Guild Wars 2

Update 1: Tried this build in Stronghold. I’m almost positive this will be the meta for thief in this mode. Holy kitten its so strong.

To anyone who had to face me in this build on BWE2 Friday: I’m sorry, but testing is testing. No need for the name calling.

Here’s what it offers for Stronghold:
-Kill all guards on the map quickly without any real opposition, even if enemies are throwing AoEs at you. This puts your team at a huge point lead.
-Assassinate enemy treb users. You will always land your condi burst and immobilize and they can’t react as fast, causing them to, most of the time, leave the treb or die.
-Assassinate the lord. Yes, you can solo the lord even with all 4 guards there (kill the guards first for points though). Often times if they don’t have a dedicated healer they STILL can’t do anything about the lord. I’ve had 2 enemy players running around lord’s room trying to stop me and it doesn’t work. All enemy NPCs have no combat regen. Guess what that means?
-Not really an offer, but still worth a mention: stealing from guards sometimes gives you the stealth item. In this build, you can use it twice. Makes it much easier to perma stealth.
-Kill all gate guards before the door breakers get wrekt. The first set is super easy and they die within 10 seconds. The second set you must have all your condi burst skills ready including steal. The last set you need to hit asap, but at this point I have observed enemies killing the doorbreakers so clear the last set of gate guards anyway.
-No map presence to the enemy. As far as they know, its a 4v5 and that last person can be ANYWHERE.
-Because of how this work, once inner is open on the enemy side it becomes a 4v3 or they pretty much lose. With proper condi application (sometimes you have to apply little bits at a time) their lord will slowly die out. It takes about 2 people to stop this completely. If it comes to it, just kill them instead which works as well. This allows your entire team to focus on defense only, making your points secured and 24/7 pressure on the lord. When it is time, your team rushes the lord who has like 10% health left. If the enemy team is crap, often times you’ll be taking out the lord yourself and finishing him.
-A side note: stronghold does not end until all lords are out of combat. This means you need to leave the room when it goes into overtime to secure the win with the point lead.
-If it comes to it, just leave and help your team. No one knows if you have really left or not. lol.

Anyway, original post:

Hi all.

This idea isn’t particularly new but I’ve gotten the build and play style down quite well now. To many this is just a troll build, but when you actually see the numbers and the build in action when done correctly it can be very effective for its niche style of game play.

Can this be a real build? Maybe, maybe not. It’s quite effective at what it does, I’m sure of that.

Build in question (Use Carrion in sPvP):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa4alsMhmnYbTw7Jw/EHIFl/FCi5j3ABwCofyTYxA-T1RAABA8CAUU/Aqq/MpSQPOKA9s/wYK/IEwk1A-w

So what does this build do?

-Stay in stealth permanently. There may be down times of 1-2 seconds of being visible if you mess up or mismanage.

-Staying in stealth permanently isn’t that much of a feat. It’s staying in stealth permanently, downing players and defeating them without even being seen like ghost aids.

-High survival rate. Staying in stealth permanently in this build will remove harmful conditions once every 3 seconds, heal about 300 HP a second, and take 25% less damage. Also throw in a couple of evades to add to that.

-High condition damage. In PvE, it’s easy to go 30 stacks of bleeding alone. In PvP, its common to have 7-15 stacks of bleeding with ease. Also throw in confusion, 10+ stacks of vulnerability, poison stacks and really long immobilize duration (6s+)

-Unblockable. All your condition damage from this build cannot be blocked.

-Because you should be in stealth almost 24/7, you pretty much always get first strike. You also get the advantage of stereotypical thief encounters where they expect a backstab. I don’t think they will be expecting no thief coming out of stealth at all while still dying to him or her.

-When you need it, you can always backstab / basilisk venom for extra oomph.

Cons?

- Absolutely no focus in PvP. This is good for you, but not for your team mates. One of the helpful things with thieves is that they can pull heat off of your allies for a few seconds, allowing your allies some breathing space. With this build, you won’t be.

- Massive condition removal will hurt your ability to kill (obviously). Condition transfers to you aren’t as bad because you are in stealth all the time.

- People who can remove immobilize easily and have a lot of mobility. You can still kill these people but its much harder for obvious reasons.

Notes

- You will notice I have a dual set, in this case, D/P and D/P. You can have no substitute. You need to swap weapons every time you can for endurance regeneration and you need access to BP and HS no matter what. You may try a D/D variant or something but when they put up blocks and stuff or if they teleport you lack the ability to chase and stealth without a target.

- By the time your immobilize is done (about 4-6s usually(, you can apply 17 stacks of bleeding, 5 stacks of confusion, 4 stacks of poison, 10 stacks of vulnerability and cripple for life. You also gain 10 might for even more damage. To people who stand still in everything, your maximum amount of bleed stacks is about 30. By chance this can be increased tremendously with improvisation trait by resetting for another trap or caltrops.

- You have a very diverse set of skill types, missing only signets. Improvisation will almost always recharge something useful.

The Works

1) Find victim

2) BP HS for about 6-8 seconds of stealth if you know how to do the x4 HS

3) Toss shadow refuge on yourself. You want to have high amounts of stealth for as long as possible in the beginning so you can escape if things turn sour, returning later for the prize.

4) Do damage combo. See below.

5) When initiative is high or running low on stealth, back off and HS BP somewhere safe. Do not return to the fight. Keep doing this (as you get bonus initiative regen in stealth) until cool downs are back up. You can steal into enemies for extra stealth and a chance to reset Shadow Refuge or whatever. At the same time, you can use your dodge rolls to keep damaging and harassing.

6) Claim prize. You do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

The Damages

1) Never steal first without SR on cool down.

2) When on the enemy, use your heal and try to get the trap to land on them. If you know how to cancel, it will place the trap immediately. It won’t matter if you do it or not because, well, no one sees you anyway. Plus you will be using it after this combo anyway. Only use the fast version when you need it. The trap is the most important part of the initiation and is the key to killing people quickly.

3) Caltrops > Needle Trap (Utility) > Dodge roll back. Watch for a bit. Sometimes people have amazing reflexes or anticipated this shenanigans. If proceeding as normal, use Basilisk Venom to proc your Krait Runes.

4) Continue to dodge roll on them. When below 50% endurance, swap weapons. Doesn’t matter what you are doing unless mid heartseeker.

5) Repeat till tango down.

Tricks

Common thief tricks that isn’t just for this build:

- Canceling shadow shot. The first shot will blind, is unblockable, and teleports you to the enemy. Spam cancel skill to stop the 2nd strike, allowing you to blind enemies and teleport around while staying hidden.

- Using steal on nothing. This will proc your stealth on steal. Just in case.

- x4 HS. Bit tricky, but it requires the use of turning your camera facing the ground (so its top down view). This shortens your heartseeker range so you can spam it faster without changing directions. This will get you 2 more seconds of stealth and is a lot safer as you will have less chances of hitting stuff outside of the smoke field.

- Backstabbing to remove aegis / blind. You can still miss traps and stuff.

Enemies and Experiences

This build is not as easy as it sounds. Despite being in stealth all the time you still need to be able to perform your job of… something. Positioning is always key. At this point, people have dealt with high stealth (though not as high as this) upkeep builds and can stun, push, etc you. Survival first. You need to be a ghost.

Trap rangers can be bad news. Though it will remove the painful burn rather quickly, you can get stuck. Hopefully they don’t notice.

Rangers in general using taunt. You can avoid it by staying out of range, but getting taunted means you are out of stealth.

Avoid using power damage. Most of the times I died in this build was because I left stealth to attempt finishing someone off. Stay ghosty for the greater good.

To deal damage in this build is a bit difficult as you rely on dodges and what not. Try to save your abilities for a burst of conditions and you will succeed.

Many times, people don’t equip themselves with the right defensive abilities (block is useless engineers!) so they end up walking around a bit, get ganked by you, and die without even doing a single point of damage, then get stomped by air. This has happened to pretty much all classes except thieves for obvious reasons.

Even necromancers have trouble. Their tankiness comes from deathshroud. Since you are invisible the entire time, they can’t really get enough life force and since all your damage is non-hit based spectral abilities don’t do anything either. If they hit you with staff 4 you’ll live. Often times they miss it because I’m dodging into them a lot.

Try not to waste skills.

Thanks to Mr. Skeltal for good bones and calcium. Let me know how it turns out.

Should the sigils be separated on each weapon set? I’m seeing x2 agony on one and x2 energy on the other.

How’s the out of combat mobility, like when you’re running from camp to camp, do you just switch to 25% movement increase signet and switch it back before jumping someone?

You’re build is a suboptimal version of the Ghost Thief.

Anywhere you can, run runes of the Trapper with Shadow Trap instead of Shadow Refuge. Refuge will get you killed 50% of the time when using it through Knockbacks + it puts giant bullseye on your location. Shadow Trap gives you an almost guaranteed activation, as you’re target is immobilized from the Needle Trap.

Here is my version of the build which I’ve had extremely good success with.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZEQNAoaVlsMh2mYzTw7JwvGHIFl/Fuh5j3ABwCofyTYxA-TVyCABQoEEgTEAg6LCf/BDM/1kyPPV/hiDBgEPBASBAz0I-w

The weapon Sigils need tweeking, but that’s about it for my build variant.

Why not D/P for stealth stacking/interrupt and P/D for bleed stacking, or is the point to literally never come out of stealth?

Isn’t P/D more appropriate for this?

Mord.9237:

Why not D/P for stealth stacking/interrupt and P/D for bleed stacking, or is the point to literally never come out of stealth?

The point is to never come out of stealth AND kill someone. (One of the first things he says…)

Don’t think it has much of a place in sPvP…

As for WvW, well, since we thieves already roam… yeah it’s another roaming build…

I know he says the purpose is to stay stealthed permanently, I’m just curious about how he actually downs anyone that’s not AFK, with just traps and caltrops utility/on roll. Unless they have no condi clear at all and spam 5 skills after you’ve stolen in to eat all 5 confusion stacks, eat all your traps, and then run around with torment, I don’t see it happening effectively. I run a P/D trapper rune setup with solid stealth uptime, the same utilities and if I want to score a kill in the next year as they tick down/cure/heal, rinse and repeat, I’ve got to be actively stealthing/pistol 1’ing out of stealth for bleed stacks, and dagger 3 for torment, as my 24s traps recharge. Maybe I’m doing it wrong or attacking the wrong targets. Maybe everyone on my server is prepped for condi roamers, idk.

Answering some questions:

Shadow Refuge knock outs are rare. If you combine them with a weapon swap, you’ll be able to dodge knockbacks and stay in SR.

Sorry about the sigils, it should be x1 agony and x1 energy on each set.

P/D can work, but the point is to stay in stealth 24/7. Even been seen for a second is dangerous as you can get locked down by mesmers and such. Rangers running Sic Em and Engineer Analyze require a target to reveal you.

Most of my testing IS in sPvP. You may see me running around in this build killing people without them even reacting. Most of the time, they get away with 25% of their health, which is impressive for not even leaving stealth.

People who run high condi cleanse can be a problem, obviously. This applies regardless of what condi build you run though, so IDK.

Because you are invisible 24/7, you can stalk people. One thing I do often is steal to them and dodge immediately. This applies bleeds (at least 2-3 stacks) and cripple. This lets me set up a second dodge roll on them. Most of the time, they dodge roll the first time, wasting it. I repeat it, keeping a steady few stacks of bleed.

You CAN run the daze trait in steal instead of confusion. This way, when they try to heal or something you can cancel it causing some panic. It’s also especially useful when you do your condi trap burst then steal right after so they have to use a stun break to cleanse it immediately. It takes 3-4 seconds to ramp up the damage to a good 2-3k per second, and these bleeds last a long time.

This is not a full trapper build. You only have 1 trap on your bar, or should. Caltrops (the utility skill) applies a ton of long duration bleeds and the trap keeps them inside it.

You can run rune of the trapper but you lose the bleed duration and extra conditions. You don’t need that extra stealth too much, but its safer.

Another note about P/D is that you tend to stay at range or have a little distance. This means you can’t use your dodge rolls for bleeds AND CRIPPLE. The cripple is very important as it makes people stay in the bleeding AoE for a little bit longer and this stuff adds up.

In group fights your incredibly long immobilize duration can really screw people over. Sometimes they throw up blocks, which is funny because it does nothing for them against you. You can also stomp/rez people pretty safely because they don’t even know if you are there or not (as far as they know, your team is missing a person).

Against roamers, this build is NOT that good. This is because they are kind of built for these encounters and usually have escapes. In group fights, you can be quite deadly. Simply waltz over to the back of their group and assassinate someone not paying attention, rinse repeat.

And yes, the point is to NEVER come out of stealth. Never. They should never see your name tag. As soon as they do, they know your location. When they see AoEs pop out they don’t know if you are there or not. You get benefits while you stay in stealth.

To the guy who posted his build:

Your bleeds are weaker than mine. Your caltrops has a higher CD than your trap. In my build your caltrops and trap come off CD at the same time every time. No matter what you do you will have lower damage than me, considering you never leave stealth. And you are using 40% condition duration food, whereas I’m not (cuz I’m an idiot and forgot about it lol). If I do use it, my bleeds (from trap) do 7865 damage total and yours does 5718 which is a huge difference when there’s supposed to be 2 of them.

And a small bonus, but using caltrops with the trickster trait removes 1 condition, which is a bonus I guess.

I agree with shadow trap though, mainly because it also grants might, applies more vulnerability, and breaks stuns. And if they teleport, you can follow EZ. Also utility. I liked SR because I can do it wherever and stealth allies for some support.

Would love to see this one on D/d, back in the day were you can chain Stealth this one is legit. those were the days, reminiscing the past.

Updated. It’s super good for stronghold so far.