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.
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(edited by randomfightfan.4091)