Guild Wars 2

I’m sure the downed skill of smoke bomb is a great skill and all, but so far it has been almost useless to me. It occurs to me that I may just be using it wrong. The problem is that it only seems to last a fraction of a second. That’s good for interrupting a WvW finishing move, but that just buys you a second or so at the cost of not raising your health while you use it. NPC’s just stand over your invisible body for that fraction of a second and then proceed to kill you when you become visible again.

The only way I’ve successfully used it is to teleport and then go invisible instantly. Sometimes this breaks aggro.

Any ideas?

There’s really nothing much to say about our downed skills. They suck.

So as a rule of thumb — don’t get yourself downed.

Imo the smoke bomb downed skill is great because it gives thieves two ways to avoid being stomped. It buys us more time so we have a great chance of a mob or enemy player dieing which causes us to rally, or it prevents a stomp and allows an ally to continue rezzing us. The smoke bomb buys you more than just a second, it takes about 3 seconds for a stomp to be completed so if the smoke bomb is activated at 2 seconds it keeps you alive for those 3 seconds plus another 3 seconds for the stomp to be done again. Although this does nothing if your enemy is smart and just DPS’s you to death.

My comment is purely WvW focused because the majority of my game time is in WvW and I rarely get down in PvE and when I do I rally soon after.

Also venomous knife hits like a truck.

nopoet.2960:

Also venomous knife hits like a truck.

You know what hits like a truck? Ele’s and Necro’s downed skills, not to mention Warrior’s second life skill.

Now compare those to Thief’s…case closed.

depending on situations.

PvE / PvP: Smokebomb>Start heal>shadow step away while healing. If you get to high ground GG.
PvP/PvE: Smokebomb>Teleport away>tap 1 like mad and if you have enough distance you may throw Venomous Knife twice.
PvP: Prevent Stomp

Sir Vincent III.1286:

nopoet.2960:

Also venomous knife hits like a truck.

You know what hits like a truck? Ele’s and Necro’s downed skills, not to mention Warrior’s second life skill.

Now compare those to Thief’s…case closed.

Imo, mesmer has the hardest hitting downed skill and to confuse thieves even more, it’s called “smoke bomb” in combat log.

Thief has quite nice downed skills. The second skill moves you, which allows you to escape stomp, move to a node to slow a decap/cap, and if the enemy is daft enough to leave you to bleed and leave the point, move to decap their point. Thief is the only class to have a downed auto attack that allows it to sometimes get off its third downed skill before a successful second stomp because you can cripple them making it take longer to reach your new position after moving. Thief is also the only class to have two downed skills that save it from being stomped. The third downed skill can save you from being stomped long enough to be revived or to allow a team mate to stomp a downed enemy, thus rallying you and preventing the enemy from using you to rally their fellow. The third downed skill also opens up the downed stealth attack, which is awesome when fighting downed, especially if you have good positioning near an obstruction because you can poison and bleed then shadow step out of line of sight and begin self-reviving. The conditions from the downed auto and stealth attacks also help your allies in dealing damage to the target, and obviously impairs their healing.

Each downed skill has its own gimmicks. I think engis are the easiest to finish, though. The thief’s set is atually pretty strong. AOE on the attack to increase rallying with two rally avoidance mechanisms + a blind.

Thief downed state doesn’t really let you rally off of people by killing them while downed, though. For the survivability it has,though, I can’t complain and think it’s pretty reasonable.

Downed state is generally only going to do something in PvE or PvP, in WvW it “can” do something if your at the endphase of a blob v blob and you can last long enough to revive because of a death.

That aside i believe thieves have one of the best downed states in the game, alongside mesmers and necros(seriously the necro damage in downed state can be ridiculous)

Thief downed set is decent to above average in group combat/PvP and completely atrocious in solo PvE, which is funny because that’s where they tend to be the weakest in general. This has been an issue from day one and, like with most Thief balance issues, revolves around the way Stealth was implemented and how they always balance around PvP and pay very inadequate attention to PvE balance issues.

The only thing you can really do if you’re alone in PvE is try to use Smoke Bomb offensively (for the stealth-enhanced #1) after Teleporting for a rally rather than trying to use it defensively for an escape, which just plain doesn’t work, ever.