High Level Fractals and Thieves
Use Signet of Agility or/and Bountiful thief
Toughness does not save the thief from one shot.
By default, Thief is just too squishy to survive the big hits at later levels, so don’t overly concern yourself with Toughness (but you do need a decent amount for the lower mobs).
I have roughly the same:
S/P + SB
0/30/0/20/20 – All Berserker gear except the coat (Power/Tough/Vit), Karka Shell with Berserker Jewel and eventually I’ll get Knight/Valkyrie accessories too. Using Golemancer Rune for support.
30: Prec -> Vit, Haste on Crit, 20% dmg on 50%<
20: Might on Dodge (swap with vigor on healing depending), 2 int/10 sec
20: Fury/Swiftness/Might on Steal, Vigor on Steal
I have Paralysation sigil (plan to switch out for Rage or Blood) + Nullification Sigil (most bosses have removable boons), bow has Purity Sigil (remove burning etc. from condition heavy mobs/bosses).
Mostly use Pistol Whips/blinds/immobilisation and Steal at opportune moments to keep the group buffed.
Gnome Child [Gc]
Resident Thief
Resident Thief
I don’t use any toughness gear as I am not expecting to get hit, I instead spec +vit so when I do get hit or take cond dmg, I can survive. my traits are the wild bill trait spec using P/D – I have no stealth on my bars as I use C&D for my only stealth requirement. I am very tanky while doing tons of +cond. I find myself ressing ppl more and more in fractals because they go glass cannon.
I’ve been having luck going glass cannon equipment with a few valkyrie pieces to get up to 15k health and then traiting for survivablility. 1-10 signet of malice and well timed pistol whips are all you need even if you trait full glass cannon because you can kill the veterans extremely fast and switch to a better heal for bosses/evade tank the bosses. From there traiting for leeching venoms is quite good. With my build my venoms heal for 300+ so the spider venom heals for 1.5k or so, coupled with pistol whip and signet of malice I can often heal for more than 3k while damage multiple enemies (pistol whip itself can heal for 2.7k if you hit 3 enemies the whole time). Eventually I’ll have to switch to some other equipment to go farther since vitality is a bad counter to agony, but until then this works quite well.
Regeneration thief may be the only way to live through agony once you get hit by it all the time since our heals aren’t exactly too good. I’m thinking traiting for assasins reward, lifesteal venom, heal in stealth. Then have Spider venom and shadow refuge on the bar for the extra heals.
Edit: That isn’t to say you can’t also go shortbow/withdraw/roll for initiative for some beautiful cascading amounts of evade.
(edited by Retanaru.2901)
I’ve been having luck going glass cannon equipment with a few valkyrie pieces to get up to 15k health and then traiting for survivablility. 1-10 signet of malice and well timed pistol whips are all you need even if you trait full glass cannon because you can kill the veterans extremely fast and switch to a better heal for bosses/evade tank the bosses. From there traiting for leeching venoms is quite good. With my build my venoms heal for 300+ so the spider venom heals for 1.5k or so, coupled with pistol whip and signet of malice I can often heal for more than 3k while damage multiple enemies (pistol whip itself can heal for 2.7k if you hit 3 enemies the whole time). Eventually I’ll have to switch to some other equipment to go farther since vitality is a bad counter to agony, but until then this works quite well.
Regeneration thief may be the only way to live through agony once you get hit by it all the time since our heals aren’t exactly too good. I’m thinking traiting for assasins reward, lifesteal venom, heal in stealth. Then have Spider venom and shadow refuge on the bar for the extra heals.
you say that vitality is a bad counter to agony, I disagree and I will explain why.
lets say you have 15,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 750 × 5 = 3750
lets say you have 20,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 1000 × 5 = 5000
all these numbers are meaningless as you are taking a % of dmg and please do not confuse % with numbers.
5 ticks = 25% of damage at 5% health of agony a tick.
this means you will be at 75% health regardless of your HP pool.
however…. you are not attacked solely by agony, you are also attacked by monsters.
lets say you have 5000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are seriously endangered) 5 sec to live
lets say you have 10000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are endangered) 10 sec to live
the same could be said for toughness:
5000 hp and you take a 3000 hit however halved to 1500 from melee/ranged – halved from tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 3500 hp remain
10000 hp and you take 3000 hit however doubled to 6000 from melee/ranged – doubled from not having tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 4000 hp remain
now lets throw some fun into the mix, if you take a poison condition your healing is reduced by 33% – do you really think healing ASAP is the fix? or condition removal?
tough does not beat vit and vit does not beat tough, they are seperate mitigations and should be treated as such. to say 1 is not useful is false, it is dependant on the situation.
having 900+ healing and trying to heal through poison is -33% effective.
having 300+ healing and trying to heal after removing poison is 100% effective.
math is fun, theorycrafting is fun, but just remember there is no perfect spec/build/combo etc.
you say that vitality is a bad counter to agony, I disagree and I will explain why.
lets say you have 15,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 750 × 5 = 3750
lets say you have 20,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 1000 × 5 = 5000all these numbers are meaningless as you are taking a % of dmg and please do not confuse % with numbers.
5 ticks = 25% of damage at 5% health of agony a tick.
this means you will be at 75% health regardless of your HP pool.
however…. you are not attacked solely by agony, you are also attacked by monsters.lets say you have 5000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are seriously endangered) 5 sec to live
lets say you have 10000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are endangered) 10 sec to livethe same could be said for toughness:
5000 hp and you take a 3000 hit however halved to 1500 from melee/ranged – halved from tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 3500 hp remain
10000 hp and you take 3000 hit however doubled to 6000 from melee/ranged – doubled from not having tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 4000 hp remainnow lets throw some fun into the mix, if you take a poison condition your healing is reduced by 33% – do you really think healing ASAP is the fix? or condition removal?
tough does not beat vit and vit does not beat tough, they are seperate mitigations and should be treated as such. to say 1 is not useful is false, it is dependant on the situation.
having 900+ healing and trying to heal through poison is -33% effective.
having 300+ healing and trying to heal after removing poison is 100% effective.math is fun, theorycrafting is fun, but just remember there is no perfect spec/build/combo etc.
This post is almost completely irrelevant to its own thesis statement, let alone the post it was replying to.
About the only thing relevant in there is that if you stack vitality, you’ll have more life remaining (on an absolute scale) once Agony has stopped having its way with you. Which is true, but as noted in the original original post, vitality is still a poor counter because it doesn’t actually reduce the damage that Agony does to you (In fact, it increases it!), it just allows you to cope with taking damage more easily.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
I understand that this wasn’t about the OP as it was stated @Retanaru.2901.
now @Softspoken.2410 learn to read quotes.
you obviously didn’t read my post because if you did you would realise that your statements contradict.
[quote=806300;Softspoken.2410:]
you say that vitality is a bad counter to agony, I disagree and I will explain why.
lets say you have 15,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 750 × 5 = 3750
lets say you have 20,000 health and take 5% health of agony a tick.
5 ticks = 1000 × 5 = 5000all these numbers are meaningless as you are taking a % of dmg and please do not confuse % with numbers.
5 ticks = 25% of damage at 5% health of agony a tick.
this means you will be at 75% health regardless of your HP pool.
however…. you are not attacked solely by agony, you are also attacked by monsters.lets say you have 5000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are seriously endangered) 5 sec to live
lets say you have 10000 hp and you take a bleed for 1000 a tick (you are endangered) 10 sec to livethe same could be said for toughness:
5000 hp and you take a 3000 hit however halved to 1500 from melee/ranged – halved from tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 3500 hp remain
10000 hp and you take 3000 hit however doubled to 6000 from melee/ranged – doubled from not having tough (not exact math, but bare with me) 4000 hp remainnow lets throw some fun into the mix, if you take a poison condition your healing is reduced by 33% – do you really think healing ASAP is the fix? or condition removal?
tough does not beat vit and vit does not beat tough, they are seperate mitigations and should be treated as such. to say 1 is not useful is false, it is dependant on the situation.
having 900+ healing and trying to heal through poison is -33% effective.
having 300+ healing and trying to heal after removing poison is 100% effective.math is fun, theorycrafting is fun, but just remember there is no perfect spec/build/combo etc.
This post is almost completely irrelevant to its own thesis statement, let alone the post it was replying to.
About the only thing relevant in there is that if you stack vitality, you’ll have more life remaining (on an absolute scale) once Agony has stopped having its way with you. Which is true, but as noted in the original original post, vitality is still a poor counter because it doesn’t actually reduce the damage that Agony does to you (In fact, it increases it!), it just allows you to cope with taking damage more easily.
I understand that this wasn’t about the OP as it was stated @Retanaru.2901.
now @Softspoken.2410 learn to read quotes.
you obviously didn’t read my post because if you did you would realise that your statements contradict.
1. it does not increase the damage as it is a % damage. I fail to see how 5% of 15000 health is less damage than 5% of 20000 – the overall damage yes, but the end result you are left with 5% less health.
2. it does not allow you to cope with damage more easily as you are taking a … do you understand how % works? if you take 50 of something it is 50% less of whatever it is taken from if it’s 10000 or 50000 it’s still 50% so coping with it? you still see half a health bubble.
3. in the original post he mentions prec->vit… he is either saying it’s better or go prec and then pick vit, he is not saying it’s a poor counter
4. read the posts before you comment, less you make a mistake.
I understand that this wasn’t about the OP as it was stated @Retanaru.2901.
now @Softspoken.2410 learn to read quotes.you obviously didn’t read my post because if you did you would realise that your statements contradict.
1. it does not increase the damage as it is a % damage. I fail to see how 5% of 15000 health is less damage than 5% of 20000 – the overall damage yes, but the end result you are left with 5% less health.
2. it does not allow you to cope with damage more easily as you are taking a … do you understand how % works? if you take 50 of something it is 50% less of whatever it is taken from if it’s 10000 or 50000 it’s still 50% so coping with it? you still see half a health bubble.
3. in the original post he mentions prec->vit… he is either saying it’s better or go prec and then pick vit, he is not saying it’s a poor counter
4. read the posts before you comment, less you make a mistake.
1) 5% of 15,000: 750. 5% of 20,000: 1000.
Static values are still relevant, since Agony being based off of the size of the health pool of the target is a very unique characteristic. So ‘Agony does more damage to characters with larger health pools’ and ‘Agony does a flat % of each character’s health, irrespective of health pool size’ are not mutually exclusive statements.
More on this in point 2.
2) I’ll try to make my assertion regarding this point more clear:
All other things being equal, half a health bubble is worth more when the health bubble is bigger.
If Agony is going to reduce you to 50% health no matter what, I’d rather have 12,000 life remaining than 8,000. That 4000 life difference can make a difference to if I survive other attacks not based off a percentage of your characters’ health pool, of which there are many.
3)
you say that vitality is a bad counter to agony, I disagree and I will explain why.
Can you see why I might have thought that you thought that he was saying that vitality was a bad counter to agony? (Read that last line carefully, I couldn’t think of a way to make it be less circuitous)
4) Thanks for the advice. You should be aware, however, that you sound nearly as condescending as I do.
Upon reflection, I’m probably just derailing this thread even more, which is a bit shameful. I’ll stay out of it from here on unless I think I have something interesting to add to the original topic.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
(edited by Softspoken.2410)
well iv got up to scale 12 with my support thief build.
20/0/30/20/0
venomous strength
quick venoms
master of deception
leaching venoms
venomous aura
Power of inertia
quick recovery
using half soldier half magi armour with rita sum runes with cleric jewelry
using a zerker short bow.
this gives me ~1700 toughness and ~1400 vitality as well as ~1600 power and ~700 healing power
as im a slyvari too im using the “healing seed” healing skill, spider venom, skale venom, smoke screen, and summon druid spirit elite.
basicly how this works is that i keep up poison and weakness on the mobs while giving my team mates healing venoms / might / and regen.
i might not be the most traditional thief (doing huge damage but needing a rez every 15 seconds) but i mange to keep the team standing.
also becasue of this i usually do all the running and triggering for the boss’s.
(edited by TheTaffer.8761)
Use Signet of Agility or/and Bountiful thief
Toughness does not save the thief from one shot.
Thanks for this tip. Apparently I completely missed Signet of Agility when considering skills to take. The condition removal is an awesome thing, I was always dying to random conditions.