Guild Wars 2

Pistol 5 isn’t the only amazing blind field thieves have. Smoke screen has a pulsating blind for anyone in the aoe as well. It also allows for the player to leap through it for free stealth. You can stack it up to 6 times for max team stealth.

Everybody knows about pre-casting cnd into steal, but you can also pre-cast backstab into steal. If you’re using mug, you don’t need to worry about the free/wasted revealed on steal as long as you cast backstab before stealing. It allows for some very high burst against a running target.

Water and fire and smoke aren’t the only good combo fields to use and blast isn’t the only good finisher. Whirl through mesmer/goop for confusion, whirl through a guard light field to mass cleanse, leap/blast mesmer/goop for chaos armor (it’s basically protection that gives boons when hit), blast/leap dark fields for blind and shoot through them for free healing. Etc.

Bountiful theft might only give you 1 stack of the boon you steal, but it rips off every stack from the enemy. If an hgh engi has 25 might and 3 other boons, pre-cast ls into steal to guarantee all boons ripped and most likely free might for you!

Death blossom only has 1/4s evade time. The ability is more like 3/4 of a second. If you’re tired of the db spamming thief evading everything, time each of your attacks so they land as soon as the thief is coming down. They won’t even be able to dodge the attack as they’ll be locked in the animation. They’ll be completely helpless and there’s nothing they can do to stop you.

If a thief is invisible, it’s either going straight for your back (d/x), straight away but within 300 range and is going to attack in 2s (p/d), or 1200 range directly away from you (sub 20% hp).

If you’re low hp and in sr, you aren’t helpless to aoes. You are still able to evade as long as you move from one side and evade to the other side. It’s not much but it will save your life at least once more than you’d expect. Vs this tactic, if you’re aoeing the sr, odds are after 3 aoes, the thief is either downed, super low (1 MORE AOE!!!), or out of dodges, leaving themselves vulnerable to things like pulls and pushes.

If you drop sr right before you go down, the sr will revive you. You will remain invisible for the entire rally (as long as you don’t get hit) and have about 4s stealth time left to counter attack. Almost no one will expect this. If they stick close enough around, they’ll think you have gone, leaving themselves open.

EVERYONE is expecting you to steal in with a pre-cast cnd. If you just walk towards your target (even without pre-casting), the enemy will often blow at least 1 dodge trying to anticipate you. If you wait just a little while, you will often start the fight with an advantage.

If you’re trying to stealth stack a team, if you have off-hand pistol in 1 set and sbow in another, you can permanently keep a group invisible by yourself. You only need 10 points into shadow arts (15 makes it easier), smoke screen, and rarely sr.

In dungeons like ta, the killer flowers at like enemies. That means their aggro acts like that of the enemy. If you are invisible while beside them, they won’t trigger.

To non-thief players. STOP LEAVING SR OR SMOKE SCREEN BEFORE THE THIEF LEAVES! The thief knows best, trust them. If you leave sr early, you’ll get revealed. You might survive but you just pulled every aoe on top of the players who wanted or maybe needed the invis to make the run. If you leave smoke screen spam early, you’ll break out of stealth before everybody else, drawing all the aoe aggro on top of the currently invisible. Would you want the person who’se holding boss aggro to come sit on your face while you’re downed?
If you’re going through a long run and are using the thief stealth to go through safely and easily, STAY BEHIND THE THIEF! Just because you stayed for the 1st smoke screen spam doesn’t mean that’s all the invis you’re going to get. If you run on ahead you might miss the sr, 2nd smoke screen, and will bring all the unwanted aggro on top of the invisibles, often making it so the thief can’t even stack the stealth. They need to land cluster bomb to stack the stealth. If there’s a mob nearby, it will reveal the thief, putting them into a very grumpy mood.

If you don’t have mug, you can steal to a target and not break stealth. This allows for some pretty nifty positioning or escapes during a fight.

There are more, go out there and discover! This is all I could think of off the top of my head. If there’s any more please let us know.

Here’s a new one:

The only ones who complain about stealth are scrubs.

Shortbow poison field, dodgetrops and caltrops can all be laid from stealth without triggering reveal.

Caltrops can be precast into steal in addition to the others you mentioned.

Opening a fight with a dancing dagger can often be enough to blow a cleanse. Either that or get an easy cloak and dagger off without wasting steal.

Throw in a few autos after readying LS. This often blows a dodge or two.

Dodging right after LS cuts out the animation while allowing the damage.

Centaur runes on a withdraw build lets you free up a utility slot. Vigor on heal is yummy.

Basically any move with a cast time (aka, isn’t instant) you can precast into steal. If you’re running D/P, precasting black powder will insure the enemy gets in the blind field. It also insures your heartseeker for stealth hits the enemy as well for a bit of extra damage.

In addition to the revive while in the shadow refuge: if you’re downed and stealthed you can use your number two downed ability to get out of any aoe and revive yourself without getting hit. It will not break your stealth (altough it seems to do so). so also if you are fighting a thief, remember to use cleave/auto attack in a bigger radius after the first 4 seconds

Zacchary.6183:

Here’s a new one:

The only ones who complain about stealth are scrubs.

A Thief complained that Engies could manage to use Stealth. Does it make him a scrub?

MrForz.1953:

Zacchary.6183:

Here’s a new one:

The only ones who complain about stealth are scrubs.

A Thief complained that Engies could manage to use Stealth. Does it make him a scrub?

Link me and I will tell you.

im surprised nobody said the long range heartseeker steal into heart seeker for those peky guys you almost downed but choose to run.. i love doing this

Useful topic Still, lots of info are missing! Shadowshot —> backstab, for example.

Frenk.5917:

Useful topic Still, lots of info are missing! Shadowshot —> backstab, for example.

you know shadowshot has a hard hitting attack associated with it right? Not sure if you found a way around it but I’m pretty sure you’re just confusing the shadowshot attack with backstab.

If you are stealthed and you use shadowshot (#3 attack D/P set) and while shadowstepping to the target you press 1 you actually do a backstab and not the melee part of shadowshot.

nice tips.

Infiltrator signet – not only does it have a nice passive – it also teleports you toward your target without interrupting your current channel. EVEN if it is out of range. This means it can be chained with steals to increase gap closings.

Infiltrator’s strike will also tp you toward your target (though it does interrupt channels). So it can be chained with infiltrator signet as well.

Steal will only tp you if your target is in range, so it should always be the last in a group of gap closers. If your target isn’t in range, steal gets a 4 second cooldown

With the new 15k steal range trait, you can gap close around 3k in a second or so: infiltrator signet – 900, infiltrator strike 600, steal 1500. Ere on the side of caution here, as you do not want to underestimate the distance.

god i hate when my party ignores my shadow refuge. I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU, STOP ATTACKING WHILE DOWNED. YOU WON’T KILL THE BOSS WITH THROW DIRT.

bobross.5034:

nice tips.

Infiltrator signet – not only does it have a nice passive – it also teleports you toward your target without interrupting your current channel. EVEN if it is out of range. This means it can be chained with steals to increase gap closings.

Infiltrator’s strike will also tp you toward your target (though it does interrupt channels). So it can be chained with infiltrator signet as well.

Steal will only tp you if your target is in range, so it should always be the last in a group of gap closers. If your target isn’t in range, steal gets a 4 second cooldown

With the new 15k steal range trait, you can gap close around 3k in a second or so: infiltrator signet – 900, infiltrator strike 600, steal 1500. Ere on the side of caution here, as you do not want to underestimate the distance.

One of the reasons, because I love my thief

Frenk.5917:

If you are stealthed and you use shadowshot (#3 attack D/P set) and while shadowstepping to the target you press 1 you actually do a backstab and not the melee part of shadowshot.

With the same idea, you can dodge or sheathe at the end of the skill to remain stealth or out of combat, i find it s a great way to move around for low iniative cost

BrunoBRS.5178:

god i hate when my party ignores my shadow refuge. I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU, STOP ATTACKING WHILE DOWNED. YOU WON’T KILL THE BOSS WITH THROW DIRT.

EXACTLY! I notice that warriors ALWAYS attack when downed and they’ll pop vengeance while im right next to them trying to ress. Like, you’re downed, focus on getting back up instead of drawing attention to yourself by doing terrible damage. I started asking warriors why they all do that when I notice it.