Guild Wars 2

Hello there! I have a quick question for you, fellow thieves!
What do you guys think the new Thief meta is going to be?

sPvP, WvW, and PvE?

PvE for example, but you can share your thoughts about the other play styles too.

in pvp thief meta is:
if you see an opponent and you’re alone, run away.

Thief PvP meta will definite require a buddy system.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Thief PvP meta will definite require a buddy pet’s pet system.

Fixed.

Don’t get a wyvern as your master, they fly up and can potentially choke you with the leash.

Same as it was over a year ago. Focus on offense more than defense, never res, rely on the team’s primary support for survival. DA = offense, Trick = offensive buffs and utility, DD = combination of offense and survival. Damage multiplier stacking runes, so ogre, and with all the damage multipliers in the three lines, force sigil will out perform blood so that’ll be back in. Pairing with mesmer or revenant for coordinated burst.

I have been discussing this matter with fellow thieves of my guild (wvw oriented mostly).

In a WvW focus party context we agreed that the meta d/p + shortbow with DA/TR/SA won’t change much, except maybe for gear (adding some vitality to compensate the guard’s buffs loss).

The Shadow Arts Traits are too much of a must have, for quick stealth rez, Shadow Embrace obviously, the damage mitigation, and regen.

Trickery is on the same spot, the augmented INI pool, Stun on F1, and F1 cooldown reduction are mandatory.

Deadly Arts, synergize extremely well with Trickery, with Mug, and Improvisation.

In the end, I don’t see any room to put the new elite spec DD.
Even if it may give good mobility and little sustain, it won’t come as handy as Shadow Arts in terms of condi cleanse, regen, and survivability.

Feel free to contradict though.

Nemaides.6873:

I have been discussing this matter with fellow thieves of my guild (wvw).

In a WvW focus party context we agreed that the meta d/p + shortbow with DA/TR/SA won’t change much, except maybe for gear (adding some vitality to compensate the guard’s buffs loss).

The Shadow Arts Traits are too much of a must have, for quick stealth rez, Shadow Embrace obviously, the damage mitigation, and regen.

Trickery is on the same spot, the augmented INI pool, Stun on F1, and F1 cooldown reduction are mandatory.

Deadly Arts, synergize extremely well with Trickery, with Mug, and Improvisation.

In the end, I don’t see any room to put the new elite spec DD.
Even if it may give good mobility and little sustain, it won’t come as handy as Shadow Arts in terms of condi cleanse, regen, and survivability.

Feel free to contradict though.

regarding condi removal i had so far with DD easy time to cleanse condition

my only problem was condi necro if he used signet on me which cover all conditions
mesmer stack mainly 2 condi torment and confusion so just 1 withraw remove them both
guard burning just dodge remove it
ele the same
ranger the same with bleed and poison

but if i cough in condi burst than i need to use all my dodge evade to cleanse them all
but so far DD works for me

messiah.1908:

mesmer stack mainly 2 condi torment and confusion so just 1 withraw remove them both

Isn’t the Escapist Absolution trait supposed to cleanse only on successful dodge roll, not on successful evades ?

I assume you have the Trickster trait to remove 1 condition on tricks utilities, but how can you cleanse 2 condition with withdraw ?

Either it’s a bug, or the Escapist absolution tooltip is not correct (or I misinterpreted it). But from the Dev responses on BWE feedbacks, it seemed that this trait would trigger only on evade from dodge rolls.

I’ll try it out in game tonight

Nemaides.6873:

messiah.1908:

mesmer stack mainly 2 condi torment and confusion so just 1 withraw remove them both

Isn’t the Escapist Absolution trait supposed to cleanse only on successful dodge roll, not on successful evades ?

I assume you have the Trickster trait to remove 1 condition on tricks utilities, but how can you cleanse 2 condition with withdraw ?

Either it’s a bug, or the Escapist absolution tooltip is not correct (or I misinterpreted it). But from the Dev responses on BWE feedbacks, it seemed that this trait would trigger only on evade from dodge rolls.

I’ll try it out in game tonight

i you withraw ans lost burning and bleed if evade pops up and if i use it and didnt see the evade pop up only 1 got cleansed.
it state when you evade (not when you dodge) an attack and not while using dodge

messiah.1908:

i you withraw ans lost burning and bleed if evade pops up and if i use it and didnt see the evade pop up only 1 got cleansed.
it state when you evade (not when you dodge) an attack and not while using dodge

That’s how I read it. I have Withdraw and Roll for Initiative give two condition removals from Trickster and Escapists Absolution from Evade procs along with a small amount of extra healing on both from Driven Fortitude.

In solo WvW, hit em fast with everything you got and run when that doesn’t work.

In team WvW, wait for friendly player to draw agro and pick off the weakest in the enemy herd.

In sPvP, thieves play the role of a pet or they exercise those sprint muscles for fast map traversal.

In PvE, does it matter? PvE is so ridiculously easy in this game you can show up with whatever for 99.9% of the fights.

So far in sPvP it’s fairly similar to before with a few changes. We still shouldn’t 1v1 most people unless they’re depleted from a previous fight and they’re not a cele Scrapper. There’s so much cleave that stealth rezzing is generally not an option. Phase Traversal makes it harder to decap without using stealth or Shadowstep to get most of the way to the node. With Bound on D/P, we have A LOT more access to stealth, even when compared to the previous D/P SA build, and it’s much much more reliable than BP + HS. Condition builds are much less common, which makes Bountiful Theft generally more helpful than Trickster given the sheer number of boon-stacking builds.

Bound gives us much more use out of combo fields, like Chaos Armor without leaving D/P against Engineers by Bounding throw the gunk we steal from them, applying a longer duration weakness with Bound in our poison field, and doing a mini burst cleave by firing a Cluster-bomb on a group rezzing their teammate and detonating as we land on them with Bound. Hitting someone with Bound in a 1v1 without teleporting into them with Steal can be a chore, but with practice it can become incredibly easy to nail someone kiting in circles on a node.

Overall, the greater access to stealth, Backstab bursts, and the more sustainable damage provided by Daredevil makes Thief really fun to play so long as the other team isn’t completely made of Heralds, Druids, Dragon Hunters, and Scrappers. Our new abilities can be far out-shined by some of theirs, which is exactly why so many Thief players come here to express our bitterness.

Don’t worry guys, I’m paving the way to the new meta with this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/New-Crafter-TP-Bank-Meta-Build/first

I think that even the focus party (WvW) gonna change. Scrapper will fit the place. With perma stealth for party and aoe reveal with very short cd it is must have. Also because of that it will hurt SA builds. Used daredevil with staff and dashes in focus. Less spike, more dps and aoe, better positioning and sustain. No stealth (cause scrapper has one, taking SR, but i cant dodge there, so i’m thinking about change).

In pvp simmilar builds works nice, saw also s/d builds works well. Normal d/p can be eaten tho. Also what mostly surprising is that new heal is really good, I take it over withdraw (really, dashes covers same function).

Altermixt.4730:

PvE for example, but you can share your thoughts about the other play styles too.

Right now it really feels like the thief meta is to reroll Rev. That said until some one does the dps numbers on classes we won’t know if thief is good or bad in pve.

As for pvp, there is no meta for thieves, we’re more of a detriment to our team these days.