Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone. I’m hopping here for some friendly advice for when I play my thief for fun in PvP. I want to understand the circumstances of when a thief should simply decap a point (leave it gray) versus fully steal the point (red or blue).

I was under the impression that stealing was always the best because you’d be gaining points for your team. But I’ve seen strategies employed where the thief simply decaps a point, then moves elsewhere.

I’d love to hear any input.

Thanks!

T.

No, usually you decap. It is very situational, but consider the following:
-A cap takes way longer than a decap.
-If an enemy is ignoring a decapped point, they loose. If they retake it they loose too.
But if they are recapturing a fullcapped point, they dont really loose anything.
The best situation for a fullcap is when the rest of the map is onesided.
If you win everywhere they arent going to miss you in the fights.
And if your entire team is dead already, you cant do anything about the other two points and might aswell secure your victory on this one.

But as long as there is any fight that you could turn around, you go there.
The most improtant thing is to gain momentum, and you dont do that by capping uncontested points.
Decapping forces your enemy team into doing annoying kitten they dont want to and requires almost no effort from your side.
Its almost impossible to stop a thief decap from happening, a thief fullcap is almost impossible to make happen.

It depends on what’s going on in the game. If there is a teamfight at mid and I see far open, I go get it quickly, then decap, and if they still need me at mid I immediately go back, or to home if home needs help.

If the other team is mostly at home and there is a small fight at mid, I take advantage of the fact that most of the team is away from their home and I fullcap. Also, if there are respawns coming I usually just decap and leave.

TL;DR: If you aren’t needed elsewhere I would fullcap it as long as you have time. If you’re a good 1v1er you can fullcap and if someone’s coming just keep capping and stay there. Otherwise, if you’re not a 1v1-oriented thief I would probably just decap and leave. So it’s a variety of factors. You’ll get used to the situations where you should and shouldn’t.

Ah, I get it now. So blocking the other team from getting the points and then +1ing a fight will do a ton more to bring my team momentum. And because thieves are so swift and mobile, the more time you spend not moving slows your team down. Very cool.

As a side question, I’ve typically played my thief with a Dagger-Pistol set, but I have been enjoying Sword-Dagger the past few days. I understand DP is preferred, but could anyone lay out the benefits of SD over DP? Or does that mainly come down to team composition? — mine and the opponent team.

Tealots.6095:

As a side question, I’ve typically played my thief with a Dagger-Pistol set, but I have been enjoying Sword-Dagger the past few days. I understand DP is preferred, but could anyone lay out the benefits of SD over DP? Or does that mainly come down to team composition? — mine and the opponent team.

S/D does not have any real advantages over D/P, to be honest. However I prefer the play style of S/D and that’s what I play. If you like the play style of S/D, then stick with it for a while, try a few different S/D builds, and see what you think. But D/P and Staff are overwhelmingly deemed to be better weapon sets.

Note: S/D recently got a “buff” so that Larcenous Strike steals an extra boon, with an extra cost of 1 more initiative. This theoretically means you could specialize in stealing from boon-heavy classes. However given that Bountiful Theft also received an extra boon stolen (with no increased cost of any kind), I argue that Larcenous Strike is still inferior. Also, the thief is about raw damage, and nobody ever won a match by simply stealing more boons.

If I had to play a ranked match (I always play unranked), I would still pick S/D simply because I am so accustomed to it.

- most cases just decap so you can force one of theirs to cap back and you can +1 a fight
- fullcap in cases where you are:
a) alone due your team wipe (don’t engage 1v1, always focus on +1’ing so if your team wipes u need to leave any fight)
b) your team is perfectly fine handling the 4v5 on the points and do not need any +1 to take it anyone (keep an eye on their HP bar and the amount of conditions)

S/D used to be strong in a previous meta from a year or so ago (don’t remember exactly when) because it could allow a thief to evade enough to act as a brawler, so they were basically a hyper-mobile team fighter.

S/D was strong because it was a dodge build that didn’t need stealth to survive or maximize damage. At that time the D/P build was executioner so people ran S/D to sacrifice some burst damage for much greater survivability.

Now with DD the D/P build has the same amount of evades as S/D with the addition of blinds, stealth, more gap closers, more damage, more utility, etc. The unfortunate thing is that while S/D is so much more fun to play and fight against, D/P is objectively better in almost every respect (except style :P)

Full cap when you intend for an ally to rotate to hold the point because you’re winning another point and already, don’t expect to, or don’t expect to be able to cap it anytime soon, or if for some reason you’re going to win that fight and cap the point or have already capped it easily and can afford to take the time to boost the score a bit.

Decap when there are enemy respawns, a fight you want to win that would benefit from you returning to it, regardless of whether the point is captured or not. Even if the point you want to win the fight on is captured and your team can hold it without you, if you going there will get a kill and maintain staggered enemy spawns, do it.

S/D suffers from tougher classes having port-to-target skills. Before it was only guard and another thief that could, and you could still out-pace the guard to a point or decap vs another thief. Revenants and Dragonhunters now though, as well as other thieves, will keep up with S/D unless you get a sneaky disengage with a cloak and dagger + infiltrator’s return and they aren’t watching for it.

D/P stealths enough that you never know for sure when the thief is still there or left to decap, and port-to-target skills don’t work without a target, making D/P superior for decapping and forcing enemy to try and counter-rotate vs something they can’t see (e.g. stealth on the way toward a point then turn back and let enemy player go there for 0 gain).