Guild Wars 2

C-c-c-c-ombo breaker…er..er…

No comments yet? Oh well. Good job Mr. Geiir! Can’t wait to read the rest.

Let’s get this pinned on top of our page!

Uau. Nice work m8 I r8 8/8

Thanks for the kind replies guys!

Took a lot of time to put together, so I am glad you liked it!

Can’t believe the amount of effort you put into this! +1

How is this not stickey’d yet? Do eeeeeeeeet!!!!

Awesome guide so far, bravo.

Good stuff +1

I still use “Infusion of Shadows” especially with D/P – since it has so many blinds I think it is better than blind on stealth trait

Much appreciated that you took the time to make such a comprehensive guide on the class. :-)

Oh and I love the name too (Book of Shadows)

Looking good so far. Few things I would add is that Dancing Dagger reflects projectiles and that improvisation is a good choice to increase your damage by 10% when using an elementalist’s conjured weapon.

Thanks for the inputs guys! It’s not easy to remember everything as I write, so I am glad I have people like you to help me make this guide as good as I can! Will add your points when I get back home.

Awesome guild, thank you very much for taking the time to do this for us!

Sticky pls!

DanielGames.5198:

Looking good so far. Few things I would add is that Dancing Dagger reflects projectiles and that improvisation is a good choice to increase your damage by 10% when using an elementalist’s conjured weapon.

Just filled that into the guide. Thanks for reminding me!

I’ll keep updating and perfecting the guide during the next week (a lot of formatting).

Cheers!

There! Just updated the table of contents. That took quite some time due to some buggy code….

Holy moly… that is one impressive guide.

“It is also a Whirl combo finisher, but it’s rarely used for that reason.?”
Whirl combo from dagger dagger death blossom can be nice if fighting engineers. Steal, throw gunk then a death blossom or two will get a handful of confusion stacks on them.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Holy moly… that is one impressive guide.

“It is also a Whirl combo finisher, but it’s rarely used for that reason.?”
Whirl combo from dagger dagger death blossom can be nice if fighting engineers. Steal, throw gunk then a death blossom or two will get a handful of confusion stacks on them.

Hmm, I have never thought of that actually. I rarely see others use death blossom for its finisher, but as you pointed out; it has it uses. I’ll add this to the guide, thanks!

Edit: There, it has now been added.

few tips in wvw:
run dollies – take withdraw with rune of the centaur and thrill of the crime => perma swiftness while stealthing them with stealth abilities SR and other combos
flip camps easily with condi base and caltrops
tag keeps and tower easily so you enemy will rotate the map or split forces
perma stealth and hide with mesmer inside keeps
most important be a pain in the kitten for the ele and necro in group fight

now with the buff coming up to the power p/p and p/d venom share group play :
p/p power build 0,6,0,4,4 signet of malice steal food and gm trait you can heal 2.8k every unload and with ricochet
or this variant if you know to manage your ini and give more health but less dmg
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQJAqal8Mp7pFOx4JsPNBQBtdAKQ/9KJdnjyWDA-T1BGwAEV+l4EAUWPAgHAgJ1fst/wUlgECw8WA-w
pd venom share group play OP dmg burst to 5 allies so group up with 2 power necros 2 power engi and buff them up with venoms and they will be killing machine while you can harass easily between cd

I didn’t read it all (still want to, though) but it is not really true that we have no 1200 range weapons. Shortbow autoattack, even if it says it is 900 range, is actually 1200 range (similiar to Mesmer GS #1, which is supposed to be 1200 but it’s more like 1350).

Frenk.5917:

I didn’t read it all (still want to, though) but it is not really true that we have no 1200 range weapons. Shortbow autoattack, even if it says it is 900 range, is actually 1200 range (similiar to Mesmer GS #1, which is supposed to be 1200 but it’s more like 1350).

I’ll have to test this theory before posting it in the guide. If anyone else can verify that would help a lot.

Didn’t know about this. But at least on paper, we don’t have any 1200 weapon. Our farthest looks like it is going to be pistols with 1050 though.

The downside of being a Thief:
you forgot

the devs hate you and they will nerf you a little at a time until you quit the game

darres.8203:

The downside of being a Thief:
you forgot

the devs hate you and they will nerf you a little at a time until you quit the game

We do get hit by the nerf bat quite often. But keep in mind that I have played thief since it was first available during beta, and I am still going strong! We thieves have a nasty habit of getting ourself back up after a fall and start to slit throats again shortly after.

Once a thief, always a thief.

I like how ARRRSENAL was corrected several times. LOL. Thanks for the guide!

Thank you for taking the time to write and post this. I havent read it yet, but clearly you have put a lot of thought, time amd effort onto it. Certainy good for any new thieves out there.

Hey,

thank you for this awesome handbook. But I got a little request. Since I play only thief in Guildwars 2 I was searching a long time for a PvP Guide and didn’t find one yet. So if you want a perfect handbook maybe that’s one subsection: By PvP Guide I mean which other classes exist, which standart builds they got, which builds are common, how to notice a build and the most important how to play against it. Me and I think every other thief would thank you for this since it’s very hard to survive as a beginner in PvP when you don’t even know the other classes skills. So a little overview would be pretty cool

Thanks :)

Lamuness: Yeah, noticed that too. Gotta fix it by changing some words. I hate the censoring in these forums… >_<

Lucente: Thank you for the kind words! I definitely put a lot of time into this, indeed I did. :p

Hakan: Great idea! I’ll definitely look into it. The thing is that making such a PvP guide will require extensive work since the meta shifts a lot between patches. I’ll see what I can do, though, because that would be really helpful I think. Have seen quite a few posts regarding PvP lately, so it is definitely needed. Thanks for the input!

Geiir.7603:

Frenk.5917:

I didn’t read it all (still want to, though) but it is not really true that we have no 1200 range weapons. Shortbow autoattack, even if it says it is 900 range, is actually 1200 range (similiar to Mesmer GS #1, which is supposed to be 1200 but it’s more like 1350).

I’ll have to test this theory before posting it in the guide. If anyone else can verify that would help a lot.

Didn’t know about this. But at least on paper, we don’t have any 1200 weapon. Our farthest looks like it is going to be pistols with 1050 though.

Worry not, I did that for you!

On the screen you can clearly notice that none of the supposed 900 range abilities are within range (there’s the “red bar” under the skill image).
Infiltrator’s signet, Shortbow #1, Disabling shot… all out of range.

BUT! I just clicked the auto and it hit. Moreover, I tried it with disabling shot, and also disabling shot appears to have 1200 range. I can’t claim that’s 1200 range because it’s not a video, but trust me, it is. I’ll make a video asap.

Frenk.5917:

Geiir.7603:

Frenk.5917:

I didn’t read it all (still want to, though) but it is not really true that we have no 1200 range weapons. Shortbow autoattack, even if it says it is 900 range, is actually 1200 range (similiar to Mesmer GS #1, which is supposed to be 1200 but it’s more like 1350).

I’ll have to test this theory before posting it in the guide. If anyone else can verify that would help a lot.

Didn’t know about this. But at least on paper, we don’t have any 1200 weapon. Our farthest looks like it is going to be pistols with 1050 though.

Worry not, I did that for you!

On the screen you can clearly notice that none of the supposed 900 range abilities are within range (there’s the “red bar” under the skill image).
Infiltrator’s signet, Shortbow #1, Disabling shot… all out of range.

BUT! I just clicked the auto and it hit. Moreover, I tried it with disabling shot, and also disabling shot appears to have 1200 range. I can’t claim that’s 1200 range because it’s not a video, but trust me, it is. I’ll make a video asap.

Tested this yesterday and got the same results! Thanks for verifying this too, that means that it is true. Wonder if I should write it though, ANet may see it and fix it….

Frenk.5917:

Geiir.7603:

Frenk.5917:

I didn’t read it all (still want to, though) but it is not really true that we have no 1200 range weapons. Shortbow autoattack, even if it says it is 900 range, is actually 1200 range (similiar to Mesmer GS #1, which is supposed to be 1200 but it’s more like 1350).

I’ll have to test this theory before posting it in the guide. If anyone else can verify that would help a lot.

Didn’t know about this. But at least on paper, we don’t have any 1200 weapon. Our farthest looks like it is going to be pistols with 1050 though.

Worry not, I did that for you!

On the screen you can clearly notice that none of the supposed 900 range abilities are within range (there’s the “red bar” under the skill image).
Infiltrator’s signet, Shortbow #1, Disabling shot… all out of range.

BUT! I just clicked the auto and it hit. Moreover, I tried it with disabling shot, and also disabling shot appears to have 1200 range. I can’t claim that’s 1200 range because it’s not a video, but trust me, it is. I’ll make a video asap.

Its like that since the start of days. If you use shortbow (and longbow i believe) 1 skill manually it reaches further.

What a thief can do in zergs/siege?

• Spam #2 on Shortbow for blast finishers (if a Ele or Engi drops a fire field, you can stack might to everyone around you very easily. Many uses for this skill, there are enough guardian fields around (light fields), if you #2 on those you get AOE retaliation).
  We have the most spammable blast finisher in the game. It’s not so funny to do so, but it’s very benefiting for your team! So spam dat #2!

• I don’t zerg, but if we happen to cross paths, I usually lurk in the background of the other zerg to pick of squishies in the backline (ele’s, some rangers are incredible squishy, necroes if caught by surprise etc etc).

• If you are in a group of 5, (havoc group) Venom Share is a awesome tool for your party. If not in a group, teammates around your venom-circle get’s your venom’s anyway.

Just a few tips that ran into my mind. I don’t see a thief as a necessity in a zerg/siege, but we can help our party through blast finishers and picking of targets in the backline.
Maybe someone with more zerg experience have a different view of what we can contribute then I have.

OP, will you describe here also Thief Builds with the used Equipment, Runes used, Sigils ect later ?
Would be quite interesting I think for many people to read also about that, what kind of equipment sets people use in PvE, WvW and SPvP for various kinds of reasons.

Also some kind of Teaching Videos if possible I think would be nice for this awesome guide so far so that new players and veterans that aren’t maybe so much experiences in yet all of the builds of the thief could see, how to make best usage of the skills.

Example: Perma Stealth through Blinding Powder/ Smoke Screen and such little things in Combat.

Especially little demonstratign videos surely would be also for alot of people helpful, because often its easier to understand something, when you can see, how it gets done, than reading how its gets done just as text in a guide ^^

You made up so many posts for future use, so I think you’ve made up some plans up your mind there

I saw Book of Shadows – A Thief Handbook in your signature in another post and thought “Hm.. Curious.” So I clicked the link.

… My jaw dropped! You thief!

I was outraged, I was flattered.. then I jumped back to being outraged again! But after reading through it I can’t help but be impressed by the time and effort that went into putting this all together. This is good work, and I hope you don’t mind a couple suggestions:

• As a new Thief, this guide didn’t yet have what I was looking for: A look at the traits and sample thief builds explained.

Reading through also helped me think up new additions to the Mesmer guide, such as explaining how certain builds work and highlighting the main traits that mesmers take, so thanks for that.

Oh, and you forgot the most important part bro!

@Geiir: Awesome so far. I did note a mistake however (I think):
In section “The Condition Dagger/Dagger Build”
subsection “Playstyle:”
you state: “Likewise, investing in initiative recovery is highly recommended, such as Quick Recovery in the Acrobatics trait (2 initiative every 10s)”

I believe QR gives only 1 init per 10s.

@Chaos: Great to see you here!

Awesome guide so far, I can’t wait to see the rest! Be sure to include all the ways we can safe-stomp, is all I can think of right now.

Mompen and Messiah: thanks for the input! I’ll work it into the guide.

Orpheal: all those things are under construction and will be posted when ready. I haven’t made any video tutorials my self yet. I Am not sure if I will do or if I’ll just find someone who are already there (asking for permission ofc!). Probably the latter since it requires less time ^^

ChaosArchangel: I completely forgot to ask for your permission first, but I hope it is okay…? Apologies for that. Thank you very much for the kind words! Your guide was a huge inspiration to me, as you can see. I’ll borrow that indeed! Thanks for the input, I’ll improve on those things in the near future. Glad I could help you too!

Sirrealist: That is absolutely true! I started writing that part before they changes initiative. I’ll fix it asap! Thanks for noticing <3

Jman: Thanks for the kind words! Safe stomps will definitely be there!

I’m giving this a bump, since it deserves it.

Mod: sticky this

Great stuff, thanks for putting this together. Looking forward to seeing it develop.

This guide need a little update, but it’s well written.

Evading now stops whirling axe.

Wow, great guide. Your dedication to a dying profession really shows how much attachment you have with your Thief. Something I don’t see everyday.

Some minor clarifications:

Proc – Proc basically means “to cause an effect.” For example: The trait Last Refuge procs stealth when you reach a health threshold.

Proc means “triggered effect.” For example, a Sigil effect triggers on crit hits. Same with Last Refuge, an effect that triggers on low health.

Burst/Spike – A sudden chunk of high damage. For example: A backstab combo. A lot of damage in a very short time.

In GW, “spike” is different from “burst” unlike in other MMO where they are one and the same.

A Spike is a coordinated attack mainly used in PvP. This is done by selecting a target and all team members will focus that target with high damage skills that it will bring that target down in short amount of time.

A Burst on the other hand is like “fire at will” mainly used in PvE. It means to forget about your rotation and give it everything you’ve got. Normally used on boss fights when the boss is below 10% health.

Players still interchange both, but they actually mean different things.

RNG: Random Number Generator – Refers to anything that happens randomly. One example are the trait Improvisation that recharges skills of one type at random when you Steal.

Typically, RNG is used to describe something with low chance, for instance a 5% crit chance. However, if the chance is high, for instance 80%, RNG is almost non-existence or doesn’t even matter.

No cooldowns on weapon skills. Yep, that’s right! But we have a resource pool called Initiative that is shared between weapon sets.

I’m sorry but this is not accurate.

Thief has a cooldown but it is shared among all the weapon skills. If a Thief has zero Initiative, it will take 3s before the Thief can use Heartseeker and 6s to use Cloak and Dagger. However, if the Thief use Heartseeker, that will depletes the Initiative pool effectively increasing the cooldown of Cloak and Dagger from 6s to 9s. And if the Thief use HS again 3s later, it will push back CnD another 3s for a total cooldown of 12s.

The only unique advantage of the Thief is its ability to replenish lost Initiatives that makes it feels like cooldown is non-existent.

The downside of being a Thief.

• Thief has the lowest base health pool compare to other professions.
• No reliable access to defensive buffs like Protection, Aegis, Stability, etc.
• Thief has the fewest options for weapon skill set.

I hope these helps. Good job!

Thanks for the feedback guys! Yep, working on updating it in the coming days.

SirVincent:

Thanks for the clarifications and adds. It is true that initiative need regeneration and work as our cooldown, need to clarify that a bit better. But on paper we don’t have cooldowns on weapon skills, which is what I am meaning. This mean that we need to think what skill we should use at any given moment during the fight, since using one ability may make it impossible to use another in a few seconds due to initiative cost. I am going to write a more in-depth explanation of initiative.

Doesn’t Elementalist have lower health pool than us? Have to check that one out before adding ^^ Thanks for the feedback!

Geiir.7603:

Doesn’t Elementalist have lower health pool than us? Have to check that one out before adding ^^ Thanks for the feedback!

Actually Thief, Guardian and Elementalist have the same base health pool.

Perhaps you should add instead;

• Thief is one of the professions with the lowest base health pool next to Ele and Guardian.

There, updated all skill and trait facts to match the recent patch and added some of the input from you guys! Thanks for helping me make this guide as good as it have to be!

The current leveling guide is out-dated and I am working on creating a new one. I have created a new thief and will level him with the new system. I need to learn a lot again since a lot has changed since I leveled my first Thief, so I’ll play through 1-80 and release the guide as I have done that.

NEED HELP WITH PVP AND FRACTAL PART OF THE GUIDE!

I am not a good thief in Fractals. I have done a few and I am at about lvl 20 in Fractals. Therefore I am going to need help from more seasoned fractal thieves to help me create this part of the guide. Send me a PM or respond to this thread if you want to help.

I am far from a top tier thief in sPvP. Therefore I am in need of help from other experienced PvP thieves that can help me form this part of the guide. I want it to contain everything from meta builds, basic rotations, target priority and more. If you have anything to contribute, please give me a heads up!

Very friendly and detailed. +1

:)

P.S its ok to say a skill is underwhelming especially when directing new thieves who may feel like they’re using a skill wrong. Many of the underwhelming skills are highly situational and take extra practice to make any use of them.

As for the fractal part of the guide, I can help out with a few pointers.

-s/p is your friend. Despite the BPS nerf, the AoE cleave + evade is invaluable since 9/10 dungeon encounters involve stacking on a corner to obstruct LoS (line of sight). Enemies will take the shortest path when chasing you if they loose LoS, causing them to gather all at a corner for easy AoE application. You will not use s/p always, but its a primary set to have.

-You will constantly be adjusting your utilities and traits, even in the same fractal. Each encounter is different for the most part, so expect a tweak here and there such as using smoke screen and dagger storm for projectiles along with the smoke screen on down trait (concealed defeat in critical strikes adept), p/p for ranged dps [the decending lasers on the uncategorized fractal are projectiles and can be blocked/reflected as such protecting your allies on the way up]. You will see what is needed in each encounter the more you play and can adjust accordingly. I can tell you that I change my traits between ~3 set ups and utilities/weapon skills constantly because everything has its place.

-Learn boss skills. Most are very telegraphed but some act much quicker than others or have strange delays either visual or effect. Knowing them you can act on the fly using all the tools thief has to offer to stay alive. Remember, a dead player = zero dps so if you are dying too often change your playstyle up and possibly your build until you are comfortable stepping into heavier dps builds.

-On the volcanic fractal (with the legendary shaman at the end) make sure you have pistol/x as one of your sets. When it uses its bubble, it is based on number of attacks. Simply carry SR (naturally both as an offense and defense) and keep pressing 1. The short aftercast will let you fire 5X bullets real fast and destroy its bubble. You’re no the only one there but for your end of the fight, its the best bubble destroyer.

-Scorpion wire can be quite useful in some situations. Get creative with it especially for fights where you need to relocate the boss somewhere (mai trin, giant jellyfish, dredge fractal boss, etc).

Thats really it, just learn the encounters and overtime you will find new and creative ways to take them down. Most important point is don’t just hop in with full zerker gear and expect it to be easy, if you are dead you aren’t contributing to the group no matter how much damage you got off in those few seconds. Ease into zerker if you can.

Geiir.7603:

NEED HELP WITH PVP AND FRACTAL PART OF THE GUIDE!

I am not a good thief in Fractals. I have done a few and I am at about lvl 20 in Fractals. Therefore I am going to need help from more seasoned fractal thieves to help me create this part of the guide. Send me a PM or respond to this thread if you want to help.

I am far from a top tier thief in sPvP. Therefore I am in need of help from other experienced PvP thieves that can help me form this part of the guide. I want it to contain everything from meta builds, basic rotations, target priority and more. If you have anything to contribute, please give me a heads up!

I don’t think a lot of people would consider me an sPvP expert but nonetheless if you want me to write or otherwise help you out with any of the sPvP portions I’d be glad to assist.

Nice to see you have included my Forward Withdraw video.

If you need any help with video’s or thief in general, I’d be happy to assist.

Why is this thread on page 2?
It should be sticked. But apparently the screenshots of thieves looks are more important then guides to help out players…

Added some more videos and tips and tricks to the guide ^^

More to come!

Thanks for the guide Geiir, it is awesome! I just created a thief and it really helped me getting started. Keep on the good work!

Heaps of effort put into this!

This needs to get pinned ASAP

Very good guide. Almost everything I found out during my own thief sessions, is in there. But best thing is that you all wrote it down in easy to read paragraphs, and very lengthy listings of what thiefs can do/have as abilities traits. That must have been a lot of effort, so thank you.

@ Anet, mods, I think we agree this deserves a sticky! I’m sure if Gaile see’s this (she’s on a roll after becoming community team lead), she would sticky it.

Can this be sticky’d already…