Not sure that I have the best sigils on my daggers (air/fire) but other than that I’m extremely happy with it. It plays so much better than what I had before. I never used shadowstep in WvW, and now I have no idea why not- it really is amazing.
I don’t think your build was viable to begin with, to be completely honest. Any backstab build should be running Hidden Killer if they don’t already have 100% crit chance, and your distribution is all over the place. It looks more like a sword build than a dagger build, and you may as well be going 30 in Trickery for Sleight of Hand to prioritize the enemy’s stability boon.
Haha fair enough. Thanks for the honesty- in my defense, there weren’t exactly many accepted builds when I left, so I was trying different things out.
Edit: looking around I’m seeing a lot of references to Jinzu’s build. Does that one still work?
Why the hell do you people keep looking and copying other ppl created (named) builds ?
I can’t speak for everyone, but I played WoW for a long time and to be a competitive rogue you pretty much had to at least base your gearing and build off those made by the theory crafters.
I’m now learning that that isn’t the case in GW2 (which is really nice), but that was why I started by looking for named builds. I’d imagine other people who look for known builds have a similar thought process.
smoke screen and blinding powder are virtually equivalent abilities, since you just hearseeker to gain stealth anyhow. Blinding powder has the benefit of being instant, a blast finisher, and stealthing teammates to stop stomps; so I think it is all around a better ability.
Fair enough. I liked smoke screen for the protection from projectiles when I happen to be with a bigger group, but that really isn’t very often and I suppose I can just swap it in then anyway.
I’d run it; we got our init regen buffed not long ago, so feel free to play with the shadow arts trait (don’t get me wrong, +2 init is still very useful). In particular, deception cooldown with blinding powder/shadowstep can substitute well for both extra stealth and infiltrator signet, while offering much greater versatility. This is VERY minor, just don’t feel locked in and test a few traits out.
I have not tested critical haste, but I think it varies from insane when it procs on your first hit to useless when it procs on your 5th, it has a 30sec cooldown also, I usually run side strikes or signet use there, but keep it til you have a chance to evaluate it.
As a tip, you can fire off steal at any time with no target to give your team swiftness, this is pretty useful with such a low cooldown.
I would be hesitant to drop signet of shadows, but if your mates have swiftness then you should drop it 100%. The reason is that heartseeker(untargetted) is your main escape, and its distance is based off your out of combat movement speed. It is a giant beating to be missing move speed when you need to retreat.
Thanks again for all the help Yeah, I wasn’t sure about dropping signet of shadows either, but I figured I could switch to SB for escaping. If I kept it, what would you suggest I drop for infiltrators signet or shadowstep?
Slight alterations include losing furious retal for practiced tolerance if you are a bit glassy and changing a utility to infiltrator signet or shadowstep.
Hidden killer is highly situational, and only optimal when you have very low crit rate or are fighting very glassy opponents.
I agree that +1 second stealth could probably be dropped, sleight of hand(now gives steal ~20sec cd) or long reach could both excellent additions in WvW, but if you like to chain cloak and dagger a lot for repeated stealth, then keep it by all means.
Yeah, I hate to give up executioner for hidden killer, but I did make some changes. Haven’t gotten to play much with it yet, but I tried to follow the advice here- thoughts?
I don’t think your build was viable to begin with, to be completely honest. Any backstab build should be running Hidden Killer if they don’t already have 100% crit chance, and your distribution is all over the place. It looks more like a sword build than a dagger build, and you may as well be going 30 in Trickery for Sleight of Hand to prioritize the enemy’s stability boon.
Haha fair enough. Thanks for the honesty- in my defense, there weren’t exactly many accepted builds when I left, so I was trying different things out.
Edit: looking around I’m seeing a lot of references to Jinzu’s build. Does that one still work?
I just came back after about a year away. I know thieves have changed a fair bit during that time. So, is this build still viable? I mainly roam in small groups (3-5 people) in WvW, but I do dungeons now and then too. If it isn’t viable anymore, what would you change?
A US/UK guild could actually be perfect for me, since when I’m on in the morning EST it’d be night in the UK. My only worry is that you guys just formed and in my experience newer guilds tend to have a tough time not falling apart, which would be a pain if it happened after I transferred servers. Do you think you’ll be able to stick with it long enough to become established?
I used to be semi-hardcore in WvW, but I’ve been gone for a year and my priorities have changed. (and my old guild seems to have left Eredon Terrace)
I’m still a competent player, but now I mostly just play while my fiancee is at work- about 6 hours during the day on monday, wednesday, and friday.
I still enjoy WvW, but I can’t really call myself hardcore with how little I play now. I’m also working at a leisurely rate towards an incinerator and like PvE (mainly dungeons, I used to do progression raids on WoW) and helping out other people.
The chance of me getting a precursor increased by 20%, seems legit. But wait, the chance of me not getting a precursor deceased by what? .00000002/.9999999 about 0.000002%.
What a significantly outstanding change!
If your chances of getting a Precursor were to be increased by 20%, the chances that you wouldn’t get one would decrease by an equal amount.
Nope. Think about it with smaller numbers for a second- percentages don’t work that way.
Say you have a paper bag with 99 blue marbles and 1 red marble. If you reach in and randomly grab one you have a 99% chance of getting a blue and a 1% chance of getting a red.
So, you pull out a blue and toss in another red in its place. You now have a 98% chance of getting a blue (~1% decrease in your chance of getting a blue) and a 2% chance of getting a red (100% increase in chance)
…unless you’re just saying since since there’s only 2 options (red vs blue in this example) a 100% increase in the chance of getting a red means you’re 100% more likely to get a non-blue marble, which while true is some very strange wording. Seems obvious that he meant it was an insignificant decrease in the chance of pulling a non-legendary.
Yeah.. This is why I use stomp when a thief runs up and starts hitting me while stealthed. I desperately hope that by knocking him back that’s less time for him to spend smacking me before I can see him, but it would be a lot better if knocking him down brought him out of stealth.
If he hits you once you can see him for a minimum of 4 seconds.
nice! good on that guardian I personally find it very annoying that our name tags stand out so much in those sort of circumstances. Hiding against a red background is the only real option we have in order to hide the name tag as well (unless you have steal that is).
It would be nice if ANet reduced the distance at which name badgers were visible (without having targetted the person at least). That way, camoflage would be more effective. Having said that, I can understand why they did it (makes it much easier for targetting purposes etc if you can see the name badges).
Yeah I agree- there’s so much room for armor customization in this game it would be nice if it worked more reliably for camouflaging rather than just looks.
I saw a guardian who was working as a spotter for a treb wearing armor dyed various shades of green and hiding in some tall plants on a cliff. I was impressed by how many people just ran right past him.
I had this same problem and the server I’m on is ranked 2nd place. It was a pain to do the puzzle and visit all poi; vistas and skill points. Getting 1shot by thiefs; or ambushed by zergs. To anyone that is considering doing this solo I advice you take off all your armor and runaround the map naked. It will save you loads on repair costs cause death is lurking around every corner.
I have no problems with the boarderland puzzles. They’re easy.
Eternal Battleground puzzle how ever. The campers don’t care if you’re naked, they’ll still kill you endlessly as they are there to farm badges of honor because they’re awful at getting it any other way in the actual WvW warzone area.
It might have the opposite effect- people would go to servers doing poorly, go into a battleground, and afk for a free reward.
If they want matches to be more balanced they really should just switch the outmanned and orb buffs. That way outnumbered worlds would get combat bonuses and worlds that are already winning would get extra drops.
The obvious solution to the long ques on some servers is to raise the player cap in WvW. Unfortunately, that would hurt worlds that already aren’t filling the battlegrounds even more.
My solution is to have a dynamic cap- say every 30 minutes the game runs a check- if all three worlds in a battleground have more than 50 people in the que it raises the cap by 50 players per world. If during one of these checks one or more servers has 0 people in que it lowers the cap by 50. In that case it wouldn’t kick players out, but it won’t let more in until the population falls below the new cap.
To prevent further issues which would happen in certain matchups if there was no floor to the maximum number of players there would need to be a floor on the limit (maybe not allow it to drop below the current maximum), even if there are no players in que
I’m looking for a guild that is based on night activity. I don’t want one that “covers all timezones” but is generally doing things earlier. I’ve tried that, and from my experience there’s just nothing going on at night.
I mainly play after 10:30pm EST and can be on until 2:30 am or so. Organized WvW is my main focus, but I’d like to do some explorable arah runs too. I have vent/mumble/teamspeak and a headset.
Server doesn’t matter (although I’d prefer one without long WvW ques during the times I mentioned). Please be a fun, mature and active group
About me: I’m 24, a cook at a pub (for now anyway), and spend way too much time playing this game. I live on the east coast and I’m sometimes on during the day, but mainly I’m on at night (after 9 pm est). I used to be in a progression oriented guild in WoW, but quit that game when it started feeling too much like a job.
About you: Mature but with a sense of humor. I’m finding that surprisingly hard to find these days.
As far as actual playing goes, I’m hoping to do explorables every night, but I don’t want to be in another guild where I feel like people are forgetting this is a game. I also like to do WvW, but dungeons are my priority. If you have a server that doesn’t have several-hour long ques for WvW that’s definitely a plus, but not a deal-beaker.
I’m a level 66 thief right now with 310 cooking and 164 weapon crafting
Annnyyywhooo either post here or PM me some info in-game
