Guild Wars 2

Writetyper.1985:

…because even PU mesmers are better than dealing with Decap.

Quote of the season.

If ladders/leagues are brought into PvP with conquest mode still being the only gam choice, and with builds like decap engi still being highly effective with little to no risk, this is going to be too painful for anyone who still enjoys the combat in this game to bother sticking around.

Hymnosi.5928:

I’m hoping they give us something like poppy has in league of legends, or even Jarvan.

“You’re Mine” 210s CD (after shout cooldown trait) – Player targets enemy, gaining damage and condition immunity to all other enemies. Gains swiftness and stability for the duration, and deals 20% more damage to the target. Duration 10s.

The Crucible 150s CD – Creates a 600 range ring which cannot be passed by players, friend or enemy. Duration 15s, can be cancelled after 3s. Cannot be passed with stability, but can be teleported out of. Allies gain 5 stacks of might and fury for the duration.

Right… looks like you haven’t played PvP before in this game.

A ranged version of ring of warding which you can’t pass through with stability? Uncounterable point cap against classes that don’t have access to a teleport. Stupid. If you got your bunker to the point before the other team does, drop this and the point is yours.

An elite that combines the effect of berserker stance, balanced stance, and a 20% damage boost that can be used in combination with other stances? So your typical hambow warrior 0/0/30/10/30 with balanced stance, dolyak signet and berserker stance and the stance duration trait could have 30 seconds of stability with 20 seconds of condition immunity? Plus the combination of merciless hammer trait giving them 45% damage boost on hammer combos when enemies are stunned, or 53% damage boost on earthshaker with burst mastery trait.

Sounds balanced bro!

“Every class will have less evades except for thiefs. It’s stupid that I blow every cooldown on a thief while they are mindlessly spamming evades and when I finally run out of cooldowns they can chase me whenever they want.”

Haha. So, correct me if I’m wrong, you were punished for spamming your skills without paying any attention to what your opponent was doing? Much like you would be punished if you spammed your skills on an ele using obsidian flesh, or a guardian using shelter, or a warrior using shield stance?

If Invulns/immunities/evades cause people to pay attention the timing of their skills rather than “blowing every cooldown” as if this is skilled gameplay then I hope they remain as they are.

Yes thieves can build for high evasion uptime but 100% evasion uptime doesn’t exist in this game. Infiltrator’s strike is limited by requiring a target to teleport, compared to infiltrators arrow which doesn’t need a target, hence the initiative cost difference. Flanking strike is not only low damage, it’s massively telegraphed, there’s a tooltip that appears for the duration that LS is available to use, and it is affected by aftercast, like every sword ability.

S/P trickery build does have a potentially very high burst that is instant, can be done at 900 range and can interrupt, but the build has not only zero defensive stats, it also wastes 300 stat points in a condition damage trait line when the melee set has no condition damage attacks.

And since when was stealth still being complained about in PvP forums? Especially on thieves?

OP you should decide what you’re complaining about, your title seems to suggest that you have a prepared valid argument for why an entire class should be removed from the game, however all I am finding in your short anecdote is a combination of a) you being frustrated by the fact that you were beaten by someone who has built their character for 1v1s, and b) you not having enough knowledge of your class/game mechanics to counter someone that uses stealth.

“There is nothing i can do, i just swing wildly”

… yeah.

If a burst guardian had turned up instead of a thief and hit you with 4k leap of faith, 4k smite condition and 9k shield of wrath blast in the first second of engagement , would you be making a petition to get rid of guardians?

The 10/30/0/0/30 with either d/p or s/p is probably the strongest burst thief build around at the moment.

Couple of things to mention are: Since the daze/stun duration no longer rounds to the nearest second, sigil of paralysation doesn’t affect any of the dazes/stuns on this set. If you take the sigil of accuracy for +5% critical chance, you could swap out your combo critical chance master trait for the newly buffed practised tolerance trait, which gives about 1.5k extra health on builds with zerker amulet. Or you could take furious retaliation for more fury uptime.

Caution: Using a zerker amulet and doing a pistol whip on 2 or more opponents with the retaliation buff WILL wreck you. The flurry on Pistol whip hits 8 times, so if retal is proccing for about 200-250 damage then hitting two people with pistol whip will make you eat 3200-4000 damage. This can be deadly. If you’re cleaving multiple opponents, dropping black powder and auto attacking is sometimes better than spamming pistol whip, as it will give you roughly the same damage output but will lessen the retal ticks that you’ll take.

Also the bountiful theft trait will prioritize aegis and stability in the boons that it rips, so combined with sleight of hand you can interrupt stability stomps just by using steal.

I’d be careful about including an immobilise in pistol whip, this is essentially like adding a perma devourer venom into the skill. Personally if I was given the choice I’d prefer to use the front hitting pistol whip if it meant that the person I’m hitting is guaranteed to be rooted and take all of the damage. Add in the 15% damage buff and you might be in danger of encouraging spam usage.

Some other people have mentioned already, stability is a good counter to an S/P thief but there’s not an equivalent counter to immob spam (aside from warrior zerker stance). I’d suggest instead of immob when hitting from the front, have a 0.5 second daze instead of a 0.5 second stun. This means that a skilled opponent will know to try and force the daze instead of the stun so that they can still move/dodge out of range of the sword flurry while the thief is rooted, as daze doesn’t impair movement or dodge rolling. This would give some counter play to it for classes that don’t have easy access to stability.

Are there any videos of any s/x thieves with a 10/0/X/X/X build, as in any build that specifically avoids the CS trait line, killing a bunker on a point? Only saying this because I’ve only seen Jumper’s videos and most of his 1v1 on-point fights took 30-45seconds to win the fight and down the opponent, and that was with 30 CS as well as full zerker amulet. If a fight on a point takes much longer than that then, unless you’re just trying to keep the point contested, you may as well leave and help in your main team fight.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Thief from [MU].. LOL.. I feel bad for you man. Ganking you over and over and over outside SM was fun. Those venom shares hurt don’t they. ;D

The Game Slayer.7632:

Well hot diggidy dang, I lured you in pretty well, huh?
It might be due to some ego issues tho.
“Cannons can’t hurt me. I am a good player.”
Plus, I’ve got good reason to stay back when you consistently outnumber us 2-1.

>Talks about using venom share
>Says he was 2v1d
>ISHYGDDT

Jesse.4631:

Harbinger.8637:

Scepter Guard…..idonteven

your the cheesiest gaurd in game! so shut up heaven

Did you decide that scepter was cheese on guards after homie repeatedly beat you with scepter focus and no armor on lol

FC become death, destroyer of worlds

Yo GoMie and FoCaccia guys come to the new arena, plenty of guys to duel!

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Theftwind.8976:

Jesse.4631:

Theftwind.8976:

What skill gives you all boons? Bountiful theft gives only 2 and only if your target has 2 boons on them , 3 for Thrill of the Crime and those are fury, might and swiftness. So I am trying to figure this out.

Its the Steal Skill we get off of mesmers

There are two skills a memser has that involves boons. Arcane thievery will trade 3 conditions for 3 boons and Signet of Inspiration will grant a random boon every 10 seconds unless activated where it grants all boons to allies. So to get all boons the mesmer would first have to have the Signet slotted and secondly he would have to activate that signet. Now what intelligent mesmer would do that against a thief?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Plasma

Besides necros, mesmers are my favorite opponents to steal from.

Yes but… have you ever done te SUPER SECRET ALTERNATIVE UNDERWATER GUARDIAN STEAAAALLLL????

You get this ranged attack called immobilising chains or something, it’s like a warrior’s throw bolas skill but shorter immob duration. You can even use it above water :-O

These are the good cheap ones (under 2 silver each) that I know of:

Candied dragon rolls – 66% chance to life steal on crit, +70 precision (1silver 27copper)
Mango pies – 88 health regen per second, +70 vitality (40copper)
Plate of steak and asparagus – +80 power +60 precision (60 copper)
Dragon’s breath buns – 10% crit damage boost, plus 200 power for 30 secs when you kill something. (1silver 28copper)
Loaves of saffron bread – 20% condi duration reduction, and take 20% less damage when stunned. (58 copper)
Koi Cakes – +70 condition damage +40% condition duration (1silver 35copper)

Quality maintenance oil – 5% of toughness and 3% of vitality is added to precision (1silver 72copper)
Hardened sharpening stone – 5% of toughness and 3% of vitality is added to power (1silver 38copper)

Don’t worry guys, we’ll just have to react to the stun, use a stun break, THEN use a .25 sec cast time shadow return, in less time than it takes for the warrior to use the next attack in their chain of cc.

Oh and we’ll have 0.33 more initiative regen per second. So everything will be fine.

Would be easier to watch a vid of you fighting, but some general things that I can think of…

- Never be in melee range when his longbow fire field is down, switch to range and kite. Unless he’s at 10% health and you think you can finish the fight, it’s not worth taking the damage. If possible fight in open spaces that deny him the chance to area control.

- Stolen skill from warrior is so strong against longbow as it reflects and does direct damage, so you can use it at melee range for burst or while kiting to nullify his range pressure and force him to either stop attacking or switch to melee set.

- Taking 10 in DA would give you access to poison on steal which is really strong against healing signet, this may be worth swapping in and taking out your 10 in Acro. If you’re using steal when it’s off cooldown you can get 33% uptime on poison without even needing to use shortbow, plus extra burst damage/2k heal from mug.

- Using inf of shadow instead of cloaked in shadow would let you chain cloak and dagger more. Don’t be afraid to do this, even if you can’t CnD on the warr, try and keep some kind of mobs/critters nearby for a back up source of stealth. You have condi removal, might stacking and healing in stealth, the longer you spend in stealth the better your burst will be, and the higher your health uptime will be. Sometimes chaining 2-3 CnDs and being patient is better than going for the backstab straight away.

- Learn to animation cancel your Cloak and Dagger attack by putting away your weapon (you can keybind it). This is super key for d/d builds as you get kittened if you miss 2 CnDs in a row and are left with no initiative. CnD has a 1ish second animation so if you see your blinded or the warr is dodging or blocking with sword, save the initiative. Longbow has a very fast ranged blind that is hard to see coming, and you don’t want to waste a CnD when you’re blinded.

- Don’t think of shadow step as just a movement utility, if you get hit by pin down or flurry and you’re at 50% health, just use it for the condi removal. Removing condis quickly stops the warr gaining the health advantage over you.

- Don’t spam heartseeker.

0/20/30/20/0 is the best build for d/p permanent stealth stacking which is what you want to be able to do if you’re just looking to tail a large enemy group. Most of the traits can be switched around for personal preference, but quick recovery and infusion of shadow are the essential ones for your initiative regen, as without that you won’t be able to keep up the black powder – heartseeker combos that give you the permanent stealth access.

If you’re not bothered about movement speed out of stealth you could use blinding powder instead of signet of shadows, as it’s a blast finisher now so using it inside a black powder gives you about 6 seconds of stealth with the meld in shadows trait, and is good for emergency stealth if you get caught low on initiative.

This is essentially the most complained about thief build, it’s annoying as hell to pin down and can fully disengage at any point in a fight, regardless of how many people you’re facing. You won’t have much burst potential with this build as you don’t have the hidden killer trait so you’re backstabs can end up doing lame damage if they don’t crit, but you get a good amount of sustain in 1v1 melee fights with black powder, and the best condi clear a thief has access to, as well as around 350-400 health regen per sec in stealth.

Edit: For the gear choices, taking Pow/Tough/Vit pieces for chest, legs and helm and Pow/Prec/Crit pieces for shoulders, gloves and feet will give you the best mix of damage and survivability. Accessories should usually be all Pow/Prec/Crit as they give the best power increase and crit damage stats, and you’re already getting a lot of toughness and vitality from your trait lines and gear.

lunyboy.8672:

Otherwise, they would just go into the actual pvp game mode and disregard the capture points there.

Lol lets go to Tpvp and have a 5 minute 500-0 game where we try to chase the other team around the map to get them to fight us, and one of their team caps all 3 points and sits on them. Sounds like some competitive, fun #esports gameplay right there.

You think [BS] are the noob ones, I heard this asuran Ele in some Nicholas cage guild runs lightning hammer when roaming. That’s like, crazy man.

Pistol whip stun duration is shorter than the time it takes to start the flurry.

Teleport skills are really prone to failure when used on staircases at the moment. Examples are the ones inside keeps/towers that lead up to walls and the ones around the bloodlust buff points. I’m guessing its because the game treats them as uneven ground so doesn’t think that you can walk a path from point A to point B when there’s a staircase separating both points.

There’s also a lot of rubber banding happening with targeted tele skills like infiltrators strike/signet where you will port to them and immediately port back.

On crit effects like flame blast and lightning strike are causing instant revealed if they proc on a cloak and dagger.

Disabling shot still sometimes roots you in place when it’s used, instead of jumping backwards/away from target.

Heartseeker will sometimes leap in a random direction when untargeted, usually when you’re on uneven ground like a hill.

Shu.6981:

Jakare.6807:

Something I found useful when you’re engaging a guardian with aegis up, you can put basi venom on and throw dancing dagger, then teleport in with infiltrators signet and auto attack to break aegis before the projectile hits. The basi venom will be on the dancing dagger so it saves you having to break aegis, do the venom animation and then attack.

Oh that is interesting o.o I could give it a try although i think its easier to just throw a dancing dagger then turn on basilisk xD

Yes but… think of the swag factor

Pistol whip is pretty much unusable as an offensive skill in PvP at the moment. Using basilisk venom in combination with it will let you hit maybe half of the flurry, devourer venom should allow you to get the whole flurry if the immob isn’t cleansed in time, but using a 45 second cooldown to set up one attack is mediocre.

The only time it’s successful is if you need an interrupt and a cleave, like to prevent a rez and damage a downed body at the same time, or if you use it in anticipation of a melee burst, which is tricky as you’re vulnerable for the 1 second it takes to complete the stun and start the flurry. However if you time it well you’re opponent will waste their burst and eat 5-6k. You can achieve the same thing with better and more reliable results as s/d though.

Warrior mobility is hilarious right now. I use mace/shield and GS in WvW, I don’t even use warhorn or signet of rage for access to swiftness, just warriors sprint for 25% movement speed and mobile strikes for the immob break.

I can get as low as ~800 health, with multiple people on me, and still get away so quickly that by the end of my rotation I’m usually already out of combat and have my health regenerating back.

First use signet of stamina (around 0.5 sec cast time) for full cond wipe, shield stance for 3 seconds of damage negation and a 1.5k passive heal with healing signet and adrenal health, switch to GS and immediately whirlwind to stay in evade frames, then bulls rush and GS rush. This covers about 2500 distance, uses 3 movement skills that can all break immobilise, and if used with a stability skill can GUARANTEEE a full escape. If I feel extra fancy I can use rampager form for stability, swiftness and a 900 range leap skill on a 5 second cooldown. That is just insane mobility, considering ele’s had one 20 second 1200 range movement skill and were deemed ‘uncatchable’ before the nerfs.

Something I found useful when you’re engaging a guardian with aegis up, you can put basi venom on and throw dancing dagger, then teleport in with infiltrators signet and auto attack to break aegis before the projectile hits. The basi venom will be on the dancing dagger so it saves you having to break aegis, do the venom animation and then attack.

It’s been discussed so many times already but the main two thing that are pidgeon-holing thief builds are the significant damage boosters in critical strikes trait line that make it essential for any direct damage build (300 precision, 30% crit damage, 30% base damage boost from first strikes and executioner), and the fact that any build that’s tried to focus on condition damage instead of direct damage will only have reliable access to single target bleeds, poison and a small amount of torment, and so won’t ever be worth taking in competitive Tpvp over an AoE conditon focused class like condition-mancer or spirit ranger.

Poxheart.2845:

aspry.6975:

Poxheart.2845:

So yesterday I was on my Mesmer, scouting around to the northeast of Bay when I spotted a thief near the western edge of the ruins. He was over 1200 range from me because my auto attack didn’t hit him. Given that he had friendlies nearby, I chose not to engage and started moving back toward the NE bay gate. As I began moving, but before I could hit my look behind key, I saw the vulnerability icon appear, so I hit Decoy & prepared to Blink. Before I could activate the second skill I found myself down (still in stealth) and watched a thief running past me auto attacking. Eventually he came back & stomped.

Afterward I checked the combat log (pitiful as it is) to see what happened. This is what I found:
First attack: 17,252 Backstab
Second attack: 12,141 Heartseeker.

Given the range at the start of the encounter, I figure he must have used Infiltrator’s Arrow to close the gap, followed by a stealth ability, Steal, then dagger 1 and 2 in quick succession.

I have no sympathy for anybody who thinks that Thieves are not viable in WvW.

I’m calling bs

Attached is an excerpt of the combat log. I hadn’t taken any damage prior to the JQ Colonel’s attack.

I’ve actually got no issues with the fact that it happened, and I’m not calling for thieves to be nerfed. I’m just pointing out the ignorance of the thief players that think that the class isn’t viable in WvW.

This is the kind of lopsided build you have to run as a thief to get that kind of damage on a level 80 opponent. 11-12k health, no defensive utilities, no defensive stats. Thieves can cover distance very quickly, even with a 3 signet build full burst d/d build you can use infiltrators signet + steal and be able to do 1800 range onto a target almost instantly. But if you miss your burst you have no way of getting out, and if you miss your second cloak and dagger (which will take your last remaining 6 initiative) then you’re completely out of options. No weapon skills, no utility skills, no heal skill, no elite skill.

Going balls to the wall full damage glass cannon is an example of high risk vs high reward, but saying that this is an example of a viable playstyle is really stretching it.

I’ve gone through two pages of comments and it’s astounding seeing the amount of people who GENUINELY believe that giving the person on the losing end of a fight STRONGER ABILITIES, as some kind of reward or safety net for losing is a good idea?? It’s like any part of this game that requires player skill, reactions, ANY element of competitive gaming that breeds real competition and a feeling of wanting to get better and improve as a player, so you can come back and beat the guy that just killed you, is just being branded as ‘too hardcore, want casual option’.

Why is the concept of WvW being a Player vs Player environment, where there is actually risk involved in running around the map, such a difficult and painful concept! There are entire PvP servers in other MMOs where your level 2 character can be destroyed by a guy at max level fully geared out, and do people ask for “special abilities” to make up for their disadvantage? No, they either suck it up and grind up to max level like everyone else or they leave, go to a PvE server, and come back when they have a better understanding of the game, and a fighting chance against other players. WvW is the equivalent of a PvP server, if you decide to bring your undergeared, uplevelled character in then you’re just baiting wolves.

Even having the downed state is more than you get in some games. You run out of health? Too bad, you lose. Should have paid more attention to your surroundings, or if you’re being focused, or made sure you had an escape route/back up skill, or just known at what point in a fight you go from having a chance to win to being out of your depth.

Even if you do lose a fight and go into downed state, you can RALLY FROM PVE MOBS. You spam 1 maybe 5-6 times on a nearby creature that’s already taken some damage, and regardless of how much downed state health you had remaining, you get to come back with HALF HEALTH, a full condition wipe, 1-2 seconds of invuln, and all skills available.

And this isn’t enough. Let’s actually give people a FREE rally skill on a 3 minute cooldown! With free 33% damage reduction! And make it so that the opponent has potentially 90,000 health in downed state! And free condition transfer to everyone around you by doing absolutely nothing and allowing yourself to be attacked in downed state! This will DEFINITELY improve the playerbase of WvW, promoting resourceful, intuitive, skillful gameplay and make it the game mode that everyone wants it to be!! YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!11!11one!

Had some fun tough fights today with the female norn thief from Inner Monkey guild, don’t know what your name is but good play, your confusion/bleed burst is insane(ly annoying).

Also had some good fights with a couple of Impact guys who were on RoS, again didn’t get your names. Both of you were running mesmers, one of you was a champ illusionist and the other a champ paragon I think. Thanks for the fights.

Looking to join a coordinated small roaming guild on vabbi, anyone I could contact?

Banish → teleport stomps look so satisfying.

Do you have any trouble with heartseeker + infiltrators signet/steal, I find it sometimes locks me in place after the tele if I use it during the heartseeker leap and doesn’t connect to my target if they’re moving.

Mariticide.1970:

Theftwind.8976:

I run perplexity runes on my engie but out of 8 level 80 toons he is essentially my only condition toon (still working on my necro’s build). As an engie he pumps out over 2,200 watts of condition damage. It works well on those ET/AR zergs and dropping a kit on a flame ram while defending a tower works wonders. I can just hear them screaming “I’m melting….I’m melting!” Music to my ears. It helped when I picked up that Ascended Dire pistol a couple of nights back. Just need one more for the pair so if either ET or AR would oblige?

AR zerg? Wow, that’s mythical! I hope to see one someday.

Nice day for an AR zerg.

Classy as kitten henge. Minutes in and youre camping us at our spawn. I CAN’T HANDLE THE PRO SKILL LEVELS!!!11!1

I was talking about shadow trap not shadow refuge, sorry if there was some confusion, I agree there’s not much to gain out of a stealth utility in an s/p build but shadow trap with a 10k range stun break teleport can basically give you the ability to cover two points. Plus it’s on similar cooldown to shadowstep, the only thing you lose from it is condi removal, hence suggesting hide in shadows as heal skill.

Black powder stomps let thieves stomp more safely than stealth stomps, no mention of them here though? Why complain about the method in which you are stomped, if you went down and can’t be rezzed in the time it takes a thief to use a stealth ability and do the 3 second stomp animation then it’s unlikely you’d be getting up if that thief wasn’t there.

Stealth doesn’t stop AoE, cleave, stuns, it just stops you seeing them. If a thief has to stand still for 3 seconds in necro marks, engi bombs/nades or a warr’s longbow fire field just to get a stomp in stealth, it’s going to cost them most of their health.

Hey, I’ve been running almost the same build as you for a while, rare thing to see s/p thieves in tPvP or WvW!

Some differences are that I use furious retaliation instead of signets of power, as I feel the fury is real helpful on getting the finishing damage on targets that you get to low health, without the burst of dagger it can be hard to effectively finish people especially when they try to run and you’ve burned all your shadowsteps to land pistol whips.

I use sigil of air and sigil of accuracy on the sword and pistol, and a berserker jewel in the soldiers amulet, so that with the signet of agility passive and the precision from Lyssa runes I get a crit chance at 43%, which I feel is a comfortable amount considering the fury uptime and amount of survivability the set up gives. Sigil of air procs pretty often when you’re hitting pistol whips and auto chains, and gives an extra 1k ish unexpected burst to your attacks which can be great. I’ve finished people who were at 5-10% just by doing 1-2 headshots and having the air sigil proc.

Some things to consider are taking shadow trap in place of shadow step, this can allow you to bunker home point and still be at the mid fight, or lay it at far point and jump to there for a quick decap if the other team leaves home point to help at mid.

Also using hide in shadows can be more beneficial than withdraw if you’re getting knee deep into the group fights, with the amount of condi spam thrown around you can never have too much condi removal, and it means you don’t have to depend on shadowstep or Lyssa runes elite proc so much.

If you do take withdraw, consider doing 10 into acro to get vigorous recovery instead of the 10 in deadly arts, as this syncs so well with the low cooldown of withdraw and with the agility signet gives really good dodge uptime.

What I love about this build is that it rewards timing and reading your opponents moves, waiting for them to pop stability and then removing it with steal, locking them down with stuns, and having infiltrators strike/shadow return ready to get out of range to avoid the bursts. It also discourages skill spam, as using pistol whip after pistol whip will devour your initiative, robbing you of the 10% from first strikes and the potential 15% from lead attacks.

Runamok.9638:

I heard this gaggle of jokers led by the supreme godly overlord of whine and cheese was considering a move back to ET. I had my credit card ready to move back to JQ. Thankfully I think it was just some people successfully trolling me. It was undoubtedly the best troll ever perpetrated against me. Although I thought about it some more and it would have really made map chat fun for me again.

LOL user was infracted for this post

xD

thumbed up

If you’re wiling to give up mug, you could go 20 into CS and get the signet recharge trait, making agility signet 24 sec cooldown and gives you back 2 init. This syncs well with the larcenous, slice, evade s/d playstyle as you need maximum endurance uptime and initiative uptime. Having perma vigor is great but it won’t keep pace with the amount of endurance you’ll use if you’re doing an on-point fight with s/d.

Jeknar.6184:

There isn’t much we can do on this matchup, so I’ve been working on retake our stuff while IoJ comes and get it again… Hell, I haven’t seen gates melt that fast ever since I left Blackgate. There is from little to no chance of reaction.

So, in the end, I farmed 20 levels for my thief, and got a lot of Wxp aswell (My thief is likely to get at my guardian rank before reaching 80 at this rate).

I also run unto Honeybuns today… Too bad my thief have 0 chance of beating anything a condition necro. I hope it get better at 80.

Thief has one of the best self condi cleanses if you build into shadow arts. Only takes 10 trait points. Good luck chipping away at two 20k health pools as an underlevel though.

Yo purp, realise when you’re being trolled pls :/

Everyone come fight night, I need practise on my ele

Bored at work, dumping some thief advice into this thread.

One thing that people who haven’t played thief fail to grasp: getting a thief to waste initiative is like half stunning them, it puts all their weapon skills on cooldown. Interrupting a heartseeker out of black powder, dodging cloak and dagger, staying out of range of larcenous strike, things like that put pressure on the thief. All 1 skill abilities from stealth don’t use up any initiative, e.g. backstab, surprise shot, or tactical strike, so just dodging that attack doesn’t put the thief at much of a disadvantage. If you see that ‘evaded’ message come up then you know they’re right next to you, so do something about it.

Stealth doesn’t mean invulnerability. If a thief goes for a stealth stomp, or goes into shadow refuge, dump all your AoE on their position and cleave the kitten out of them; blow your load. Don’t try and rez someone being stealth stomped unless you know you can finish the rez in less than 3 seconds. Also be aware if poison is on the downed person, it slows down your rez speed by 33%.

Thieves have high mobility but all of their teleports besides steal are essentially their defensive utility skills; getting them to use those skills just to get into close combat with you means you’ve already used up some of their defensive options.

Everyone who expects to competently fight thieves should know what the buff symbols look like for basilisk venom, infiltrators signet and shadowstep. If you see basi venom up, use stability, block or get a stun break ready, etc. If you see shadowstep icon up, kite them until it drops (10 secs), they now have 30-40 secs where they’re down one stun break. Same with infiltrators signet, once the symbol disappears that stun break isn’t available anymore

You should also be able to tell what weapon set the thief is using after just a few seconds of fighting them. At least one ability in every weapon set has an obvious animation that will tell you what they’re using – flanking strike, cloak and dagger, death blossom, pistol whip, black powder, unload, etc.

Thieves have no access to stability besides their elite skill dagger storm and the stolen skill from mesmers ‘consume ectoplasm’. Their main counter to CC is evading and stun break teleports, of which they only have two. Stuns can wreck a thief when they’re teleports/stun breaks are down. Try Timing a CC attack to land right after their dodge roll animation has finished.

1v1 fights with d/p thieves, one of the strongest roaming classes, now mostly go in my favour, whether i’m on d/d thief, zerker s/f guardian with 11.5k health, or hammer/gs warrior. AoE pressure, kiting, pulling the fight away from their black powder, knowing when their skills are on cooldown is what people mean by L2P, as opposed to immediately using your dodges, then spamming 1 running in circles hoping you don’t get hit with backstab.

Scholar runes give highest dps output, or otherwise ruby orbs give only slightly less dps but are a lot cheaper.

Also s/d weapon set can be more useful than s/p in dredge fractal, as they are immune to blind and often buff themselves with protection, regen and might, all of which you can steal for yourself with larcenous strike. Taking away protection from a mob or boss essentially boosts your party’s dps by 33%.

Rob.7624:

Jakare.6807:

Rob.7624:

titanlectro.5029:

Rob.7624:

Ouch. This musta hurt.

Seriously Rob? Do you have any NEW material? The night-capping troll is getting worn out. I expect better from you!

Baby all my material is new material.
Me and my GoM buddies.

Didn’t see that coming did you.

Lol human racial heal. What a scrub. Do you even shelter bro?

Nope.
Too low a heal for my tastes and I have enough block as it is.
Dwayna has lowest CD for its healing, which also plays into my build. Making it better than signet in a duel and shelter is just lol no.

Do you even.. know how to play guardian?
Guess not.

Human racial heal has the same cooldown as shelter, I don’t know why you’d take that heal when it has 1.5 sec cast time, can be interrupted, and does around 2k more heal than a complete block on all attacks for 2 secs. Someone attacking you can do the same amount of damage to you than you healed for in the time it takes you to finish it. I guess you don’t use might of the protector trait to get 5-10 stacks of might whenever you’re using shelter while someone is attacking you.

Although I guess night crew only has to deal with NPCs attacking you once every 3 seconds so you can get away with bad builds.

Rob.7624:

titanlectro.5029:

Rob.7624:

Ouch. This musta hurt.

Seriously Rob? Do you have any NEW material? The night-capping troll is getting worn out. I expect better from you!

Baby all my material is new material.
Me and my GoM buddies.

Didn’t see that coming did you.

Lol human racial heal. What a scrub. Do you even shelter bro?

Zumi.6384:

Adlanaa.6172:

Zumi.6384:

Wow I miss these forums! And I missed this matchup! Back from a short break, and seems like it was a good week to come back.

Here’s a fight with some [OS] and randoms from yesterday morning in GoM borderlands…enjoy!
Mesmer Roaming Video

I’m pretty new to the whole video-making thing so feedback is welcome.

Nice to finally watch a video with music I really like, thanks for that. Looks like you had fun!

Thanks, the fight was a blast, glad you enjoyed it!

Make it watchable on mobile, I want a good distraction from work

YuiRS.8129:

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Stobes is laughing because Fortus hasn’t played against any good DPS guards.

There are no good DPS guards. Unless you’re talking WvW, where everybody is a champ.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WP4b-zaMCJo

So you lost a duel with a d/d thief using the most obviously telegraphed opener a thief can do, basilisk – CnD- steal- backstab, followed by an escaping heartseeker spam? Did you try headshotting him during the heartseekers? Or using shadow shot? Or any kind of shadowstep? D/d is unfortunately restricted to using heartseeker as their only gap closer/extender, but signet of shadows + 2222 isn’t some incredible escape move that’s impossible to catch up with or counter. I have centaur runes and use withdraw for the swiftness on low cooldown heal, with infiltrator signet on 24 sec cooldown, and I have still had thieves keep pace with me when I have been in full retreat mode – withdraw, swiftness heartseeker and 900 range shadowstep.

Nice job. What build? Also your health uptime was awesome, only couple of times you got low. Enjoyed the part where you’re swearing to yourself after killing the nightmare court knight with the hammer haha

I think 50% extra damage could end up being way overpowered. D/d thieves with a full zerk set up could essentially insta stomp someone with a cloak and dagger, mug, backstab combo.

I think cluster bomb is still limited by the 5 person AoE cap, but if you explode it then each cluster becomes a separate AoE attack so you can potentially hit 15 people, 5 people with each cluster.

If you’re in 10v10-20v20 fights thieves can be a massive asset staying on the periphery and focusing the ranged/caster players that stay on the edge of the fray, who are usually built glassy. D/d or d/p burst spec with shadowstep/infiltrators signet allows you to do quick spike damage anyone that stays on the outskirts and stick on them if they try to kite around. Getting involved in the fray is generally a bad idea, other classes can do better cleave damage and have higher survivability.

Shortbow on swap is almost always a good idea, the only time to it suffers is if the enemy team has high retal uptime. Poison fields on downed bodies is very strong, minimising everyones rez speed by 33%. Having 15 points in deadly arts for the weakness combo is great for mitigating the melee classes damage.

If you’re in 5v5-9v9 you have a much higher chance of being focused yourself so stay on shortbow for the AoE and quick access to evade frames, only switch to your melee set if a target gets low and you want to focus them down. Offhand pistol for the blind field becomes a lot more useful, as the fighting area will be smaller and you can assist with mitigating the melee classes damage or assist in a stomp. AoE and conditions become much harder to avoid in smaller fights as there’s less AoE cap, so using a zerk heavy build is lot more dangerous.

Shadow refuge is a must, combined with a guardian giving stability it can pretty much guarantee a rez.

Moji.3042:

PurpleHaze.4157:

Moji.3042:

Bones.5762:

Moji.3042:

Dear whoever it was from [Basic], please don’t run away after you realize you haven’t 1-shot me. It’s very boring, especially when you can do this http://imgur.com/XiyR2Sv before I can even see you. Thanks buddy.

theres only 2 reasons y he wouldve ran.

1, he was about to get zerged
or
2, he realized u weren’t worth the effort being that he did a 10k backstab.

so i guess consider it lucky he saved u 3s? i personally wouldnt but yeah. I’m also pretty sure i know who ur talking about to, with it being a thief and all, and no he doesn’t usually run from zergs, in fact i see him run into zergs for a couple kills and get out almost all the time.

I wasn’t aware IoJ had zergs in their own BL at 6am. Also considering he tried multiple times I’m going to assume you’re just blindly defending your friend. I even admitted I may have lost the encounter, if there was even an encounter to have. I swapped back to condi and he tried once more and then I never saw him again. Shocker. I just wanted to duel, /shrug.

idk why you’re complaining? he let u live and u come to the forums bash him? LoL

I never bashed anyone. I just said it was boring. I run away from the zergs to have smaller fights because that’s what I find fun. I have no idea who Basic even is, but apparently you all think pretty highly of yourselves. There were 2 warriors from your guild today in IoJ BL (with their snazzy legendaries) that actually fought people. Was fun.

I’m going to hazard a guess that this thief was me, as I’m the only thief in BS who’s at knight rank. I have a built in reflex of backing off from necros after my initial burst, because I run with very little condi removal and they can destroy me in a few seconds if they can lock me down with chill/immob.

It’s extremely rare I’ll hit a 10k backstab on a level 80 so if find you again and hit you for the same amount I’ll know you’re in full zerk and stick around to finish you off.

EDIT: Hey my legendary is equally snazzy, how come you didn’t notice it >:(

I’d consider training into acrobatics instead of deadly arts, as you need as much initiative regen as you can get with dual pistols, due to unload spam being your main source of damage.

I had a look at your build and switched some stuff around:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUm6O3ey5E95Ex2DgmTe6pAsiVTBOfJA-jAyAYLBRyCARAM5VEN2yaR0Y11YKXioa7dR0qFCY0CA-e

Taking 20 points out of deadly arts means you lose the 200 power, 5% damage on dual skills and vuln on crit, but to make up for it I took power of inertia, as you can get 3 might stack dodge rolls with feline grace, which gives you back some of the power you lost.

I swapped flanking strikes for thrill of the crime, and combo critical chance for furious retaliation, as you otherwise didn’t have any access to fury and having a low crit chance can really hurt your damage with pistols, as unload damage is spread across multiple hits, so you want as many of them to crit as possible.

If you want more init regen you could take signet recharge in the critical strikes trait line and take infiltrators signet in place of roll for init, as you’d be able to get back 4 init every 24 secs by activating signet of shadows and infiltrators signet, which means 8 init every 48 secs, as well as still having a stun break.