New to thief, could use some tips please.
A Sword mainhand is definitely your best choice for leveling.
Couple it with an off-hand Dagger if you like Cloak and Dagger for Stealth every few seconds.
Couple it with a Pistol off-hand if you like Pistolwhip and Black Powder (Blind Field).
As for traits….there’s not really that much choice while leveling. Can’t go wrong with Critical Strikes or even Shadow Arts if you stealth a lot (using Cloak and Dagger) .
I can’t really think of a “must have” trait during leveling that makes everything significantly easier.
Do take note however that your auto-attack will change to a new ability while in stealth. That’s where the Backstabs and Tactical Strikes come from. Every mainhand weapon has a unique Stealth attack that is often their signature move.
I’m just telling you this because I didn’t notice my unique Stealth abilities until about level 50 when I was leveling my Thief.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Ok cool, thanks for clearing the sword thing up, i will give that a shot when i finish work, i like the fact you can jump in hit your target and bounce straight back out again i also like the look of flanking strike, (which i was thinking of putting in my trait lines aswell, coupled with this weapon skill i think it would work nicely.)
my main question is i have noticed ( i know i am only low level) that i am rather squishy i know this may be the fact its a new char and i am not used to the skills or dodging as much but i would really like that safety net of some survivability.
my advice: roll a guardian, delete the thief
Well that’s why Sword mainhand is so awesome.
You get to cleave up to 3 targets while affecting them with Weakness which cuts their melee damage by roughly 25%.
Then you have Pistolwhip which has an inbuilt evade while slashing at your enemies.
The best part is though that you can stand in a Black Powder combo field and simply auto-attack your melee enemies to death while constantly applying blinds. It means you can kill almost any melee mob without taking damage.
When using a Dagger offhand you can also use Cloak and Dagger constantly (as in every 3 seconds) for the Stealth, followed by the Stealth attack. If you spec into the Shadow Arts tree you can Blind all nearby enemies every time you stealth which is very effective in PvE.
Knowing these tricks should really help compensate for the Thief’s innate squishiness. I know for sure that had I known those tricks I’d have died a lot less.
ok mate thanks for the tips, it is not just me then, all thiefs are squishy? or do they get a bit tougher at higher lvls? do you have any advice on slot skills or is that personal preference? i could just use pointing in the right direction when it comes to them that is all. with my necro it was easy but i dont know why i am struggling so much with this build.
Dan, thanks for the advice mate, but i will probably be making a guardian next anyway, i dont really want to give up on this challenge just yet. i think with practice and a little help and knowledge i can really enjoy playing my thief.
we are squishy but some armor can fix that. but as a thief your agility is literally your best defense, and stealth depending on your weapons. I role dagger dagger so stealth and I are best friends. It gets easier the more you play
ok thats good to know, do you have any tips?
tips for like what armor weapons? because the other guys pretty much covered the basics. Ultimately it depends on what kind of thief you want to be. There are alot of condition pd thieves. Im a dd backstab thief(but not a glasscannon >:( ) so the advice depends on what you want to do. edit: those arent the only two kinds of thieves
actually, there is a tanky dagger dagger condition self healing build i roled with for a bit (liked the idea of stealth fighting better) this vid may help, it does work. Pretty defensive for a thief http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykHzLlhZJCw
i want to be the same sort, steath but i think i want to use sword dagger, or S/P…. not sure. i mean traits wise, gear i can pretty much guess from the trait lines and i can also add either toughness or vitality to the mix within the gear.
also my slot skills i am having trouble deciding on what ones go with stealthy backstab, i kinda guessed i dont want ones with conditions right?
i found a vid for stealth brawling sword using let me find it for you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp6g0apTlvk
edit: sword wont give you backstab damage, only daggers have the skill ’Backstab"
me personally, my dd stealth thief runs Signet of shadows shadow step and shadow refuge with dagger storm elite
my main stealthing comes from the last dagger offhand skill cloak and dagger
(edited by RedSpectrum.1975)
ow right, how does flanking relate to backstab then? is backstab more dmg? or does flanking and side strike give you about on par dmg? thanks for the vids by the way i appreciate it i am going to watch them now when my internet stops monging it
flanking strike simply means that when you are attacking people from the side or behind, your attacks (usually your auto attack if your circling your opponent) will do even more damage, backstab itself it the auto attack skill for dagger main hand when you are in stealth. from the front, backstab is like any other attack, just does damage. From the side or behind however, it does superior damage, added on to the fact that flanking strike already increases any attack from the side or behind, backstab gets really powerful.
so would you say DD is more of glass cannon? and where would you recommend using sword dagger? or even sword pistol?
Glasscannons use dagger dagger backstabbing, however, not all bs dd’s are glasscannon like me, some of us like to actually be able to take a few hits. As for sword dagger and sword pistol, im afraid i cant help you there. I use daggers and SB or dual pistols. The stealth brawler vid i linked uses sword dagger as a stealthing aspect which is interesting but that about it for my knowledge of the other guys. The other thieves here may know more about that and you could research some builds. Sorry dude.
In my personal opinion, D/D backstab isn’t very good while leveling because of the trouble you can have getting your crit chance up (might just be me). Also i prefer D/P (leap combo through smoke field to stealth) though it requires 2 initiative on stealth-trait to not get too expensive. D/D condition (death blossom) can however have a very high survivability if you make sure to manage your initiative well, since you evade while using DB. I leveled mostly spamming pistol whip from S/P, but that was before the damage nerf, and I’ve heard that it’s currently better to just use Black Powder and auto-attack (at least in PvE since the stun isn’t that useful there). I’ve been running a lot of S/D lately in both PvE, WvW and SPvP and I’d say it’s one of the most defensive sets since you have a stunbreaker, condition removal, a panic evade (if you’re immobilized or run out of endurance) a stealth (which can trigger various shadow art traits such as Blind nearby foes, Remove conditions and Gain regeneration) and a long dazing stealth skill.
I’d however say that the one weapon that always works for the thief is the shortbow. It has high AoE damage that works great both at long and short range and is good against both single and multiple targets. If you find a water field (or steal it from rangers) you can combo blast it with cluster shot for a ~1.3k AoE heal per 3 initiative (which is great). This is while it does also have one of the best mobility skills in the game – infiltrators arrow.
When it comes to traits I’ve always liked to have atleast 15 points in acrobatics (gain 15 endurance on dodge). When stacked with Vigorous Recovery (~10 sec vigor on heal), Withdraw (15 sec recharging heal) and Bountiful Theft (15 sec vigor on steal) you will have basically permanent vigor and almost unlimited endurance (a little overkill however).
By putting 15 points in trickery you’ll gain a minor trait that gives +3 max initiative, but while this doesn’t seem like much, it’s very much more forgiving if you for example miss a CnD.
Shadow Arts has a lot of useful traits for CnD-spammers – if you want really high survivability you can put a lot of points there to gain initiative, regeneration, remove conditions and blind nearby foes upon entering stealth.
With 15 points in Deadly Arts you will get a trait that makes you cause 3 sec weakness when you poison a foe, and this synergizes very well with Shocking Gas on the shortbow – maintaining AoE permanent weakness should not be underestimated in dungeons.
Critical Strikes… well, that’s pretty just for raw damage. It has (IMO) the most useful attributes (prec and crit dmg) and quite useful traits, but it’s also quite boring since you don’t really notice all that crit and damage increase the same way that you notice the endurance return and weakness on poison from other trait lines.
tl:dr: If you put at least 15 points in acrobatics and shadow arts, grab a shortbow and a set with a lot of stealth, and have some kind of stealth utilities you should honestly not have that much of a problem surviving even with glassy gear.
Oh kitten how did this post get so long…
Yes Toroquin seems you let your fingers fly, but yes, for starting out, a backstab build is not advised since it needs crucial traits you just dont have t the time
ok thanks guys for the tips, i will ultimately aim towards either S/D or D/D stealth build for around the lvl 50 stage, until then i might switch to S/D from D/D and see what i can do. thanks for the help so far everything is extremely useful.