Guild Wars 2

Others may give stealth, but no other skill performs its function of combat rezzing. Hence a minor nerf that does not really impact this function probably would not make players abandon it.

Shadow Refuge has several other functions as well. I use it because it is multi-talented. I don’t use venoms because they can be used for only one thing.

The thing I dislike most about the thief right now is that many skills and traits are designed to work together too much.

So you can’t use venoms without all the venom traits, you can’t really use signets without the signet traits. You need shadow arts to even think about using stealth, and so on.

It feels as though there are a few pre-designed builds, instead of player discovery.

Don’t think it would have the intended effect. Shadow Refuge is used because it gives the thief a unique ability you can’t find anywhere else.

Can’t just replace it with Scorpion Wire by doing a small nerf.

I don’t see why this needs to be changed…

Sounds like your suggestion would make it more difficult to use, since you’d need to stay in it for one second longer to get the full stealth.

Not sure why people need to keep suggesting nerfs to perfectly functioning skills but.

When skill 2 was used, it only stacked 5 vulnerability, instead of the 10 right now. It also cost 4 initiative.

So I’m really not sure. Seems like a backwards change more than anything. Right now Body Shot’s best use was in solo PvE to soften things up before Unload or cloak and dagger. Its effectiveness for this has been halved.

Yes I took on board what you said, as I agree with you. Some more toughness is good there. But that’s really just an easy fix gear issue.

Don’t get hit. ;p

It’s not a build for when you’ll be hit back at, but works exceedingly well in open world PvE where the role is to do damage but you won’t take much in return. Ricochet and Unload seems to be one of the thief’s best combinations for open world event farming.

If you find you do need a bit more toughness, it’s not that difficult to get some new trinkets. Exotic ones only cost a few gold.

I know this forum is biased towards sPvP, but I find open world pve fun.

NightmareFiction.5478:

My problem with Venom utilities are two-fold: You have little control over when your Venom is applied to a target and the cooldown on Venoms are entirely too long for what they do.

Venom “Queuing”
This is the primary reason I lost interest in Venoms once I actually used them and figured out how they work. You attack, the debuff is applied, and continued attacks simply refresh the cooldown essentially wasting Venom “charges”. This creates a situation where in order to get the most use out of your Venom’s effect, you have to lag your attacks so not to refresh the debuff but re-apply it, which is counterproductive to not only general combat but how you’d want conditions to work.

If you apply a condition that does not stack in intensity, you naturally want it to tick it’s entire duration; that is simply how you get the most mileage of that condition. In combat, you want to constantly inflict damage on your opponent, as that is simply how you win. You cannot theoretically fulfill both of these basic desires using the Thief’s Venom, making them unsatisfying to use. Basilisk Venom is probably the only exception, as it’s a single “charge” and therefore you fulfill both by default.

If a condition stacks duration then subsequent applications will lengthen the application. I.e if you use Spider Vendom, it goes 6 × 5 = 30 seconds.

Here’s a fun pistol/pistol build have been using. Decided to create this topic as I put this build together based on a collection of disparate posts by P/P users in this forum and then going in game to try it all out, so thought it would be nice to collate something together instead of having to patch posts together while wading through sPvP whining.

This build is meant for solo pve and open group pve. It is not meant for sPvP or dungeon PvE. Some people say double pistols is “broken” but it’s very good at what it does – high sustained single target + AoE ranged damage + combo field activation.

Traits

The basic trait setup is 0/30/0/0/30. Critical strikes line gives a lot of extra damage and initiative regen. Trickery gives many of the traits that make pistols good.

The last 10 points can be put in either of the remaining lines depending on what you want to do.

Critical strikes traits

1. Pistol Mastery: Can’t overlook 10% more damage.

2. Signet Use: Combine this with Signet of Malice and Hastened Replenishment to keep Unload reloaded. It also allows you to use your signets for their active effects and be somewhat compensated for losing the passive buffs, as well as get them back quickly.

3. Executioner: Helps maximise the damage of ricocheting bullets to low health targets.

Trickery Traits

1. Thrill of the Crime: This has three good uses. First, extra opening burst on steal. Second, fury gives extra initiative recovery with your critical strikes initiative regen on crit. Third, random speed boost in open world running to another point out of combat (it gets activated on steal activation, not on actual stealing).

2. Ricochet: Very important trait that turns Unload into an AoE attack. This lets you keep good damage on targets you want to kill, while still hurting everything else.

3. Hastened Replenishment: Combined with Signet Use, every time you use Signet of Malice on a 12 second cooldown you’ll get back 6 initiative. This is important as you’ll go through initiative like crazy.

Optional traits

The last major trait is optional from either of the remaining lines.

Acrobatics: Assassin’s Retreat gives perma swiftness as long as you’re constantly doing AoE damage with Richochet. Vigorous Recovery gives almost constant endurance regeneration with using Signet of Malice.

Deadly Arts: Sundering Strikes works well with Unload spam to apply vulnerability.

Shadow Arts: Has a good collection of traits for deception skills, like 20% reduced cooldown, team regeneration on stealth, or initiative gain on stealth.

Slot skills

1. Assassin’s Signet A large power boost that adds a lot of damage. Best to leave this constantly on its passive buff.

2. Signet of Agility: Extra crit chance. Most of the time this is good to leave on its passive, but with Signet Use using it for the active effects doesn’t hurt if you need it. You’ll get 2 initiative, full AoE endurance refill, and remove a condition from yourself and allies on a 24 second cooldown.

3. Optional slot. This slot is generally open. You have your damage, movement, and initiative regen already covered, so you can bring utility here. Infiltrator’s Signet works well due to Signet Use, but it’s not mandatory if you want something else.

Gear

You generally want to focus on not getting hit, so full berserker’s gear for the extra damage and critical power.

I like runes of the scholar on armour. This gives power, critical damage, and +10% damage when you’re at full life.

The primary pistol I like a sigil of purity. This ensures your condition removal with all the unload spam.

The secondary pistol I use a damage sigil, either a sigil of force, or a +10% damage to target type.

The second weapon set I usually just keep a third pistol in the second slot, leaving the primary slot open. On this pistol I put a Sigil of Perception, and use this weapon set until the stacks are at 25, then I swap back to the first weapon set. This weapon is transmuted to a different look to allow easy identification.

I like this approach as you’re invested in pistol traits and so most other weapons will be lacking. However, the pistol/dagger set can work well for single target damage. You don’t really need to do that though, since Unload in this build does almost everything.

Well, in light of experiences like these…

Stx.4857:

I will also say that I feel thieves being one of the mobile classes need more access to swiftness. In Spvp I can make do with dodge spam and boon duration from Acro. But on wvw/pve, I pretty much always have shadow signet slotted for passive move speed increase because dodging won’t even come close to perma swiftness, and the only other way is to trait 30 into trickery and use steal just for swiftness.

I don’t think its fair that the ‘mobile’ class needs to sacrifice a utility for movement speed when other classes like necro, warrior, ranger, engineer can obtain perma swiftness fairly easily.

So it does seem that some people at least do not experience perma swiftness from zergs.

I do not feel that just because some zergs have AoE swiftness it makes a trait pointless. If it were changed on that basis alone, then if we weren’t in an AoE swiftness group that option would be gone.

crouze.3078:

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Acrobatics:
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IV Assassin’s Retreat
Gain swiftness when you kill an foe. This effect cannot occur more than once every 5 seconds.

What’s wrong with it exactly?

In a large zerg fight with an aoe weapon to tag lots of targets, this will give you perma swiftness. Extremely useful trait imo.