Guild Wars 2

Hi!

Yesterday I noticed a lot of players talking about a “cheater that kills without revealing itself and is almost impossible to kill”. I went to find out what is this player all about and indeed I did find him trying (and sometimes succeeding) to kill fellow players in front of my keep in the Eternal Battlegrounds.

I was pretty sure he was cheating. I mean, how can somebody kill a person while staying in stealth all the time? Without revealing him/herself even while attacking. However before I made a cheat report to anet or QQ’ed in the mapchat I stopped for a while and thought “Is there even a possibility that this is legit?”.

I logged onto my thief that had been parked for a long time and started looking at the traits. Also I remembered that the “cheater” had been using traps. Would it be possible to kill somebody with traps without getting revealed? Would it be possible to gain perma-stealth with traps and D/P stealth?

I started testing stuff.

1. Yes. You can get 100% uptime on stealth with thief skills and traps.
2. Yes. Thief traps don’t deal damage. They don’t “reveal” you.

So I made a build. Took all traits that say “trap” in them and took all condi gear I had and cooked some Superior Runes of the trapper. I was ready to test the build in wvw and make a quick video too. Although the things in my video don’t play out that well for me, it still shows that it is possible to attack people in WvW with this thing: http://youtu.be/DkyqDdU1HrM

Now my final feelings about this build:

• I don’t like this build and I don’t recommend it to anyone.
• Ability to have permanent stealth is not healthy balance.
• Traps not revealing you feels wrong.
• Yes you can kill people, but its not that difficult to run away from this.
• I have seen at least 4 other players use this build in wvw now. Its not my invention or anything.

Here is the build I used:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZEQJAoal8MhynYbTwsJwvGHyElfLajPknDtwNo3zpIAA-TFApAUUaE-w

What do you think about the build?

QUICK EDIT:

Point of this thread is to show that you can kill people from stealth without getting revealed. Its more about showing a concept than showing an exact build or awesome gameplay.

How is this different from any other build that uses stealth? A thief that knows what they are doing can get a high stealth uptime and kill bad players. But “a cheater that kills without revealing themselves” is a thief that just so happens to kill someone with literally no situational awareness. So you can imagine the skill level of the person who made that comment.

Why healing signet? Since you drop traps on heal and traps stealth, tricks are reduced – go withdraw. It’s 14s cooldown, stealths you (trap can be laid every 25s so every 2 withdraws back to back) stun breaks, cleanses immobility and a condi cleanse.

It synergizes so well – and withdraw would have certainly helped you in that fight.

I made full condi build based around traps, the same runes, withdraw etc.

Precast your needle before steal, lays on confusion, all the conditions associated with steal and then needle trap – whilst in stealth. First they know they’re engaged is that they’ve got 4-6 conditions…

You can troll fairly hard (e.g. WvW north camp stack place behind a bench near the supply location) by using withdraw and needle trap (so two traps) onto that location and wait for cooldown off. That way when someone runs into it – they get large condi application, preloaded with might and them vulnerability and you’ve got everything available off cooldown.

However, I went p/d than d/p – but may try it.

Major issues are mobility; did you even have a stun break? Withdraw offers one opportunity when synergizing with the traits for tricks and runes for stealth.

Is it as fun as playing my beloved d/d? No… but d/d is hard these days. Is it as fun as s/d? Definitely a big heck no, but I’ve struggled with s/d and regularly get ruined playing it. I’ve refused to be d/p until now, but the blinds are needed to mitigate damage in fights and I can see why it’s the “viable” meta.

The condi build is… viable. If people are putting 3-5k burns on me which I can’t condi cleanse fast enough – and can reapply it faster than I can cleanse – then why should I feel bad about making use of what Anet has provided us with?

Chips.7968:

Why healing signet? Since you drop traps on heal and traps stealth, tricks are reduced – go withdraw. It’s 14s cooldown, stealths you (trap can be laid every 25s so every 2 withdraws back to back) stun breaks, cleanses immobility and a condi cleanse.

It synergizes so well – and withdraw would have certainly helped you in that fight.

I made full condi build based around traps, the same runes, withdraw etc.

Precast your needle before steal, lays on confusion, all the conditions associated with steal and then needle trap – whilst in stealth. First they know they’re engaged is that they’ve got 4-6 conditions…

You can troll fairly hard (e.g. WvW north camp stack place behind a bench near the supply location) by using withdraw and needle trap (so two traps) onto that location and wait for cooldown off. That way when someone runs into it – they get large condi application, preloaded with might and them vulnerability and you’ve got everything available off cooldown.

However, I went p/d than d/p – but may try it.

Major issues are mobility; did you even have a stun break? Withdraw offers one opportunity when synergizing with the traits for tricks and runes for stealth.

Is it as fun as playing my beloved d/d? No… but d/d is hard these days. Is it as fun as s/d? Definitely a big heck no, but I’ve struggled with s/d and regularly get ruined playing it. I’ve refused to be d/p until now, but the blinds are needed to mitigate damage in fights and I can see why it’s the “viable” meta.

The condi build is… viable. If people are putting 3-5k burns on me which I can’t condi cleanse fast enough – and can reapply it faster than I can cleanse – then why should I feel bad about making use of what Anet has provided us with?

Withdraw is problematic for placement, though, because it places the spike trap where you end your roll, not where you start it. Hide in shadows might compliment this better. Also, withdraw isn’t a stun break, it only clears chill, immobilize, or cripple.

I can see with all the QQ on confusion PU mesmers and now this, Condi application will remove stealth (like it should) eventually.

Having condi ticking while stealthed is not the issue here. The bigger issue is the condi application not revealing.

I met a thief using something similar. Permastealth with traps, completely impossible to see. We where 4 people and had to unload pretty much every AoE imaginable while flailing weapons everywhere. He constantly came back trying to res a downed ally and dropping traps, I only ever heard him. Eventually though he made a mistake and it was through sheer luck we managed to immobilize him long enough to kill him.

1v1, this type of build should be completely unkillable against any target. 1v2… Probably just as unkillable.

I’d rather meet a PU condi Mesmer and a burn Guard at the same time – worst case scenario, at least you can see half of them.

This is why trapper runes, much like perplexity, and dire gear, need to go.

Why? The problem identified by the original poster is using dagger/pistol to constantly stealth, supplemented by the traps for a little extra. Reality is he doesn’t need the stealth on traps at all… that’s just a nice addition and a fail safe. He could set traps from stealth without trapper runes.

I ran roughly the same build as before with krait runes instead. Still withdraw and needle trap, still worked a treat – just using black powder, stealth on steal and shadow refuge.

The same gameplay mechanic is there – using traps to do the vast majority of the damage, with a little pistol 1 from stealth and pistol 3 to gain the gap.

Your post is almost as knee jerk as the QQ’s being mentioned :P

Met a ranger who wasn’t even weilding a bow – and again, dead heat. He had adapted to trapper thief and was doing very well indeed.

do u dusted ur thief to test it out b/c it wasnt fun to play and was nerfed to hell but now u want ppl not to use the only build viable for thief? lol

Hello,

I run this build all the time, and I’ve pretty much min-maxed it.

Hide in Shadows, cause it stealths you,

Caltrops for more AOE damage (good for zerg diving),

Shadow Trap for more reliable stealth (Can’t get knocked out of an area like you can with Refuge) on shorter cooldown than Refuge or Blinding Powder.

No Trip Wire as it adds very little to the build,

Reaper of Grenth because more AOE condi. Poison for downing players easier whilst their mate struggles to pick them up.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZEQNAoaVlsMh2mYzTwvJwvGHIFl/Fuh5j3ABwCofyTYxA-TVyCABQoEEgTEAg6LCf/BDM/1kyPPV/hiDBgEPBASBAz0I-w

meepeY.2867:

Hello,

I run this build all the time, and I’ve pretty much min-maxed it.

Hide in Shadows, cause it stealths you,

…

Why do you use Hide in Shadows with Trapper’s respite? Their stealth effect doesn’t stack does it? You do get 4s stealth from heal and 4 from trap, but they don’t stack and you just have “double stealth”, right?

Cancel the heal and the trap is placed, heal goes on 3s cooldown. Trap still has its internal cooldown of 24s

Coinhead.7591:

Why do you use Hide in Shadows with Trapper’s respite? Their stealth effect doesn’t stack does it? You do get 4s stealth from heal and 4 from trap, but they don’t stack and you just have “double stealth”, right?

Unless I’m mistaken, you can have a max of 5 stacks of Stealth. So I don’t see why it wouldn’t stack. But a single Revealed breaks them both.