Guild Wars 2

So i’m bored, thought maybe it’d be fun to try and prove out how s/d thief is mathematically broken right now. Let me know if I made any mistakes!

Variables/Values
i/s base initiative regen = 1 init per 1.33 seconds =.75i/s (Initiative per second)
SC sword3 init cost= 3 (evade) + 2 (boon rip) = 5 init
cast time= 1/2s + 1/2s = 1s …= -5i/s
ER base endurance regen = 5%/second (10% with vigor)
H withdraw = 15s cooldown (10 seconds of vigor and 4 initiative from traits) vigor downtime = 5s, +.27 init regen/s
RFI roll for initiative = +6 inititative/60s cd = +.1 init regen/s
IS Infultrators signet= +1 init/10s = +.1 init regen/s
QR Quick recovery trait= +2 init/10s = +.2 init regen/s
Stl Steal= +3 init, 15s vigor 27s cd = +.1 init regen/s vigor downtime = 12s
Flg Feline grace trait = lowers cost of evade to 35%

totals
= 1.5 init/s
=infinite vigor up time as long as you steal at least once every 4 heals (you can steal once every 2 heals) or heal in between 2 steals (you can heal twice in between steals).
= 1 evade available every 3.25s, (with normal endurance regen it would = 1 evade available every 10 seconds, but we have perma vigor -which shaves off 5s and the feline grace trait which shaves off another 2.5s. also, evades last .75s and we are still regening them as they are happening)
= -5 init/s (cost of sword 3 FS and LS)

-5i/s+1.5i/s= -3.5i/s So, s/d thief actually looses 3.5 initiative per second spamming 3 after initiative regeneration is accounted for.
How convenient then that your evades take exactly 3.25s to recharge.

What does it mean? double rainbow? -nope
Basically, you can spam evades infinitely on s/d thief as long as you keep your endurance below 99%, your initiative below 14, and your vigor up (steal at least every four heals, or heal at least once between steals). Notice, Larcenous strike doesn’t have an evade attached to it, so you’ll still have brief .5s periods of vulnerability, but it shouldn’t really matter, because landing a skill in that .5s window is pretty much impossible to do on purpose thanks to the unpredictability of weather you will evade or flanking strike or heal or roll for initiative next. Basically, you have 4 different evades in your kitten nal, and 1 non evade, 2 of those evades are on very short (non) cooldowns, so your oponent only has a 33% chance at actually getting your non-evade in the first place, ontop of that they have to time the .5s window -which means begining the skill animation while you’re still in the middle of an evade (unless it’s instant cast skill).
Anyways, yeah s/d thief is pretty kitten broken right now haha, I guess the best counter would be to just drop condi fields on them, that way their bound to get the condi applied, but still you can just take lyssa runes and bass venom and cleanse if you really need it. + heal when using init trait + spamming your 15s cs heal should keep you up pretty well.
Here’s the build, have fun guys.

And you didnt even take into account that a dodge and the rolls last 0.75s (or did i miss it?).
" = 1 evade available every 3.5s, (with normal endurance regen it would = 1 evade available every 10 seconds, but we have perma vigor -which shaves off 5s and the feline grace trait which shaves off another 2.5s.) "
Shouldnt this be 1 evade each 3.25s? With vigor you get 10% of your total endurance/s , so 20% of the endurance for one dodge roll. With the trait you only have to recover 65% endurance for the next dodge so 65%/(20%/s)=3.25s . So felince grace takes away 1.75s not 2.5s (which wouldnt make sense with the 3.5s anyways, guess theres a typo in).

noone is using roll for initiative and you have 30% boon duration as thief

also s/d thieves don´t use any points in trickery

(I´m refering to the current meta build, not random builds palyed at low levels)

no doubt thieves have too many evades and you can´t reliably hit them, on the other hand they need surviveability, but they should take away vigor and help thieves to survive by using stealth

This build has been around for at least 4 months, and this is all known information (that has been complained about for months). Thanks for reposting it for the 37th time, though.

So, you can dodge a lot in between not damaging me? K.

Blackjack.5621:

noone is using roll for initiative and you have 30% boon duration as thief

also s/d thieves don´t use any points in trickery

(I´m refering to the current meta build, not random builds palyed at low levels)

no doubt thieves have too many evades and you can´t reliably hit them, on the other hand they need surviveability, but they should take away vigor and help thieves to survive by using stealth

4s revelead up from 3 disagrees with you.

Thief mechanics will always be frustrating: evades, teleports and stealth are HATED by people, stealth in primis.

So if you buff thief stealth, people will rage even more.

There’s no way to stop the QQ, because aside proper balancing issues ( S/D is too strong balance wise) people will complain regardless.

Just like they still complain about mesmers.

All youre proving is that S/D THFs dodge a lot? Who didnt know that? I was expecting more!

good luck killing any tough class only spamming evade
warrior regen build that heals more than thief shortbow AA is sure fair too
if you think thief are broken go and duel a good Necro as the one on this video or any other decent one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3o2fB_ADjc

Mrbig.8019:

So if you buff thief, people will rage even more.

fixed*

Requiem.8365:

Shouldnt this be 1 evade each 3.25s? With vigor you get 10% of your total endurance/s , so 20% of the endurance for one dodge roll. With the trait you only have to recover 65% endurance for the next dodge so 65%/(20%/s)=3.25s . So felince grace takes away 1.75s not 2.5s (which wouldnt make sense with the 3.5s anyways, guess theres a typo in).

Yep you’re right, I actually had it at 3.25 then changed it when I went back and edited. I couldn’t remember how I got there lol. Thanks for bringing that up, I’ll change it back.

wish.1027:

All youre proving is that S/D THFs dodge a lot? Who didnt know that? I was expecting more!

That they can dodge infinitely, Dodging is supposed to be a decisive, timed, and limited mechanic -it’s supposed to be why gw2 requires more skill than other games. Being able to spam dodge mechanic defeats the point of having it in the first place. You might as well just give everyone passive invulnerability with short periods of down time, especially considering this takes essentially spamming only 2 buttons to achieve.

Mrbig.8019:

Blackjack.5621:

noone is using roll for initiative and you have 30% boon duration as thief

also s/d thieves don´t use any points in trickery

(I´m refering to the current meta build, not random builds palyed at low levels)

no doubt thieves have too many evades and you can´t reliably hit them, on the other hand they need surviveability, but they should take away vigor and help thieves to survive by using stealth

4s revelead up from 3 disagrees with you.

Thief mechanics will always be frustrating: evades, teleports and stealth are HATED by people, stealth in primis.

So if you buff thief stealth, people will rage even more.

There’s no way to stop the QQ, because aside proper balancing issues ( S/D is too strong balance wise) people will complain regardless.

Just like they still complain about mesmers.

Well, Mesmer and Thief class design as a whole is pretty f***ing terrible (for pvp) -let’s be honest here, lol. Mesmer’s have waaaaay too much access to clone spawns to be played the way it was designed to be played. I’m not saying shatter builds aren’t awesome, but shatter utilizing clones for their burst is kinda like double dipping. It seems like they modeled the class after shadow priest from WoW, but instead of separating apparitions and shadow orbs, they just said “this’ll be innovative, let’s combine the two!” -probably because they didn’t have the resources or desire to implement a UI tell for shatter’s build up. The result was pretty much a playstyle that confused the hell out of people then bursed them (spawned a bunch of clones, screwing up targetting, then shatter for large spike damage), which isn’t very fun to play against is it? Anyways, don’t even get me started with thief design haha, I’m sure we could argue for hours.

feliscatus.1430:

So, you can dodge a lot in between not damaging me? K.

Actually, sd 3 does do pretty good dmg (LS hits for around 2-3k), and rips boons from you. So you could be taken even more damage if you have might or fury uptime in your build.

Errant Venture.9371:

This build has been around for at least 4 months, and this is all known information (that has been complained about for months). Thanks for reposting it for the 37th time, though.

Just wanted to make sure it was still being discussed! And jumper had an even more lethal build back then, which involved s/d+s/d and init/evade regen on wep swap. There was a bug where you could swap weapons right as you finished casting shadow assault and you wouldn’t get the shadow return proc. Basically it had more mobility than sb 5 when out of combat (you could basically blink from point to point lol). But the bug was fixed and we moved on.

Zodian.6597:

feliscatus.1430:

So, you can dodge a lot in between not damaging me? K.

Actually, sd 3 does do pretty good dmg (LS hits for around 2-3k), and rips boons from you. So you could be taken even more damage if you have might or fury uptime in your build.

So if you’re only hitting with LS to keep cycling to FS, and dodging in between and not throwing out any other attacks, what sort of DPS are you putting out? I mean, assuming that every LS and FS hits, how many do you get to use in a minute (or whatever criteria you’ve normalized this about) and boil it down to DPS.

Maugetarr.6823:

Zodian.6597:

feliscatus.1430:

So, you can dodge a lot in between not damaging me? K.

Actually, sd 3 does do pretty good dmg (LS hits for around 2-3k), and rips boons from you. So you could be taken even more damage if you have might or fury uptime in your build.

So if you’re only hitting with LS to keep cycling to FS, and dodging in between and not throwing out any other attacks, what sort of DPS are you putting out? I mean, assuming that every LS and FS hits, how many do you get to use in a minute (or whatever criteria you’ve normalized this about) and boil it down to DPS.

without crits or evades (steady weps), you’re going to hit about 1.5k-1.65k dps. On average you’ll evade inbetween sd3’s, evade = .75s which means we subtract 25% of the original dps (we’re now doing 1.5k over 1.75s), which leaves us with 1.125-1.24k dps.
If we run soldiers amulet, we have 35% crit chance with fury (which you’ll have most of the time via boon rips and steal). Factoring that crit chance means 35% of the time that dps is doubled, over a 10s perior 1.125k dps becomes 2.3k dps for 3.5 of those seconds, we average that and find that 6.5*1.125k + 3.5*2.3k = 15.36k, we devide that by 10 and end up with 1.536k DPS
With zerkers amulet, we get 1.865k DPS -without factoring in the crit damage (+20%).

So to answer your question with a tldr:
1.125k dps without fury
1.536k dps with fury + soldiers amulet
and 1.865k dps with fury + zerkers amulet not including the crit damage increase of 20% from zerks amulet (it’s well over 2k)

Zodian.6597:

Maugetarr.6823:

Zodian.6597:

feliscatus.1430:

So, you can dodge a lot in between not damaging me? K.

Actually, sd 3 does do pretty good dmg (LS hits for around 2-3k), and rips boons from you. So you could be taken even more damage if you have might or fury uptime in your build.

So if you’re only hitting with LS to keep cycling to FS, and dodging in between and not throwing out any other attacks, what sort of DPS are you putting out? I mean, assuming that every LS and FS hits, how many do you get to use in a minute (or whatever criteria you’ve normalized this about) and boil it down to DPS.

without crits or evades (steady weps), you’re going to hit about 1.5k-1.65k dps. On average you’ll evade inbetween sd3’s, evade = .75s which means we subtract 25% of the original dps (we’re now doing 1.5k over 1.75s), which leaves us with 1.125-1.24k dps.
If we run soldiers amulet, we have 35% crit chance with fury (which you’ll have most of the time via boon rips and steal). Factoring that crit chance means 35% of the time that dps is doubled, over a 10s perior 1.125k dps becomes 2.3k dps for 3.5 of those seconds, we average that and find that 6.5*1.125k + 3.5*2.3k = 15.36k, we devide that by 10 and end up with 1.536k DPS
With zerkers amulet, we get 1.865k DPS -without factoring in the crit damage (+20%).

So to answer your question with a tldr:
1.125k dps without fury
1.536k dps with fury + soldiers amulet
and 1.865k dps with fury + zerkers amulet not including the crit damage increase of 20% from zerks amulet (it’s well over 2k)

Well that seems mediocre at best. What armor value is this against? I mean against a regen warrior the upper end of you DPS will probably equal out to 1300 (assuming you don’t poison him). Against a necro or warrior (assuming no healing+every attack hitting) that’s still going to drag the fight out to 10+ seconds which really starts to favor the field/aoe spam they can put out. Seems like everything has to go absolutely right for meh results. And off you fight a guard who likes wards you have to steal stability or you’re not going to be able to connect with a lot of those attacks. It’s the strongest weaponset we have (imo) but only if a good player makes everything happen exactly as planned while meeting minimal resistance.

Wow, very informative. Ty for sharing

Maugetarr.6823:

Zodian.6597:

Maugetarr.6823:

Zodian.6597:

feliscatus.1430:

So, you can dodge a lot in between not damaging me? K.

Actually, sd 3 does do pretty good dmg (LS hits for around 2-3k), and rips boons from you. So you could be taken even more damage if you have might or fury uptime in your build.

So if you’re only hitting with LS to keep cycling to FS, and dodging in between and not throwing out any other attacks, what sort of DPS are you putting out? I mean, assuming that every LS and FS hits, how many do you get to use in a minute (or whatever criteria you’ve normalized this about) and boil it down to DPS.

without crits or evades (steady weps), you’re going to hit about 1.5k-1.65k dps. On average you’ll evade inbetween sd3’s, evade = .75s which means we subtract 25% of the original dps (we’re now doing 1.5k over 1.75s), which leaves us with 1.125-1.24k dps.
If we run soldiers amulet, we have 35% crit chance with fury (which you’ll have most of the time via boon rips and steal). Factoring that crit chance means 35% of the time that dps is doubled, over a 10s perior 1.125k dps becomes 2.3k dps for 3.5 of those seconds, we average that and find that 6.5*1.125k + 3.5*2.3k = 15.36k, we devide that by 10 and end up with 1.536k DPS
With zerkers amulet, we get 1.865k DPS -without factoring in the crit damage (+20%).

So to answer your question with a tldr:
1.125k dps without fury
1.536k dps with fury + soldiers amulet
and 1.865k dps with fury + zerkers amulet not including the crit damage increase of 20% from zerks amulet (it’s well over 2k)

Well that seems mediocre at best. What armor value is this against? I mean against a regen warrior the upper end of you DPS will probably equal out to 1300 (assuming you don’t poison him). Against a necro or warrior (assuming no healing+every attack hitting) that’s still going to drag the fight out to 10+ seconds which really starts to favor the field/aoe spam they can put out. Seems like everything has to go absolutely right for meh results. And off you fight a guard who likes wards you have to steal stability or you’re not going to be able to connect with a lot of those attacks. It’s the strongest weaponset we have (imo) but only if a good player makes everything happen exactly as planned while meeting minimal resistance.

hmm, i don’t know about that. Guardians usually have around 14k hp (I’m using clerics ammy for this example, i’m too tired to logg in and test everything else out for this scenario), and rely heavily on boons to stay up after their invulns are burned (heal/ult). This build should counter guardians and ele and engi especially hard because of the boonrip (these classes are very boon reliant). If they have 14k hp and we do 1.5k dps, asuming they have enough toughness to bring down our dps to 1k, it should still only take < 15s to kill them. Their heal block lasts 1.75s and has a 30s cd, their elite invlun lasts 3s and has a monstrous cooldown of 90s. Using their heal (5k heal) + elite should only shave off 10s from the fight, which might be enough time for their team to arive. This is all in mathematical consideration of course. Relative to skill level, a top notch guardian may still be able to stay up against an sd thief. Furthermore I think offensive guardian builds could beat it mathematically, since they rely on retal/blocking/burning and not necessarily direct damage it’s a tough fight though.
And the thing with warrior is, it’s a very timing oriented class. You have to land your important cc/burst skills to be efective in the fight. Healing signet is 397/second last time I checked (with zerks amulet) -if a warrior can’t hit you, you’ll outdps that regen. I’ve been playing warrior alot lately, it’s why I made this thread actually, s/d thief is the most annoying matchup there is. d/p is annoying too unless you bring zerker stance (blind spam op). But I don’t play LB, so I don’t really know how well that aoe field works against it personally, maybe it’s a hard counter, but think about it -if the only skill your landing is an aoe, should it really be enough to 100-0 someone?

so basically you can perma evade doing no damage and hoping someone does not have an istant stun/root to cast after you dodge.
yeah, defnitely broken.

Only one thing plz explain this with Math
Why any decent team i mean any team close to pro DOESNT run 2 thieves or even 5 thieves cause they are so kittening OP

Even then, what do you mean .5 second larcenous strike is too short for people to hit you, is this a joke? You are doing no damage, they will spam all kinds of crap at you and will ALWAYS hit you in that .five seconds, someone good will hit you with interrupts, knock downs, etc.

incandescence.6784:

Even then, what do you mean .5 second larcenous strike is too short for people to hit you, is this a joke? You are doing no damage, they will spam all kinds of crap at you and will ALWAYS hit you in that .five seconds, someone good will hit you with interrupts, knock downs, etc.

.5 secs is nothing considering skill animation, cast time and lag. It makes the window of vulnerability extraordinarily small. Regardless, it doesn’t take S/D a ounce of timing to spam, yet it takes the player on the receiving in to react with strict timing.

Some people seem to miss the point of the OP’s calculations. One thing that is being looked over is the fact that S/D can avoid damage at any time. Because of this, decision making is absent since dodge and evade has a beyond high uptime. Dodge is suppose to be used to escape damage, however if you blow it on something that isn’t very threatening, then you might not have the endurance to dodge a big hitter. Basically there is a reward or punishment factor depending how one utilizes dodge.

That entire concept is absent with S/D thief, which is why the OP said: “You might as well just give everyone passive invulnerability with short periods of down time, especially considering this takes essentially spamming only 2 buttons to achieve.”

Because thats what it boils down to. For the sake of understanding, evade, dodge and invul are basically the same mechanic with different names. All of them completely mitigate damage.

Block is also in that category, but I didn’t mention it because its function is much more limited. In addition to unblockable skills already existing in game.

Walker.3056:

Only one thing plz explain this with Math
Why any decent team i mean any team close to pro DOESNT run 2 thieves or even 5 thieves cause they are so kittening OP

Because we are in a condi meta.

Okay people you’re missing the point here. You’re obviously not going to spam dodge the entire fight, you’re going to auto attack, ls, fs, steal, rip boons, you’re going to do significant enough damage to win by attrition in pretty much any matchup outside of maybe necro and ranger. The point is not that you’re going to dodge the entire fight, the point is that you CAN dodge the entire fight. There is no meaningful choice when it comes to the most “skill based” mechanic in the game.
Imagine playing without unlimited dodges, it’s like if your a full time college student; you’re broke and you have to really THINK about what you spend money on, where you eat, what you buy, ect..
Being a s/d thief is like being a university kid with a million dollar trust fund, you can do buy w/e the kitten you want and not have to worry about any immediate consequence (tried to use an analogy that is relatable to the general gw2 target market).
This is what I’m trying to get at here -thief is mathematically broken because they have access to more than 1 dodge in a 5 second window (which is the intended cap with vigor). Having that much access to a dodge mechanic defeats the purpose of even having the kittening mechanic in the first place.
Even if you don’t go into the acrobatics tree, being able to pull off as many dodges as s/d thief can is unreasonable, especially if you’re actually timing them properly. Dodges are meant to be your “get out of jail free card” that will negate the burst/cc that you’re about to take. If you can just dodge on demand, then you’re not making hard decisions, you’re just pushing a button whenever you feel threatened or vulnerable -which is mathematically and philosophically re*arded.
I realize this isn’t as much of an issue in wvw or pve, but in spvp it’s totally game breaking, there is no way to really counter out s/d thief consistently. There’s a joke on the spvp forums “An s/d thief walks in the the bar and asks ’where’s the counter’” There isn't one.

These theorycrafting threads get really old where someone says, “Oooh, it’s broken, look at my maths!”

If it’s so broken why don’t you make this character and go dominate PvP completely, then post video(s), then maybe someone will believe you are right. But don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath waiting to see you ranked number one on the charts….

incandescence.6784:

If it’s so broken why don’t you make this character and go dominate PvP completely,

OH! OH! I know the punchline to this joke!

If you think S/D thieves are too strong in spvp you’re wrong. End of discussion.

Passive healing stun/longbow warriors, condition fear necros, spirit rangers, bomb/bunker engies are all more useful in a spvp match, and are easier to play than a thief.

A thief has to time his evades, use skills at right time, outdps the passive healing, and basically never get hit with a stun to beat a warrior. All the warrior has to do is spam attacks and stay alive, which with 500+ health per second, isnt hard.

Warriors and Condition bunkers are a big problem right now, so is AE damage in general. Thieves are barely even taken anymore. Yes, please nerf S/D.

Stx.4857:

If you think S/D thieves are too strong in spvp you’re wrong. End of discussion.

Passive healing stun/longbow warriors, condition fear necros, spirit rangers, bomb/bunker engies are all more useful in a spvp match, and are easier to play than a thief.

A thief has to time his evades, use skills at right time, outdps the passive healing, and basically never get hit with a stun to beat a warrior. All the warrior has to do is spam attacks and stay alive, which with 500+ health per second, isnt hard.

Warriors and Condition bunkers are a big problem right now, so is AE damage in general. Thieves are barely even taken anymore. Yes, please nerf S/D.

Warriors and necros are both FOTM right now, this thread isn’t to compare current class balance, it’s to evaluate the accessibility of evade as a mechanic on s/d thief. Why should any class/build have surplus access to what is supposed to be an extremely finite game mechanic? Even if it’s not completely broken by your standards right now (imo it is, because it is, math doesn’t lie, sorry), what happens when warrior and necro get nerfed this month?
Furthermore, is it really fun just spaming the same 2 keys for 90% of a fight? Don’t you feel like you’re cheating or something? I do.

nope…i dont feel like i’m cheating, and i do like those 2 keys. sometimes i even press 7…this is then an extraordinary moment in my life.
stop whining, s/d thief is fine, your math is crap.

incandescence.6784:

These theorycrafting threads get really old where someone says, “Oooh, it’s broken, look at my maths!”

If it’s so broken why don’t you make this character and go dominate PvP completely, then post video(s), then maybe someone will believe you are right. But don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath waiting to see you ranked number one on the charts….

Maybe because it’s already being done? you do realize there are multiple s/d thiefs at the top of both solo and team queue ladders right now right?
And as far as videos go, did you happen to watch the MLG invitational? no? how about the PAX invitational? both had pretty good clips of s/d thiefs abusing evade spam. Go watch 1st map of the PAX tourney, there’s a point when caed tries to finish off CC’s thief down in front of keep and he just spams evade like 10 times in a row until his heal comes up.

Zodian.6597:

incandescence.6784:

These theorycrafting threads get really old where someone says, “Oooh, it’s broken, look at my maths!”

If it’s so broken why don’t you make this character and go dominate PvP completely, then post video(s), then maybe someone will believe you are right. But don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath waiting to see you ranked number one on the charts….

Maybe because it’s already being done? you do realize there are multiple s/d thiefs at the top of both solo and team queue ladders right now right?
And as far as videos go, did you happen to watch the MLG invitational? no? how about the PAX invitational? both had pretty good clips of s/d thiefs abusing evade spam. Go watch 1st map of the PAX tourney, there’s a point when caed tries to finish off CC’s thief down in front of keep and he just spams evade like 10 times in a row until his heal comes up.

That time Lady Nag Nag uses shortbow for evade. Much better than s/d on this point. as Caed could have done too with D/P/SB just need 15 points in trickery

Zodian.6597:

Stx.4857:

If you think S/D thieves are too strong in spvp you’re wrong. End of discussion.

Passive healing stun/longbow warriors, condition fear necros, spirit rangers, bomb/bunker engies are all more useful in a spvp match, and are easier to play than a thief.

A thief has to time his evades, use skills at right time, outdps the passive healing, and basically never get hit with a stun to beat a warrior. All the warrior has to do is spam attacks and stay alive, which with 500+ health per second, isnt hard.

Warriors and Condition bunkers are a big problem right now, so is AE damage in general. Thieves are barely even taken anymore. Yes, please nerf S/D.

Warriors and necros are both FOTM right now, this thread isn’t to compare current class balance, it’s to evaluate the accessibility of evade as a mechanic on s/d thief. Why should any class/build have surplus access to what is supposed to be an extremely finite game mechanic? Even if it’s not completely broken by your standards right now (imo it is, because it is, math doesn’t lie, sorry), what happens when warrior and necro get nerfed this month?
Furthermore, is it really fun just spaming the same 2 keys for 90% of a fight? Don’t you feel like you’re cheating or something? I do.

Uh, if you’re not comparing thief to other classes, then what is the point? Your math is useless and has no point. If you just spam evades as a thief you will die in seconds. You have to have a plan, you have to know what you’re going to do before you do it. You have to react, manage your initiative, anticipate certain attacks… Thieves are very squishy. Stealth was already nerfed, so evades are all we have. If you want to nerf them, then thief wont even be playable in spvp.

Same 2 keys? Hardly. S/D thief, unlike many professions, makes use of almost every ability. You might not use cloak and dagger as much as a stealth oriented spec, but it is definitely useful, and so is AE cripple, infiltrators strike, shortbow skills, and especially utilities.