH

A holo if not paying attention

90% of warriors

Any glass build

Other thieves

Anyone who let me stand on the side of a teamfight and freecast repeater

Anyone dumb enough to stand and eat a venomed thieves guild in a 1v1

 

What farmed me:

Fire weaver

MM necro

most prot holos

a rev paying attention to me

 

I was able to slip away from almost every bad matchup except rev, making them the scariest to me

Just about everything else was a toss-up

 

i was that rev paying attention hehe 😉

Edited July 31, 2021 by La belladone.6579

[DoomNexus.5324]

Read carefully what I'm about so write now as it is the reason why this build works and your thread is just another proof that this mechanic is overperforming in sPvP:

 

Condi.

Thank you for your attention.

 

 

PS: There's just no way you could make a meme-cheese build like that work with only power.

Edited August 1, 2021 by DoomNexus.5324

[Shao.7236]

37 minutes ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Read carefully what I'm about so write now as it is the reason why this build works and your thread is just another proof that this mechanic is overperforming in sPvP:

 

Condi.

Thank you for your attention.

 

 

PS: There's just no way you could make a meme-cheese build like that work with only power.

Bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed bleed dead. (It's literally a better autoattack that has virtually no cost to it.)

Edited August 1, 2021 by Shao.7236

[Crab Fear.1624]

Will it work without smoke screen, shadow arts, or condi?

[Crab Fear.1624]

16 hours ago, Leonidrex.5649 said:

I dont get it, are you flexing getting 55% winrate while stomping noobs in low gold or something?
because if you make a new acc there is where you start, I honestly think you could grab almost any build that isn't utterly kitten and do the same, like plat 1 as something impressive from someone that multi-classes? my friend with kittening 150 games and no pve experience gets into gold 3 while making his own off meta holo build, if anything you getting ONLY into p1 should be a testament to the fact this build isnt all that great, expecially since due to its burst it SHOULD be shitting on low ranked players to begin with.

 

This kind of thread is just to take attention away from the real problem:

 

SCOURGE