Guild Wars 2

i’ve played many many hours as thief in wvwvw. i tried like every build i can think of (perplexity runes based, trapper rune based, d/d, p/d, d/p… etc) and without a doubt i like s/d the most, it is just really fun to play. Even though every time i take my lvl80 warrior i feel like playing gw2 on easy mode i just feel better when im running with my thief when every fight is a challenge.
I like dodges/evades and i hate stealth mechanism, i feel pretty good with my actual build (i know it is super week vs conditions – switching quick recovery for pain response may help a little) but i will be glad to hear some hints what can i try to make it better.
I sometimes trade power of inertia for vig recovery, and i will most likely switch runes in the near future

my build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQRAsY8Yl0Mp3pVOx0J8PNBNh4d4vb1KQ3HLOE-T1CBABdpEqS1fWwEEWKXA4kA4lSi80PQhSwi2fIFNMb8EACAgAcz2sNbzA38mD9m7MZA0HDA-w

so if you got any ideas how to improve it and what should i test feel free to post it thanks

and here is my s/d thief

As great as acro s/d is, you’re a sitting duck if you don’t invest at least 2 points shadow arts. The meta for WvW is condi, and condi will shred any decent thief if they don’t have a reliable source of cleanse. Stealth mechanics are simply too necessary of an asset to trade off in WvW. It’s almost a guarantee that you’ll end up in outnumbered fights, especially if you go out solo.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/WvW-Roaming-Havoc-Build/first This is a WvW havoc build I made awhile back, but it follows the same principle mechanics as s/d. Maybe you can get some ideas from it. Just swap out the weapons, or run the tried and true 20606.

If you are really dead-set on going with zero points in SA, there is a 2nd, but expensive option. Get your shortbow equipped with a sigil of generosity and sigil of purity.

kabeo.9638:

Even though every time i take my lvl80 warrior i feel like playing gw2 on easy mode i just feel better when im running with my thief when every fight is a challenge.
I like dodges/evades and i hate stealth mechanism,)

Lol, this is so unreal, thief is easily one of the cheesiest, easiest WvW roamer class over warrior, i only play thief in wvw cuz it’s way easier.

So what, instead of timing your dodge for big hits, you prefer spaming dodge all day long? much skill such wow.

and you do know that dagger 5 and sword daze is a legit combo for s/d which involves stealth, right?

Simon.3794:

kabeo.9638:

Even though every time i take my lvl80 warrior i feel like playing gw2 on easy mode i just feel better when im running with my thief when every fight is a challenge.
I like dodges/evades and i hate stealth mechanism,)

Lol, this is so unreal, thief is easily one of the cheesiest, easiest WvW roamer class over warrior, i only play thief in wvw cuz it’s way easier.

So what, instead of timing your dodge for big hits, you prefer spaming dodge all day long? much skill such wow.

and you do know that dagger 5 and sword daze is a legit combo for s/d which involves stealth, right?

you cant just spam dodges and hope that you will somehow survive and if you want to play as thief not going stealth every 1-2 hits to reposition/heal you need to avoid many skills
Sure i use daze, but it is situational, it is not like backstabb in dagger build when you relay on it as main source of dmg, 2second daze wont be a deciding factor when you are not playing burst build.

And what is hard about warrior? You got health, dmg, armor, sustain, mobility… everything with easy access. Warriors have crazy mobility, if they decide midfight that they want to run I can’t do much as a thief – well i can burst all my initiative to maybe catch up to him but good luck after that.

@Arikyali

yeah I was running with s/d and 6 in SA before, I could play around 2-4 person groups for a while thanks to that but that was all about hiding in stealth between attacks which i don’t like that much, relaying more on dodges and evades is more fun even though i have to pick my fights more carefully and dies more for sure.

and well with my build im fine with the fact that i may not be able to beat decent condition based builds, even if i change 1-2 things to help me against conditions. So maybe it is better to ignore that completely and focus on who I actually can fight with this build, im fine with the fact that i will not be able to beat everyone
nevertheless I will try puting those 2 points in SA for a while to test how much of a difference it would make

If you don’t like stealth so much, you could try sigils for condi cleanse – generosity (on crit), purity (on hit) and sigil of cleansing (on wep swap), seeing you use double S/D, the last one could be good for you. But you’d lose your dmg/dodge potential you have with your current set up.

Double S/D and in fact any kind of “Double” is kind of stupid. Very, very stupid.
Now of course as a respectable thief I have a full inventory of Ascended weaponry to play around with. I still do have just a single sword, however, since I can’t DualWield it.
As a compliment to S/D you will want a movement set, that is either D/P, D/D or SB.
And then again Shadow Refuge is irreplaceable(aside from healing and tactical stealth, it also provides nice AOE blindfield and LifeLeech projectiles) while Roll for Initiative feels lackluster.
Superior sigil of accuracy is a bummer. 7% crit chance won’t affect your damage quite as much as Air or Fire would.
I’m baffled that you don’t use Sleight of Hand, I think it’s a very important trait myself as it affects the vast majority of your other traits.
And the traits in Acrobatics are once again super-initiative based. Squishy as we are, Hard to Catch, Pain Response and Vigorous Recovery are the main contenders for being picked.
I think that’s about it. Can’t say I can say much more about your build.
TL:DR Your build is terrible. Try to make something similar to Sizer’s build and then add some modifications for yourself/for WvW

This is what I run in wvw, yes I use sa oh no! For pvp/duel’s I will us acro but for wvw I think its better with the added sustain and Condi removal.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVlsMp2plOx7J8PNBNhwdtVz8O83yaFA-TlDEABLqGABPAgEVhwgTAATKTkSpALqg0kSq20HAoSwc2fAgDBwDHBAXUdIAACwOrz6cnBOaEa25Nv5RP6RLFggKjA-w

I’m glad to see you really committed to S/D in this build and it looks like a lot of fun. I’d echo Jayden’s excellent advice on condi cleanses.

Regarding runes, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Pack at all, its great! Lyssa gets poo’pood these days due to it’s balance change, but that could be a great way to get some extra condi cleanse and still keep your high crit chance.

You probably have enough fury from Thrill, to not “need” pack.

Also, with all that initiative, I’ll bet you can afford to IS/IR a lot to clean onesies and twosies of condis.

I like your utility layout.

My only suggestion would be to give Pain Response a try, and to swap infil sig for sig of agility. Infil and Quick recovery are the weakest of all our +ini access, especially after they buffed passive ini regen. Add to that all of the ini you’re getting from GM acro/trick, and 2 on steal, and 6 on Roll for Initiative, and the extra 3 in the bank, to me that’s more than enough, and you wont really notice less ini by dropping Infil Sig and QR.

You will, however, notice a huge survivability increase by taking Sig of Agility (which has so much synergy with your build and style), and Pain Response is a great passive cleanse and works well as a micro heal in tandem with mug heal.

S/D S/D without stealth may also be the only build that can take full advantage of Hard to Catch, since you wont be ported out of Shadow Refuge at the worst possible time, and you can always IS/IR to regain situational awareness.

kabeo.9638:

you cant just spam dodges and hope that you will somehow survive and if you want to play as thief not going stealth every 1-2 hits to reposition/heal you need to avoid many skills
Sure i use daze, but it is situational, it is not like backstabb in dagger build when you relay on it as main source of dmg, 2second daze wont be a deciding factor when you are not playing burst build.

And what is hard about warrior? You got health, dmg, armor, sustain, mobility… everything with easy access. Warriors have crazy mobility, if they decide midfight that they want to run I can’t do much as a thief – well i can burst all my initiative to maybe catch up to him but good luck after that.

Yea dude, you just spam all the dodges and avoid all the skills, not like it takes skill to spam them “invulnerability” to have a huge “sustain”. it’s so easy it’s unreal. im not sure how you are acting like evading skills are hard as acro thief. not to mention how your build is basically built to spam the most 3 possible.

2nd daze is a huge factor against any PPC builds, you go in daze them 2 seconds and do you AAs, they can get down to half health in that 2nd if you actually have air fire.

I’m sorry, i don’t really want to call you a noob, but health does not matter, that’s why guardian has so much sustain, the best bunker and eles can sustain just as long if not longer then warrior with lowest base HP and lowest armor.
and also, warrior does not have crazy mobility, 1st of all, all of those mobilities can be interrupted, affacted by conditions and they are on foot mobilities, unlike teleportation, which can instantly get you out of any potential burst or trouble while re positioning yourself. secondly, warrior needs to spec to have insane mobility, if you are losing to a greatsword sword warhorn warrior, then you are bad, like super bad. because they are just jokes.

Also i like how you just say i’m a “no stealth thief”, but you just called all warrior have insane mobility. it’s funny. let’s make a thread about PPC axe axe triple physical warrior complain about how all thieves just stealth all the time.

i would so gladly help you on acro s/d if you just didn’t bring up warrior, just cuz you “felt” like you have to show the world that you are a complete ignorant and don’t really know the game yet act like you know all, thats the way you ask for help.

@Arikyali

I’m not super knowledgeable about builds, but I have trouble seeing the real benefit of Shadow’s embrace. It’s one condition per 3 seconds and you rarely get more than 4 seconds of stealth. Combined with the cooldowns on the stealth skills, that’s not a whole lot of cleansing. I guess it works if you’re simultaneously running away, but if you’ve got multiple conditions and one of them is chill or cripple, it doesn’t seem like you’d be getting a lot out of the trait. I see it a lot in builds, so I’m guessing someone is finding a use for it, but I often wonder if people use it because there just so few cleanses for thieves.

Black Frog.9274:

@Arikyali

I’m not super knowledgeable about builds, but I have trouble seeing the real benefit of Shadow’s embrace. It’s one condition per 3 seconds and you rarely get more than 4 seconds of stealth. Combined with the cooldowns on the stealth skills, that’s not a whole lot of cleansing. I guess it works if you’re simultaneously running away, but if you’ve got multiple conditions and one of them is chill or cripple, it doesn’t seem like you’d be getting a lot out of the trait. I see it a lot in builds, so I’m guessing someone is finding a use for it, but I often wonder if people use it because there just so few cleanses for thieves.

I probably wouldn’t use it if there were other reliable options. Even though Shadow Embrace is slow in removing multiple conditions (yeah couple of times it’s not fast enough to cleanse after condi bomb before I lose all my HP, from full to 0 in few seconds), it’s still the best condi removal available.

Black Frog.9274:

@Arikyali

I’m not super knowledgeable about builds, but I have trouble seeing the real benefit of Shadow’s embrace. It’s one condition per 3 seconds and you rarely get more than 4 seconds of stealth. Combined with the cooldowns on the stealth skills, that’s not a whole lot of cleansing. I guess it works if you’re simultaneously running away, but if you’ve got multiple conditions and one of them is chill or cripple, it doesn’t seem like you’d be getting a lot out of the trait. I see it a lot in builds, so I’m guessing someone is finding a use for it, but I often wonder if people use it because there just so few cleanses for thieves.

Part of the reason is that there really are very few cleanse, but shadow’s embrace isn’t so bad.

1. 2nd most useful adept trait imo (first is blind on stealth)
2. Usually end up with only 1-2 condi at a time, unless fighting a necro or a group of condi classes. Careful times of stuns and blinds help reduce the hits applying conditions. You can cleanse one and eat the other.
3. Chill, immobilize, and cripple are rarely an issue, since s/d mobility allows you to move out of harm’s way to recover.

The most dangerous condition for s/d is probably torment, and the most dangerous class that applies that are scepter mesmers. Thankfully, scepter mesmers also throw plenty of clones out to CnD off of. I have found PU mesmers to be very easy to counter with dagger offhand, and it’s the shatter mesmers that give me the most trouble. Most shatter builds tend to run a PvP-style setup which cannot afford the PU trait. And a good shatter mesmer will always be smashing clones into the thief before they can CnD off one. But direct damage is preferred for shatter, whereas the scepter is condition, so it’s safe in that regard.

assuming you’re keeping the traitpoint distribution the same and the runes the same as well:

acro traits:
power of inertia can be okay but really only works with strength runes, quick recovery is useless especially when you already have infiltrator’s signet, and running quick pockets for the purpose of using a double set (s/d+s/d) is an awful idea.

vigorous recovery gives you high vigor uptime when coupled with bountiful theft, pain response gives you some much needed regen and condi cleanse, and assassin’s reward gives you some additional sustain (it might seem mediocre but over longer fights it can easily regen you 2k-3k hp). hard to catch is very hit or miss, it can save you a lot but occasionally it can screw you over.

your acro traitline should look like:
vigorous recovery – pain response – assassin’s reward/power of inertia/hard to catch

i also would take slight of hand over hastened replenishment because of how huge the interrupt + 20% shorter cooldown is. now, maybe if you were on d/p it could be done because d/p has headshot but for s/d slight of hand is a must, as the interrupt can singlehandedly win you plenty of fights.

skills:
take shadow refuge or signet of agility over roll for initiative because roll for ini is extremely redundant with your other skills considered, as you already have 3 stunbreaks (2x shadowstep, 1x inf signet), you can already clear movement conditions with withdraw, and you have plenty of evades as it stands. refuge is infinitely better for small fight scenarios, and signet of agility gives you some offensive strength plus some survivability.

sigils:
s/d:
accuracy is terrible for this build, and dual energy sigils isn’t the best idea. sigil of air + sigil of fire will give you the best damage with pack runes due to it’s nice fury uptime (4th proc + thrill of the crime) and the +125 precision increase. i would also recommend looking at sigil of generosity + sigil of air for additional condi clear but considering it’s obscene price this advice is best left for spvp.

sb:
shortbow is largely a utility weapon/survival weapon so sigil of energy is recommended. the other sigil on shortbow can be either sigil of air, sigil of leeching, or sigil of generosity (again though, too expensive really).

food:
lemongrass poultry soup is your best choice. it effectively cancels out broken condition food and helps nicely with conditions in general. so between lemongrass soup, infiltrator’s strike/return, pain response, shadowstep, hp gained from applied fortitude/acro traitline, signet of agility, and assassin’s reward, conditions stop being such a huge problem.

sharpening stones for utility.

NOW…

if you run strength runes instead of pack runes, power of inertia is a must and so is taking maintenance oils over sharpening stones. you’re also going to want to run signet of strength + signet of air on s/d as well, this will let you maintain 8-15 stacks of might in fights easily. you can also start looking to use p/d instead of shortbow because the extra condition damage/power from might stacking turns p/d into a very strong dueling weapon.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAV8Yl0MpyplOx7J0PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdHl+GEA-TlCEABEcEASU9ntUCawBBgJlP5s/Qb6eA4BBklSoHuAABAQAu5NzmtZwyVuyVuyVO38m38m38mlCochVA-w
Is my uptake on it.
Slipperfish S/D which relies on being uncatchable to survive, and uh… insane “gear” to wreck your face?
Also food was supposed to be Bowl Of Cactus Fruit Salad, but no such option existed. Lemongrass poultry is also fine but I hate to bend to conditionmancers. And you should win them anyways if you’re the first to engage as you will have very decent condition removal tools with my(well, classic S/D slightly modified? cough) build.
Oh and Dagger storm is very nice for many things, but even when it looks like it isn’t(1v1 melee), it’s still 11 seconds of stability. Don’t forget that. Though all of the elites are quite usable with this build…

Simon.3794:

I’m sorry, i don’t really want to call you a noob, but health does not matter, that’s why guardian has so much sustain, the best bunker and eles can sustain just as long if not longer then warrior with lowest base HP and lowest armor.

how can health does not matter? LOL
i wounder if you would still say that if warrior had same hp pool as thief
big hp pool let you take burst dmg easier and keep you alive longer
sure there are many factors deciding if you are tanky or not and how much dmg you can take but hp pool is one of them

i would so gladly help you on acro s/d if you just didn’t bring up warrior, just cuz you “felt” like you have to show the world that you are a complete ignorant and don’t really know the game yet act like you know all, thats the way you ask for help.

i stand by what i said, warriors are easy mode comparing to thief – all the mechanics on thief demand more from a player. Warrior is much more forgiving when it comes to player mistakes

I didn’t made that topic to argue about those things, that is my opinion and I don’t really care that you disagree, go look for someone else as I won’t be responding to you off the topic anymore.

@everyone else
thx for suggestions, i guess i will try again to mess a bit with SA on s/d as fighting multiple opponents without it is quite hard
I will switch sigils for fire/air for more burst dmg and take bow or some pistol combo(most likely bow) for other set to have more variaty and maybe some ranged attacks.

I love how the thief/warrior debates on the forum always turn into which class has it easier. Its like first world problems when two top tier classes try to make another lookg worse. In reality, both classes has it really easy in wvw, tons of disengages, more forgiving to mistakes and so forth.

Simon.3794:

kabeo.9638:

you cant just spam dodges and hope that you will somehow survive and if you want to play as thief not going stealth every 1-2 hits to reposition/heal you need to avoid many skills
Sure i use daze, but it is situational, it is not like backstabb in dagger build when you relay on it as main source of dmg, 2second daze wont be a deciding factor when you are not playing burst build.

And what is hard about warrior? You got health, dmg, armor, sustain, mobility… everything with easy access. Warriors have crazy mobility, if they decide midfight that they want to run I can’t do much as a thief – well i can burst all my initiative to maybe catch up to him but good luck after that.

Yea dude, you just spam all the dodges and avoid all the skills, not like it takes skill to spam them “invulnerability” to have a huge “sustain”. it’s so easy it’s unreal. im not sure how you are acting like evading skills are hard as acro thief. not to mention how your build is basically built to spam the most 3 possible.

2nd daze is a huge factor against any PPC builds, you go in daze them 2 seconds and do you AAs, they can get down to half health in that 2nd if you actually have air fire.

I’m sorry, i don’t really want to call you a noob, but health does not matter, that’s why guardian has so much sustain, the best bunker and eles can sustain just as long if not longer then warrior with lowest base HP and lowest armor.
and also, warrior does not have crazy mobility, 1st of all, all of those mobilities can be interrupted, affacted by conditions and they are on foot mobilities, unlike teleportation, which can instantly get you out of any potential burst or trouble while re positioning yourself. secondly, warrior needs to spec to have insane mobility, if you are losing to a greatsword sword warhorn warrior, then you are bad, like super bad. because they are just jokes.

Also i like how you just say i’m a “no stealth thief”, but you just called all warrior have insane mobility. it’s funny. let’s make a thread about PPC axe axe triple physical warrior complain about how all thieves just stealth all the time.

i would so gladly help you on acro s/d if you just didn’t bring up warrior, just cuz you “felt” like you have to show the world that you are a complete ignorant and don’t really know the game yet act like you know all, thats the way you ask for help.

He is right y’know,warriors need to have gs+sword/x to have really good mobility,and most of the warriors who use it are zergfesters or bullscharge 100b which is pretty much -enter a word which will get censored-.
Thieves have the easiest escapes,you talking about whirlwind and rush? that is nothing compare to thieves they can just CnDyou and get away CnDing things on the way.
I dont even play a warrior(about 100 hours of play) but I mostly play thief and I usually cant catch up a warrior,but,it goes on both ends,and not just that,thieves can do even better with stealth.

Arikyali.5804:

As great as acro s/d is, you’re a sitting duck if you don’t invest at least 2 points shadow arts. The meta for WvW is condi, and condi will shred any decent thief if they don’t have a reliable source of cleanse. Stealth mechanics are simply too necessary of an asset to trade off in WvW. It’s almost a guarantee that you’ll end up in outnumbered fights, especially if you go out solo.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/WvW-Roaming-Havoc-Build/first This is a WvW havoc build I made awhile back, but it follows the same principle mechanics as s/d. Maybe you can get some ideas from it. Just swap out the weapons, or run the tried and true 20606.

If you are really dead-set on going with zero points in SA, there is a 2nd, but expensive option. Get your shortbow equipped with a sigil of generosity and sigil of purity.

This is complete nonsense, I run my standard 20066 build in WvW and it works out just fine. I don’t usually need cleanse too much in WvW, but I’ve run Runes of Lyssa even after they were nerfed (they’re still just fine to use) and they’re a relatively cheap and effective option if the OP is really in need of condition cleansing. Tbh the OP doesn’t really need runes of the pack because if you’re running through WvW and play your cards just right, you can get 95-100% Swiftness uptime via Expeditious Dodger and Thrill of the Crime combined with +30% boon uptime from going 6 into Acro. With Shortbow, Infi Strike, Infi Signet, Steal, Shadowstep, etc 20066 is arguably the fastest build in the game.

@OP: your build is good (I would know- I’ve run almost exactly this build for ages) but you should really get rid of Quick Pockets for Assassin’s Reward (my personal favorite, and for some reason extremely underrated. Honestly, just looking at the amount of health you get for every point of initiative, it’s totally worth it, especially once you’ve calculated the average number of initiative you gain per second with a build like this), Pain Response (the standard for sPvP), or Vigorous Recovery. Also, swap Quick Pockets for Vigorous Recovery or Pain Response. With this build I run Power of Inertia, Vigorous Recovery, and Assassin’s Reward and it’s worked very well for me. Otherwise, your traits are great, and I’m happy to see that you picked up Hastened Replenishment which is another highly underused trait for S/D builds that is great in both sPvP and WvW.

With swapping out Quick Pockets, trade one of your S/D sets for Shortbow. It’s honestly necessary IMO to have Shortbow in WvW just because of the necessity for AoE and the mobility provided by Infiltrator’s Arrow.

I mentioned earlier to trade out Runes of the Pack- you don’t really need them for this build, since you can get a long swiftness uptime by using Steal out of combat for the Swiftness via Thrill of the Crime and Expeditious Dodger. With Shortbow, you’ll need it even less because you get so much more mobility from Infi Arrow.

Replace the Cavalier’s gear with Soldier’s gear- the additional power and vitality is much more useful than that extra bit of ferocity and toughness.

Finally, swap the sigils of Accuracy for Sigils of Fire or Force. Mathematically (if I remember correctly) they’re both a bit better, and in WvW the AoE potential of Fire sigil is going to be tremendously important. Definitely put a Fire sigil on your Shortbow.

Otherwise it all comes down to how you play the build. This build was originally made for sPvP but it works very well for WvW. If you really feel the need to improve your gameplay then playing after playing lots of sPvP matches you’ll start getting much, much better. That definitely worked for me, at least.

I can’t stand running S/D in WvW, too many teleport bugs. I can’t even use flank strike combined with steal…

is it just me or does flanking strike have really bad tracking now ?