Guild Wars 2

So I tried the two main builds for insta-gibbing and found them to be viciously effective but really really boring. (Those are the pistol whip and backstab/heartstrike.)

I’ve tried experimenting with bleeding, which seems to be the least effective method of killing anyone.
Venomancer Aura build with Lyssa’s runes because every buff for 5 seconds every 31 seconds is awesome.
Pistol/Pistol and shortbow and the main thing I found was shortbow felt consistently more powerful than unload. Which just flops over pathetically when encountering any amount of toughness.
And many other ideas such as signet based builds or trap based builds.

The main thing that seems apparent to me is that if you aren’t rolling a fully optimal cookie-cutter pistol whip or backstab build. Every class will out last and out gun you. With maybe the exception of necromancers. Sorry necros, but i’m beating you on the weakest build I came up with… pistol/pistol, pistol/dagger.

The point of traits was so that we wouldn’t devolve into obvious cookiecutter builds. But the thief seems set up that way because of the sheer strength of the cookiecutter builds. Our viability everywhere else is incredibly flimsy.

I’d like to see the cookie cutter builds scaled back a bit and in exchange our overall viability improved.

I fully agree. The thief just seems to be halfmade and very repetitive. One of the main reasons I suspect is that we got the lowest HP pool that kills alot of options. And the wierd selection of boring utilities.

Let the meta game evolve for a bit, and people will learn how to counter the current popular builds with ease. They’re really not THAT strong.

Let the meta game evolve for a bit, and people will learn how to counter the current popular builds with ease. They’re really not THAT strong.

Alright but my point is… That will leave the thief in the situation where it is mostly only effective with 2 easily and well known builds. And lacks the strength to be flexible with its builds compared to the other classes.

An example is my ranger… Just with one weapon I have access to many build ideas, all of which seem to preform very well and have access to numerous flexable traits and utilities.

The thief on the other hand, we have people pushing as much attack as they can while maintaining some durability. Simply because if our first gambit fails, we are dead in the water until we can prepare a second bout. So our first gambit cannot fail, hence the high damage focus of these two builds.

The only skill involved in thief at the moment seems to be picking the cookie cutter build of your choice and learning how to:
A, set someone up for an instant gibbing.
B, retreating to the shadows when successful or if you fail.

For a class called “Thief” it certainly acts more like an Assassin.

I agree with your sentiment.

The Thief’s current prowess evolves around a very few selected builds/skill combinations. Nothing else comes close.

Just consider for a moment how popular Sword/Pistol would be without Pistolwhip. How popular would Dagger/Dagger be without backstab?

If the loss of a single ability has such a detrimental effect on a specs popularity then that’s a solid sign that something is broken.

You should try using a sword. It is very fun.

Dagger/Dagger condition builds are incredibly powerful – I can hold out 3 vs 1 and have won a few 2 vs 1 fights. 1 vs 1 I’m probably at 80/20 win/loss and not a particularly good player. But yes, its cookie cutter and a bit repetative so I’ve tried to swap to using the shortbow and….it seems very underwhelming.

Basically theif seems to have a handful of very effective builds which are easy to play but the range of choice feels lacking.

I am not using any cookie cutter and I feel being strong somehow. Running with sword/dagger + shortbow, build for 30 shadow arts, 30 acrobatics and 10 deadly arts. Using runes or Rata Sum + enchant on weapon, what increase weakness duration by 30% + 10% from deadly arts. Added Scale Venom for permanent weakness with venomous aura trait.

What does it give to me?
I can counter every glass canon build I ever met in sPvP yet. Not only thieves. And if I can’t kill somebody, I just run away with shortbow or infiltrator’s strike. Also, I cannot be insta gibbed by any burst,thanks to extra toughtness and vitality.

So, no – instead of complaining, learn some new builds and stop reading these dumb guides from “pros” with one week game experience. PvP isn’t only around damage and big numbers, it’s also around tactic, utility and support.

Nothing you’ve said here actually helps any one Dagins and simply comes across as deliberately antagonistic.
If you are willing to post this much, post a build and your general strategy. Or heck, just explain how you are dealing damage with no crit or power.

All you have really done is demonstrated is that thieves can only function on extremes. “All in damage” “All in toughness/vit” as I clearly mentioned the main issue is that thieves lack flexibility and can only make up for their weaknesses by going to extreme builds. How exactly is anything you’ve said, disproven that?

I also note your main stratagy is running away… Which makes you unreliable in group pvp. Since your main advantage is running away at the first sign of a disadvantage.

I believe this is down to initiative, i mean look at it this way giving someone a limited resource for their abilities one ability is going to become the main ability. I mean why should i waste my initiative on a blind when i could stun them and chop though them AGAIN?

as long as this is happening people are going to figure out builds that empower the 1 ability.

Ok, I’ve already found a working skill calculator, here is my build. Make sure to check all tabs:

http://tinyurl.com/btls8v5

How the fight looks – if it is 1vs1, I keep my opponent in semi-stunlock, using C&D whenever I can to apply 2sec daze and blind. If it’s a steady melee fight, I can C&D every 3-4 seconds, where every stealth enter gives me 2 stacks of might and small AoE blind.
Assassins Reward works really well with high initiative regeneration from Infusion of Shadow and Quick Recovery, healing me like I had passive Signet of Malice. I have max stacks of “sigil of superior life +250 healing” almost all the time, because I don’t die. Auto attack is very important, because it can keep weakness up for the whole fight.

About bigger teamfights – mostly I open them with short bow spam of AoE poison and weakness. Also, at the beginning I apply to all teammates Skale Venom if possible. Otherwise, I apply it to Thieves Guild mobs. When I see a teammate downed, I shodowstep with Shadow Refuge. If there are some durable enemies who just refuse to die, I switch to sword and use tactic explained in 1vs1. If the objective is lost, I simply run like nothing happened.

I don’t have to max deadly arts and precision to deal damage. Of course, it takes a bit longer to kill somebody, but I have a feeling of better fight control.

About running away – dead thief can’t dps. It’s not like I run away whenever dropped to 50% hp. Dying for your squad might be honorable, but it isn’t effective at all. Thiever are effective in this way by a definition.

i kinda agree that only Backstab and Pistol Whip builds are good at solo killing. I do frequently play a Venomous Aura shortbow build though and use it entirely for map control instead of for actually killing players. Its one of the best builds in the game (out of any class) for supporting team vs. team engagements and taking control of map points.

the damage on this build is low and attrition based though so you do have to run away from solo fights. all of your kills will come in group fights when you are supporting a more offensively built class.

I see a lot of posts defending the thief and frankly, I just don’t see it. I leveled a warrior first, then started leveling a thief, all while experimenting with most of the other classes.

The warrior is dynamic, versatile, and both fun and easy to play without feeling overpowered. Other classes felt mostly the same way to varying degrees.

In comparison, the thief is gimmicky, lacks flexibility, and is very weak at the baseline. As an above poster said, they can function effectively only by min/maxing their builds and have a few skill/trait combos that make them OP in PvP, but they’re still pretty bad in PvE. Even at low levels, it feels like it lacks polish compared to other classes and is the bandaged result of multiple changes in design direction.

Some people love to say “l2p”, and I say in response: classes should be easy to learn, hard to master. The thief is the opposite, and that’s a problem. They need some pretty serious revamps. To begin with, they need better survivability and more weapon skills.

The problem is is that you are using only cookie cutter builds, OP.

My Critical Strikes/Shadow Arts S/D build is highly surviveable. I’m constantly 1v3’ing people and not dying. I’m not going to be able to kill 3 people, sure, but it’s very unlikely that I’d die because of my insanely durable build. It’s also got sustained damage from crit strikes (+10 when ini over 6 and + 20 when under 50% hp) and the sword autoattack is actually quite strong, albeit slow. The weakness debuff from sword auto 3 is nice as well. But sword 2 gives you THE BEST STUNBREAK IN THE GAME, as it is ALWAYS available, it’s cheap on initiative, and it moves you far from the fight, and it even clears up a condition.

It is insanely hard to be killed on my thief when you can stunbreak everything, and any stealth will heal you for 3k hp.

TLDR:

Stop using cookie cutter burst builds and start experimenting.

I can’t say I agree completely with original post.

What I’ve noticed is we do have a weakness to condition damage when the foe can keep replacing it against our limited removal. Being supported by team member condition removal seems essential to thief viability.

Another essential aspect is the balance of healing and/or toughness without total sacrifice of offensive boosts. Thieves are useless without some strong damage options equipped. They are also useless if everyone can instagib them if caught. We can get away with not taking toughness more than others since we can avoid a lot of hits with our blinds and evades. Weakness is highly under appreciated.

My favorite builds rely on hybrid stats that improve just about everything & ensure solid precision and some condition damage so I can make use of both my weapon sets, deal versatile damage that can’t be completely countered with a single tactic, and utilize my full evasion potential as a thief.

My build completly defies everything you just stated obtuse. Condition Damage? No removal? False. There’s a trait that makes stealth remove conditions. using SnD, that makes your 5 remove conditions, and your 2 already does. That’s two weapon skills that remove conditions. Your stealthing heal will auto-remove bleeding, poison, and burning.. and another condition after 3 secs with the trait. You have a trait that removes bleeding, poison, and burning every 45 secs when you go under 80% hp.. if you took the condition removal trait on stealth, you can make ALL of your utilities remove conditions..

You are just doing it wrong.

Useless without strong dmg? Whaaat? I kill people with the autoattack from my sword, That stuff does do dmg.I get 3-5k dmg per 3 hits on sword, depending on how many crits pop out and if the target is under 50% hp. That’s plenty enough damage to kill someone. Have you thought about other ways to make people die? This is a team game. On S/D, use your 2 to immobilize and 4 to cripple fleeing foes. That’s a ton of CC, considering you have no CD’s. CC’s secure kills.

Also, STOP USING BERSERKER’S AMULET!! If you want to not die everytime you are bursted, switch to a soldiers or knights amulet. Use only the berserker’s stone inside one of the aforementioned amulets. It let’s you actually survive a hundred blades frenzy burst.

Dagins.5163:

And if I can’t kill somebody, I just run away with shortbow or infiltrator’s strike.

EVERYONE does that…not just you…

It doesn’t defy so much as confirm what I mean about thief hybrid play. I tried loading out your build on gw2skills just now and I do find it to be heavily hybridized. Your offensive capabilities are traded off slightly for high avoidance and the stealth heal and condition defense. The way I set it up was as a signet use build, signets of power, and executioner. With signet of agility and infiltrator’s signet.

In shadow I took shadow protector, shadow’s embrace, and shadow rejuvenation. For this build I think hidden thief might be better, and I would then change the 1st slot to roll for initiative.

I put in the knight amulet and berserker jewel, runes of divinity for balanced improvement and critical damage, and sigil of superior leeching & blood for a heal on critical /30% chance. I think I would take dagger/pistol as the 2nd set for heartseeker sprint or finisher and the blinding shadow step on 3. Plus the black powder stealth combo. This gives us a lot of heal from the stealths.

But, For condition removal I’d rather use shadow step utility, as I can heal way more with signet of malice than shadow rejuvenation adds. It’s going to heal about 120 per strike with these stats

The build like this will have 20k hp, 400 +heal, about 1600 heal per 3 second stealth, 52% crit chance and 48% crit damage. 1670 power

It’s as hybrid as you can get short of the bag of everything builds I am using with assassin’s reward & signet of malice. It’s a great use of thief avoidance and damage capabilities in the traits.

If you agree with the OP, the thief class is probably not for you. Or you don’t yet understand the class play style. You can’t play a thief like a warrior. Thieves are a thinking mans class, and I’m not saying that to condescend anyone, it really is.

Thieves win by out playing their opponents, we do stuff that’s “cheap.” We make other players believe that we can “permastealth” and have too much mobility or blinds or stuns or damage or whatever they’re complaining about in the forums.

PW and BS builds are “cheap” and thiefy, but have way overvalued damage over utility, which makes them not fun and much less well rounded because our class is supposed to have lots of that.

I’ve been using a pistol-dagger build and it’s amazing, the key is understanding that you whittle down your opponent with condition and auto attack damage instead of big crits while annoying your opponent. For PD, that means staying stealthed and gaining all the benefits of stealth such as condition removal, health regen, initiative regen, the AoE blind, etc. That might sound more boring than big numbers to some but, I think, for natural thieves, it’s as fun as combat can get. I believe that as time goes on highly effective PD and SD builds will become go to “cookie cutter” builds.

Check this video out, this guy does PD and shows how fun and effective this build and the thief class can be:

the build in that link couldn’t be more off from what I do. the utilities don’t make sense, you don’t take any healing traits in the healing line.. your weapons don’t facilitate condition removal or stunbreaks or anything.. the only stealth skills you even have are steal and CnD, which tend to be highly unreliable. I don’t know why you don’t have blinding powder or shadow refuge, as they are amazing utilities. you put a ton of points into trickery and I don’t see why, more condition damage and more stealing don’t add a meaningful difference. Critical strieks at 30 gives you way more damage, and shadow arts at 30 gives you way more sustainability, actually filling the hybrid role there. You invest a lot of utilities into stunbreaks.. while if you simply used a sword you’d ahve the best one ever.. and another condition removal ontop of it.

There’s nothing similar about our builds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQNAV4Ylcm6OXeS6E+5EBnCjiUvHkdsotTxV1KA;T0Ag1CpoKyUkoIbRuikFtEZgxhjdAvQA

Looks like the clipboard had a wrong build link or failed the recopy from the actual build, maybe read the description of what I took while I re load it out

Copy paste this one which is what I made before, taking hidden thief over shadow rejuvenation

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQRAsY4alUmaPHfS4E+5Ex2jeuTey9gpOFpdkittenA;TwAA2CnoqxUjoGbNuak1s+Y8xeiJGA

It was hard to follow.
Anyways, what I do have to say about it is that your utilities are completely off. You’re not getting any real synergy with your Shadow Arts traits, and that’s where this build becomes beastly. The only signet you should consider is the 25% movespeed one, because short of using centaur runes there’s not many ways to keep your speed up. The two signets you have right now really don’t offer anything. you don’t need a shadowstep signet when you have sword 2, you don’t need a condition removal signet when you have sword 2 + stealths. If you put Blinding powder and Shadow Refuge in there you’d see wayyy more returns. Shadow Refuge with the Shadow arts traits as I ahve them make it an immense rescue skill, as you are now healing from Shadow Refuge’s pulses, from becoming stealthed by it, and from being stealthed, not to mention that it removes conditions every 3 seconds and it lasts for like 15 seconds the entire duration (the stealth, anyways). I don’t see any reason to not have shadow refuge in this build, and I’m not seeing the synergy between the signets you chose, other than that they’ll grant you might and some initiative… but that’s really not going to help you even close to as much as other utilities will.

the only reason i even use Signet of malice is because I like the gimmicky trick of using it with Dagger Storm, even though the stealth heal skill is far more reliable and gives a much bigger heal..

how do you take hidden thief over shadow rejuvenation? Do you really need another 3 second stealth? Shadow rejuvenation gives you wayyyyy more healing. The shadow rejuvenation ticks are much stronger than a regeneration tick. By the way, that extra healing on stealth does work while you are downed, If you are ever about to be downed, toss your shadow refuge ontop of yourself and you’ll be stealthed while downed, healing incredibly fast. i’ve gotten myself up many, many times with this strategy.

Shadow rejuvenation is weaker than shadow protector, if you intend to stack both that does add some heal with the stealths you have, but hidden thief gives you another stealth to gain utility and only give up a small amount of the total sustained healing

Given the way this build applies initiative use it may not gain much with signet traits but the rest of the traits available in critical line are pretty debatable as well. I’m seeing the combo of infiltrator step and cloak and dagger as a huge initiative cost and could find additional utility stealth useful, bringing hidden thief as an option

I’m almost 100% positive that Shadow Protector IS NOT stronger than Shadow Rejuvenation. I’ll even double check when I get back home. but No, you don’t need the extra stealth on steal especially when you could acheive the exact same result by doing the precast CnD + Steal combo, except that that stealth is even longer.

Not exactly the same, due to initiative costs. When working out synergy in builds the efficiency of resource to benefit & time is important to seek. You may still have a better result with both passive stealth heal traits

Weird it did not accept this edit though I had no error:

Since the initiative spending for this particular build is not used for attacks it may gain little from the signet synergy. The other traits that even helped in critical are debatable as well, thinking furious retaliation & side strikes.
From there, when stacking up the protector and rejuvenation benefit, I think runes of dwayna would augment that and really create a higher value than hidden thief option. I still really like signet of agility for the endurance refill use in the 3rd slot, but scale venom seems like a good option as well to give weakness

I suppose, but if you look at the S/D build.. they really have no spammable initiative skills. I mean, you could spam them.. but they serve little purpose. The only S/D skill you might spam is Dancing Dagger. S/D is by no means an iniative intensive build, and it’s commonly better to not blow your iniative because then you’d lose the 10% dmg increase from critical strikes.

I kill people all the time with a pistol/dagger/shortbow venom build(wvw mostly but it works in spvp too). 30 deadly arts, 20 shadow arts, 20 acrobatics. My gear is a mix of knights and carrion. Shortbow is awesome for skirmishing and team battles. Pistol/dagger is good for taking people out 1v1 or if lucky sometimes 2v1.

I disagree, I find TONS of builds to use as thief.. you need to get creative.

obtuse, i compared shadow rejuvenation and shadow protector…

with 300 healing power, shadow protector healed for 168 5×.
with 300 healing power, shadow rejuvenation healed for 323 5×. (this was a 4 second stealth, any longer and it would have healed for even more ticks than regeneration did. although, regeneration will scale very slightly with boon duration)

anyways, shadow rejuvenation is nearly 2x stronger than shadow protector… as it should be since it’s a top tier trait.

I’ll give you a hint if you want to succeed in PvP more than you are.

Drop precision and crit completely from stats and pick up toughness and +healing.

Run either 15 Shadow Arts / 30 Acrobatics / 25 Trickery or a 30 Shadow Arts variant.

Use Signet of Malice and Signet of the Infiltraitor.

With the correct set-up in traits with vigor, using Dagger/Dagger, your Initiative gains will be ridiculous enough to spam the crap out of Death Blossom. But this is reliant on 30 acrobatics to be able to utilize the 2 initiative every 10 seconds, on top of Infiltraitor Signet and the stealing giving you vigor traits.

Between Death Blossom and vigor allowing you to nearly spam double tap, you are in evade heaven, with decent bleeds, and ridiculous healing from the Signet of Malice.

I don’t think Signet of Malice is any good in PvP. It just heals, zero utility. It might be useful with some strict ranged builds, but as soon as you will get targeted by a group of people or a very good player, you will regret it.

Thanks for posting that pistol video. I never really mainhanded pistol all this time, I’ll give it a spin.

what did u expect, when u urself say you go for the insta-big builds?
ofc they will be cookie cutters then.

atm i do play a dps spec (20-30-20-0-0)
but before that i played a “tanky” build and it was fun.
getting everything that grants vigor, sword/dagger, withdraw, roll for initiative.
(i stopped playing it because i was fed up at how bugged Flanking Strike is)

I play a non cookie cutter and I do great 1v1, 1v2 1v3.
I use pistol/dagger and thats it.
my build is 0-0-10-30-30
and is built all around avoidance and survival.
The condition damage is not re-inforced in any other way but the 30 trait points and the adventurer rune. Its only used for pressure.
Its not easy to play, but I have been doing it for a while now I can do it with my eyes closed.

The thing about this build is that you cant screw up at all.
You can last for a long time, but you cant spam, or hit something at the wrong time.
You have to know what you’re doing 100% of the time.
Its not a popular build at all because it doesn’t do amazing damage right off the bat.
I like that.

Dagins.5163:

I am not using any cookie cutter and I feel being strong somehow. Running with sword/dagger + shortbow, build for 30 shadow arts, 30 acrobatics and 10 deadly arts. Using runes or Rata Sum + enchant on weapon, what increase weakness duration by 30% + 10% from deadly arts. Added Scale Venom for permanent weakness with venomous aura trait.

What does it give to me?
I can counter every glass canon build I ever met in sPvP yet. Not only thieves. And if I can’t kill somebody, I just run away with shortbow or infiltrator’s strike. Also, I cannot be insta gibbed by any burst,thanks to extra toughtness and vitality.

So, no – instead of complaining, learn some new builds and stop reading these dumb guides from “pros” with one week game experience. PvP isn’t only around damage and big numbers, it’s also around tactic, utility and support.

you can’t kill an good ele you will be knocked back thrn he will uuse churring earth you will run away then lightning flash on you dealing 5k burst with 7 bleed then switch to air blind and arc lightning without the use of mist form

dagger pistol 10/30/0/5/25, really strong and gives amazing utility

learn to experiment before acting as a relevant authority after you do something someone else spoonfed to you

Has anyone actually thought that the reason some thieves are having trouble beating people with non-cookie cutter build is because the people they are fighting are using cookie cutter build? There’s a reason why they exist, because they are the easiest to play. All classes have them.

In order to do well with a non-cookie cutter build, you actually have to be a half-decent player.

Could be worse you know. You could have rolled a warrior where you have 1 viable weapon/spec which is negated by the dodge key (great for killing bads and being a ‘ganker’ by nailing people when their backs are turned and cd’s aren’t up).

Dee Jay.2460:

Just consider for a moment how popular Sword/Pistol would be without Pistolwhip. How popular would Dagger/Dagger be without backstab?

If the loss of a single ability has such a detrimental effect on a specs popularity then that’s a solid sign that something is broken.

This is one of the most ridiculous lines of reasoning I’ve ever read.

E V E R Y build of E V E R Y class revolves around 1 or 2 abilities and everything else on the bar is utility. This sentiment can be applied to everything that is GW2. It’s assanine. If this were WoW where you had 2x dozen+ abilities at your fingertips at any given moment (not including consumables) THEN and only then would this line of reasoning hold value. But when any weapon combination in the game yields a paltry 5 abilities your line of reasoning is invalidated.

To put it in perspective, here is the WoW equivalent of your statement:

“If the loss of five abilities from a build has such a detrimental effect on a spec’s popularity then that’s a solid sign that something is broken.”

That’s how ridiculous you sound.