Guild Wars 2

As the title suggests, just wondering if there are any thieves who run neither Shadow Refuge nor Shadowstep on their utilities. Just about every thief I’ve met uses both of them, and I don’t blame them — 15 seconds of stealth and blink/stunbreak/condi cure are pretty good.

If you don’t use either, what do you use instead, and what’s your build? How do you deal with resetting fights and curing conditions?

Alternatively, if you were forced to remove both, what would you take instead?

they are good skills no doubt. but there are 2 reasons we take them and have to take them.

reason 1- they are good
reason 2- theres no other choices competitively

:P

if they were removed? blinding powder and RFI i think.

I run shadowstep but not refuge anymore, just kinda trained myself not to use it, first 6 months on thief however they never moved from my bar =), now i run shadowstep/ scorp wire/ blinding poweder. Scorpion wire being the one id switch around and play with.

kittenslapper.2483:

I run shadowstep but not refuge anymore, just kinda trained myself not to use it, first 6 months on thief however they never moved from my bar =), now i run shadowstep/ scorp wire/ blinding poweder. Scorpion wire being the one id switch around and play with.

u must just be a roamer with high mobility then. bc if ur in aggressive mode/build u need it as a safety net. if ur runnign with teamates its an uncomparable utility for your team. reviving…sneaking up…escaping….attacking…. etc etc. pve or pvp. if u dont run this then ur either selfish or roaming……androaming is 99% ofthe time selfish. im not against it just pointing out you missed what the OP was saying. they are the 2 strongest/best utilities we have. hands down. what would u take if they were removed from game.?

Shadowstep I always keep for the condition removal and the extra mobility. Other option would be Roll for Initiative.

Shadow Refuge is really great for team utility, but when going solo I feel shadow trap outperforms it with same things + additional things, only thing missing is the combo field for blind or lifesteal. Other options in this slot is Smoke field or Blinding Powder.

no shadow refuge and shs, it is called venom build…usually a joke in pvp…but it is what we should be running i guess looking at recent patches?

actually im talking from a PVP stance mainly since its 80% of my gameplay. I run 0/30/10/0/30 d/d build with shadowstep only out of the two, and do quite well. In WvW however yes i do run SR but its maybe a hour or two out of a month i even touch WvW honestly. And to be honest in fractals and dungeons i run it for easy revives without aggro. In my main gameplay though i almost never run it. So to answer your question what would i run? Still scorpion wire cause i love it in multiple ways, as a interrupt, gap closer, and unsuspected skill for a thief, pull people from fields before they combo and catch runners while causing a KD on a 20 sec timer assuming that stability isnt up, which happens more than not surpirsingly. Sorry i didnt state it before its new years =) lol

Probably run Signet of Agility / Infiltrator Signet / Blinding Powder.

Instead of Infiltrator Signet / Shadowstep / Shadow Refuge.

Some interesting replies. It seems most of the alternatives are still fairly defensive in nature: blinding powder, roll for initiative, signet of agility. We don’t seem to favor our more offensive utilities like haste or ambush. I guess thieves treat their utilities as defensive options in general. I think scorpion wire could be interesting, but I’m just a bit wary of how gimmicky it is. It often does nothing when it looks like it should pull the enemy. Not to mention all the terrain bugs.

Personally, I’d consider smokescreen to compensate for refuge stealth and help against engis/rangers/mesmer duelists. I’ve also fought a thief who used tripwire pretty effectively. I’d also consider the torment/immobilize venoms and caltrops if I were playing p/d. Other than that, I guess you can’t go wrong with blinding powder, roll for initiative, and infiltrator’s signet.

Biggest problem is condition removal without shadowstep. Seems to me like you’re forced to take hide in shadows to compensate.

Devourer’s venom, although venoms on their own are pretty weak, kitten immobilize can be devastating for someone who just blowed away their condi removal. Especially when it’s Xv1 or XvX. It opens a long window for target fire.

I used to run without either utilities for a while as well, but like mango above me said. You’ll need HiS to compensate the loss of condi removal. This is probably the biggest negative point for not running ShS.
SR on the other hand is imo a free to pick skill. In PvP setting it’s usually not worth it imo. While taking a node, it’s just wasted utility. In WvW/PvE it could have it’s place but for my current build not worth it and if you can see from distance that you need it, you can still just swap out.

Refuge is often a giant bullseye that just gets you knocked out of it and revealed. Dunno why it has to remove stealth when you step out of it. Feels like a trap most of the time unless you’re using it for a preemptive attack.

I still use Shadowstep but I like using Infiltrators’s and Agility Signet/Roi and Blinding Powder. Used to use Shadow Trap before they nerfed it. Every time I try to make a build more suited for my playstyle I’d get beaten in the face with no cond removal options since we’re so cursed by Shadow Arts and Cloak and Dagger. Wish there was a way to trait it onto other utilities.

Then I feel like we have 2 entire trait categories that are relatively useless. (traps and venoms) It’s like we have half the utility other classes have.