Guild Wars 2

the hit count on the tool tip counts the bolts the attack sends out, not just the whirl and those don’t reliably hit if you aren’t inside your target.

it works great roaming with 5 or so people, the control and health leaching it can provide is insane.

XanBie.3675:

biofrog.1568:

Maybe it includes the first 5 minutes of invulnerability too? :-)

Wouldn’t be the first time we have to kill something while it’s invulnerable! coughwurmheadcough

Joking aside, this could be the fault in Anets design atm, it may start the clock on their spawn and not on their event trigger.

honestly would not surprise me. wouldn’t be the worst/most obvious error they have made with content. I still have nightmares about the karka events.

there is no one answer. in toughness vs vitality, you want enough vitality to deal with conditions and burst, and enough toughness to deal with sustained direct damage. it moves up and down depending on what you are doing. in pve any vitality or toughness is a matter of your ability to survive the fights with as little as possible of either. and in roaming in wvw you bring less of both than if you were zerging. you should keep in mind however, it isn’t just vitality you measure toughness against, it is every other stat that could be beneficial. it may be worth losing a little hp and armor to get yourself to the crit chance threshold for a certain trait or sigil.

as far as I know, there are no hard diminishing returns, what people are referring to are the points where sacrificing some stats stats for another stat becomes less profitable due to what you are giving up. as an example, stacking toughness past a certain point, dependent on class and build, can reduce your damage to the point that your damage output is to low to kill another player within a reasonable time frame. with precision, as your crit chance rises, especially if you have plentiful access to fury, it becomes less valuable than increased survivability. basically the diminishing returns you hear about are the points when stacking a stat can start to become less effective than using another stat, or even a liability.

personally, I jump into the middle of the enemy group or on top of a downed enemy and use it till I get forced to back off. with a power build it hits fairly hard, even if it leaves you vulnerable. in a one on one it is admittedly much less useful, but if they pull out a rifle and try to kill shot it can really help. it doesn’t do much at all for condition builds though, so it may be best to just burn it if you are running one or are on your own.

If I remember correctly FGS is treated as a bundle or kit so no weapon based traits should affect it.

Interceptor.2653:

The ICD on Furious Retal is 30 seconds. Fury stacks duration, so overlap isn’t a big deal in my opinion. Easier to make a build around Fury access than it is to decide what the impact of Side Strike is.

Another consideration is people who spec Acrobatics or itemize for boon duration: I get 13s from Furious Retaliation for example, not 10s.

and if you take 10 points into trickery for thrill of the crime you can get some really respectable up-time on fury even with no outside sources of it.

thief leveling advice threads may be slightly out of date, but thief leveling has never really changed. if you don’t like death blossoms and caltrops, try sword/pistol. it is power based, has a lot of evades and blinds, and levels almost as fast as the death blossom set up. if you give it a try it uses signet of malice to heal, and may still use caltrops for large groups of mobs simply for the hit volume. it and the death blossom build are the most common but you can honestly make most anything work. as another piece of advice always keep a short bow handy for travel through the world, and shadow refuge is a great utility for the channeled skill points and other open world things that have dangerous mobs around.

frans.8092:

All the Power, Precision and Crit damage you can get versus all the thoughness and vitality you need to survive. About 15k health is common and upwards to 2500 armor (unbuffed).

Commonly used is, i think, Berserker trinkets and a mix of Soldiers (head, coat, leggings) and Berserker armor(shoulders, gloves, boots) .

to add to this, if you use hidden killer in the crit strikes line you can get away with lower precision and sub in some valkyrie gear for some berserkers pieces without hurting your damage output too much. the added survivability can help you out more than the damage lost when you are starting out.

you absolutely need condition removal, I would recommend 10 points in shadow arts for shadows embrace. if you are going for a back stab build, I would also not recommend going so deep into trickery, you would be better off investing most of those points into survivability, though 10 points in for thrill of the crime is always nice.

if you are going for a death blossom/condition build, the points in critical strikes should be swapped out for survivability, either acrobatics for evasion or shadow arts for stealth. if you go the stealth survivability route, having a pistol in one of your weapon slots main hand allows p/d shenanigans in smaller fights/ when you just dont want to ever die.

weapon tool tips don’t display a few types duration increases. but yes, the bonus should apply to all torment applications.

honestly for guild groups you may be better off taking opportunities as they come. see someone hurting your group? burst them to make them back off. see someone around half health? knock em down. see someone down? stealth or blind stomp them so your group can keep on fighting. if there is an enemy putting out a lot of healing pressure them. basically be wherever you can do the most good at the moment and don’t cement yourself into just attacking the back line. you are mobile and slippery, make use of it.

oh and as far as gear, in wvw/pve mixing valkyrie into zerker to give yourself some buffer helps a lot, in pvp 30 points in SA and the zerker amulet is usually enough for me when going d/d.

Matt H.6142:

If only thief venom was as good as some of your words, ouch.
—-
If you read nothing else, let it be this:
As a thief, do you judge other thieves if they don’t have the damage output?
What gear should I get if I want to survive that mesmer shatter and still be able to see a player’s health drop when I attack?
——
I clearly state I posted in the ele forum about the 10k backstab on my ele, and here I’m saying I had my face melted by a shatter mesmer on my thief. I’m here to say any such OHKO isn’t fun to receive. I’m not here to say I want my thief doing massive damage. To my original point though, the only people to comment on my play style have been thieves on my thief. Is this a thief culture to judge others on their damage output?
I guess I’m more a roleplayer than a pvper. And yes, I’ve only done HotJoin because I fear elitism in TPvP, and if I am as bad as I think I am, you’re welcome.
At creation, I thought I’d play a carrion venom thief, but that was really bad damage back then. It felt stupid watching my charr whittle a stag in world so slowly. And no stunbreaker on venom was really unattractive.
So I went berserker, and that was good, I could actually see chunks of the health bar disappear now. But I don’t see anything I like in Critical Strikes, so my output can never be these 5-10k hits.
So my build is 0-0-20-20-30. This gives me hidden thief and the 25% health stealth. Dodge might and cripple cleanse. 1500 steal on 20s cooldown and thrill of the crime. Zerker amulet.
The fury gets my crit chance up. I can swift and stealth with steal without a target. Haste for more damage output. Shadowstep and trap to get me out of trouble. I think this will be good for backcapping and scouting. And I’m not a terrible teammate. I can usually score top player in something in this style.
Can anyone suggest a different type of gear for me in PVP/PVE?

for main hand dagger the main thing in critical strikes is usually at the 30 point mark. hidden killer giving backstab a 100% crit chance is major, and allows you to build in more survivability, while the 20% damage against players with less than half health can help you finish off the wounded and is a great asset for sword based builds. most every thief power build goes heavily into it, and that is a large part of your low damage. the other thing I noticed is the 20 points in both acrobatics and shadow arts. for backstab based builds shadow arts is usualy better survivability than acrobatics, and if you are willing to go 30 into it for health regen in stealth you can become very survivable while still putting out good damage. if you aren’t dead set on dagger main hand sword is a really fun weapon to play with. I use s/p for wvw roaming and the control and mobility is incredibly fun.

so I am most likely coming back to the game after several months off, and I was wondering what all had changed for thieves. I’ve looked through the patch notes, but it’s hard to really get a handle on anything that’s changed over such an amount without playing around with it and I wont be back for a week or so yet. also, I saw that the the back stab threads are still around lol.

for gear while leveling greens every 10 levels from the trading post are cheap and good enough. as far as a leveling build dual daggers with death blossom, caltrops and signet of malice in condition damage gear is one of the main leveling builds. the other leveling build is sword pistol in power gear, using the pistol’s black powder and pistol whips evade to blind and evade most damage while you hit them with your sword. as for an end game build, I would wait til you get near 80 and have tried out most of the weapon sets so you have a feel for what you like.

as far as thief leveling it is still the same two main builds, condition damage dagger dagger with caltrops, death blossom spam and signet of malice, and sword pistol power with blind and evade spam. honestly no point is karma items, just buy new gear every 10 levels since it is fairly cheap.

with d/d and p/d on the same set, either carrion or apothecary work, though it should be noted that full carrion vs full apothecary comes down to damage vs survivability. carrion having better damage, and apothecary better survivability. with any build using p/d 30 points into SA are advised. after that it it really up to you. 20-30 points into trickery can pay off with the extra initiative and condition damage. acro can further ramp up your survivability, DA can give you a bit more non condition damage and give you some more condition duration, though you can break 75% or higher without it and that is usually long enough in PvP and WvW since cleansing is almost as easy as applying depending on what you are fighting. the old 0/0/30/20/20 standby still works to be honest. as far as advice, a geomancy sigil on the off hand dagger can be useful for even more AoE bleeds on weapon swap, and an agony and corruption sigils are more good options. for armor runes, using 2 of each of the rune sets that give 15% bleed duration is great, or 3 from 2 of the sets for a bit more condition damage if you plan on always using rare veggie pizza( sorry I cant remember for certain the names at the moment as it has been a while since I went condition, I believe krait, affliction and centaur are the three right rune sets).

well, for the PvE side of it a condition based build using death blossom and caltrops to kite and bleed is one of the better ways to level.

as far as your trouble, a lot of it comes from going from guardian to thief. you have gone from a class than can face tank things to a class that is 100% evasion based for defense. one good way to get started is to take 15 points in acrobatics. it will let you dodge more often and give you a bit of an hp boost. another thing is in PvP and WvW learn to disengage. I get the feeling you are over committing to fights, and thieves generally can escape it things aren’t going their way. another way to get used to playing a thief that uses dagger main hand is to use a build putting 30 points into shadow arts. it makes you much much harder to kill, though you often give up extra dodge,initiative, or even some damage because you end up dropping 30 points into a survivability tree. you will still be able to hit hard though, and the added sustain is great for small group fights. also, mixing in some valkyrie or soldiers gear is never a bad thing, and don’t use full berserker gear until you feel you have learned enough about the thief to be able to avoid most serious damage. most thieves that run it are screwing themselves over, though a truly skilled zerker thief is fun to see in action, (even on the receiving end as far as I am concerned). as a foot note, I really need to get off my but and write an into to and basic thieves guide since no one else seems too willing to.

s/p is a build that relies on evasion, so if you are new it isn’t the best build to start off with in pvp/wvw, however in PvE the trick is to black powder then auto attack then pistol whip if you can finish the enemy with it rather than poping another black powder.. in PvE you can use death blossom (dagger/dagger #3) and the caltrops utility to bleed and kite your enemies to death while wearing condition damage gear. d/d burst would probably be the pvp weapon set to start learning with, as it tends to be the simplest, and a build with 30 in shadow arts will help you live quite a while while still hitting quite hard assuming 30 points are also in critical strikes for hidden killer and the right gear. it can definitely be confusing at first, but don’t give up, the thief community is quite helpful, so we can likely set you on the right path for a build you enjoy.

executioner also helps get the15k mark. the only time I ever hit that high is when the enemy is below 50%.

well, there are a lot of builds, or to be more accurate, a lot of variations on the same few builds. the big question is how do you want to play the thief, d/d with short bow and caltrops, built for condition damage is great at area denial and is quite survivable, there are the versatile d/p builds and the burstier, but less versatile d/d, s/d has mobility and rips boons off things. what I am trying to say is how do you want to play the thief, burst with survivability, full GC, conditions, control? let us know and we can help you much more efficiently.

you can’t contest while stealthed any more, so for things with small or open capture circles, not so much.

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Thanks for these replies. I don’t have a problem with dying a lot. When I started the Mesmer, I died a lot lol.

I find it odd that the Thief profession would die more than other professions since they wear medium armor and have such high damage output and quick healing abilities ( So I’ve been told ).

we die a lot while leveling in PvE outside of a couple of high survivability builds, and while learning the class in the end game, as all of our defense for the most part is active via dodging, evading, blinding and stealthing. stealthing isn’t that great of a defense in PvE since being invisible wont stop an instant death AoE or a nasty cleave that a warrior, necro, or guardian could just eat. not saying we aren’t survivable, just thakitten takes more practice than the classes that can actually deal with incoming damage in ways other than outright avoiding it. that is what leads to a lot of deaths for new thieves, and in the case of dungeons, bad ones.

The thief is definitely a fun class, and, at least to me, can feel faster paced than some other classes. that said, leveling in PvE can be a horrible experience for a thief as they have less margin for error than the other classes, so they tend to die a lot.

Mainly because of that, two main leveling builds have cropped up that make leveling a breeze, and both have a variant end game setup that can be used for at least something. d/d condition damage uses death blossom, caltrops, and short bow’s cluster bomb to AoE bleed things to death while kiting, and is extremely effective, but slow at lower levels. the other leveling build is s/p using black powder to blind and auto attacks/pistol whips to take out enemies, once again with short bow’s cluster bomb, for more than 3 enemies. both use signet of malice to heal by hit volume and avoid damage through blind/evasion.

end game you have several ways to build around several weapon sets, most of them having good mobility and some fun tricks. d/p is an easy to learn, versatile weapon set, d/d is more bursty and has cheaper(and harder to acess) stealth but also has less utility. s/p is more of a PvE set, but in WvW I have found success with it in small roaming groups as the mobility of the sword main and the control/utility of the pistol off hand really mesh well for smaller fights. s/d recently got an ability re-work and can steal stacks of boons, has a daze from stealth, and the mobility that main hand sword brings to the table. p/d is a condition build that likely wont kill someone unless they just really want to sit there and fight it out, but it lives forever and is a nice build to screw with people and distract zergs/hold a position until reinforcements arrive. p/p has decent ranged burst but the weapon set is plagued with issues due to the pistol main hand. lastly short bow is a high mobility weapon that has a spamable blast finisher for combo field play.

I hope all that gives you a decent over view of the classes weapons and leveling, and if you decide on thief welcome to the community.

d/d condition damage with death blossom and s/p power using black powder to blind and PW to evade are the two most efficient leveling builds. of the two d/d is probably the faster just because it handles content that you are under leveled for better since conditions don’t glance. with it you just drop caltrops and them spam death blossom and kite the enemies till they die. with s/p you black powder to pulse blind on enemies then you let your auto attack and, depending on the situation, PW to kill them.

you can’t move above 133% of out of combat run speed no matter what, so the full benefit of the trait only happens in combat, since run speed is lowered in combat.

or they could make it ignore a certain percentage of the enemies defense, or ignore protection, or something else interesting. I like what they did with the warrior’s signet of might, would like to see our strength signet get some interesting situational effect.

it does well, it can’t stealth as easily as D/P but it is much cheaper to do so, and the set has higher burst. it gives up access to head shot, an instant gap closer, and black powder to do so though, so you give up utility for the cheaper stealth and somewhat higher burst.

SwickHobo.5096:

venoms are pretty bad. The only thing decent about the share build is giving ur teammates an extra what 350 dmg per hit? Poison, vuln, weakness, chill, and immob are are easily achieved by stronger more efficient builds. And sharing bask venom is prolly the best aspect but i rather just have more dmg or utility in refuge, or dagger storm or smoke screen or w/e.

actually, the life steal will hit for more than that, heal your team, and stack might. except for basilisk venom, the actual venom effect doesn’t mean much in PvE. the main thing is the damage, healing, and might it puts out. if you want to look at it from a PvP or WvW perspective a single VS thief can make a small group a giant ball of CC on top of that. devourer venom or basilisk venom shared across a group before a fight starts puts the group that has it at a great advantage over the group that lacks it. I can vouch for it being very valuable support for small to medium groups in WvW.

the short share range makes it difficult for groups split between melee and range to all get it, and the unwillingness of pugs to listen or cluster up makes it generally perform far below optimal. if you run with the same group our your guild a lot then it works amazingly, but it simply requires more coordination then running in in mostly or even full zerker only having to really depend on yourself.

probably not the best move. most any thief build can already keep up with most targets long enough to finish them, and we have easy access to poison with traits or a main hand dagger. the only real benefit is the CD increase from the chill, and that isn’t much from an elite slot when we can chill with a utility(however unused) or just out maneuver our opponent. less mobile classes like guardians tend to get better use of it.

cool, then all you need to decide is whether to go glassier or more survivable. it really all depends on what you think you can survive with, and what you prefer. for d/d I prefer to go tanky with a majority of valk gear with enough berserkers to get 30% crit. then I take hidden killer to guarantee back stab crits and then proc fury through furious retaliation at the enemies 50% health mark. others prefer higher crit chance and take executioner, though you need quite a high crit chance for that to be the best choice. short bow will honestly be more likely to work well than p/p in WvW. it has more mobility, a good source of AoE and the all important spamable blast finisher. most people who use p/p do so because they like it more than for its effectiveness.

as a side note about PvE, build more survivable, and use the short bow at first then add more strait damage based gear and start getting in closer more often as you learn the dungeons and get better at dodging and predicting attacks. it will help prevent you from being one of those famous floor tanking thieves.

d/d is perfectly viable, and there are several power based builds. as for better weapon combinations, honestly use what you love. if you pick a play style you don’t like just because it is somewhat more effective you will just find yourself hating the thief. as far as armor, berserkers and valkyrie pieces can be used for multiple builds, so they are good investments.

as far as weapon combinations and skill/traits, do you want to keep using d/d? if so 30 points in both crit strikes and shadow arts, with valkyrie gear and enough berserkers to get 30-40% crit chance can make you a very survivable damage dealer, there are the more glassy options, or you can switch the off hand dagger for a pistol for easier, non targeted,though more expensive stealth, and more utility.

sword builds take longer to kill, but bring more mobility, more control, and tend to be very survivable even when almost full GC. the real question is, what way do you want to play? let us know your prefered weapons and play style and the other people on the forums and myself can find a build that suits you to start off with and make your own.

yes it is, but not enough to bother stacking it, like most thief healing. a full 30 points in shadow arts (300 healing power) raises the heal from 100 to 110 if I remember correctly.

well, the points in critical strikes are not doing you a lick of good. the bleed on crit weapon sigil has an internal CD so you wont proc it enough to make it worth it against groups, and we have no bleed on crit trait for it to work together with against single targets. thieves don’t really need crit in a condition build, since we stack it so easily and have no trait synergy with it like warriors and necros, who can bleed with every crit and have the health pool to have high compatibility with rabid gear. we do better with carrion, we get the damage bonus from the gears power, and the primary stat is condition damage. on top of that it fills in our weak vitality. it does leave a toughness hole, and that plus our weakness to conditions means shadow arts is a great tree to invest in. with just 10 points you can cleanse conditions with every stealth. acrobatics is really just more survivability, and a little bit of mobility. the main thing is 15 points in gives you the extra dodge rolls, which you can use while regening initiative after a few uses of DB. the 1200 range steal is better for burst builds, since you can DB then steal to get an extra DB per full initiative bar. bountiful theft or thrill of the crime would likely do more good. as for your points into DA, every 10 points gives an extra DB tick, but between runes and an agony sigil you will have enough. even more so if you use pizza. it just doesn’t do much for a non power or venom build.
another trick the acrobatics tree can give is might on dodge with might on dodge food, meaning you can stack your bleeds then dodge roll spam. with signet of agility you can get some nice might stacks to make your bleeds hit harder.

for leveling there are two builds usually considered the most effective.

the first is dagger/dagger focusing on condition damage. you use death blossom and the caltrops utility to bleed and kite enemies until they drop dead from the bleed damage. it can take on enemies with level advantages because bleeds don’t glance, and rips groups of mobs apart with ease, though it does kill slowly until you get access to decent condition damage gear, caltrops, and some trait points. for utilities, caltrops, signet of shadows, and roll for initiative are very useful, and signet of malice for your heal makes the high hit volume of death blossom and caltrops put out great healing. using a shortbow to drop a poison field before you get started can make it even better. traits wise, acrobatics will increase your survivability quite well, so 15 points into it as soon as you can helps immensely, trickery increases condition damage, and gives access to some nice traits like a smaller, weaker version of caltrops on dodge. deadly arts can also help, as every 10 points into it give your death blossom bleeds an extra tick, but you dont get much from it outside of that, so if you can’t get 10 points into it, getting to 15 acro or putting points into trickery takes priority. D/D is obviously your main weapon set, but pistol/dagger can be used for soloing things like skill challenges, and short bow brings a poison field and cluster bomb, allowing even more AoE damage.

the other build is sword/pistol. it uses black powder to blind enemies, and the swords ability to hit multiple opponents to kill without taking much damage. PW is a nice evade/interupt you can use to finish off an opponent instead of dropping another BP or if you need the hit volume for things like signet of malice. once again caltrops comes in useful, more for the hit volume than the bleeds this time, as signet of malice is a good heal for this build too. power is your priority on gear. good utilities are caltrops, signet of shadows, and signet of agility for extra dodging when you can’t blind or evade everything with just the weapon set. for traits, max out critical strikes, 15 points into acrobatics once again increases survivability quite a bit. after that it is largely up to you. points in deadly arts can increase damage, points in trickery can increase your initiative pool, give you access to fury on steal, and even vigor on steal. sword/pistol is of course the main weapon, but shortbow makes a great second weapon. you can spam cluster bomb at point blank range to kill groups of weaker melee range enemies quickly, just make sure you have some way to defend yourself while you do it,though with signet of malice you will out heal most enemies damage short of the big hits.

for universally useful utilities, shadow refuge is great for avoiding enemies around resource nodes, the channeled skill challenges, and getting out of a tight spot. signet of shadows increases movement speed, which is great, but it can be hard to learn to live without it if you get used to it. signet of agility refills endurance and clears a condition, so you can use it if you need more dodges, or in combination with haste.

with all that said, these are just the most common leveling builds, and the open world PvE in this game is easy enough most anything can work if you want it to. if you find something you find more enjoyable then by all means do it instead, or the leveling grind can just kill your motivation to play the class.

Thobek.1730:

I’ve come here immediately after experiencing this thief in WvW popping in and out of stealth during combat so quickly he couldn’t of been visable for more than a second. Is this working as intended?

People were commenting on it as he zipped around a ground of abotu 20 of us. we finally managed to snare him thanks to an automated turret and AoE the space where we imagined him to be (he had restealthed again) It took forever to take him out after he destroyed one of our siege weapons.

I thought once you attacked you had a 3 second reveal debuff placed on you. I am wrong?

if you use cloak and dagger right before stealth wears off, you will re-stealth right as you come out. it can be done as long as you can find a target to hit and it sounds like he was doing that.they were going to make leaving stealth give revealed, which would have fixed the issue, but nope, 4 second revealed instead, not fixing the issue that they admitted existed and having to revert it to 3 seconds in PvE the next month. huh, that turned into a bit of a rant, sorry

I normally switch to a troll by shadow step build when I can’t seem to get anything done in WvW. it is always fun to watch entire enemy groups try to keep up with rapid shadow steps and the occasional move into melee range can keep them at it for quite a while. I don’t kill anything but it is fun. I also tend to jump into sPvP on off days, or when I cant get a decent group together. it is good practice and helps get me re-focused.

most super high back stabs usually involve high might stacks, full blood lust, and at least a few vulnerability stacks. also things like having executioner and hitting a target with low hp or being full GC built (25/30/0/0/15) and even upleveleds are often involved. BS isn’t the instant 14k death button most people seem to think it is.

Edited for clarity

If they are built defensively, you will just have a hard time of it and that is it. any main hand dagger build makes it obvious when big burst is about to go down, so they can block it reliably with the right weapons or utilities. any dazes or stuns you can get through with will open them up though, even more so if their boons are running out of duration when they get through. try faking them out by doing things like stealth stacking or a single HS to try and make them blow CDs to stop burst they think is coming but is actually delayed or just a feint.

we don’t have much as far as a general guide to the thief class. there are guides to different builds and the like, but I don’t think I have ever seen a proper guide to the class in general.

they guys above me forgot to mention the sword main hand, so I will cover it and try to give some basic trait advice to try and help you make your build, or maybe better understand the one you chose from the existing ones.

as far as the sword, it focuses on control, mobility and cleansing conditions over the raw burst of dagger. the auto attack’s last hit has great damage, but the key comes in your ability to dictate the range of the battle. with infiltrator’s strike you can shadow step to an opponent and immobilize them for a short time so you can wail on them. that said it may not be the best idea to stay there long depending on what you are fighting, but the skill lets you shadow return to where you teleported from(at insane distances, cleansing a condition). you can use that shadow return to evade large bursts of damage with ease, even when CCed. the dagger off hand uses stealth to repeatedly daze it’s opponent, controling them throughout the battle. it’s dual skill can be hard to get both hits because of it’s tracking, but it is an evade that rips boons and hits hard. they are apparently reworking it in the next patch to make it a two-part skill with better tracking that steals boons instead of ripping them. the pistol off hand allows nearly insane control and utility. the off hand gives you a ranged daze and black powder, a very, very versatile ability for defense, stomping, and stealthing. it’s dual skill , pistol whip, is a stun, followed by a series of sword swipes that put you in evade. rather than a damage source it is a nice hybrid of control, survivability and damage. you can stop a reviver and punish them and the downed guy for the mistake of trying to get back up. the evade can allow you to survive better in PvE, or while focusing a target in larger fights where you simply can dodge everything. that said it is near impossible to hit with the entire chain on a target that isn’t occupied by something else. steal and shadow step can be used in the middle of it to allow it to finish hitting though.

as for traits, deadly arts is a hybrid of direct damage and venom enhancement. for burst it usually only sees more than 10-15 points put in by complete glass cannons. in venom share builds, its traits for extra venom charges, venom cooldowns, and might on venom use are invaluable.

critical strikes if fairly self explanatory. most builds that go into it go into it fairly heavy. it’s grand master traits are extremely powerful, and can determine whether a build tries to burst an opponent down in one go, or stick in for the long haul to gain more survivability in their build with more defensive gear choices.

shadow arts is our healing and defense tree. it can allow stealth to last longer, give initiative, cleanse conditions, and even heal you. since it gives healing power and toughness on top of that it is amazingly useful for builds that stealth a lot as a way to increase survivability immensely.

acrobatics is mostly focused around dodge rolls and mobility. it enhances our low base health by giving vitality, and the boon duration can be useful as well. it can allow dodge rolls to refund some endurance for just 15 points, so if you don’t plan to stealth much, or can afford a heavy investment in shadow arts the trait line is a great source of survivability.

last is trickery. it enhances condition damage, modifies steal, and grants all kinds of useful bonuses like extra initiative for 15 points in the tree. it is a great spot to put spare points when making a build.

hope the information is useful, and have fun with the thief.

Edit: some typos and other similar errors fixed

it is mug being turned into a life steal, they miss typed, and have already corrected it. in the SoTG they said mug will lose it’s ability to crit but become a life steal that heals for around 2k and scales with healing power. better than an outright nerf, but still kinda sucks for full out burst builds.

EvilKupo.2197:

thanks for the reply, I’ve been looking around and finding that this game is all about how you want to play (as opposed to other MMO’s where you almost “must” stick with a single build) and that’s a good thing! I just picked up Caltrops, too. I didn’t realized death blossom worked that way, so that’s good to know.

I thinK i’ll be looking for some more conditional damage gear/upgrades and see how things go with d/d for now, although i’m still confused about traits =D

as far as your trait confusion, it is something you have to use to really get the hang of. at low levels the stats the trait lines give is more valuable than the traits you can get a lot of the time. as you reach higher levels and get access to more traits, the traits become what you want to focus on, and the stats become secondary. for instance, if you are leveling D/D condition damage, at low levels trickery is invaluable as condition damage is hard to come across, and putting 10 points in deadly arts can give your death blossom bleeds another tick. at higher levels when stats become easier to obtain, and you have access to traits that synergize well for things like initiative regen, dodge roll enhancement, steal enhancement and might stacking as well as grand master traits, the traits take center stage.

I was, and will again eventually. some gear suffered an unfortunate salvaging accident.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlcmCN3ay9E/5EB3DmC1n6VgsaPupNjJA-TQAA1GgsAZCB

with full PVT gear is usually what I run, since my group wants me to bring as much control as humanly possible when I run venom share, and venom share+S/P has so much control it’s almost overkill. also, headshot while standing in shadow refuge is awesome for healing as it is a projectile finisher so it life steals, while in a field that is healing you, while you chain daze some poor sap.

Edited for oversensitive censoring

mad king is great if you use the right utilites/weapons. Lyssa just needs less specific circumstances to be effective. if you have methods of condition removal other than lyssa and use SoM the mad king runes allow your BV to heal you and do damage on top of the standard venom effects. I have a sword for cleansing and I run high survivability gear on my venom share build, so I usually run SoM for my heal. that means mad king does a great job. it just depends on how you play your venom share. one thing to be aware of though, is that the ravens come in at the end of your elite’s cast, so your BV charges will be spent on random targets that the ravens choose.

Issues.5789:

randomfightfan.4091:

not sure if a bug or a nerf but it`s probably not going anywhere any time soon.

It’s a bug atm, causing it to be a nerf.. So it’s both. What I don’t get about Arena net is why they don’t test these skills out and fix the existing problems before focusing on other issues..

well, they said they were going to focus on bug fixes next month, so you could try to be optimistic. that said their bug fix notes usually mostly contain things like " random, usually unused, skill – this skill’s tooltip had the wrong shade of white text, the error was corrected"

runes of the mad king are fun, but to make the 6 rune bonus actually effective you either need a good amount of power, or signet of malice. signet of malice with those things is great since the ravens hit multiple times each on up to 5 people. afflicted on the other hand are just kinda meh compared to Lyssa runes for venom share. lyssa removes conditions on a BS with a 40 something second internal CD, and that build hurts for condition removal if you aren’t running around with a sword, not to mention the boons.