Hello all! Just wanted to get a post going that can include some nifty tricks and tips for our wonderful community!
I noticed that hardly any boards have any stickies aside from the ones that were there when I started playing (right after release). Being an adamant thief player, I thought we might try and get something useful stickied here.
I am one person, and I am certainly not the best thief. I will try and put in things I can think of, and I hope that the rest of the thief community can help as well. I know a bunch of names around here that I am sure would just love to hop on in and throw some secrets and spoilers of the trade, so please do! All that said, let’s get down to what the thief can do!
General tricks!
Stomping downed players:
-Begin stomp, shadowstep away during stomp, shadow return right before completion.
if you aren’t obviously on top of a lot of people trying to stomp, they don’t know they’re being stomped.
-CnD>stomp. works well, and with trait points to increase time in stealth, you’ll pop out of stealth right after a flagpole appears in their head.
-Ever (finally) downed an ele, just to begin a stomp(stealth or not) and the bugger turns into a vaporous cloud of broken limbs and floats a few hundred yards to the left?
Begin stomp>(ele, thief, even mesmer – but you have to be quick targetting in mesmer’s case – generally lucky mouse location when they reappear – used their downed #2 skill to move out from under the stomp)>Steal when they stop moving(mesmer’s case; reacquired target) before the stomp finishes and you shadowstep/finish the stomp.
So: Begin stomp>steal once target’s #2 downed skill used up midstomp>completed stomp.
Signet of shadows. You forgot to unequip it before engaging didn’t you?
Nah, it’s legit. This one is really dandy for guardians with their aoe push from their downed state. Just pop the signet before they pop their aoe. A blind push, is a missed push, some clear it with an autoattack, but that’s the effectiveness of timing.
Sword tricks!
-Infiltrator’s Strike doesn’t require a target! You can lay your cirlce down with no
target and you have ~14 seconds to utilize shadow return.
-You can use Infiltrator’s Strike with an enemy target out of range to shadowstep 600 units in their direction! This combined with steal (900 range, 1200 range traited for ‘long reach’ in trickery) can net you 1500-1800 range gap closer (and you’ll still have shadow return available, and even well past that distance, it will return you). (please note to get the full distance, infiltrator’s strike must put you in your respective steal range, otherwise steal will gain a 4s cooldown and you’ll just stand there)
-Pistol Whip (s/p#3) is a stationary attack with a small stun and evade component. Most players will move out of pistol whip range right after the stun fades (because it supposedly hurts them, go figure). Once they get right to the edge of it’s range you can steal mid-pistolwhip and land the rest of the chain on them.
-Infiltrator’s Strike seems to have a height barrier. Don’t expect to make your circle atop a keep, jump down and then shadow return when things get sticky!
Shadow return doesn’t have a height barrier. The general rule of thumb for all the teleportation skills is this: if you can get to the area (even if it’s on the z-axis) WITHOUT having to jump, you should be able to teleport on to it as well. This arises due to high the pathing is on the maps. However, there are some areas that have their pathing intentionally blocked – keeps, enemy base on foefire etc.
-Thanks Rome!
-Flanking strike has two hits for it to land. The first one will remove a boon, and is unblockable – on demand boon removal is not bad. The second strike is blockable, and affected by your odd pathing (though the evade built into the skill lines up with it’s animation nicely, as opposed to some other dual skill evades) when chilled/crippled or with swiftness. It’s a hard hit if both land.
Don’t underestimate the power of Infiltrator’s strike. If your circle is down away from you and your victim’s, erm, pursuers, drop a shadow refuge on yourself and shadow return out as soon as you see that temporal curtain, or feel they aren’t crowding where your circle was. Most will be too busy trying to pull you out of the refuge, or trying to blow it and the surrounding area up.
I love a dagger, and would go on about those for another 15 minutes, but I am about out of time for now, and want to see what other great things other people can contribute!
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(edited by Selver.1307)
