Guild Wars 2

Last night, I was part of a CoF group where someone in the group was ragging on a Thief that had three signets equipped. The argument got ugly and the Thief ended up getting the boot soon after the event where you had to use Magg’s ice thrower gun. (It was mostly a guild run and the thief didn’t belong to the hosting guild) Part of that argument was that they were seen on the same view as Signet Warriors in that they provide almost no party support.

Now I have never played a Thief past level 5 so I wouldn’t have the extensive knowledge of how they worked and whether a Signet Thief should be viewed in a similar fashion to Signet Warriors. Honestly, I don’t care what build anybody goes with as long they known how to hold their own weight and cooperate with others, but I wasn’t the party leader so I didn’t had a say whether that thief should have gotten the boot or not.

Simply put: is a Signet Thief someone I should worry about in the long run? I already worry enough with Signet Warriors, but sometimes, I could be proven wrong in some groups.

Signets are not too bad in PvE. If the Thief knew his character well and was geared correctly a full signet Thief could DPS with the best of them. I personally use 2 Signets most of the time. While solo questing/Farming I always equip Signet of Shadows for the 25% increased move speed. When I group in dungeons I always switch it out for Shadow Refuge … becuase its just awesome. The one Signet that never leaves my bar is Signet of Agility, because I run a crit build it packs quite a punch.

I also use Signet of Malice for my heal, but I think you are refering to the 3 utility skill signets.

tl:dr A well played Thief could equip pretty much any skill combo and do well if he or she knew how to play there character well. I grouped with a full Signet warrior a few night ago that preformed amazingly well in all 3 paths of CoF.

People you find in pugs can be simply ignorant at times – Warriors with 5 signets are terrible and therefore now when people see signets they start having major brainfarts.
3 signets is ok, I assume he was using SoA+SoM+SoS, it’s not bad depending on his traits/weps.

When I see any player running three signets, it immediately puts their personality in question. It really shows a lack of desire to play the game at the same level as the rest of us. I do not mean they are using signets because they are easy, but rather because they have not bothered to ask questions such as, “Is this really part of a useful build?”. Often, this attitude is reflected in all aspects of their gameplay, including mechanics, and they will often end up on the floor or otherwise not contributing to fights as much as a serious player.

There are exceptions, but this is my first reaction almost always.

There is nothing wrong with a signet thief but I can see the issue your guild may have had with him. Signets only help the thief and given some of the wonderful support skills we have I can imagine how heated the discussion may have gotten if the thief refused to give up his DPS build.

Anyone who isn’t switching out abilities on a “per encouter” basis isn’t using his/her max. potential.

I for one am constantly switching out my utility skills and I’d expect the same from any Thief. It takes 2 seconds so there’s really no reason not to do it.

Unlike Warrior 5 Singet builds there isn’t all that much utility and synergy to Thief Singets. Sure, you can get the odd might stacks and some other nice effects but overall they’re fairly weak.

So yes, while the guild guys probably did have a point their actions are still kinda dickish.

I can understand kicking people who perform poorly but kicking based on a build alone is meh.

Signet thief is pretty good. I’ve been using a FOUR signet build lately, coupled with Signet Use (-20% cooldown, and +2 initiative on use) and Signets of Power (5 stacks of might on signet activation). The signets have good active effects anyway. I use signet of malice, agility, shadows, and infiltrator’s.
The actives on agility and infitator’s are great. AoE condition removal and endurance refill. If that’s not party support, I don’t know what is. And then a shadow step with a stun break that has half the cooldown of the other stun breaks.
I sometimes replace shadows with something else since it’s not that strong in combat
Anyway, this lets me pretty much spam as many initiative skills as I want (like all the disabling skills that cost initiative. daze lock is a favorite of mine), and the man can’t keep me down.

Signet thieves in group PvE are just bad and often a waste of a groupslot. There are actually only 2 signets which have some use in group PvE, Signet of Malice and Signet of Agility.
Signet of Malice is just your normal heal and with a build focused around it it is a good heal.
Signet of Agility refills the endurance of your team if you use it and with that you enable your party to be more mobile and dodge more. Furthermore it removes even one condition.

Borderline Signet would be Infiltration Signet. The additional init can help if you have a init heavy build or job, like unload spamming at a range fight, or when you need to have a stunbreaker ready.
The other signets only have some use in PvP.

Thieves dont have much group support to begin with, but some utilityskills are still pretty useful and if you ask me, every thief should run refuge and smoke screen in group instances.

Smoke Screen is a pretty awesome utility skill as it provides you with projectile block, blinds when a enemy stands in it and blinds when you shoot through it and even stealth when you are a backstab thief and have 3 init for a heartseeker.

Other good utility skills are skorpion wire, which is the best skill I know for pulling a single mob to you, even when he stands in a huge group and blinding powder.

I use SoM (mostly when I swap to DB spam), SoS (when I’m solo roaming, or traversing), SoA (when I desire condition removal and more crit chance), and IS (almost always in PvE because IMO that extra initiative regen, stun break, and shadowstep is invaluable). However, if SoS is on, SoA is off for me. AS has become fairly useless now because it functions like venoms and the counts for hits are all used up even if the hits miss (obstructed glitch), or are evaded.

I’ve had people kick me yesterday because I’m not a guardian. I laughed really hard at them. It made my day to encounter another ignorant bunch.

PvE thieves should always have two signets on their bars (Malice & Agility), and there are very few exceptions where you wouldn’t (Hide in Shadows has situational use). Infiltrator’s is useful as a stunbreak with a decent passive. The others aren’t that great compared to Smoke Screen / Caltrops / Shadow Refuge.

Thanks for the information everyone! I guess it would depend on which Signets are used in the build, which unfortunately I don’t recall which signets were equipped (though it wasn’t the healing one because none of the signet icons were bluish colored).

With a little bit of research, I did notice Signet of Agility does provide some group support in removing conditions, similar to how the Warrior shout “Shake It Off!” works (at least according to the wiki’s discussion page) but with added Endurance regeneration. Though it is worded kind of funny thinking that it only affects the Thief and the amount of conditions removed is based on the surrounding allies. Which one is the intended effect? Who knows, but if it works like “Shake It Off!” then that’s a great signet to have when it comes to party support.

Signet of Shadows is quite nice as well since it provides AoE-Blind when activated. That means the mobs have a hard time hitting you and could work when avoiding certain attacks that could kill you or anyone else in one hit. I can live with that!

The other signets seem to be a bit more personal like doing extra damage, shadowstepping, and self-healing; but I guess the rest of the utility skills would tell me if you intend to go full-support or lean towards a more glass cannon-like build.

Maybe it was just a simple brain-fart in thinking “Oh snap! Signets! We got a baddie! Kick him!” I guess I’ll never know, but it’s great to have this sort of knowledge, especially for a profession that I have yet to level to 80 some day. Thanks again!

Funny.

I’d like to see those same people spvp my 3 signet thief build. I’m not joking, have them send me a mail in-game. Any class, any spec bunkerconditiongcw/e.

Nope.

It there were DPS meters, I have a feeling you’d reconsider.

Anyone can go survival spec and never die.

style.6173:

The bigger issue in general is that it sucks to have a thief on your dungeon team. They are by far the weakest dungeon class.

Have you even seen Rangers? By far the most useless. Thieves are around as useful as most other classes if you can actually play it. More than the majority of thief players don’t understand how to build for dungeons and just die over and over, contributing nothing. Thieves (Power/Crit build), do a lot of DPS, especially with sword which honestly is the superior dungeon weapon, they provide AoE stealth which is useful for breaking mobs.

Thieves aren’t much compared to guardians/warriors, sure. But they’re far from the weakest dungeon class. Problem is that thief players struggle to adapt to the difficulty in dungeons (that or they run p/p).

Signets in groups can be used well, but this is extremely rare. Most thieves that run SoS, for instance, are merely running it for their own movement convenience and never touch the active. Assassin’s Signet is also hard to justify, as it is essentially just a DPS boost for the thief and not a very significant one. Something like Haste can be leveraged for group utility or to get through a rough patch, but AS isn’t really powerful enough to make a difference.

Signet of Agility is awesome, and can definitely feed into group synergy better than most thief utilities. This is another Signet that can be a sign of a terrible thief if they never activate it though .

Infiltrator’s Signet is sort of in-between, and really depends on how they leverage the extra initiative regen.

Signet of Malice is amazing with the right synergies and I’ve got nothing wrong with thieves using it.

In short, some thief signets are very good, but others (like AS) I can only really justify taking in a PvE setting if you’re running heavy signet synergy.

tl;dr – Malice, Agility good, others could be a sign of laziness, just take Shadow Refuge and useful group stuff instead.

I think that, as a thief, you really should be swapping skills several times during a dungeon run.

You have some skills that are always desirable in dungeons, especially Shadow Refuge. But most of your stuff is situational, like Smoke Screen, Signet of Agility, Caltrops, Shadowstep.

Any time you’re in an encounter focused around mobility, there’s nothing wrong with taking Signet of Shadows as one of your utilities. When you’re not, though, a more supportive skill should be in its place.

For me, Assassin’s Signet is the big warning sign, because neither its passive nor active modes are really all that good a use of a skill slot in dungeon battles.

style.6173:

The bigger issue in general is that it sucks to have a thief on your dungeon team. They are by far the weakest dungeon class.

This is simply not true. thief puts out great damage and are not a hindrance to any group, bad players are.

The real problem is that thief is a class that actually takes a lot more skill to play well then most due to its very squishy nature. A poorly played thief brings nothing to the dungeon as they will likely be downed way too much stopping their dps and the dps of the person who is always getting them back up (i normally just leave them down if this happens).

now that same “bad” player rolls a warrior or guardian and they will be downed much less due to the nature of the class making them not seem so useless as they did playing the thief.

many thiefs will try to switch to sb or p/p to avoid the constant downing because they are not skilled enough to run d/d or s/p, but the issue here is they are built for d/d (or s/p) and their build does not work well with p/p or sb further lowering their dps making them somewhat dead weight (though likely better then when they tried to melee as they are built for).

I have a fully geared 80 thief and guardian and i can and do switch them out all the time in guild groups and with the same other 4 players there is no difference in the time it takes us to clear the same dungeon depending on what toon i bring (assuming the group is not made of all squishy classes when i bring the thief).

A thief in a dungeon is generally not being ‘useful’, regardless of their build. You just bring them for damage, much like you bring the typical warrior or elementalist for damage. Their build and utilities are most irrelevant, so long as they don’t constantly die and dish out a good portion of damage. In some situations, it is beneficial if the thief switches to particular utilities, such as poison on healing bosses. For the rest, upping precision and power with signets is a good thing. So long as they keep at least the stealth/heal skill on the healing slot, instead of the healing signet, they can get out of bad situations with that.

Well it just so happens that I’m in the process of leveling a Thief (67) and this is exactly what I’m using – a Signet build. Because I’m levelling & a newbie to the Thief class I’m mostly just soloing, so I tend to go overboard with the amount of Signets that are on my bar.

As soon as I turned 60 I got 2 runes of the fire, strength & hoelbrak to get 60% might duration and even some sigils of battle on my weps AND heavy speccing into acrobatics (a bit excessive…I know :P). Tbh, I’m amazed at how fast the build can stack might alone and additional initiative. I’m too much of pauper to buy another set of gear now so I’ll be stuck with this for a while. Still satisfying as hell to take out enemies in a split second.

The thing I like most about it is that you can charge up your might stacks before a battle by rolling constantly. Acrobatics buffs help you out in that respect and with so much Might buffs, it’s a huge duration.

But of course as people have mentioned…Signet in every slot? Party support sucks. Pretty much any Thief with a longbow can poison & vuln, I think that’s pretty much the extent of it. So of course, I won’t go entirely overkill on the Signets, and I can’t live without Shadow Refuge in dungeons. I’ll still have at least 2 signets on which are Malice & Agility, and it’s not like other people in the party are giving their own Might buffs. I feel that the signet traits in Critical Strikes rival the more obvious traits – 7% crit from behind? +5% with Dual wield? I’d rather go for the raw overall power.

Deathspike.1870:

A thief in a dungeon is generally not being ‘useful’, regardless of their build. You just bring them for damage, much like you bring the typical warrior or elementalist for damage. Their build and utilities are most irrelevant, so long as they don’t constantly die and dish out a good portion of damage. In some situations, it is beneficial if the thief switches to particular utilities, such as poison on healing bosses. For the rest, upping precision and power with signets is a good thing. So long as they keep at least the stealth/heal skill on the healing slot, instead of the healing signet, they can get out of bad situations with that.

No one can do perma AoE weakness / blind like a Thief. Those alone, combined with their high damage, make them quite useful in a group. On top of that, they have the best blast finisher (spammable), and bring some pretty good secondary utility, like smoke screen and shadow refuge ressing.

Ari Kagura.9182:

Thanks for the information everyone! I guess it would depend on which Signets are used in the build, which unfortunately I don’t recall which signets were equipped (though it wasn’t the healing one because none of the signet icons were bluish colored).

That would mean all his utility skills were used up by signets, leaving no room for Shadow Refuge. Going into a dungeon without shadow refuge is just wrong, it’s a thief’s greatest group support skill.
I’m not saying kicking was the right thing to do, but they sure had the right to ask him to reconsider his utility skills.

Pinch.4273:

No one can do perma AoE weakness / blind like a Thief. Those alone, combined with their high damage, make them quite useful in a group. On top of that, they have the best blast finisher (spammable), and bring some pretty good secondary utility, like smoke screen and shadow refuge ressing.

The problem is that finishers are largely irrelevant, they aren’t quite as good as ANet intended them to be. You can ignore them, no harm done, except for some special traits triggering off combination effects (i.e. Elementalist auras with boons for everyone). Similarly, you don’t really care about those other utilities because they aren’t as good as anyone might want to think. If you have a solid bunker to keep focus and tank, the other people can bring a single utility to the group; damage. The way the game currently stands, there is very little skill involved in any encounter. Learn a few dodges, have something that tanks and occasionally prevent healing. Nothing more is necessary.

Deathspike.1870:

If you have a solid bunker to keep focus and tank, the other people can bring a single utility to the group; damage. The way the game currently stands, there is very little skill involved in any encounter. Learn a few dodges, have something that tanks and occasionally prevent healing. Nothing more is necessary.

You can’t soak a lot of the high difficulty Fractals. The best way to deal with it is to mitigate it as much as possible. Blind and Weakness are fantastic mitigation, especially when combined with Protection and Regeneration.

The only signet I would have a problem with is the Signet of Shadows. It’s really more of a PvP signet, cause how often do you needs to chase a PvE mob?

In the end, I suppose it depends on how flexible you are.
One should expect a certain level of competence, but you don’t want to be an elitist who reams allies out for the slightest misstep.

And flexibility is very subjective because everyone has their personal pet-peeves and we all vary in our predispositions.

As a rule of thumb, I say: “It’s a game… but remember you’re not the only player”
- It’s a game, so don’t obsess over little things
- It’s an MMO, so remember to think of others occasionally

Anyone who isn’t switching out abilities on a “per encouter” basis isn’t using his/her max. potential.

You misspelled “encounter” and “signet” in your post. So use of one’s potential is hardly your area.

Plenty of players are more casual and just using what suits them. They want to enjoy the game as much as do well. Expecting all players to utilize the absolute best build or strategies is elitist-thinking.

Lower your expectations. If they’re trying their best and they’re not dropping every 10 seconds, they’re doing good enough.

Very few people have time to study up on a game like regulars or hardcore fanatics do.

DreamOfACure.4382:

The only signet I would have a problem with is the Signet of Shadows. It’s really more of a PvP signet, cause how often do you needs to chase a PvE mob?

For dungeons, it helps with the jumping sections, the running-around-holding-things sections, and many of the fights that are heavily slanted towards avoiding red circles or melee swarms. And kinda sucks for the other situations (which is why I recommended switching it out selectively). That’s still not a bad track record overall.

No matter what your build you can still select different utility skills for different encounters or situations. Running 3 signets for solo play is perfectly fine, I do that myself, it allows for faster killing and moving between places.

Signet of Shadows is a passive 25% movement speed increase that is on anytime you are NOT in combat, people saying that its made specifically for pvp to chase people down are wrong because if you are in combat and getting hit you are not moving 25% faster until you go out of combat again. Its also a free blind on demand which for solo play is great at reducing your incoming damage (edit: 25% stays in effect in combat just aren’t moving as fast as out of combat)

Signet of Agility if a 5% crit increase at level 80 and it cures a condition on yourself and everyone around you as well as refilling your endurance. Very helpful for yourself and not half bad in a group situation.

Assassins Signet is a damage boost and for soloing or pvp is great for killing faster but can be replaced with more group tools. Not a bad signet, but if you are in a group you can replace it at a reduction in personal damage.

Infiltrators Signet gives you 1 initiative every 10 seconds and a shadowstep on a CD. Personally its one I don’t use often and it is clearly another one that is more self serving then helpful.

So out of all those the Signet of Agility is the best one to keep in a group for its short CD condition removal with a survivability increase for yourself. You can easily replace the other 2 with Shadow Refuge and have the last one as a floater depending on the encounter.

Smoke Screen is good, but there have been situations where something Scorpion Wire has been helpful pulling a lone target to the group that was too close to another group. So I like to have 1 Utility skill as a floater that I change depending on what the group needs or if the group is balanced enough to not need anything then it can go back to self damage increase.

Utility skills are kinda like weapons, Sometimes you need to switch them depending on the situation. But there isn’t really a wrong weapon, Just a wrong time or place for it.

Agnima.3714:

Signet of Shadows is a passive 25% movement speed increase that is on anytime you are NOT in combat, people saying that its made specifically for pvp to chase people down are wrong because if you are in combat and getting hit you are not moving 25% faster until you go out of combat again. Its also a free blind on demand which for solo play is great at reducing your incoming damage

I thought Signet of Shadows worked in combat? Has this changed recently?

You slow down in combat like everyone else but you still move at Slow+25% instead of just Slow+0%.

Agnima.3714:

Signet of Shadows is a passive 25% movement speed increase that is on anytime you are NOT in combat, people saying that its made specifically for pvp to chase people down are wrong because if you are in combat and getting hit you are not moving 25% faster until you go out of combat again.

Not entirely correct. The 25 % does indeed stay effective in combat, but your base combat speed is still lower than your base out-of-combat speed. If you’re chasing or being chased by someone with no runspeed modifiers and you’re using one of these signets you will either close or create space. The flipside being that anyone who is actually invested into swiftness will be able to catch you or get away from you.

Well guess I stand corrected then, it just never felt like I gained ground on anyone in pvp or in pve to make it noticeable when running so I just figured the boost shut off during combat.

Let’s be honest, arguing about a thief using signets rather than something “group oriented” is just terrible.

The only group utility skills thieves offer are Smoke Screen, Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder and Signet of Agility… and that’s pretty much it, but they aren’t necessarily the BEST utility skills to use given the way the devs made thieves.

A Signet Thief can be helpful in a team, but they’re really only there for DPS. In this case, there are better options for your party, but they still aren’t the worst build available. They only have one support ability.

Honestly, the only bad build for thief in PvE is a D/D burst build. Single target DPS with no utility is terrible in dungeons. Other classes can dish out as much DPS but do it in AoE while still having far better support options.

Sword is definitely the best melee PvE option, and it’s a shame you see so little of it. S/D can CC bosses, keep permanent weakness, and stay alive well. S/P can keep permanent weakness, near permanent blind, and has great AoE as well as great CC options. S/P can also stay alive fairly well if built for it. Health on Crit Sigil/Food, Signet of Malice and Leeching Venoms with Pistol Whip

Thief is best used in dungeons for mobility for traps (not all, though), permanent AoE Weakness, blind spam, stealth revives and raw damage.

Whoever is saying thieves are not useful in groups, try again. I give my group might, swiftness, fury, vigor, and boons the boss has and venoms that heal. And every 36 seconds we stun lock a mob/boss for about 4 seconds. On top of having a clutch rez when needed.
Any class rolling 3-5 signets in a dungeon is bad. I seen a 4 signet thief before and it’s just bad. Same with Warriors, if my friends and I have to pug a person and it’s a 4/5 sig warrior, we laugh in mumble at him.

Signet of agility is one of those great-potential abilities though I cannot say it benefits as much from signet recharge. For a group it is a must-have.
Infiltrators signet offers easiest and fastest stun break available to thief, with a small benefit to thief when not used. I personally take it to every fight where both shadow refuge and smoke screen are not needed at same time.
And third slot you just have to waste on shadow refuge. In dungeons (except the ones you can easily complete without ever getting downed) it is the best defensive utility available. At the same time, dark field provides leeching for whole party, boosting both damage and surviveability.
Outside few situations (running objectives alone and moving after respawn) SoS is not worth a slot in combat.
Assa signet is just bad.
About signet of malice – it provides superior over time healing but I found out that at higher levels (been running glass cannon in dungeons for a while) it is easier to rather avoid all of the damage and use hide in shadows for superior condition and aggro control.

3 Signets + healing signet (also heals on hit). Traits to reduce signet cooldown, gain might and grant initiative on use. Trait to increase init regen and heal on initiative use. Sigil to heal on crit, food buff to heal on crit. Macro 3 signets to be used in one button press. Equip sword/pistol.

Result: Near infinite supply of initiative for Pistol Whip or Black Powder, effectively blinding groups of mobs or locking down a mob as long as you want (or a combination). Melee AoE that heals you (allot). Hitting 3 mobs with one Pistol Whip will heal half of your HP-pool. Evade all attacks while using Pistol Whip. Always keep Infiltrator’s strike teleport up and break every potential stun against you, or escape a tricky situation.

So, you have a thief that’s extremely hard to kill. Can chain-blind/stun forever. Can effectively “tank” groups of strong mobs (even without vitality/toughness). Does good consistent AoE DPS while healing himself. Can break every stun. Can provide Cripple and Vulnerability (if traited).

Yes, other classes has more “obvious” support to the group because they provide boons and such that are displayed in icons on your screen. You can see a boon being given to you and think “i was provided support”. It’s harder to comprehend that a mob didn’t one-shot you because he was blinded, or because all it’s strong attacks was interrupted, or because it was simply focusing a thief it can barely hit. And on the flip side, as Thieves don’t provide insane amount of clearly visible support, we also tend to not need any from others. It’s a quite independent class.

Ye , not too long ago there was me asking the same question.Still no one managed to convince me why would anyone want to use signets in dungeons.Its just wrong.

Why they are bad?
Signet use is individual play .Dungeons are Team play.
It doesn’t even improve DPS , only short bursts .Bursts are useless in dungeons.
Brings no utility to yourself or the team.
It doesn’t help you survive , AT ALL.I don’t care what you say.A stun break that teleports you direcly to the mob is not a life saver , its suicide.
Exept signet of agility which is somewhat useful for extra dodges and condition clense and the Heal.
I usualy don’t care when I see one of those Thieves or Warriors in dungeons like AC or CoF because they are just stupid easy but when I stumble upon one in ARAH I just kick them out , no hesitation .And you should too , save you the trouble.You just know when ever you see one of those Signet users that they are a complete fail.

When you see someone with a bunch of signets equipped, most of the time it’s a player who doesn’t make use of their abilities at all, is just using signets for the passives, and generally performs about as well as you’d expect from someone who doesn’t use their skills.

It doesn’t help that the signets, for the most part, do very different things and belong in very different builds as a result.

The 3 signet build you’ll see most often is Malice/Agility/Shadows. I don’t think that is a bad world exploration build at all; Malice is very strong when fighting big packs moderately easy trash, Agility is nice for pulling that random 30s cripple you’ll pick up time and again, and Shadows is great for a class lacking strong access to swiftness running around the world.

The problem is that in dungeons this build falls flat. Malice is great when AoEing trash but provides much less value than the other heals when fighting legitimately difficult foes that will 2-3 shot you. Shadows is great in big open worlds but provides essentially nothing against a big stationary foe that’s immune to blind. Agility, at least, looks good on paper, but in practice falls so far short; the AoE is small, and most conditions are either applied in big chunks or reapplied continuously, so most of the time I use it, it feels like it didn’t do anything.

So while I’d heartily endorse that build for world PvE, none of those utilities belong on your bar in a min/maxed dungeon build.

It does seem that a thief running all signets in a dungeon will be somewhat less useful that one using other abilities. Having blinding powder and/or shadow refuge is extremely useful for ressing for example, and you’re throwing that away by not using one of them. It does generally suggest a player who’s just too lazy or inept to do anything but spam DPS.

If a guild group cannot carry any other warm body through CoF, then the bigger issue in my opinion is how bad is their group.

Niim.9260:

If a guild group cannot carry any other warm body through CoF, then the bigger issue in my opinion is how bad is their group.

No one should be carrying anyone , period.

Raine Akrune.8416:

style.6173:

The bigger issue in general is that it sucks to have a thief on your dungeon team. They are by far the weakest dungeon class.

So wrong that ANet needs to add a -1 feature just for your comment.

You are also a thief so of course you will say they are useful in the dungeons. Ask any non-thief at higher level fractals which class is the weakest and they will say thief or maybe a ranger who can’t control his pet.

My point though is that any thief build, signet or not, will have haters in the dungeons. Sure thieves can bring some things to the table when they aren’t in the downstate, but a team will typically be better suited adding an additional warrior or guardian instead of the thief.

The reality is that the thief has been nerfed too much based on sPvP and now is severely lacking in other parts of the game such as dungeons.

So much misinformation – especially accusing signet thiefs of not understanding build synergy. FYI we have 2 very good traits in the crit tree for signets that encourage using them.

Signet use = initiative – which is the primary way a thief is useful in groups. Add signets of power to that and you get a dps boost from it as well. More #2 on fields = huge group benefits. Just the ability to spam your blast finisher more often makes you have all sorts of group buffability that you won’t find anywhere in your utility bar. You can use caltrops or you can get hard to catch and have it practically for free. SoS is a ranged aoe blind utility and when you’re using it anyway for ini and 5 stacks of might, you’re also getting a solid group benefit. And it recharges way faster than blinding powder.

I won’t argue caltrops and SR aren’t useful, I pretty much go with Malice, and Agility and SR and switch out the last one according to the situation. Often I’ll put another signet there if the situation doesn’t require anything but straight dps. DPS is universally useful. If you get caught with caltrops on in a ranged fight you are wasting a lot more space than the signet thief who at least can use his signets to do a little more dps.

COF isn’t that hard of a dungeon – and if a thief is rolling through in dps mode with 3 signets up, that really doesn’t indicate at all that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If your group was sucking wind, you can’t blame it on the utility bar of the thief. 1-2 abilities very rarely make or break any encounter by themselves. If your group wasn’t sucking wind, and was rolling the dungeon, then you should thank the thief for maximizing his dps and increasing the run speed rather than carrying around utilities that don’t improve dps.

My point though is that any thief build, signet or not, will have haters in the dungeons. Sure thieves can bring some things to the table when they aren’t in the downstate, but a team will typically be better suited adding an additional warrior or guardian instead of the thief.

I can’t argue this point, guardians and warriors are awesome for groups, especially if it comes to kiting (cof path 2 for example). But many glass cannon builds give thieves a bad name. When they stack some toughness/vit and understand the encounter and their class they can hold their own in any non-kiting situation.

Hah funny because I been kitting on path 2 CoF solo whit my thief up to 80% sometimes and surely never been able to do that on my Warrior.Don’t talk BS if you don’t know anything about the class.Thief has unlimited evades which makes it perfect for kiting.Theres no other class that does it better.Thief survivability and damage is better than 1 of a Warrior , anyone who plays both will tell you that.And I have friends on fractals 65+ that preffer Thief over Warrior anytime.

if the signet player is not a burden to the team, i.e. dying all the time, poor dps, etc, then who cares….gw2 was built so people can play how they want.

could it be a better run if he/she wasn’t a signet player…possible…but
- just because the person doesn’t use signets doesn’t mean they are a good player…or;
- just because they are not using signets doesn’t mean they are using an optimal pve build.

so…like I said…as long as they are pulling their weight, i.e. not dying, following boss mechanics, dodging, hitting the right targets, etc, then who the kitten cares.

rook.4625:

Funny.

I’d like to see those same people spvp my 3 signet thief build. I’m not joking, have them send me a mail in-game. Any class, any spec bunkerconditiongcw/e.

We are talking about dungeons here, not pvp
Because you can quickly take down someone with 12-20k hp, doesn’t mean you are actually viable in dungeons while fighting against a boss with defiant. I’m not questioning whether you’re good in pvp or not, but it’s not relevant.

hartmoore.9632:

if the signet player is not a burden to the team, i.e. dying all the time, poor dps, etc, then who cares

Absolutely, you can run dungeons in all blues with no trait points invested if you know what you’re doing. The level of optimization you want to set is all up to your group.

However, I’d definitely put ensuring your group mates are using a solid and helpful build above, say, making sure they’re not using Magic Find. If you’re optimizing then you should be looking at people’s terrible utilities before you start telling them to take off their pirate runes.

Youd.1375:

3 Signets + healing signet (also heals on hit). Traits to reduce signet cooldown, gain might and grant initiative on use. Trait to increase init regen and heal on initiative use. Sigil to heal on crit, food buff to heal on crit. Macro 3 signets to be used in one button press. Equip sword/pistol.

Result: Near infinite supply of initiative for Pistol Whip or Black Powder, effectively blinding groups of mobs or locking down a mob as long as you want (or a combination). Melee AoE that heals you (allot). Hitting 3 mobs with one Pistol Whip will heal half of your HP-pool. Evade all attacks while using Pistol Whip. Always keep Infiltrator’s strike teleport up and break every potential stun against you, or escape a tricky situation.

So, you have a thief that’s extremely hard to kill. Can chain-blind/stun forever. Can effectively “tank” groups of strong mobs (even without vitality/toughness). Does good consistent AoE DPS while healing himself. Can break every stun. Can provide Cripple and Vulnerability (if traited).

Yes, other classes has more “obvious” support to the group because they provide boons and such that are displayed in icons on your screen. You can see a boon being given to you and think “i was provided support”. It’s harder to comprehend that a mob didn’t one-shot you because he was blinded, or because all it’s strong attacks was interrupted, or because it was simply focusing a thief it can barely hit. And on the flip side, as Thieves don’t provide insane amount of clearly visible support, we also tend to not need any from others. It’s a quite independent class.

You’re wasting your breath. The ridiculous effectiveness of the build you describe has been discussed before, and the ignorant and the trolls didn’t want to learn anything new then either.

Okamakiri.8746:

You’re wasting your breath. The ridiculous effectiveness of the build you describe has been discussed before, and the ignorant and the trolls didn’t want to learn anything new then either.

If even half the all-signet thieves actually ran signet synergy and built around it then this thread probably wouldn’t exist. The fact is that the majority of people who run signets don’t take any sort of signet synergy, rarely activate them, and just use them for convenience.

Tulisin.6945:

Okamakiri.8746:

You’re wasting your breath. The ridiculous effectiveness of the build you describe has been discussed before, and the ignorant and the trolls didn’t want to learn anything new then either.

If even half the all-signet thieves actually ran signet synergy and built around it then this thread probably wouldn’t exist. The fact is that the majority of people who run signets don’t take any sort of signet synergy, rarely activate them, and just use them for convenience.

That doesn’t make the dismissive types any more correct for ignoring the answers of how a signet build DOES work.

I could use your logic to say the same about most people who do NOT use signets but use other terrible utilities or traits, or simply don’t use their utilities at all or at the right times during encounters. Bads will be bads regardless of what build they’re playing.

Hah funny because I been kitting on path 2 CoF solo whit my thief up to 80% sometimes

I’d like to see this. Would be educational because I’ve never been able to last more than 10 seconds even with acro heavy build and using evade attacks like shortbow 3. They always land some burn inbetween attacks and it only seems to take a couple.