Guild Wars 2

Here’s something fun to do when you get bored.

First, get some Thief friends. You can barely manage it with one friend, two makes this easy, and more thieves just mean more fun. I’d also strongly recommend that you be in voice chat of some sort; it just makes it much easier to work as a team.

Next, have all of the thieves use this build. They should use their best Healing Power gear, and Condition Damage or Toughness are also priorities. The Runes and Sigil are nice, but certainly not required. Additionally, everyone should purchase and use Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew (+40% endurance regen, might on dodge). It’s pretty cheap and will really, really help you.

Now you’re ready to troll zergs. Here’s how it works: skills that do not apply direct damage do not break stealth, even if they apply damaging conditions. This means that you can use Choking Gas or Caltrops and stay in stealth.

Three thieves using this build can work together to keep themselves in stealth 100% of the time. While in stealth, you regenerate health (~350 hps), remove a condition every 3s (which is a lot), and move 33% faster.

Your goal is to cripple and debilitate a group of enemy players. Stay right in the middle of the zerg, and work together to stay in stealth. Spend all of your initiative on Choking Gas. It applies large stacks of poison to the enemy (7.5-9s every second). It also applies weakness (3.5s every second) to any enemies in the poison fields. Focus on spreading the poison fields apart so that as much of the battlefield as possible is covered constantly.

You should also be using Caltrops on cooldown, for AoE cripple and bleeding. You can dodge frequently (once every 5s), and every dodge drops calrops which cripple and bleed nearby enemies.

Additionally, all these things are healing you heavily with Signet of Malice. Without any healing power on your gear, the passive effect will heal for 115. This means that each Choking Gas or Caltrops can heal you for up to 575 per second. Add this to your stealth regen and condition removal and the fact that the enemy cannot see you, and you’ll probably survive for a really long term.

This is a really, really powerful tactic. A group of three or four thieves can maintain permanent Poison, Weakness, and Cripple on a large group of enemy players without dying. If there aren’t any allies nearby, this will make the zerg waste time trying in vain to kill you. If the zerg is fighting people on your server, they’ll have a massive disadvantage. If the numbers are even close to equal, your allies should win the battle handily.

Additionally, this is fun. It’s really, really entertaining to play a thief like this. You’re a ghost on the battlefield; no enemies can see you, and you (and your friends) sow chaos among the enemy. They’re getting crippled and debilitated by enemies they can’t see, and they’ll be obviously frustrated. It’s fun to laugh as they fail to kill you.

Finally, every 90s, you can turn into a whirlwind of death. A Thief using Dagger Storm and Signet of Malice in a group of enemies is nigh immortal. Three to five Thieves using Dagger Storm and Signet of Malice are immortal, and they will also kill literally everything around them. Some enemies will survive by thinking fast and using projectile-blocking or invulnerability abilities, but the rest will all be cut down by your massive AoE damage. Once Dagger Storm ends, you go into stealth, stomp the enemies, and resume sabotage for a minute and a half.

A couple Thieves using this build and strategy can turn the tide of a sixty-man fight. Whether it’s from crippling and debilitating the enemy or laying waste to all around you with Dagger Storm, you’ll have a large effect on the battlefield.

I approve this message.

Well, the zerg must be brainless if they cannot catch a few thieves stuck for 4s inside a clearly visible red circle with a tiny floating house above it. And they do that like, every 15s or so.

Dacromir.6207:

A couple Thieves using this build and strategy can turn the tide of a sixty-man fight. Whether it’s from crippling and debilitating the enemy or laying waste to all around you with Dagger Storm, you’ll have a large effect on the battlefield.

Seems pretty fair. After all, this takes a lot of skill, amirite? And glass cannon thieves are squishy.

stof.9341:

Well, the zerg must be brainless if they cannot catch a few thieves stuck for 4s inside a clearly visible red circle with a tiny floating house above it. And they do that like, every 15s or so.

Zergs have too many brains, that’s the problem.

But the other issue is that due to bugs and build decisions, many classes simply cannot hit thieves. Ranged people without ground targetted AoE, for example, cannot reliably hit thieves even if they know exactly where they are; it requires very awkward camera manipulation with no feedback of success.

And since the thieves are building for big regen and toughness, only a few AoE builds will actually have the oomph to discourage this for real. And if you were allowed to bring along 1 burst thief to deal with the occasional wise guy who runs in and quickness+hundred blades, it’s not clear what a zerg should do about this except hope they have a lot of rare power-staff necros (condition builds won’t be very successful against this due to the outrageous amount of condition curing) and now-less-popular-and-recently-nerfed grenade engineers.

Even then, actually killing those thieves would be hard for a zerg if they were competent. They don’t have to unstealth and culling bugs mean even if they do they won’t necessaril become a focus.

The real problem this tactic faces is that your team itself can lose visibility, and also there is an aoe limit of 5 targets per pulse. For an actual zerg the results will be limited.

KirinDave.6451:

Seems pretty fair. After all, this takes a lot of skill, amirite? And glass cannon thieves are squishy.

I’m not sure if this is sarcastic or not, so I’m going to assume that it is and address it as such.

Yes, this is pretty fair. It doesn’t take all that much skill, but it does take a lot of teamwork. If you get out of stealth for more than a second or two, you’re guaranteed to die in seconds. You’re putting your life in the hands of the other two Thieves you’re doing this with. If one of you screws up, the three of you are out of stealth and you all die.

Also, you should consider the fact that these Thieves won’t actually have much of an effect on their own. If they all use Dagger Storm, they’ll easily down five or six people. However, unless the rest of the zerg is stupid, they should only get one or two stomps off. Other than that, their only effect is to slow down and annoy. This can have a big effect on the battle if two zergs are fighting, but these thieves against a zerg won’t be getting any kills. Their effect (when not using their elite) is to make their allies stronger.

Any small group of players can have a large effect on the battlefield if they work together. If they have a plan beforehand, build specifically for that, and have tight cooperation and quick teamwork, they can make far more difference than three times their number in enemy zerglings.

Imagine a group of Guardians all using wards (Sanctuary, Ring of Warding, Line of Warding) in a coordinated manner. They could exert massive control over the enemy zerg. They could cut the zerg off at a choke point for quite a long time. Some enemies could get past with teleports or Stability, but a large number would be controlled. They could also provide permanent projectile deflection for an area.

Imagine Elementalists with Glyph of Storms and Blasting Staff. Individually, they can apply massive AoE damage to an area. Together, they could create such a storm as to kill anyone in it within mere seconds.

Imagine Mesmers with Time Warp. I don’t need to tell you how powerful that is.

Imagine Necromancers with Wells, Marks, or Epidemic. The conditions they could apply are mind-blowing.

cannons.8109:

Is this just theory, or can you post a video of this in action?

This is not just theory. I’ve actually done it, to great effect. My record for surviving (so far) has been something like 6 minutes in a zerg v zerg fight. You don’t really get many kills or much loot, but you’re making a big difference in the fight and it’s a lot of fun.

Sadly, no video because my home computer is broken.

Dacromir.6207:

KirinDave.6451:

Seems pretty fair. After all, this takes a lot of skill, amirite? And glass cannon thieves are squishy.

I’m not sure if this is sarcastic or not, so I’m going to assume that it is and address it as such.

It’s about half sarcastic. Lately thief main players have taken to claiming that because GC builds exist Thieves should be the best attrition class. It’s sort of a dumb argument, and I think that thief condition curing needs to be reduced a bit.

At the very least, Hide in Shadows is an incredibly powerful heal skill and should at the very least not cure poison (you can still trait to remove poison post-stealth, but poison should work to reduce the HP gain).

Dacromir.6207:

Yes, this is pretty fair. It doesn’t take all that much skill, but it does take a lot of teamwork. If you get out of stealth for more than a second or two, you’re guaranteed to die in seconds.

It’s simply not true if you equip for it. Toughness+vit thieves are not made of spun glass and itemization makes it straightforward to have decent condition damage and duration for this task.

And this is not “a lot of teamwork.” This is “basic coordination via a voice channel.”

Dacromir.6207:

Also, you should consider the fact that these Thieves won’t actually have much of an effect on their own. If they all use Dagger Storm, they’ll easily down five or six people.

However, unless the rest of the zerg is stupid, they should only get one or two stomps off. Other than that, their only effect is to slow down and annoy.

The goal is to infinitely harry the zerg and slow it down. In WvW, that is exceptionally powerful. Saying that because they can’t actually secure kills but can only slow the all-importnat blue arrow and make the zerg lose cohesiveness it is not effective is silly.

If you slow down the blue arrows of a zerg, you slow down the zerg. Slowing down a zerg means enough time to predict and man its next target with better siege. That is a very powerful strategy and I heartily approve of the idea.

Dacromir.6207:

Any small group of players can have a large effect on the battlefield if they work together. If they have a plan beforehand, build specifically for that, and have tight cooperation and quick teamwork, they can make far more difference than three times their number in enemy zerglings.

The argument is not, “Small teams should not be able to stall zergs.” The argument is, “The way the game mechanics work, thieves can do this much more easily than anyone else can, and there are not a lot of good counters.” Especially with the culling problems that exist right now.

Dacromir.6207:

Imagine a group of Guardians all using wards (Sanctuary, Ring of Warding, Line of Warding) in a coordinated manner. They could exert massive control over the enemy zerg.

Actually no. The counters for this are straightforward.

Dacromir.6207:

Imagine Elementalists with Glyph of Storms and Blasting Staff. Individually, they can apply massive AoE damage to an area. Together, they could create such a storm as to kill anyone in it within mere seconds.

You must be joking.

Dacromir.6207:

Imagine Mesmers with Time Warp. I don’t need to tell you how powerful that is.

Other good skills exist in the game. Yes.

Dacromir.6207:

Imagine Necromancers with Wells, Marks, or Epidemic. The conditions they could apply are mind-blowing.

I am starting to suspect you do not understand how AoE works in WvW. But Necromancers with Greater Marks sound like a good counter to this strategy until you take into account the amazing amount of condition clearing this build has compared to staff and scepter cooldowns.

The reason this strategy is so powerful is that clever toughness cond thieves can be very hard to kill even if you predict their movements. This is almost entirely a function of how many classes lack good ways to attack blindly. If every auto attack could optionally be ground-targettable then you’d see far fewer complaints.

It only takes one player in the zerg to AoE pushback the thieves out of the shadow refuge they need to use every 20s or so to kill them though.

That or the zerg can ignore them and continue. They got 33% MS in stealth sure but they need to stop moving 4s every 20s too.

I don’t think it’s OP. It’s somewhat effective and counterable. Seems very legitimate for me.

stof.9341:

It only takes one player in the zerg to AoE pushback the thieves out of the shadow refuge they need to use every 20s or so to kill them though.

Unless the thieves, who by the way by definition are superior players, dodge that mesmer coming up. Probably the only thing that’d really ruin that shadow refuge right now is a twitchy engineer with a Big Ol’ Bomb.

stof.9341:

I don’t think it’s OP. It’s somewhat effective and counterable. Seems very legitimate for me.

It’s not the net effect that is op. It’s just how much easier it is than doing this with any other composition of party. I do this kind of stuff a lot in WvW (stall the blue arrow, stall the zerg, it’s that simple) and usually we must have good terrain for it to work because the analogue to stealthing for everyone else is to break LoS.

KirinDave.6451:

Unless the thieves, who by the way by definition are superior players, dodge that mesmer coming up. Probably the only thing that’d really ruin that shadow refuge right now is a twitchy engineer with a Big Ol’ Bomb.

Mesmer got multiple ways to cause you that pain though. Into the Void has no cast time so you cannot exactly dodge it for example. Elementalist got Gust which is a 1200 ranged targeted spell so it can be really hard to see and is easily in range to be used etc…

Big Ol’ Bomb isn’t usable for that purpose. Too much delay really. Also, I think you can still dodge it anyway. On the other hand, shield engineers got an AoE pushback with very little warning due to no cast times.

stof.9341:

Big Ol’ Bomb isn’t usable for that purpose. Too much delay really. Also, I think you can still dodge it anyway. On the other hand, shield engineers got an AoE pushback with very little warning due to no cast times.

The bomb is more for area denial. The shield pushback is easy to predict and dodge.

If Engineer deployable turrets worked in WvW, then this strategy would be totally useless against someone who spec’d for that + accelerant-packed turrets. You’d get instant area knockbacks at range via ground targeting. Too bad it doesn’t work.

Appreciate this thread a lot. Felt like applying The Art of War to Guild Wars 2.
Thieves like deterrent submarines, I love it.

Been doing this for a month already. Haven’t gotten anyone else to do it with me though. It is amazingly kittenn to watch my guildies go “Who the hell is that running IN that enemy zerg?!”.