Guild Wars 2

Enjoy some teleporting spots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fVE0mJ4Ayc

Annotation is in Russian, but don’t mind it, it’s easy to understand the pattern without it anyway.

Arganthium.5638:

anzku.2876:

Whats skills are best to get stealth?

Heartseeker + Black Powder
Shadow Refuge
Cloak and Dagger (sometimes)
Infusion of Shadows (sometimes)
Blinding Powder

That list lacks Descent of Shadows, imo.

May be my video will be helpful, guys?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fVE0mJ4Ayc
Some common and not very common spots for Shadow Stepping, to understand it’s mechanics. Annotation is in Russian, but it’s rather clear without it, imo.

Great idea.

Zerker Staff ele. Half-zerker Hammer warrior. Zerker Necro. I LOVE D-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y! But with thrill.

Go Venom Share, if you wonna be part of the zerg.
Pick up any build, if you wonna hunt down enemy backline.
Pick up p/p, if you are too afraid/bad @ surfing through battle field and reading the situation.

And don’t listen to anybody who says “thief is worst class for zerging”. That is wrong.
Thief is best class in taking down targets.
Go and take down those zerker eles that can crit your zerg for 7k with each meteor. You can save some kitten, if you do it quick enough.

BTW roaming ganker – sounds too simple minded. You are a mobile scout. You can know where enemy will come before anybody else and can react accordingly. For example: you can deploy supply traps @ legs of enemy zerg and go to treb to throw them some cows. They’ll be happy and port back.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Are there any re-traiters or merchants or repair vendors in it? I’m at work so I’m at the mercy of the internet information.

No, nothing.

That’s a huge trolling spot as it is.

- arena is not enough far away from entrance
- you shouldn’t get strait to the arena circle, but to grandstand
- grandstand should be separated from arena by invisiable walls
- there should be 3rd platform on the top, for a 3rd server
- flatforms on the top should have rails/invisiable walls or be invulnerable-zones
- not enough space for multiple GvGs

Dunno if it’s intended, but you get loot, wxp and kills for WvW achievement.
Kidna “overflaw-map” with a spawn-farm.

messiah.1908:

but in the gvg the thief in some fights had hard time to take down the backline fast and more use of Infiltrator’s Arrow which result with 1 less effective member in the group so it was more 19v20 (or 14v15) and he hardly use the full potential of the d/p and spamm only 1 (so he would have been more useful with d/d cnd on hand for 4-5k dmg )
and nice vids!

You are totally wrong about 19v20. Somebody was hitting him, so it’s already “19v19”, roflmao, so stupid to write that thief, that is taking down key targets is a Zero in GvG. It\s not all about AoEing, you know?
Thief is both good and fun in WvW & GvG.

Erzian.5218:

Skill, that renders the vast majority of cc skills useless and allows you to make up for 293824902380 mistakes at avoiding certain key skills, is getting fixed.

Are you talking about stability? No?

Sword nerf.
I don’t usually go sPvP with this weapon set, coz it feels awfully clumsy for me.
But.
I do command on my thief in WvW with sword main-hand. I’m obviously will be talking about the zerg-fights.

Well, as I touched it… I’ll wine a little. Is there a spoiler here to hide it?
Anyway, here I go:
In current zerg meta thief lacks it’s role. Don’t get me wrong, it is viable and can be used, but it has a serious barrier for that.
Thief can do devastating damage to enemy backline, but he’ll hardly ever kill anybody there solo (except upscaled characters). There are 2 ways to overcome this. First, you go there, fearless in daggerstorm for aoe cripple and then pray while wirling that commander will push through your crippled victims. Other solution is to have somebody to step in there with you to actually kill them, not just to force them to heal or dodge. The higher level of organization is needed. Or go solo stealthy, picking up wounded targets. Both last are harder and more exciting, but are discouraged by skill-lag.
Other role viable for thief is the soft-controller. Venom Share. I’m running it. Other class that can provide it is ranger. Funny, but both classes are considerate as bad for zerging. So, I’m leading in venom share. I’m kinda forced to wear PVT so it looks like this (I use toxic sharpening stones, so I’ll swap dagger in the link for Giver for pretty numbers)
The thing is that while having ability to heavily soft-control (6s immobilize on 5 targets(precast Needle trap + Steal/ShadowStep), 4s immobilize for 15 targets(just share Devour Poison) that in many cases give your side kills, you lack other things. It is nearly impossible to lead without a guardian in a party, due to lack of stability and protection. That’s a big issue and to manage with it I picked up sword with a build-in stun-breaker(earlier) or at least teleport-out with condition cleansing (which is the other issue). It really helps a lot. Btw I’m forced to take Withdraw (for immobilize remove) and off-hand dagger with Shadow’s Embrace to somehow fix it. Your guardian is not a god – you will catch stun+condition-spam and you have to save yourself. Yes, I have shadow step. But really, that’s the only other save for me and it’s cooldown is not low. Look @ guardian, ele or warrior. They don’t have that type of problem. They can provide support while leading people without sacrificing their survivability. They also rely on there class-specific abilities. They really have more buttons to push and coz of this their utility slots are more free. I envy them.

May be part of problem is that Withdraw has terribly long respond time. It’s more reliable to step-away than hoping for it to activate before you’ll catch a stun. I think that’s wrong. Can you look into it, please? Withdraw’s activation time.

May be problem with my zerg build coz of Venom Share placed in a tree focused on stealthing, which is not so good for zerging, tbh.

#####
Also, about D/P.
With 15 in SA:
3 seconds stealth in cost of 7 initiative is too short. It’s -4 initiative.
For D/D it’s 4s stealth for 4 initiative. -0 initiative.

That’s kidna… frustrating. How about fixing Meld with Shadows to work with blast and leap finishers?

So, there are several things that everybody are talking about:

• Initiative buff/nerf
• Sword nerf
  Big ones…

I’ll tackle them later, let’s go for a smaller ones for now:

• Assassin’s Retreat
  - will still be useless, seriously… What is the point of that trait? Swiftness on PvE events? Come on… Ye, it’s only Adept trait but still… Could do better than that! May be initiative gain or endurance refill on kill?
• Assassins Reward
  Tbh I didn’t get it, may be I overlooked answer(sry if I did), but: " Increased healing scaling by 35%". By 35% ?
  The scaling was 3.5%, wasn’kitten So the new scaling is 4.725% or what? Still 3 times less than regeneration scaling?
  If yes – it’ll still be useless trait, imho.
• Hard to Catch
  As was mentioned somewhere in the tread the “Step-away” part is too unreliable for even looking @ that trait seriously…

#######
Now, few cents about Ini buff/nerf.
I won’t go into some abstract math here as someone did. I’ll make it simple.

In dungeons I provide my group a perma-blind on trash packs by spamming Black Powder.
For this I need 6 ini every kitten seconds.
Right now I get 3 ini from regen and about 2-3 ini from Opportunist (I make 4 cleaves with the sword while blind is there).
With new regen I’ll get 4-5 ini from regen and 1 from Opportunist.
I will not notice any change.
The thing is we actually will have a buff in vulnerability-stacking.

Let’s look into other situation.
DPSing a boss with D/D. Go see calculations made – insert there time you waste on dodging and we’ll notice nearly no change or even a buff in your initiative gain.

Now an active PvP fight, where you go in, damage, then go out. Opportunist could not even proc for me in that cases, but it will proc now. Not even mentioning buffed initiative regen.

And the last one.
You are a DPS thief in a zerg fight in WvW. You see a brief moment – no heavy AoE, no retaliation up – and go in for some Cluster-spam.
This is the only case, where Opportunist was nerfed, imo. That’s sad, and I don’t really see a reason for it, but I can accept it.

• Initiative gain from Signet Use and Kleptomaniac.
  This two are the most sad thing I see. It was used for finishing Heartseaker spam under effect of Assassin’s Signet(w/o auto-attack), but not anymore. It’s not like you’ll use signets on cd for better initiative gain, so there was no reason for nerfing this other then for Assassin’s Signet’s active and First Strikes to not work together, imo.

Kicast.1459:

No remark on mesmer roaming efficiency ?
I heard that we were bad for zerg (except veil)
Now I see that we are even not seen as good roamers.

Well I feel it is true..bit it still makes me sad…

Wrong.
People just talk about solo-roaming, while naming the top 3 mobility classes.
Both necros and mesmers are good for roaming.
With
A
Group

Just find a party that will give you perma-swiftness and you are fine.

What is roamer’s objective?

This one →

To get some good fights.
Meanwhile you go out to find em you’ll kill dollies, sentries and maybe get camps only to raise some attention.
WHEN you gonna get zerged down or ignored by enemy zergs you report it in chat cause you are, basically, a gentlemen.

Augury Rock – Ogurtsy

1. EU skill lags
2. GvG (WITHOUT CAPTURING ANYTHING)
3. Anti-80-men-zerg mechanics.

Ok, now I need twice as much inventory space as I had before.

Sorry, but they die too fast.
Only [WL] guys seems to be more tough.

Junkpile.7439:

olleN.2356:

Let’s see who will win this matchup!

Let’s see who have better kill death ratio in this match up.

This.
SFR is not interested in fighting neither VZ nor KDS. Gonna dive deeper.

Ok, so we’re continuing this thread.
And stop blob-whine or Wemil will blob you for lulz

Too much lag on Ks bl today… But our garri was so pretty, no walls, no gates and tons of bags xD

Junkpile.7439:

Well comparing jade sea and kodash to viz is like comparing two little pitbulls to tyrannosaurus rex.

Oh, pls. That’s kitten wrong. Don’t insult our new opponents comparing them to VZ. This guys have teh things that do a fight entertaining.
I doubt if VZ even know word “pride”.
But this guys love to fight and this is freaking awesome after running away VZs.

As you could see, we are planning to stay T2 for a while, so let’s have some bloody fun here.
Also looking forward for some GvG action.

It was just bad timing of update announcement, sry, we didn’t do it on perpose

I liked this tier. You guys are much more lively and aggressive than VZ.
Too bad we have 2 outmanned borders with 0 income since ~21 CET =\

D/P + Shortbow,
+2 ini on stealth, +2ini/10s, SR, SS, SoS(traveling)/RfI/Smoke Screen

Use shortbow to have fast excess to cliffs and to overall fast traveling.
Use D/P 5-2-2-2 through the same smoke field with auto-targeting turned off. Refill your ini with SR, SmScr(+2+2+2) or Rfl than your are low on it.
You are in perma-stealth scouting there.
You can be spotted by seeing your smoke fields, but you can easily go away.
No actual gear is needed, coz thief’s survivability mostly is not gear-dependent.
GL&HF scouting.

BTW you _should_care about killing people, coz some of them will annoy you, while you are scouting for income and can’t leave your position. This is where you need gear.

Quxudais, stealth stacks. You can use stealthing abilities multiple times to prolong it. Later you’ll get Shadow Refuge, which works like that on it’s one.
Else was said above.

Daecollo.9578:

RNG is bad.

This.

I would like to have a rifle.

I would like to have more combos available.
For example… Death Blossom + Dancing Dagger in air = mini-“blade storm”
Or something like that.

Hello, I’m experiencing heeeeeavy lags in wvwvw prime-time.
Here’s the tracert:

0 Roof [192.168.0.100]
0/ 25 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% 192.168.0.1
0/ 25 = 0% |
2 0ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% 192.168.1.1
0/ 25 = 0% |
3 7ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% 80.80.111.97
0/ 25 = 0% |
4 15ms 0/ 25 = 0% 0/ 25 = 0% 213.27.31.71
2/ 25 = 8% |
5 16ms 2/ 25 = 8% 0/ 25 = 0% 212.188.16.37
0/ 25 = 0% |
6 27ms 2/ 25 = 8% 0/ 25 = 0% 212.188.29.5
0/ 25 = 0% |
7 33ms 2/ 25 = 8% 0/ 25 = 0% 195.34.53.17
1/ 25 = 4% |
8 65ms 4/ 25 = 16% 1/ 25 = 4% 195.34.53.102
0/ 25 = 0% |
9 78ms 4/ 25 = 16% 1/ 25 = 4% 195.16.161.193
0/ 25 = 0% |
10 76ms 3/ 25 = 12% 0/ 25 = 0% 146.188.112.121
0/ 25 = 0% |
11 87ms 4/ 25 = 16% 1/ 25 = 4% 146.188.4.205
0/ 25 = 0% |
12 77ms 4/ 25 = 16% 1/ 25 = 4% 149.227.16.46
0/ 25 = 0% |
13 65ms 3/ 25 = 12% 0/ 25 = 0% 213.71.135.138
4/ 25 = 16% |
14 162ms 7/ 25 = 28% 0/ 25 = 0% 4.69.134.150
0/ 25 = 0% |
15 154ms 7/ 25 = 28% 0/ 25 = 0% 4.69.134.141
2/ 25 = 8% |
16 167ms 9/ 25 = 36% 0/ 25 = 0% 4.69.132.85
0/ 25 = 0% |
17 188ms 10/ 25 = 40% 1/ 25 = 4% 4.69.134.21
0/ 25 = 0% |
18 187ms 9/ 25 = 36% 0/ 25 = 0% 4.69.151.157
1/ 25 = 4% |
19 194ms 10/ 25 = 40% 0/ 25 = 0% 4.69.145.139
0/ 25 = 0% |
20 —- 25/ 25 =100% 15/ 25 = 60% 4.59.197.34
0/ 25 = 0% |
21 194ms 10/ 25 = 40% 0/ 25 = 0% 64.25.32.9
0/ 25 = 0% |
22 —- 25/ 25 =100% 15/ 25 = 60% 64.25.32.26
0/ 25 = 0% |
23 192ms 10/ 25 = 40% 0/ 25 = 0% 64.25.39.1

JakobGW.5730:

Cost.6917:

Aren’t we talking about WvW here?

I thought so. . . .

Walls?

Aren’t we talking about WvW here?

JakobGW.5730:

My problem is not with the weaponset itself, but the fact many thieves are abusing the stealth combo to essentially stay stealthed more than 60% of the time, or even 100% of the time when necessary and on demand.

Oh, so the problem is that they are doing nothing but regen their health 60-100% of time? I don’t see it as a problem…

We are kinda scouts, so isn’t it ok?
After all we lack long range.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Rissou.7213:

I would like to see what 10 good thieves can do with this build vs 30-40 zerglings.

40 zerglings will start to kitten one thief and then proceeding to the next thief, and then there were none.

Acctually, No.
10 thieves are in perma-stealth.
They come into zerg unexpected and BOOM, cluster bombs from 10 zerker thives. Half of the victory.

And come on, guys. D/P require no skill? Are you kidding?
It’s #4 is one of the most skill-dependent moves in thief’s arsenal.

I would, however, argue that this type of play style is exactly why there is so much thief hate all over these forums.

Exactly! But isn’t it a part of Thief Community?
To deceive, distract and strike you unguarded?
We all abuse shortbow#5 to be unreachable, don’t we? That’s the same thing. Or you think people don’t hate thives for shortbow#5?
So who cares? We are mean characters in any game.

Grimwolf.7163:

The one and only downside is the lack of AoE

Oh, god… That’s not it.
Downside is speed of performing the “killing move” and having 7+ ini (10% damage) while doing it.

Rakanishu.2980:

but I feel like I’d have too little condition removal without Shadow’s Embrace

I feel the same. It’s still Embrace… Thinking of dropping it,
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlYm6OHdy9E+5Ex2jdmTeyVwpdPiqV1KA

Ok, adapt.
I adapted before patch. To fractals.
Used to run 30crit/30sa/10tr before.
But things r hitting harder and harder. So why heal, if I can dodge?
And I made 30crit/10as/30acro. Zerker + 3 pieces of Soldier(I’ll change them for Valk soon). Swaping traits and weapons constantly.
It’s good for melee, good for unload or pw spam, has access to reliable condi-remover from 10sa.
It’s jack of all trades.
I didn’t drop D/D in PvE with revealed nerf, but I didn’t use them everywhere from the beginning. S/P sometimes is much, much better.
For P/P or S/P just pick 2ini/10 and 3ini/swap. -20%cd deception from sa seems useful in that case – you can life-steal with SR more often or provide better uptime of smoke screen.

I use the same build for sPvP and WvW. Just was too lazy to change traits and gave it a try. It worked just fine. It provides everything I need there too.
So… Ah… I use D/P in sPvP and WvW. +SB of course. Heal: Withdraw.
Overall performance of that build?
It slippery!

May be I’ll try 0/30/20/20/0 for pvp later…

Nilgoow.1037:

WyldKat.4712:

I like to imagine it’s less rotating and more using the best skill at your disposal for a situation.

I think people like combos because it takes that part out.

That’s why they play dd eles? ;D

Oh, and THE ANSWER on your quastion:
5-2-1

BTW was just trolling around on wvw with my 0/30/10/30/0 d/p 1v5, so much fun (:
It’s nearly d/d unicorn, but with blinds+stealth instead of evade.

/sign

That kitten is killing me 20 times more often than it saves me.

Oh, btw, they also got rid of double openers from refuge/pistol5 with this extanded revealed…
Bye-bye sneak attack-unload-sneak attack, I loved you.
That’s sad, u know?

Where’s mobility told to be on weapons other than shortbow…? =\

Lol, TS you are so wrong…

Ye, I heard the same thing several times.
But I’m sure it’s the same type of people who say: “You guys have 0 AR on lvl 10 of fractals?! I quit!”

We have insane sustainability with Sarts or insane number of dodges with Acro.
In all specs we have:
- spammable AoE blind (#1 skill on trash)
- additional build-in evades
- 3-target-weakness
- easy access (or spammable, but short) daze
- bazilisk
- spammable boon remover
- easy access/short cd/spammable immobilize
- spammable/insane cripple
- aoe condition remover (cd or spammable on light field)
- aoe might (spam on fire field)
- aoe heal (spam on water field)
- anti-projectile wall
- long projectile reflecter
etc. etc.

No need to go further.
Thief neither have any problems with survivability nor utility in dungeons.
If you can solo a boss – is your class really that weak in the dungeon?

Also I had up to 3 thieves in a party including me – no problems ever.

It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials.

It does, but it’s a bit tricky and not everywhere.

I didn’t play a thief long enough yet, but I don’t get all that wine about “nerf”.
I was kind of uncomfortable that bosses were going half-hearted against me, but now it’s ok.

But yes, downed state is garbage now.

Also the Shortbow jumpshot seems so useless it barely works anywhere to be of any use

Omg, you are wrong here.
But gimme that rifle!
We have spear guns anyway, we are skilled enough!

How r you dying exactly? What is your gear?

With x/P it’s really a faceroll lvling, I wouldn’t recommend that. It’s terribly boring.
I lvled up with 0 defensive stats on gear and everything was fine.

Here’s your freedom -> healing thief

Spam 2 on a random field for buffs.

I’ve read that combination of both D/D and P/P is not viable

That’s false, D/D & P/P both work fine with pwr/crit gear.
You just want more ini regen for P/P(and you also don’t get power from SA-trait with it) – and it’s in acrobatics & infiltrator’s signet.
Also IMHO Patience is useless.

Strayhand.8216:

Well, the story mode of AC opens on lvl35 and you’re lvl46, so explorable modes will hit you hard.

I belive it’s story 30, exp 35.
I did AC around that lvl too. Didn’t have any problems at all.

Metamega.9025:

I just don’t want to get to 80 and waste weeks grinding to find out, oh yah, to get really good gear you need to be in what you guys called fractals? level 30+? to get it?

What should I say…
I’ll tell you my story.
My friends started playing GW a bit earlier, than me. But we all love pvp and gvg -> we all knew that we r lvling our chars for wvwvw. So, they lvled and found a proper guild.
Their guildies told me “oh, no, don’t bother with thief, it sucks both wvwvw and pve, don’t even lvl it up”, “thief useless”, “they die like rabbits”, etc.
But you know what?

I
do
not
care

Coz I already played many MMOs, and know how thieves/rogues/assassins r ‘useless’.
They only seems to be so.

So I pick a thief and lvled it. With ease.

I’m kind of maniac, so I didn’t lvl up any crafting professions and stick to my race locations. So, I was exp starving till around lvl 40, doing Story-quests with 3-5 lvls below recommended and same with ‘hearts’ on locations.
My lvling wasn’t fast, but I’m playing for plesure, I don’t care about anything.

And btw, it was great. Any fight was some kind of challenge, coz many mobs could one-shot me and there were crowds also. But ye, with short bow u r unkillable.
But I forced myself to use other weapons to learn.

Then I took a little break, lvling up crafting professions a bit.
As part of a break I did AC story/exp near that 4X lvl and didn’t have any problems knowing nothing about this dungeon, only on intuition.

Since lvl 50 (I think) “I took an arrow in a knee” (a found myself killing veterans with ease) and kind of rushed to lvl 80.

With ease and pleasure.

I randomly took any and all sets of weapons, used pwr/crit or condition builds.
I liked all. Of course I have a favorite set, but honestly – I liked [/i]all[/i] thief weapon sets.

My first dungeon at 80 was CoE p3. Of course I died several times. But since I understood mechanics of fight – it was easy.
People say it’s kind of… 3rd hard? Dunno yet, I only did all paths of CoE(farmed), CoF and 3/4 TA and a few fractals(9 lvl and below). I had no problems with survivability, kiting, sometimes dodge-tanking and being ‘last 2 men standing’.

So, the answer to your question:
After all your pain with a thief – I doubt, but you can still try. GL&HF/