Guild Wars 2

Hi there,

I play a mesmer and encountered a thief that left me very impressed.

There were 3 of us minding the docks and he pretty much took us out, systematically one after the other. Not with the kind of burst that leaves you 100 to 0 in a blink of an eye or the dagger storm punishment for being too close but rather, the kind of finesse that really made me marvel.

His damage primarily came from bleeds and he spent a lot of time in stealth. When he did come out, it was to deliver his payload and disappear again. In those small windows, he’d blow your condition removers and reapply the bleeds all over again.

He could also take quite a beating and when he came out of stealth, he healed up a considerable amount. At one point I thought I had him where I wanted and stacked with enough conditions on him before he vanished again but when he popped back in my face his health had gone back up to 3/4 his bar and the conditions were gone.

Sometimes he came at the target with dual pistol unload but otherwise death blossom.

One by one we fell. I was the last to fall but thoroughly enjoyed the fight. It was well played

any idea what kind of build this particular thief was using?

He was using a P/D condition/stealth build. It’s becoming increasingly popular, mainly due to a few people uploading videos onto youtube of it. It’s a great build, and very annoying to have to fight against in 1v1 scenarios. It feels a little more powerful than it should because of the culling issue, though.

I’m pretty sure he wasn’t using Dual Pistol Unload either. He was seemingly using D/D and P/D. The Pistol Stealth attack can be confused for Unload because of how fast it fires, but P/P doesn’t have a reliable stealth ability. He’d have to switch between P/P and D/D while in stealth to use the P/P ability, and weapon swapping has a longer CD than this. This leads me to believe he was using P/D.

could anyone be so kind to link vids or the build? In my own quest to build an all rounded understanding of each profession, I’m keen to learn. thanks!

Raven.4690:

could anyone be so kind to link vids or the build? In my own quest to build an all rounded understanding of each profession, I’m keen to learn. thanks!

He’s one of the more popular youtube uploaders for thieves. It’s basically just spam stealth as much as possible while applying bleeds.

Since you are such a nice mesmer and didn’t come here to cry – I’ll give you my best guess.

The constant healing will probably be due to this grandmaster trait:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow%27s_Rejuvenation

Combine with the healing component of this utility skill:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Refuge

Condition removal would be this skill:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Shadows

or this trait:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow%27s_Embrace

I would suspect his heal skill cool down finished while he was in stealth also – that might be why he came out of stealth with so much health.

Sounds like a pistol/dagger build to me – there is no easy way to continuously re-stealth with a pistol/pistol build – or he was stealthing using dagger/dagger and then switching to pistol/pistol to use the sneak attack. Which doesn’t correct because of the cooldown on weapon swap. The Unload attack is a very similar animation to Sneak Attack.

I would say his sequence of attacks are:

1. (gain stealth) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cloak_and_Dagger
2. (sneak attack) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sneak_Attack
3. (multiple auto attack) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot
4. go to back to step 1

Given you are at some kind of ‘docks’ my best tip to help you win that fight is → jump in the water. It removes many sources of stealth and teleportation for us.

All the above is just a guess and I could be wrong.

Looks like a P/D with some death blossum if you ask me. I hate how this build is becoming more popular. No longer can P/D condition be held a secret. Sooner or later every thief and their mother is going to be running P/D…I like it back when I was of the unique few running it

pretty sure the two posters above me are right.. he is a healing condition p/d spec.

the trick is to dodge a few seconds AFTER the pistol unload, so he misses his c + d skill which puts him back into stealth, 1 missed c+d puts him on the back foot, and two misses means his dead. also make sure you cc him as much as possible.

Any sort of sustainable condi removal will pretty much shut this build down, which is why it’s not tpvp viable except for special tactics (all those ele’s and guards running team cleanse). This alone won’t let you kill them, as they can heal for 500/s in stealth.

If you want to actually have a shot at killing it, you need to time some CC effects either to the end of their dodges or in the middle of their unloads. Some of these builds do not even RUN stunbreaks, which is absurdly ballsy.

EDIT: Also as has been said, dodging their cloak and dagger can be helpful. But if you have a pet, illusions, turrets, etc, they will just be using those to land their cnd anyway

Doomdesire.9365:

Looks like a P/D with some death blossum if you ask me. I hate how this build is becoming more popular. No longer can P/D condition be held a secret. Sooner or later every thief and their mother is going to be running P/D…I like it back when I was of the unique few running it

Hehe. I am one of the “unique few”.Basically it doesn’t bother me that many people are starting to use it .They are terrible.They mostly spam Death Blossom until they run out of initiative…What bothers me more is that the big number of people using it will force the player mass to pay more attention to condition removal skills.

ZLE.8293:

Doomdesire.9365:

Looks like a P/D with some death blossum if you ask me. I hate how this build is becoming more popular. No longer can P/D condition be held a secret. Sooner or later every thief and their mother is going to be running P/D…I like it back when I was of the unique few running it

Hehe. I am one of the “unique few”.Basically it doesn’t bother me that many people are starting to use it .They are terrible.They mostly spam Death Blossom until they run out of initiative…What bothers me more is that the big number of people using it will force the player mass to pay more attention to condition removal skills.

Or nerfs >_>

Thank you for all the input so far. It has certainly been insightful.

In terms of condition removal for mesmers, we tend to run with either null field or arcane thievery which is on a 45sec cd untraited. It might be better to save those to get out of a bad spot and maybe try to use daze more in attempt to CC. We do also have a Signet that allows us to stun a target for 2 secs but otherwise in longer fights, the condition removal at our disposal may not sustainable.

We do also have a trait, Shattered Conditions, which allows us to remove a condition when we shatter. This could be something interesting to test out

Whats more interesting to me is that C+D feeds off a mesmers strength. That which gives the mesmer his/her efficacy is also the source of a p/d or d/d thiefs stealth.

p/d #1 sneak attack animation shoots out those 5x bullets in a much faster rate of fire than p/p #3 Unload. And also Sneak Attack only uses the right hand pistol. While unload will shoot each pistol alternatively from right to left.

Mesmer and necro in particular play into the strength of P/D. With D/D on the other set you land masses of conditions in short order.

Mesmer does need a counter though The class is so solid it should have a nemesis.

It sounds like the build I am running now. It can basically out live anyone. Because they will have high toughness and high regens in stealth. Only class I ever have problems with is D/D eles, well because, they do EVERYTHING.
I feel the ol mighty nerf bat coming for this spec since everyone is starting to run it.
And we all know anet loves to put us thieves down.

I run a P/D + SB build on HoD with condition and healing gear (shaman) and get about 2K heal with every [patient] C+D…sounds similiar. I also have 3 backup stealths if C+D misses too often. The thing that gives me the most trouble against multiple targets is chain CC knockdowns. Best advise is to learn how to time them with your group. I don’t use stun breakers, so that probably why LOL. I don’t run into enough organized groups to force me to play with them.

Mesmers have a hard time vs P/D because clones are easy to gain stealth from. I’ve found the harder mesmers to fight use all Phantasms instead of clones, there should be time to get them all up. That way each time we come out of stealth we are instantly attacked by 3 of them. Trying to hide in clones doesn’t work vs seasoned players anyway.

It’s also helpful to have greatsword of focus so that you can knock us out of shadow refuge or just KD in general as it’s probably the builds biggest weakness.