Guild Wars 2

Attached is a compilation of ghost thief gameplay using a Sylvari. This character was made specifically to be a ghost thief, as the elite skill is an invulnerability that can be used while revealed. With the sources of revealed only going up and up over time, naturally this build becomes more and more effective. I believe this build to be the most effective tactic available when fighting outnumbered.

There are variations of ghost thief that can do more damage (notably the Asura variant with Pain Inverter, and/or the Perplexity/Tormenting rune variant) and may be better 1v1, but for survivability in outnumbered fights this has to be the king.

There has been much written about ghost thieves on various forums. A lot of the information given is of questionable quality. Now that bona fide ghost thief gameplay is being released this thread should serve as the official “what is a ghost thief, what can they do, and let’s QQ about them” location.

All these clips were taken from Tier 1 over the last month. In none of these clips was there an effort to roam with anyone else or coordinate attacks via map chat or TS.

At some point I will probably put together a post outlining how to fight against a ghost thief, but for now just see what a ghost thief does from the videos.

Video 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhxNBqOu04g

Video 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeAXrKlHIHU

Video 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7xf4JimjEw

Video 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhZb52SsfeQ

Video 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM87-NNETKI

Video 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRQERmvOCIg

Video 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I2aRWWzLoc

Video 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSjarh99KnI

Angry

Wow.. amazing, the fact you did it to maguuma makes it even more lolworthy.

Stealth design is broken, always has been broken, always will be broken in this game, that’s all that needs to be said. Thanks for putting those up, I await the usual thief responses.

Funny how thief who barely knows how to stack stealth can do this. You made these videos so anet would nerf this build? right?

Meh this looks legit. It’s those pesky druids and their op 10k laserbeams that are the real problem.

@sarah @anet pls… nerf

I’m not going to QQ about it because it’s an easy build to fight if you know what to look for. In fact, I knew it was going to be you as soon as I saw the content of the thread, and I’ve killed you a number of times. I might even be in one of your videos if you decided to include it.

I’m not very good at all, so that should really say something about how good you are and how much the build can carry someone. If anything, it’s a perfect example of how players can be extremely successful and appear skillful when using a broken build.

But I digress, it’s always fun to watch roaming videos unless it’s a condition Chrono montage with anime-themed music. So I’ll watch all of these anyway (:

Oh woe! Once a skillful profession, dear thief. How the mighty have fallen. This is the epitome of the saying; “There is no honor among thieves”

But it seems bothersome. It can be countered if you are ready for it, but still I think this thing should not exist. Nice videos

Justine.6351:

Meh this looks legit. It’s those pesky druids and their op 10k laserbeams that are the real problem.

How do you get insta 10k laser beams with staff, its a channel skill building up damage.

Ghost thieves have been carefully evaluated and found working as intended in WvW. Otherwise the latest balance patch would have removed stealth stacking.

Offair.2563:

Justine.6351:

Meh this looks legit. It’s those pesky druids and their op 10k laserbeams that are the real problem.

How do you get insta 10k laser beams with staff, its a channel skill building up damage.

It’s been a running joke on the forum since some baddies complained about it in a druid qq thread.

@Op
What can I say about a ghost thief Montage video….. at least I enjoyed your music. I’m pretty sure you made some of those pre bronze rank players rage quit wvw for good.

I haven’t encountered Ghost Thief on EU T1 for a good 2 months now. Which is a good fortune!

last one that tried to gank me and a guildie fighting the 3rd server got sent to the wp on an afterthought

Well executed for what the build is. Of course any montage video is going to show wins rather than losses. That said I’m impressed by the use of the Silvari elite as it solves a potential problem with the build.

How to fight: disrupt the stealth stacking. Look for the red circles of black powder and use knockbacks and aoe cc abilities. Keep moving. Watch the ground for the trap’s being put down and dodge through them. Don’t clump up with other people. And finally, bring condition clear to the fight.

saerni.2584:

Well executed for what the build is. Of course any montage video is going to show wins rather than losses. That said I’m impressed by the use of the Silvari elite as it solves a potential problem with the build.

How to fight: disrupt the stealth stacking. Look for the red circles of black powder and use knockbacks and aoe cc abilities. Keep moving. Watch the ground for the trap’s being put down and dodge through them. Don’t clump up with other people. And finally, bring condition clear to the fight.

• Have condition clears, as you always should.
• Don’t expend your clears on minor conditions, wait for the Steal burst.
• Stand in the red Black Powder rings when you see them. This will cause the Thief to hit you and become Revealed.
• Drop CC’s and AOE’s on the Black Powder circles as well.
• Watch/listen for the trap drops. You can see where they’re being placed and can dodge through them.
• Remember that they’re slow. Once they’ve Steal bursted you, you should be safe to run as far and as fast as you can without much concern for them catching you.

If you’re a Necromancer you’re SOL. Best thing you can do is wait for the Steal burst since they’ll be on top of you, drop a Putrid Mark at your feet (wait a second for them to Caltrops dodge so they don’t evade the mark) and/or gamble attempt a pointblank Deathly Swarm + Reaper’s Mark and hope you Fear interrupt their cleanse attempt.

Keep these things in mind when fighting one. Also, Stealth Disruptor Traps are your friend!

+1 Stealth disruptor traps. Makes me giggle every time.

Point is, anyone thinks this requires skill? Even if he is not the best thief being able to mantain 100 stealth time while doing a lot of damage is broken. If he s smart like a see in many ex in the videos he can just burn Cds on people that ha e few options as cleansing. Dont defend this it is a stupid way of playing that rewards too much for not every class with tools to defend itself.

This game lol.. zerg meta only thing its got going for it, and that’s pretty broken too.

gg anet,

a class you cant see that can constantly cc you and condi damage that ignores armor.

mlg worthy

In actually gonna create a thief today and see how easy it is. Never played one and nly have basic knowledge on some skills they have. If what i see in the video allows me to perform just as good well… kinda says it all

Please don’t delay the “how to fight ghost thief” vid. Perhaps it will quell a fraction of the uninformed QQ posts. It’s an easy build to fight if you have just a little experience.

Justine.6351:

Meh this looks legit. It’s those pesky druids and their op 10k laserbeams that are the real problem.

Nice deflection, difference is you can see and attack that druid almost the entire time, for a ghost thief you don’t get to see them for almost the entire time.

Most people have been saying yeah they can’t do damage and just run away. He wasn’t even using weapon skills to do damage, 3 skills delivered enough condition bomb damage to kill someone, even if they cleansed, oh well restealth and do it again, even to groups of players. Just run into his smoke field! why do you think most of the time he went away from the players and sometimes around corners to restealth.

Dealing damage while staying in stealth is why stealth is broken in this game, it will never be fixed because they made the mistake of building thieves entirely around it.

This was from a single thief, imagine a group of them running around, I actually hope more thieves show up with this.

Someone didn’t got the joke in the quoted post.

Jeknar.6184:

Someone didn’t got the joke in the quoted post.

You looking for a cookie?

Xenesis.6389:

Jeknar.6184:

Someone didn’t got the joke in the quoted post.

You looking for a cookie?

No… I’m just pointing that you are answering to a sarcastic post.

Jeknar.6184:

Xenesis.6389:

Jeknar.6184:

Someone didn’t got the joke in the quoted post.

You looking for a cookie?

No… I’m just pointing that you are answering to a sarcastic post.

So you want a cookie?

Xenesis.6389:

Jeknar.6184:

Xenesis.6389:

Jeknar.6184:

Someone didn’t got the joke in the quoted post.

You looking for a cookie?

No… I’m just pointing that you are answering to a sarcastic post.

So you want a cookie?

I’d like a cookie if your handing them out….

Xenesis.6389:

Wow.. amazing, the fact you did it to maguuma makes it even more lolworthy.

Stealth design is broken, always has been broken, always will be broken in this game, that’s all that needs to be said. Thanks for putting those up, I await the usual thief responses.

I don’t think anyone with a remote sense of understanding of fun and balanced gameplay design promotes this build.

It maybe not be OP, but it is stupid – stealth stacking as a whole is on any class for any reason.

#NerfStealthBuffThief

Jim Hunter.6821:

Xenesis.6389:

Jeknar.6184:

Xenesis.6389:

Jeknar.6184:

Someone didn’t got the joke in the quoted post.

You looking for a cookie?

No… I’m just pointing that you are answering to a sarcastic post.

So you want a cookie?

I’d like a cookie if your handing them out….

Macadamia nut cookies from subway are pretty good.

Jim and I demand a cookie now.

Ghost thief is as challenging to play as any. Need to be 100% invisible. Cannot fail d/p 5 2 2 2 2 – cannot fail the traps. If you want go easy, run with the zerg.

BTW, playing commercial music as background music for video is not fair use. All movie makers pay royalties when they play commercial music.

It’s a pretty easy build to ignore for the most part if you carry a bit of cleanse and you can even kill it with a stealth disruptor/Engi/Revenant or a Gravity Well bomb – but these require the ghost thief to be almost completely braindead so not entirely reliable.

Still don’t really think the build should exist though. Although it’s a testament to Anet’s struggles to work out the “traps on heavily stealth dependent class” conundrum. Obviously the correct answer was to never put traps on Thief, but whatever..it is Halloween after all!

Simonoly.4352:

It’s a pretty easy build to ignore for the most part if you carry a bit of cleanse and you can even kill it with a stealth disruptor/Engi/Revenant or a Gravity Well bomb – but these require the ghost thief to be almost completely braindead so not entirely reliable.

Still don’t really think the build should exist though. Although it’s a testament to Anet’s struggles to work out the “traps on heavily stealth dependent class” conundrum. Obviously the correct answer was to never put traps on Thief, but whatever..it is Halloween after all!

I still think there nothing wrong with traps or the way they function. There only one trap that works here with this build and the other damaging utilities are not traps.

Again on a perplexity build I can stack up 11 confusion , 2 poison and weakness on a steal which remains this builds single largest condition source. Yes one can argue that without needle trap the build weaker BUT the issue is not so much the strength of the build as it not overly strong, it the nuisance and frustration factor which would remain if changes made to traps.

This woul just break legitimate builds that use traps and accomplish little else in the long run.

The issue is stealth stacking and how d/p can be used to stack 4 or more in short order.

No guys, you have it all wrong, thief is a high skill floor ultra high skill ceiling class. What you see here isn’t a thief it’s…er…well you don’t see it.

Stealth is perfectly balanced and has plenty of counterplay, never mind that someone that hasn’t been lobotomised can still stack stealth by doing it away from people. Just stand in the red circles!

Thief has the lowest DPS and burst and everything with lowest survivability so it needs stealth.

Just cleanse and run away, it only kills bad players.

All this and more when “thief mains” see the thread.

I think perma stealth using D/P is an issue. They were hinting at trying to fix the camera trick, although it has been shown to be possible without using that to stack 4 times.

More than likely we will ultimately see a slight reduction in the duration of the smoke field on pistol 5 to prevent permanent stealth gameplay. Right now it has a duration of 4 and an interval of 2 on pulsing blind.

I’d suggest changing it to duration of 3 seconds and pulse blind on a 1 second interval.

I d suggest those traps do damage that reveals from stealth. Just a small amount of direct damage.

apharma.3741:

No guys, you have it all wrong, thief is a high skill floor ultra high skill ceiling class. What you see here isn’t a thief it’s…er…well you don’t see it.

Stealth is perfectly balanced and has plenty of counterplay, never mind that someone that hasn’t been lobotomised can still stack stealth by doing it away from people. Just stand in the red circles!

Thief has the lowest DPS and burst and everything with lowest survivability so it needs stealth.

Just cleanse and run away, it only kills bad players.

All this and more when “thief mains” see the thread.

That’s pretty much what teef mainers come and tell ya when you have valid concerns about broken kitten.

Thieves should just be completely reworked…

saerni.2584:

I think perma stealth using D/P is an issue. They were hinting at trying to fix the camera trick, although it has been shown to be possible without using that to stack 4 times.

More than likely we will ultimately see a slight reduction in the duration of the smoke field on pistol 5 to prevent permanent stealth gameplay. Right now it has a duration of 4 and an interval of 2 on pulsing blind.

I’d suggest changing it to duration of 3 seconds and pulse blind on a 1 second interval.

I think an easier way is to remove that 1 second ICD from stealth attacks and apply that 1 second ICD to stealth applications.

^ this would work best, other thing could be to reduce the BP field to 3 seconds instead of 4 which would help as well.

Mikhael.2391:

I d suggest those traps do damage that reveals from stealth. Just a small amount of direct damage.

Bad idea. The trap will become unusable as it was before.

They had direct damage before and no thief used them because they could get the thief killed . In that respect they were very much like that forced “last refuge”.

The issue is not traps. There only one trap used in this build. Again I can lay down 11 confusion stacks from stealth without using a single trap.

Ah yes, good ol’ noob pwner build.

PROTIP: You can even “stow-cancel” your heal and the trait would still proc the trap. So you could still have your heal after 3 seconds if you don’t need the stealth from it.

Also a good contender for elite if you’re a human is Reaper of Grenth. Poison and Chill for more fun!

BlaqueFyre.5678:

^ this would work best, other thing could be to reduce the BP field to 3 seconds instead of 4 which would help as well.

I do not like the latter as it further weaknes BP which already too expensive for the INI spent. There are reasons to use BP other then stealth stacking . As In P/p to set up blinds from an unload or s/p to blind and try and get An aa chain off.

I would decrease the initiative cost by 1 as well to compensate. Otherwise you are right that the cost would be prohibitive.

If they could implement an internal cooldown for stealth application that might work. I wonder at the complexity of implementation over other solutions though.

saerni.2584:

I would decrease the initiative cost by 1 as well to compensate. Otherwise you are right that the cost would be prohibitive.

If they could implement an internal cooldown for stealth application that might work. I wonder at the complexity of implementation over other solutions though.

The implementation shouldn’t be too difficult since they designed. Certain skills to all stealth stacking with SR and SG which both have long durations to apply Stealth so the 1 sec ICD wouldn’t impact them too greatly, but it will make stealth Stacking more prohibitive

Remove the leap finisher from Heartseeker. Problem solved.

Jeknar.6184:

Remove the leap finisher from Heartseeker. Problem solved.

Then Thieves would have the worst stealth access in the whole game compared to every other class that has it and they are designed for stealth unlike every other class in game.

Plus your suggestion would ruin more than just Stealth on Thief since that finisher is useful for a lot of other combo fields. The best idea is to implement the 1 sec ICD on stealth stacking across the board.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Jeknar.6184:

Remove the leap finisher from Heartseeker. Problem solved.

Then Thieves would have the worst stealth access in the whole game compared to every other class that has it and they are designed for stealth unlike every other class in game.

Plus your suggestion would ruin more than just Stealth on Thief since that finisher is useful for a lot of other combo fields. The best idea is to implement the 1 sec ICD on stealth stacking across the board.

I hardly see anyone use Heartseeker other than stack stealth. Your “that finisher is useful for a lot of other combo fields” argument is silly because of that. Besides, you have Bound for all your leap finisher needs.

Sure, the ICD on stealth aplication would be the best, but you cannot suggest hard to implement things because you can be sure they will never happen.

To be honest, thief should just be totally reworked so stealth can be reworked too.

Jeknar.6184:

I hardly see anyone use Heartseeker other than stack stealth. Your “that finisher is useful for a lot of other combo fields” argument is silly because of that. Besides, you have Bound for all your leap finisher needs.

Sure, the ICD on stealth aplication would be the best, but you cannot suggest hard to implement things because you can be sure they will never happen.

To be honest, thief should just be totally reworked so stealth can be reworked too.

So, because you don’t see anyone using a leap finisher you assume that a profession doesn’t need it. That sounds really profound and smart.
Other than that: Guys, play thief and then complain about those pesky thief mains who have got no clue about thief.

ETA: That goes to you as well, Babou :P

Jeknar.6184:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Jeknar.6184:

Remove the leap finisher from Heartseeker. Problem solved.

Then Thieves would have the worst stealth access in the whole game compared to every other class that has it and they are designed for stealth unlike every other class in game.

Plus your suggestion would ruin more than just Stealth on Thief since that finisher is useful for a lot of other combo fields. The best idea is to implement the 1 sec ICD on stealth stacking across the board.

I hardly see anyone use Heartseeker other than stack stealth. Your “that finisher is useful for a lot of other combo fields” argument is silly because of that. Besides, you have Bound for all your leap finisher needs.

Sure, the ICD on stealth aplication would be the best, but you cannot suggest hard to implement things because you can be sure they will never happen.

To be honest, thief should just be totally reworked so stealth can be reworked too.

So one trait from ES is your answer to removing a leap finisher on the core class?, that’s laughable, yes they should rework how stealth works. will a complete overhaul happen? No. A lot of Thief mains and others have asked for an overhaul on the class and stealth multiple times since launch to no avail, so an ICD which shouldn’t be too hard to implement since they do it on absolutely everything else ingame for the most part.

The leap finisher is very useful especially for Water Fields, Fire fields and Dark fields specifically just because you don’t see it being use doesn’t mean they never get used.

You want stealth stacking nerfed the ICD would do that and it punish players that attempt it. Since Stealth for thieves is applied in increments of 3 or 4 secs, the ICD on Stealth Application plus the actual cast time of HS would virtually eliminate stealth stacking abusers.

babazhook.6805:

Mikhael.2391:

I d suggest those traps do damage that reveals from stealth. Just a small amount of direct damage.

Bad idea. The trap will become unusable as it was before.

They had direct damage before and no thief used them because they could get the thief killed . In that respect they were very much like that forced “last refuge”.

The issue is not traps. There only one trap used in this build. Again I can lay down 11 confusion stacks from stealth without using a single trap.

But if a dh deals damage using trapper runes or ranger druid it breaks stealth aswell. No class should be able to do damage while in stealth i say that again.

Mikhael.2391:

babazhook.6805:

Mikhael.2391:

I d suggest those traps do damage that reveals from stealth. Just a small amount of direct damage.

Bad idea. The trap will become unusable as it was before.

They had direct damage before and no thief used them because they could get the thief killed . In that respect they were very much like that forced “last refuge”.

The issue is not traps. There only one trap used in this build. Again I can lay down 11 confusion stacks from stealth without using a single trap.

But if a dh deals damage using trapper runes or ranger druid it breaks stealth aswell. No class should be able to do damage while in stealth i say that again.

Again the Devs specifically made that decision to Thief traps fully bowing the interaction, the problem you are having is with Stacking Stealth and not the damage portion, removing the stealth stacking capabilities will neuter the Ghost Thief, placing a 1 sec ICD on all stealth application will fix almost every single issue players have with Gw2 stealth.

Neither of those classes you listed are designed around stealth or rely on it, so the comparison is moot.

1sec still feels like they ll be able to be quite some time in stealth. I would agree if they did not have the huge ammount of mobility they have already. Seems thiefs still want to stealth long enought to be able to fight while using stealth. Should be a getaway button or opening damage for the surprise atack nothing else.