Guild Wars 2

Hi, noob here. Most of the other noobs don’t know knockbacks are annoying and decrease overall DPS, so be sure to tell them. They are capable of learning. Sincerely, a random noob that did know not to knockback.

Speaking for WvW/EoTM:

Guardian is definitely not bad. They thrive as the back-bone of every group, with their many supportive abilities and game changing abilities, and are well suited as commanders. You can take a serious amount of beating, dish out good damage, throw healing around with room to spare, and use those tactical moments and place your abilities to wreck utter and total havoc. If anything, the Guardian and Mesmer are the two most game-changing classes and should be appreciated by anyone with some competence.

As to what you are “supposed” to do; that depends! A Guardian, in contrast to what the many doomsday preachers here say, is a well balanced class that can take anything between damage, defense, healing, defensive support, and offensive support. Granted, if you are for pure damage and offensive support, you are better off with Warrior. If you want to escape every situation, something with Stealth (Mesmer/Thief) is better. I play it as minor damage, high defense and tactical abilities, on the front-line in the heat of battle. As a commander.

If you like being up close and personal, Guardian is great.

I thought Asura was great for being a small assassin, but telegraphed attacks are really annoying if you’re so small. I recommend doing for Human or Sylvari just for the size alone.

• Off-hand pistol allows for the black powder blinding field.
• The sword allows you to hit up to 3 monsters at the same time.
• The sword/pistol allows for a stun/flurry of attacks, while evading.
• If you have initiative trouble, use the initiative sigil (infiltrator I think it is called?)
• Use food. Health regeneration over time is nice at low levels.
• Get used to Withdraw, the heal skill with the best health over time ratio (+evades)
• Learn to love interrupts, and blinds.
• Once you get traits, Shadow Arts is amazing. Regeneration + blinding rule.

Having been in the same position, frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the thief that gets worse and worse every other patch, I went for both Warrior and Mesmer to find the profession that would become the replacement for the fun that was an effective D/D+S/D thief. Warrior, due to the lack of any real tactic, was not for me.

The Mesmer is similar to the thief in a lot of ways. A lot of the tactics that you’ve learned and loved to be anywhere near effective on a thief are 95% transferable to the Mesmer. You just have one major difference/advantage; summoning phantasms in stealth WILL NOT break stealth, so make use of your stealth traits/skills and phantasms to continue putting out damage while you are happily in stealth regenerating. The Mesmer has more diversity, more power, more defense, similar stealth, effective range attacks, amazing utilities, and works well for every game type (open world, dungeons, fractals, zerg surfing, roaming, etc).

As some people mentioned, there are some issues with the Mesmer right now, but that pales in comparison to the mess that is the Thief. You will want to use the Blink skill at all times, because of the mobility you lack otherwise. Condition clearing is a bit limited, a torch and mantra can solve this completely (Sword/Torch is superb anyway!). The 25% movement speed is best to come from Traveler runes.

I personally run full Berserker with Traveller using a Sword/Torch+Greatsword with 20/20/30 for protection/regeneration/aegis in stealth, exploding phantasms, more phantasm damage, fury on phantasms, traited torch for condition remove, illusion on dodge, and 3% defense for each illusion. I often have 39% damage reduction due to this (protection + 3 clones), while regenerating health and doing damage. Powerhouse..

Preparation: Prepare a torch off-hand and decoy. Blink is great for distance making, too.
Step 1. Use stealth skills after the thief. If thief is C&D, dodge it/make distance.
Step 2. Summon phantasms after the thief re-appears.
Step 3. Repeat #1-#2 until the thief is dead.
Having played a thief yourself makes them laughable easy to deal with. Try one

Norn. Because Stealth as an Elite in WvW is blatantly OP.

Carighan.6758:

You’re quoting an old version of the build. Been nerfed. :P

I don’t consider it ‘old’. It is current, but will be changed. Even then, it remains 3/4 up.

Not sure why you think Thieves are so strong. Compare Berserker PU Mesmer to Thief:

• Stealth access through utilities and torch; and plenty with low cool-down.
• Permanent vigor due to minor trait giving 7s vigor every 5s.
• Regeneration, Protection and Aegis obtained through PU in stealth.
• Allow attacking from stealth, both summoning and Illusion attacks.
• Rapid building of Might with Greatsword #2 (bounces for Might).
• Defensive attacks and utilities that make the Mesmer invulnerable.
• Rapid application of Bleed and Vulnerability through Illusions with 95% crit chance.
• Higher base health pool and higher consistent damage in comparison with thief.
• Incredible burst potential through chaining immobilize, berserker and shattering.
• Easy access to cripple, knockback, and daze.
• Easy access to the incredibly powerful Burning condition.
• Powerful ranged attack.
• Incredible team utilities.

I seriously don’t get why people think Mesmers are weak, and thieves are strong.

I, for one, became Mesmer after being getting hit with the nerf-bat on a Thief over and over. The Mesmer is the closest match with that playstyle, you can still use all your knowledge of enemy classes, while not being hated and nerfed every patch, and still do incredible damage, tactics and escapes. A lot of thief friends did the same… that might be why?

The perfect team composition, in my opinion, would be 2 Warriors, 2 Guardians and 1 Mesmer. That said, it’s not like other classes cannot be amazing contributions. In contrary, a good thief can make a huge difference, save time, and make a lot of encounters extremely easy.

Unfortunately, inviting random players of classes not of the wonderful 3, usually ends up with incompetent players utterly incapable of contributing to the team. To be fair, it’s not like the Warriors/Guardians/Mesmers are all great players for some mysterious reason, but the required skill to play one is dramatically lower. For that reason, and that reason alone, random parties usually pick classes with the best ease of use to effectiveness ratio.

So, find a nice guild that understands this and runs with you (a good thief?), and you will be fine.

The illusions copy your stats, including the stats boosted through food and perception stacks.

Blind or a stun breaker?

I would avoid the initial condition burst; a conditionmancer usually opens with scepter #2 and dagger #5 to apply a large amount of conditions. I will also prevent the #5 Death Shroud skill (the green line thing; dodge after 3 seconds of its apperance, or make distance in stealth). Negating this entirely makes the fight easier. The remainder of the conditions can be dodged (permanent vigor), cleansed (mantra/torch) or prevented from being cast at all (stealth). Mesmers, unlike thieves, do damage while in stealth. The more an encounter is prolonged, the more the balance shifts towards the Mesmer.

What: Blind accessibility.
Why: Because it forces me to do 5 attacks instead of 3 to down a thief.
Suggestion: Take away blind abilities. Give more initiative to balance it!

What: Shadow Refuge
Why: They heal and stealth! Countering requires thinking during a fight!
Suggestion: Replace it with a 1 initiative/sec gain while inside.

Fun thread.

Thief running S/D is lacking. It doesn’t do a high amount of damage like a main-hand dagger, the abilities from stealth are lackluster, shadow return takes a small eon to complete, and C&D is easy to dodge. I run Axe/Warhorn + Hammer and have little trouble with S/D thieves.

I initiate combat with a hammer and use crowd control abilities to force the thief the burn stun-breaking abilities. Most thieves will run Shadow Step as the sole stun-breaking ability. Some run Infiltrator’s Signet and that is depicted in their states (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Signet). This tells you that they have two stun-breaking abilities, and you need to burn both.

Once the stun-breakers are gone, wear the thief down further and throw down a stun of ~1 second prior to using Eviscerate. A 100% critical chance helps ensure that you can burn ~50% HP in that one attack (assuming ~16K HP with 8K eviscerates).

In my opinion, bursting abilities are they key to defeating a thief. They down quickly.

Follow-up question:

Stats boosted through food are copied, as well? How about effects such as health steal?

Thanks for the information!

A quick question that I did not find the answer to through search or wiki:

Does an Illusion inherit Sigil of Force?

Meaning, if I run Sigil of Force, do my Illusions get that +5% damage?

I agree that Black Powder/Heartseeker is a ridiculous counter against melee-orientated professions. It can shut down these entire characters, forcing them to have something capable of either countering the Blind area (e.g. the lovechild’s Berserker’s Stance) or a ranged skill forcing the thief out (e.g. a guardian’s Binding Blade/Pull). Oh, wait! Wasn’t learning and countering the whole point of this game?

Also, nerfing something because idiots do idiotic things with them? Nerf everything, then.

Just pick up Knights armor and weapons to add survivability when you are not all that familiar with the content yet. Don’t join groups that require full Berserker, and you will be fine. It’s also fine and recommended to run some healing utilities, like a healing banner or healing shout trait, but don’t over-do it and go 100% defense. You should be able to take down enemies by yourself without taking an eternity, and without raising suspicion.

It is indeed 2 seconds ICD and does not scale with anything. I personally find it too weak, as a Thief I cannot put pressure for an extended period of time and require stealth to heal up, re-position and during that time the sigil is wasted. The 5-second cooldown is better for re-engage timing and puts out damage over an area, which is both better for timing and falls in line with the burst potential we use.

I genuinely did not know about the Engineer trait. But the Necromancer and Elementalist traits should be considered to be absolutely useless. It might have some place in a D/D Elementalist if you don’t want any other trait, but the other options and allocations are generally better for almost any build.

Oh well, should have guessed someone would come with those two comments.

The Warrior is the only profession that has movement speed as a trait. There is very little reason to have the same kind of trait on a Thief just “Because Warrior has it”. All other professions need to invest in Runes or utilities, and there is nothing wrong with that. You could also complain about the ease Warriors have to keep swiftness up, instead (which is what I do).

Generally lacking and considered not viable. That said, I sometimes used P/P on switch.

It is nice against Mesmers, Elementalists and Rangers. Not so much against anything else.

In situational form, be sure to keep a Black Powder or Shadow Refuge around.

Build it like any other power thief (Berserker, 10/30/30 or 0/30/30/10 with 10% pistol damage).

WvW only has D/D and D/P remaining viable.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/first

Everything else (condition etc) is better done on some other class. Oh, and prepare to die. A lot.

You can eat PU mesmers by running enough condition cleansing. For that purpose, I run an off-hand Warhorn and 3 shouts supported by Rune of the Soldier. This gives me a ridiculous amount of condition cleansing that completely counters most, if not all, condition builds.

The power-based mesmers require control; a hammer is great. Make them waste blink and decoy with short low-cooldown interrupts, and then move in with your strongest Earthshaker and on-switch damage combination. I use Axe and Eviscerate for that purpose. A Mace/Shield have given me success, too, but I personally can’t run without Quick Breathing Warhorn in fear of condition spam.

bettadenu.5483:

I feel less useful than other classes in a party, with the exception of stealth taxi people through hard PvE parts such as in dungeons.

Correct~ It’s nice to troll around with a few thieves in WvW though, but generally it would be better if all of them would use a better class.

Since I have both I will comment a little on each.

A Warrior has nice self-sustaining through Healing Signet and provides group healing with Shouts/Banners, while cleansing conditions with the same shouts and condition conversion with an off-hand Warhorn. The damage and control remain pretty good even with a high toughness, as there is absolutely no need to invest in anything other than toughness. Scaling of healing abilities is not spectacular enough to warrant wearing Cleric armor.

A Guardian has an insane group-sustain through Selfless Daring and really benefits from healing scaling. This warrants wearing Cleric armor, or a mix thereof, and benefits a lot from endurance regeneration boons and sigils (more heal!). The amount of toughness is incredible and the up-time of protection is not to be underestimated. It can provide shouts with condition cleansing and can convert conditions through the same abilities with Pure of Voice. The damage and control is much lower, but in returns gains the much better healing, boon appliance and utilities (in the form of putting down barriers and reflections).

Both have their uses and both function equally well in an (organized) group. I feel that a Warrior is more on the damage/selfish-end of the spectrum, capable of roaming, while the Guardian is more on the defensive/supporting-end of the spectrum. I don’t roam with my Guardian due to the lack of personal damage, but it is a lot of fun with the Warrior.

Neither is better. Pick your flavor and enjoy.

In WvW the racial elite of the Norn can provide some serious troll moments. Ever had a Warrior disappear into stealth as he was losing? Norn can, and it’s extremely annoying. I wish I had made my Sylvari a Norn instead. Just to troll a group as I was going down to disappear as if I was a thief. Sheesh!

If you want to join the elitist groups running simple dungeons like CoF, you need full Berserker. Other parties and parties for the fractals of the mist will be fine with you running toughness. Personally I run full Knight armor and weapons with Berserker trinkets in both WvW and PvE. I also do shouts for healing and condition cleansing (3 shouts, runes of the soldier) in both forms. For me, this is extremely effective, but of course, sacrificing Berserker will reduce your total power. In WvW, a good balance of damage/surviving is more important than raw power tho..

Now that I play Warrior instead of Thief I can only agree on thieves being annoying in a group fight. A thief deserves attention, and in a solo situation you can give your full attention to them therefore making the fight pretty simple. In a group setting, it is much harder to give them the attention they need to become a simple kill; but the reverse is also true! I remember how hard it is to avoid the sheer area-of-effect damage that can down a thief in a few hits.

That’s really all it is; a sacrifice. It doesn’t make a thief valuable member of a group, or an excellent roamer – it just requires you, as the thief enemy, adopt a different tactic instead of the usual ‘hulk smash’-tactic. That changed mind-set is incredibly powerful and also incredibly easy, but most people simply neglect change because ‘I am pro and I should win when rolling my face around the keyboard’.

I don’t like banners due to the mobility restrictions you’re enforcing on yourself. Banners really do give nice health when attacking a fixed point, though, and in a huge zerg throwing a few banners around will help your allies without them even realizing it. For mobility purposes, consider going all-out shout build.

• Major changes. For the worse. D/D+D/P x/30/30/x/x remain only real viable builds.
• Most skills have changed. Traits have changed. Thief is completely different now.
• Little lag; most WvW issues have been solved. Only 3-way SM fight still lags for me.
• In WvW the player base on my server remains fairly stable.

@OP, you’re lacking experience. Thieves aren’t dangerous at all, assuming you know how to deal with them. The remaining viable thief build that sticks around is x/30/30/x/x with D/D or D/P.

D/D: Take the first C&D/Steal/Backstab damage, or absorb it with an utility. If you can’t, you seriously need to bring more toughness/vitality. Bring down pressure and lower the health of the target. At this point, start using evades to get out of C&D and pressure the target to ~50% HP using simple, low-damage skills and auto-attacks. Since most run between 12K-16K HP, you should be capable of bursting the remainder of the health. As a Warrior, I love to Eviscerate into a thief for ~8K damage to get them down at that point.

D/P: I take a different approach with these builds. They use blind fields and leap through it for stealth, and as a melee-type character, that is rather annoying for me. If you’re ranged, take the advice from above. After 1~2 seconds into their stealth, I start using movement skills to get distance to avoid the Backstab. Rince and repeat, the pool of Initiative is severely limited now (Even though ArenaNet claimes it was buffed, it is not for pretty much each viable build). About ~3 times in, you should have your window to pressure and burst. If you’re area-of-effect heavy, just use that while the target is in stealth.

P/D: Conditions! Just bring enough condition remove. You should, anyway, because the current meta is a condition-heavy meta. Start cleansing as soon as a decent amount of stacks are applied. The number of conditions is limited, unlike a Necromancer, and it is easy to get rid of them.

Having played one makes them extremely predictable. Much more so than other classes.

I was expecting a big change. Can you post the stats by equipment piece so we know how much each piece changes? Also, there is +55 defense and 6×5 toughness from Infusion available there, which is actually a really decent reason to go for it as well (almost 1% DR).

You should keep waiting and hiding in the shadows. Attacking will get you killed.

EpicSuperFail.9518:

Oh. Well crap. I guess the real question is, are thieves still one of the best roamers, or do the other classes surpass them.

Surpassed by miles and miles.

If you have a nice critical rate, you can always grab a Sigil of Fire.

It can do pretty much anything you desire. If you want the highest power, a simple 30/25/0/0/15 with Berserker will settle pretty much all arguments about that. It’s not that survivable though, so it makes sense to weave in some survivability. Personally I ran 0/25/15/30/0 with Berserker/Knight while I was learning, it could shout heal and have a ton of passive healing with reasonable damage. Having a Warhorn is pretty much a must if you want to do group player-versus-player; trait it to convert boons, and a Hammer to bash people. A Mace/Shield is great for stun locking, too.

All in all I recommend learning about weapons for dungeons first; Axe/Mace + GS with full berserker and a defensive trait line allows you to survive reasonable well while you get experience and start to weave in/out whatever you prefer.

It is really difficult to make a Warrior build that truly sucks.

The adrenaline trait on Axe critical gives me full adrenaline in a mere 3 seconds. Having anything like Endurance regeneration on critical attacks would be borderline overpowered, almost regardless of how much it is. If there was such a trait, take the Thief trait as an example, ‘You gain some Endurance back on rolling.’ which effectively turns 2 dodges into 3. Still, having that in a Thief is a must because taking damage means death, but the Warrior has a thousand other ways to survive. Adding more would make me laugh hard and troll others even harder (I switched to main this), but would be way overpowered.

Sanduskel.1850:

I disagree that they are ruining sword. They are opening other options now. Thieves who get insta killed are glass cannon specced and may need to put some effort into survivability, just as other classes must do.

A thief with defense is still going to melt to pretty much anything. If you go all out and get full defense, like so many have already done by running full Dire, you’re still so much lower in terms of survival compared to every single other profession out there. The damage of the Thief isn’t even special and encountering one with the knowledge of how one is played almost guarantees a victory. The Thief damage AND survivability relies on confusion, and you can’t confuse a player that knows you.. the Sword changes just make it so much easier to catch you now.

Hi

Seems like you just caught on. Most serious thieves that have been regulars on the forum have moved on a different game or professions. I personally run an Axe/Warhorn+GS Warrior now. It has more sustain, group support, condition cleansing, healing, mobility, damage and burst compared to my Berserker/Valkyrie D/D+SB thief and let’s face it, that profession will get all the future love as well.

Sincerely,

Ex-main thief

You can calculate the difference in stats once they have been made public. You could then, for example, switch certain pieces to Cavalier according to this guide http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/

Assuming a Conditionmancer…

If you’re facing an x/Warhorn build with Heal Shouting and Runes of the Soldier, you cannot beat a decent one with with the usual ‘throw condition pressure and wait for it to die’-routine. These builds are the counter build for the current meta that is the condition tank, will convert conditions into boons and cleanse the entire burst pressure without caring a bit. If you can keep them in a crowd control, they can’t convert conditions with the warhorn, but if you can’t, you’re screwed; sorry.

If you’re facing a Berserker Stance/Mace/Shield+Hammer build, all you need to do is run for ~8 seconds for it to wear off and then put the condition pressure in. These builds usually depend on a lot of crowd control, high damage and their initial immunity to kill you. It will usually run Melandru or Hoelbrak and will have limited condition cleanse. Do whatever you can do to avoid that for the time when your burst/blind conditions are ignored, then put them into their place with blind and condition pressure. Take the damage and keep at least one dodge for the burst skill (Earthshaker or Skull Crack) to negate it every ~8 seconds to avoid Cleansing Ire from clearing their conditions with that burst skill. (Note: Nerfed a ton on the 10th)

I feel that it depends on the dungeon. If you’re doing a speed run on the Citadel of Flame, for example, you don’t need regeneration, additional healing or condition cleansing. If you’re doing something more difficult, such as Fractals of the Mist, then having that additional healing and condition cleansing becomes worth it and help your team immensely. Do note that if you want to use a shouting build (having two shouts on a 20-second cooldown), then having Soldier Runes becomes relevant as well. Yes, you’re sacrificing personal power for that, but that trait line can also gives a +150 power for the entire team (effectively 750 power). If you use a Strength Banner with regeneration boon instead of shouting, that is an additional 150 power (effectively 750 power again) – a grand total of 1500 power for choosing that trait line/utility. Not too shabby.

MyCondolences.8172:

Would really appreciate some opinions and suggestions. If i joined your party with this build how would you feel?

I would question your weapon of choice when you swap to the Hammer, but I would not mind that choice. The rather popular 30/25/0/0/15 has better damage, and this build does not bring additional utilities for the team. It will be able to survive more, but surviving is meaningless without your team doing the same thing. I would much rather see you bring (healing) banners or (healing) shouts, and perhaps even +150 power for the team from that same line. Being a more survivable build is fine, but you just might want to consider bringing something for the team instead of selfish signets and traits.

My 2c

You can use a Sigil of Intelligence for that 100% guaranteed critical hit. Focus on the bottom trait line to have adrenaline recharge on a critical hit with an Axe, and Burst Mastery. If you run enough critical chance, you can fill up the adrenaline within 4~5 seconds, well before the next Eviscerate. Personally I run an Axe/X+GS build most of the time and I hit between 4K (on the tankier targets, like Guardians) and 7K (on the lighter targets, like Rangers/Thieves). Being durable and capable of pressure is, in my opinion, more valuable than being a one-trick spike damage build. Look at how effective thieves are nowadays with something like that …

Lighter.5631:

please teach me how to get perm fury with meta hammer build

Depends on the ‘meta’ you are referring to. I use FGJ + Signet of Rage. If you’re one of those running Endure Pain, Berserker Stance and Balanced Stance, choose the least relevant skill for your current situation (roaming, zerging, … pve?) and drop it. There you go, permanent Fury, and 100% critical chance in those 3 seconds you got everyone stunned. You’re welcome.

You’re seriously suggesting you don’t run with at least 30% critical chance in your build?
+ Permanent Fury (20%)
+ Unsuspecting Foe (50%)
I always hit 100% if I run a cheese build with Unsuspecting Foe.