imo best spvp weapon set is...
Pretty much, yeah. Though thieves hardly have any options anyway… shortbow is our secondary option almost all the time and sword/dagger is always bad.
i do wish we could have something other then SB be viable as our secondary.
i hear S/D actually isnt so bad, but it requries a diff way to play.
i do wish we could have something other then SB be viable as our secondary.
i hear S/D actually isnt so bad, but it requries a diff way to play.
its just the duel skill is quite bad, the rest of the set has some nice utility.
It doesn’t do much damage, It takes along time to go off and it often makes you out of range for the attack to go off… even if they are standing still…. don’t even try to hit a moving target with it!
It ends up leaving you with a set that lacks burst damage and isn’t great on conditions either.
Dagger pistol is a pretty solid secondary since you can go very mobile sprinting with heartseeker and do black powder heartseeker combo for stealth if you have synergizing traits
I am the super thief
I haven’t tested Powder+HS and the 2 init/stealth trait, do they work together? I’m wondering if the game will simply recognize heartseeker as a skill that stealths you if it’s from a combo field.
I like Dagger/Pistol ALOT
Nothing comes close to the burst and utility you get from this
Pistol/Pistol is also insanely good! When traited for it
Pistol/Dagger is probably the best condition damage setup
Dagger/dagger seems kinda useless unless you go for Backstab build
Sword/Pistol seems a bit gimmick with PW
Shortbow is a must have to all this setups in my opinion
Gunnars Hold= Tuga Land
meh I prefer Dagger/Pistol for even backstab setup. Cloak and Dagger is a joke and requires you to be kissing the target not to mention if the target moves even 1 stupid inch it misses.
Even though technically it is more initiative cost I find blackpowder and heartseeker 100x more reliable and you can actually do it on a target well out of normal melee range.
I also find dagger/dagger to be the best for condition damage not pistol but thats just me. Love dropping caltrops in a group then spamming DB.
I haven’t tested Powder+HS and the 2 init/stealth trait, do they work together? I’m wondering if the game will simply recognize heartseeker as a skill that stealths you if it’s from a combo field.
Yes it works, I use it.
Dagger/Pistol all the way for me, the utility is just too good to pass up, blind / interupt / gap closer / easy stealth. I run it with a burst backstab build.
meh I prefer Dagger/Pistol for even backstab setup. Cloak and Dagger is a joke and requires you to be kissing the target not to mention if the target moves even 1 stupid inch it misses.
Even though technically it is more initiative cost I find blackpowder and heartseeker 100x more reliable and you can actually do it on a target well out of normal melee range.I also find dagger/dagger to be the best for condition damage not pistol but thats just me. Love dropping caltrops in a group then spamming DB.
But probably fight ppl of inferior skill,
Gunnars Hold= Tuga Land
meh I prefer Dagger/Pistol for even backstab setup. Cloak and Dagger is a joke and requires you to be kissing the target not to mention if the target moves even 1 stupid inch it misses.
Even though technically it is more initiative cost I find blackpowder and heartseeker 100x more reliable and you can actually do it on a target well out of normal melee range.I also find dagger/dagger to be the best for condition damage not pistol but thats just me. Love dropping caltrops in a group then spamming DB.
But probably fight ppl of inferior skill,
That is a generalization, I can say the same about a pistol condition thief. since a lot of it requires you to use sneak attack to really get any good stacks of bleeding and that isnt even AOE
the only really helpful thing about pistol offhand is the no4 interrupt
when enemies try to finish off your team mates.
no5 blind isnt as useful as ppl think cause ull be focus-fired if u get in melee range.
Pretty much, yeah. Though thieves hardly have any options anyway… shortbow is our secondary option almost all the time and sword/dagger is always bad.
sword/dagger is bad because Flanking Strike instead of working properly
it actually works against you, by never pathing correctly.
they should either fix it (idealy) or change it.
(edited by Trismegistos.3046)
Pistol #5 is good when you get jumped by a thief or warrior at melee range. And it helps when finishing someone off.
i agree that Head Shot and Black Powder are really good skills. however, i still prefer Dagger+Dagger. I think Death Blossom is absolutely outstanding no matter what you’re build (though its particularly awesome for condition damage build), but mostly I find it really hard to pass on Cloak and Dagger.
At first I was not that impessed by C+D, seeing it primarily as a way to try and backstab multiple times in a fight. It kinda works for that, but really thats not what its good at. No, its the amazing utility and enemy confusion that C+D creates that I’ve come to view as indispensable.
The more experienced I get with my Thief the more I come to appreciate the power that Stealth has in simply disorienting your opponents and making them fight inefficiently. Its so easy to win fights against disoriented opponents. I wouldn’t trade this in for anything.
i agree that Head Shot and Black Powder are really good skills. however, i still prefer Dagger+Dagger. I think Death Blossom is absolutely outstanding no matter what you’re build (though its particularly awesome for condition damage build), but mostly I find it really hard to pass on Cloak and Dagger.
At first I was not that impessed by C+D, seeing it primarily as a way to try and backstab multiple times in a fight. It kinda works for that, but really thats not what its good at. No, its the amazing utility and enemy confusion that C+D creates that I’ve come to view as indispensable.
The more experienced I get with my Thief the more I come to appreciate the power that Stealth has in simply disorienting your opponents and making them fight inefficiently. Its so easy to win fights against disoriented opponents. I wouldn’t trade this in for anything.
If they fix CnD I would feel the same, and I am sure a lot more would as well. Currently it misses randomly even when you are within it’s range, and it’s range is actually probably not even accurately described in the tooltip so it’s probably bugged. If you are say within arms length of the target but not close enough to kiss them 9/10 it will not work. I would be 100% having it make you stealth without needing to hit a target
ok first,
@trikitten, your GREATLY undervaluing black powder, maybe its cuz of the way you play as that can have a affect on your weapon set choices among other things. First i dont understand your comment “you will be focused in melee range” how is that bad for black powder? and unexpected for a melee class? do you solely play pistol mainhand or shortbow? not to mention that if you are in melee range and have black powder down, the enemy is gonna almost constantly whiff. melee range is actually the best place for a x/p thief to be because of blind powder. you see a warrior incoming, put down BP, watch him whif his charge and hundred blades while you auto burn him down.
biggest issue is ranged can still get you, as well as aoe, you cant really help the aoe, and obviously you play differently vs ranged. but beyond that, both shadow shot and blind powder blind the target you have as wel as its additional effect, so it can mitigate ranged attacks to a point.
honestly x/p excels at 1v1 and close range group support with BP fields used to mitigate melees damage, and setup up rezes and executes. its often how i do it. kill something (or at least make it run away) then alternate between supporting the way i described and killing people. i can honestly say i have a impact on a group fight farther then just dpsing someone down.
@metaphorm, i really need to get the word out on this, i have tested condition and power based builds with death blossom, the amount of damage death blossom does is absolutly pitiful (i mean letting it run its full duration) when your power specced, you are straight up better autoattacking, the only thing daeth blossom gives D/D power builds is a ini cost evade.
again, unless your condition specced, death blossom is NOT WORTH THE DAMAGE vs your other damage skills.
still a good evade tho if your out of dodges.
also CnD, i love it, but in personal practice it fails compared to BP>HS. simple reason is it requires melee range and can miss, BP>HS doesnt require either of those and your partially protectd in blind powder. i used both extensively, and maybe its a playstle difference but i cant help to find /p offhand to be more effective.
on Death Blossom:
it is definitely a poor initiative dump for damage UNLESS you have 500+ condition damage on your gear. at that point it becomes efficient even against single targets, and SUPER efficient when you are able to AoE with it.
however, i do still recommend using this skill on a regular basis even if specced Power/Precision rather than Condition Damage. Not spamming it mind you. You spam it when its your primary damage source in a condition build. Just being clever about using it.
Death Blossom has 2 different characteristics that make it very valuable even for a Power/Precision gear setup. The first is that its a very potent evade. Its one of the only evade triggering skills in the game that seems to evade equally with the Dodge roll. it works against pretty much every attack, from every direction. Very unrestricted, so its good defensively. The second is that even though the damage it causes will be light it still immediately causes 3 strikes against every enemy near you. These strikes are a rich source of attack procs like the healing from Signet of Malice, or your various Crit triggers from weapon Sigils or traits in the Critical Strikes line.
So while its only suitable for initiative dump damage spam if you’re equipped with Cond Damage gear, Death Blossom still does alot of valuable work as a utility skill even if you’re not geared to make it do alot of damage.
id want to see the math on whether its useful to use that much ini just for the chance to proc things honestly. tho i agree about the evade portion, hence its in my post.
lol…
yup yup cloak and dagger sucks…. We only have 1 viable build and none that have dagger as offhand?
L2P?
Snuff i think your misenterpretting this thread by coming here posting people dominating with dagger in the offhand using cloak and dagger.
cloak and dagger is a good skill, and when you compare strictly the stealth use of CnD with BP>HS its a tradeoff, you trade less ini cost for a risk vs reward scenario (hit hte cnd and gain stealth, or miss it)
meanwhile BP>HS has no way to miss.
you could argue then that a skilled player is greater with a dagger offhand, but then you wouldnt be looking at the whole game (from pvp perspective)
BP and headshot simply offer more utility then dancing dagger and cloak.
this is in terms of spell interrupts and stomping/rezzing players, a big, and at high level of skill, a VERY important part of play.
headshot can interrupt a stomp outright, and can be done from range, can interrupt important casts.
BP can almost completly negate a enemies survival attempts in a downed state, far more effectively then CnD stealth stomps.
in terms of rezzing its also clearly superior.
in group fights it is again, superior.
honestly BP when used appropriately (as it has its own weaknesses/drawbacks) is probably the best thing since sliced bread.
Wolfe,
To each his own and honestly you can spec this Thief many ways and be effective. I was just eye rolling about how there was a theme that CnD somehow sucked because honestly it is amazing. Granted you run Pistol/dagger you need a good connection and skill or else you will get stomped but if you have skill you can be a major impact.
One thing I didn’t show (and forgot to video last night) was a zerg vs zerg fight and me in the back killing the guys that were on their siege which allowed our zerg to get in close. Hell they didn’t really even pay attention to me until after I killed two guys that were on siege and even then they never killed me.
there are good uses for other builds but if you play Pistol dagger right you can single handedly distract the back end of a zerg allowing your guys to stomp them.
In DAOC I use to run a Stealther only guild and we made major impacts in fights, this game will allow the same. You get 4-5 good Thief’s together and they can swing a battle with all the disruption they can cause.
you can spec a thief a number of ways to be effective, thats not what this thread is about
honestly in a gruop setting BP has a greater impact then CnD. CnD is a good skill for gaining stealth, it hits for ok, but it isnt as reliable no matter how skilled you are. just the way it is mate.
as for the siege comment, i dont see how thats CnD exclusive, rather just plaeyrs not paying attention.
simply put pistol offhand offers more group utility then dagger offhand, there cannot be an argument against that