Guild Wars 2

Im tired of all these glass cannon builds that have no REAL mobility or survivability to speak of. i want to be in the fight longer then 2 seconds then run away or die.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mckzzc9MMFnvMMrLaM9MxxaVoqokRV

Its a stealth based backstab build, but instead of going glass cannon, i go for something a little different.

I call it the blind thief because of the trait i take “Cloaked in Shadow”, everytime i stealth, the enemy near me are blinded. this greatly helps the team, and your own survivability. this has to do with the mentality vs a stealth thief. when we come out of stealth, the players instinct is to immediatly burst or CC us in some way, the blind causes that crucial spell to miss. waisting precious time before im back into stealth.

the rest of the traits are from hours of personal testing to find “what works” vs “what works on paper”

hence shadows rejuvination, healing me 350-500 a tick while im in stealth, makes my stealth heal heal for a LOT and makes shadows refuge even more useful.

fleet shadow, many people might laugh at me taking this, but its no joke, vs a smart or erratic player with movement speed buffs, it can be hard to land that backstab within the 3-4 seconds you have. this has made all the difference in the world for me in that department.

fleet of foot, outside of this, withdraw is the only other way for a thief to remove cripple from ourselves. and since i want all the stealth i can (and the stealth heal is very powerful) taking this absolutly frustrates players as they cant keep me snared reliably

pain response, ive found this incredibly useful, it removes the same conditions as our heal, on a 45 second CD, and applies regeneration. you just have to try it and try it without to see for yourself how much a difference it makes in your survivability.

the last 10 points are completly up to you, i took thrill of the crime as its a nice group boost and a boost to your own damage. you could equally go 10 points into critical strikes for more crit starting out and gaining fury when target is below 50% hp, or go into deadly for steal to apply poison (healing reduction is always nice) along with steal doing some damage. they all are effective in there own way.

with this build, i may not get 12k+ backstabs, but i have more then once soloed 2 enemies who thought they could keep me down, only to find me in stealth a lot of the time, to find there attacks missing when i do appear, and to find my health constantly going up even while they try to bring it down.

you have to space your defensive options tho, often after i come out of stealth, i wait a second, then dodge (evasion frames) so to further lessen the time they can hit me while im out of stealth. and you have to time your restealthes around your revealed debuff (lasts 3 seconds i believe)

if youve read this far, i could say more, but just try this build out for yourself. to quote a mesmer who tried to kite me while i was trying out this spec its “kinda f****** dumb”

Something went horribly wrong with your link. Can you redo it? I’d love to see what you’ve concocted.

sorry ive been at work all day! i redid the link.

gearwise i typically do divinity runes with berserker neclace and jewel.

weapon i use accuracy (5% crit), blood (lifesteal) and fire on shortbow (fire aoe)

gives me close to 2.9k power, 45% or more crit, and 17k hp roughly, with i think 2.2-2.3k toughness.

I’m with you very nice build. Also if you will time shadow refuge with elemntalist aoe it will be longer up to 10 sec i think so its very useful to heal yourself

I’ve also been running a pretty strong blind build for most of the game’s life so far. It’s given me a distinct hatred for Dredge.

Honestly ive noticed shadow refuge truly be a refuge for me with shadows rejuvination. more hten once i was low on hp and my heal was down so i put down shadows refuge and sat near the outside of its radius while players tried to find me, healing me up nicely.

as for the dredge, i havent pve’d a whole lot, they immune to blinds?

Wolfe.3097:

Honestly ive noticed shadow refuge truly be a refuge for me with shadows rejuvination. more hten once i was low on hp and my heal was down so i put down shadows refuge and sat near the outside of its radius while players tried to find me, healing me up nicely.

as for the dredge, i havent pve’d a whole lot, they immune to blinds?

Yup, every last one of them is completely immune to blind.

bwillb.2165:

Wolfe.3097:

Honestly ive noticed shadow refuge truly be a refuge for me with shadows rejuvination. more hten once i was low on hp and my heal was down so i put down shadows refuge and sat near the outside of its radius while players tried to find me, healing me up nicely.

as for the dredge, i havent pve’d a whole lot, they immune to blinds?

Yup, every last one of them is completely immune to blind.

heh, well, maybe keep it as a spvp/tpvp build, wvw id rather use shortbow, probably in dungeons too. from what pve i am doing its condition based P/D+SB cuz i can kite melee elites

edit: would love to get more peoples impressions on this build, its still working great for me.

I am not big on giving up the extra 3 initiative from trickery if trickery is 15+

I’m a similiar but i get my blinds from shadowshot, D/P
I open with steal,stealth backstab, Shadowshot for blind/damage, then let my auto attack combo go, dodge, shadowshot, auto attack combo. This is kinda what i do, I can throw in more backstabs with Blinding power Utility and Heal stealth, 25% life stealth is even another try at it. I save heartseeker to finish them off

Alot of people dont realize that the auto attack combo actually does more damage than the weak tier Heart seeker, (more so after nerf) and if your 15 in Deadly Arts your poison from your auto attack combo weakens them so now they are doing on average 25% less damage when a blind doesnt stop them. this also causes them to have 50% less dodge during the fight.
Im still a glass cannon build so i do alot of damage but i dont seem to get hurt that much when i do choose to go toe to toe with fighters. the nice part is runners have no chance of getting away.

30 DA, 20 CS, 20 SM. (panic strike),

i find my build not very initiative intensive so i rarely am out of it, so the extra 3 from trickery seems pointless to me (for this build)

and @ Pirhana seems like that build would be much more…initiative intensive, but what are your skills? how do you deal with people smart enough to try and make room when you stealth so you cant backstab them? what about people who try to keep you crippled? with D/P you also dont have CnD, making it even more initiative intensive to get into stealth.

id have to see a breakdown of your traits and gear, then give it a shot myself. seems like you would run out of initiative too easily and not have the same mobility as i do outside of shadow shot.

I ended up leaning towards a similar idea almost the same time I found this thread. Really it’s about exactly what I had in mind once I started looking at some of skills and what they do. I haven’t done much PVP yet in any fashion, it’s all been PVE for me, but the only real change I’m considering is Uncatchable over Thrill of the Crime. Maybe I’m just underestimating the combination of Might and Fury, but it seems like dropping the caltrops would serve not only as a good way to prevent chase, but also to help keep a target from being able to run around too much. Guess I’ll have to try both and see which I like more at some point.

i’m also working on something like that
that what i got atm
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYMQNAV4YlUmaOncy9E+5EB3jkiUj6p4rktTxVtKA;TEBgyyuEcJ5S1liLKtMaJ0yqlTLpWrFGRciYDxbEA

Izuma: I use caltrops in my PvE condition build for some extra stacks of bleeding, but right now dodging to lay caltrops seems to take me out of stealth more often than not. I don’t remember it doing that, but that is how it is acting for me.

I do approve of the stealth/healing thief for PvP. It is what I run, and definitely a lot of fun. +1 to everyone.

Wolfe, thank you so very much for your “Blind Thief” build. I’ve been trying it in sPvP and I’m enjoying my thief way more now. I’ve stopped trying to be a good glass cannon (which I sucked at) and I have a much more enjoyable role now, with much more interesting combats.
Thanks!

if only shadow arts wasn’t the toughness and healing power stat tree :P aka useless

you could drop 5 points from acro however, and add it to trickery for extra options like one extra evade and cripple from your SB which would help you get away better, pain response is nice, but not necessary imho not when stealth and shadows refuge will outheal a lot of condition damage combined

come to think of it why would you put points in a tree up to a minor trait that LITERALLY contradicts the point of the tree, 10% bonus dmg when your endurance is not full, but gives you endurance back :S 20 pts there seems to avoid the moronic contradiction better imho.

then you could drop the 33% speed increase, and give yourself either vigor on self heal (never a bad thing) or might on dodge

it’s a nice build and all, I just hate 20+ in the acro tree for it’s lack of sense along with the fail stats of toughness and healing power

I run a build following a similar theme, but I use Sword/Dagger rather than a backstab build. I tried a backstab build when I first came up with the build, but I found it to be really lacking in…something. I couldn’t quite place it. What I did figure out is that Sword/Dagger works very well. The sword adds the (sometimes buggy) Flanking Strike, which is nice on command boon removal and evasion. It also adds the free shadowstep in and back out which is an amazing ability. To bring this together, it has consistent sustained damage.

Here’s the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQNAsYVlUmaPHdy5E95EyOjKUn4ekUIVT1fArA;TgAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1A

I really enjoy it. It is great for roaming around and back-capping points. Thanks to the constant stealthing and blinding, I can sacrifice vitality for damage, as most of my damage mitigation is handled by my trait mechanics.

I decided to try out the build recommended by the OP and it brought a big smile to my face

Previously in SPvP I’ve been running with a backstab (D/D + SB) or condition (D/D + SB) build and found that I was just dying too much. Yes, the backstab build yielded some nice crits and the condition build felt great in some situations, but altogether I was a bit disheartened by the thief class… of course this could be down to me needing to ‘ltp’, but that’s another matter entirely…

I also went with divinity runes and the beserker necklace and jewel (although at first I went with the power/vitality/toughness necklace and jewel but found I wasn’t hitting hard enough vs. Guardians and heavy armor wearers).

As well as moving over to this build I decided to go D/P + SB. Honestly the combination of all the blinds and stealth utilities is just amazing. A combination of Steal, Shadow Shot, Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Hide in Shadows and the Signet of Shadows active ability makes you incredibly difficult to keep up with, not to mention the healing benefits in stealth and the increased movement speed in and out of stealth. For me personally this is the classic thief build as it’s sneaky, annoying and very mobile.

Since trying this build with D/P + SB I’ve managed to remain relatively unscathed after battle. Moreso, previously I wouldn’t have gone 1v2, now I have much more confidence in these situations.

Thanks for a great build

Nice explanation and build! i’m still exploring what works and what kinda playstyle suit me, gonna probably give this a try!

thanks and good job!

Thanks dude, I have specced this on my thief, but as my mouse took an unfortunate kitty on me tonight in the middle of pvping, I cannot test it until the new one comes. The testing with the keyboard in the mists though, the speed in the build already impresses greatly, it seems a great thing, thanks for the hard work and sharing.
Regards,
PS

so glad to see people getting good results with this build!

for coordinated pvp its still one of my favorites. tho currently im using a spvp zerg friendly build with more damage (relies more on black powder)

honestly lot of testing went into it, i dont see the 33% mroe speed in stealth as replaceable, vs a competent player you downright NEED that speed to get in for your backstabs.

and as for the 20+ in acrobatics, pain response man, pain reponse, you need that like a fat kid needs cake, along with dodges removing cripple/weakness

i switched over to dagger/pistol form dagger/dagger too, love black powder even if its more expensive to get into stealth…might not be for this build tho.

i also am actually kinda glad for shadow arts being the healing stats…it helps with shadows rejuvination a lot! as wella s our stealth heal.

the added toughness from acro im unsure…im sure it helps the build be a bit tougher vs direct damage.

but again, super happy to see everyone liking this build, feel free to post back with your findings and opinions.

I prefer mine more. I go 30 Critical and 30 Shadow Arts.. the last 10 get switched around alot. I use the Power + Toughness + Vitality amulet.

I get a lot more damage out of Critical Strikes, the +10% over 6 iniative (not an initiative sensitive build, this is like all the time active) and +20% when under 50% hp. Shadow art traits are +regen upon stealthing, condition removal while stealthed, and +hp regen while stealthed. I’m in love with the Shadow Arts line. I use S/D for the extra condition removal/stunbreak/stealths, and also because the sword autoattack applies weakness/cripple which is awesome. Also having cripple on 4 is great too.

btw wolfe, you don’t need the +movespeed terribly bad if you’r S/D, because of the two cripples and one immobilize. I usually still take the +25% movespeed signet though, because speed is great.

@auhfel, currently i run a similar build (the one i called zerg friendly) with D/P. its nice, but in coordinated play i think self reliance is important, unless you have someone that can dispel cripple or your running a diff spec that uses withrdraw, then your can be kited a lot, yes inf strike helps a lot but then you also lose the utility and aoe that shortbow provide.

i also dont like the stealthed condition removal for a backstab build because A) your not always gonna wait the 3 seconds in stealth) andits random, having my fate decided by lady luck can be fickle

and again, S/D is a playstyle to have for a alt weapon set (assuming you still use a dagger mainhand build for backstabs) but losing out on shortbow utility makes me cringe.

anymore i focus on one target for kill (which imo dagger mh is better, faster auto attack too) then switch to group support until i feel i can kill again (ill still attack people of course) but thats in my other build for farming glory in spvp.

33% more speed while stealthed, imo needed vs anyone competent enough to try and make room when you stealth (sword mainhand not withstanding), ability to remove cripple/weakness on dodge imo is just huge. not having it means you can be kited while you waist ini trying to get into melee range for 2 seconds at a time and do crap damage while your at it. and pain response helps so much i find.

but, to each there own, there are many viable specs still out there, and its good to ahve them