General Questions
I have been playing the thief for a short time now, and taking a break from my Guardian. I have to say, that this class is fun to play, and a change in play style to say the least.
I had some general questions that i was hoping i could get answers to.
1. For the trait that gives 100% Crit while in stealth, does that include shadowstep? I guess the questions should read: is Shadow Step considered a stealth?2. Has anyone tried using Dagger/Dagger and Dagger/Pistol? I ask this because the short bow is annoying me, and the dual pistols are lackluster. I tried this setup, and i have backstab up on both weapon sets, and i am able to keep the bleed from D/D and shadow step from D/P. It dishes out tons of damage, but you lose the SB aoe damage and movement. Just curious if there is something i am missing, and should be doing something else.
3. I am a bit confused on stealth. It seems like the only time i have access to it, is when i heal myself, use the D/D ability, or use the AOE ability that stealths you and your team. What am i missing here? I see, or have seen, thieves who stealth all the time, come out, go back in, and i have searched the builds and have been unable to find anything that grants that much stealth.
4. Toughness or Vitality? Which is a better mitigation of damage. On the Guardian i use toughness, but i have seen some comments on these boards referring to vitality.
Thanks for your time, and assisting me with these questions. I normally see nothing but complaints from other classes all over this thread, but i am hoping to have some thieves help me out without trolling from the haters.
1. No
2.
3. Dagger offhand final skill is a 3 second stealth. There are also a total of 4 utility skills that give stealth, shadow refuge for a very long time.
4. Vitality. Toughness is for characters who plan to be take a lot of damage over time. Vitality is better at mitigating bursts and as a thief you should just be fighting in bursts.
1. Shadowstep is a movement ability. It has nothing to do with stealth.
2. Depends on what you want to do. But for burst D/D + Shortbow, and for Con P/D + Shortbow is pretty much the only option right now.
You simply need the movement as Thief to do anything (mostly surviving) and Shortbow is the only way to get that. The Shadowstep from D/P isn’t all that great, and besides that, the weapon set offers nothing important D/D hasn’t, but is lacking a lot.
3. Thats the point of D/D. You need that Cloak and Dagger from your Dagger off hand.
With the right build, it allows you to stealth a lot.
4. It depends. Thief can’t really get any of the defensive stats high enough to really profit from it, which means you will barely live longer when going for Vit/Toughness, but you will loose out on a lot of dmg, which is why pretty much all Thieves are glass cannons. I would go for a little bit of both, ratio depending on your spec.
While toughness takes a good chunk of damage away from huge bursts, it doesn’t help with conditions or much damage over time in general, where you just need enough health too.
Generally i would say, get some vitality so you get at least 13k health and then try to get some toughness (maybe speccing into Shadow Arts a bit), together with ways to remove conditions frequently.
Btw., against the common opinion: Toughness = anti burst, Vitality = anti condition/over time dmg. But keep in mind that a huge dmg mitigation is worth nothing when you have no HP in the firt place, and a huge HP pool is worth nothing when you have no damage mitigation to keep it up.
Thank you for the responses. After reading what you posted, i realized that using the D/D with D/P is actually defeating the purpose. After consideration, i am losing the remaining abilities needed from D/D, because I am using the Shadowstep from D/P. I should probably use D/D for the burst and SB for the mobility when needed.
I agree with you on Vitality/Toughness combined, as i use that same mentality on my Guardian, and am able to mitigate both sources of damage without kittening myself on damage.
The reason i thought that Shadow Step was a stealth ability, was because you actually stealth for a split second when you do it..which led me to believe it could be considered a stealth, thus granting 100% Crit Chance from the trait. Thanks for clarifying.
You also get stealth if you use a leap or a blast finisher in a smoke combo field. An example of this would be Pistol #5 and Dagger #2.
What combos with D/D are the most used…..havent quite figured that out yet. The Guardian doesnt have many combos, but i can see that this class does.