Guild Wars 2

This is an all around build for PVE and WvW. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQRAoY4alsMpzpdPx0J8PNBNBt9DGeI4uGlYGaFAA-TVCBABVcSFqZ/hKVV5MlgYp8DgjQglqVkn+HGeQABAQAuZb2mtZbezbezH9oH9oDdodzbO0bO0bWKgxGGB-w It is mostly based off of an older build by Wish found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief. It has decent sustain as well as decent damage. It is a standard WvW D/D or D/P roaming build with Might stacking ability to account for loss of damage from Critical Damage nerf.

Traits are preferably 2-6-6-0-0 as link provided suggests. They can also be 0-6-6-2-0 with either Fleet Shadow, Power Of Inertia (preferred), or Descent Of Shadows. For WvW I prefer to use D/D and D/P instead of SB swap, this is because enemies do not expect you to have both and will be surprised. Some enemy tactics that work well against D/D do not work well against D/P and vice-versa, this puts them in a bad position. Also you can escape just as easily if needed with D/P as you can with SB IMO. In PvE it’s better to use SB swap with either D/D or D/P (your choice) for range and tagging enemies during farming. In terms of Defense the build is not very tanky, but not pure glass either. It can handle a full spike of damage from Dwayna for instance bringing you to around 800 HP, but you will not instant down. I have never had problems in a PUG Dungeon run, however there are more specific builds available for each dungeon that will work better, but overall this build can work.

With Superior Runes of Strength, Superior Sigils of Strength, Plate of Roasted Cactus, and 5 points into SA you can average 14-18 stacks of might during combat. If you trait for Power of Inertia you can hit 20+ stacks, this will allow you to keep same amount of power as if you were traited for Mug, and gain another 1000 HP, you obviously lose the damage and healing from Mug though. In WvW combat expect around 10-14, but against pure tank builds 14-18 is definitely possible because you can keep the pressure up. Just keep in mind the longer you stay actively fighting, the more damage you will do. This means with full buffs in WvW plus might stacks you will be around 3k+ Power. If you are not solo and playing with another class that gives might it’s very easy to hit 25 stacks of might in combat. A video example of the build/might stacking can be found here, http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=91e_1405380098 , does not include any PvP. If there is enough interest I may consider making an actual PvP video, I made this quickly today because recently on the forums a lot of people have been asking for such a build so I thought I would share. Especially since the new food really makes this build work well. Against glass expect 8.5k-11k+ backstabs (more than enough to down them with Mug and CND damage as well), and anywhere from 4k-6k backstabs against Tanks (They will hit you like a wet noodle however, you will probably win if you keep proper pressure up). However a build to watch out for is the Dire/Perplex condition build (But you can always leave, because they won’t have to enough damage to actually kill you outright, only if you push as well)

Fully Buffed WvW Stats

Power: 2,658
Toughness: 1,386
Vitality: 1,482
Precision: 1,937
Ferocity: 985
Condition Damage: 100
Healing Power: 300
Armor: 2,504
Health: 16,465 (17,124 with WvW bonus in video)
Critical Hit Chance: 60% (With Sigil of Accuracy, 53% Without)
Critical Damage: 216%

Thanks for reading, and hopefully this helped you!

Gameplay is what matters. Loot is part of the game. So is it safe to say that loot is also part of the gameplay? Don’t get me wrong personally I have not had one problem with the way loot is handled in this game. 4k+ hours, and hundreds of gold in the forge and still no precursor, that’s honestly fine IMO because you can buy precursor which I did. However this update is bugged or just plain bad. Did the boss blitz, got into an unorganized Pavilion, took over an hour, and literally got 0 loot from all veterans and did not receive any bronze chest after we had killed every boss… There is definitely a problem.

This is my opinion on why thief should not be nerfed further, and why it should not change. I have thought about this for very long time and I think these are the points everyone seems to miss when they call for a nerf, or start a QQ thread about Thief.

1. One of the main Thief mechanics is to excel at 1v1, it even says so during character creation. Therefore the difference in ability required between say a ele and thief to win in a 1v1 should be different. That is precisely the point.
2. Because of this prowess in 1v1 thief is inherently crippled in terms of all other roles. All other classes fit the other roles better than thief. Thief is at the point right now where anymore significant nerf to the class will push this inherent lack of other playstyles to the point where thief will not even be able to attempt said other roles. Since gw2 is about playing it your way that is unacceptable.
3. People vary on skill level, reaction time, ping.
4. Thief dps is a counter to some builds, all builds need counters.
5. Thief gameplay attracts a different type of gamer to GW2. No I don’t mean trolls (IMO the trolls all moved to Warrior/Guard a while ago anyway), but gamers that are interested in resource management, rather than timed management. If you wanted to sell something why would you exclude a certain type of person? I for one would not be playing this game if not for the thief class.
6. A lot of times people complain about Thief and only use one or a few examples of the problem. People will not take this seriously because you present it as an outlier. Or an issue that rarely happens, and therefore should not be balanced around as it is not representative of everyday play. If you want the issue to be taken seriously you must present proof that this is the regular occurrence; meaning not just you presenting the issue coming from multiple occurrences and multiple different Thief players of varying skill levels, but players of all skill levels analyzing the problem and saying the same thing. Do that and people will take the issue seriously, and atm you really can’t with Thief.

All the other issues (how the builds work, defense, available useful builds, effective countering) have been beaten to death on these forums pertaining to the Thief, and why nerfing this class further is unnecessary. So I hope you can kinda see the problems that Thief faces, thanks for reading.

Supply respawns every 30 secs at a supply camp.

Sentries are worth 1 immediate point upon successful flip.

A Dolyak will respawn within 4 minutes if killed by an enemy.

I like how Kain fights on or off the field if one gets into trouble 3 others come to the rescue.

What: Thief gathering
Why: With signet of shadows, heartseeker, stealth, and all their teleports, they can clear a map of all gather nodes in about 20 min. This is way OP, it’s gotten to the point that no other class can hope to gather as quickly as them. This is making most (cheers to the very few non-permagather thieves out there) thieves very rich, while every other class gets to sit in Lion’s Arch with 0 gold wishing they had rolled these incredibly OP gatherers. Ever since ascended weapons came out all the mid-level nodes have become pricy making these OP gatherers even richer. A nerf is needed more now than ever before, or else you are going to have 90% of your playerbase leave because you could not fix a terribly designed and OP gathering class.

I can do my old 0-20-30-20-0 (init on stealth, quick recovery, and infiltrator’s signet) d/p dps rotation in 0-30-30-10-0 (only need init on stealth now). As well in d/d i can have blind/cond clear/and heal in stealth with ease, instead of having to give up blind for initiative on stealth. So for me it was a massive buff, I have no idea what your talking about it’s hugely noticeable to this theif.

Ensign.2189:

Oghier.7419:

You’re making a lot of changes to initiative regen. I assume you guys have done the math, and you’re being accurate when you say builds that don’t currently make use of the +initiative traits will get a boost. For a typical crit-power build, however, I wonder how the nerf to Opportunist will balance this out. I wish I could parse the combat logs, so I could tell how much regen I am getting from it now.

A P/P thief min/maxed to chain Unloads full throttle will gain around 4.75 initiative per 10 seconds from Opportunist in its current iteration; if the proposed nerf goes through, this will be reduced to about 1.75 initiative per 10 seconds.

A more conservative, D/D thief using a standard PvE rotation will be dropping from around 2.75 initiative per 10 now to 1.5 per 10 after.

If you made good use of Opportunist before these changes take effect, you can expect to have less initiative after this patch regardless of where you spent the rest of your trait points. That trait is a font of initiative for high performance PvE thieves and they’re taking a sledgehammer to it.

Ok so this is with your calculations.

P/P Unload Build

10 secs of current init regen + 4.75 from current Opportunist, 10 * .75 + 4.75= 12.25
10 secs of buffed init regen + 1.75 from nerfed Opportunist, 10 * 1 + 1.75=11.75
So you are losing .5 init every 10 secs in the new patch, throw a dodge or 2 in there and they are even (which you can now because you are not relying on activating unload for initiative).

D/D Build

10 secs of current init regen + 2.75 from current Opportunist, 10 * .75 + 2.75= 10.25
10 secs of buffed init regen + 1.5 from nerfed Opportunist, 10 * 1 + 1.5= 11.5
Its being buffed…

Also for both builds you will no longer be AS effected from weakness, your damage will go down, but your initiative regen wont take as big a hit now. IMO the initiative change is needed and welcomed by this theif.

Anyone else open this thread hoping to find discussion on actual counter-play and not children bickering amongst themselves? Threads like this are why I’m this close to leaving this class/game.

Actually I have noticed not criting with HK. Seems to happen if you backstab and your stealth drops during animation, making HK not a factor in the backstab and only your regular crit rate. It will still give reveal as well. I know the reveal was added because at release this kind of timing could be abused to achieve a double backstab. If it says glancing then yes, you have the weakness condition.

wish.1027:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1c.h14.a.1c.h2|c.1c.h1.8.1c.h17|1c.71j.1g.71j.1c.71j.1g.71j.1c.71j.1g.71j|2s.d13.2s.d13.3s.d16.2s.d13.2t.d13.2s.d13|a3.u36b.u46b.0.0|55.7|57.5b.5c.5h.5w|e

This setup is exactly 52% crit chance, and is the best DPS you can get for that much EHP.
If you want links to threads with math click “thief” in my sig and look at the bottom of that post.

Wish I have based my builds off of yours for a bit now, but this d/p build has no initiative regen, how is it sustainable after 1 BP+HS? My current d/p with init regen (not the best still some wasted stats I believe) http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1c.h2.a.1c.h17|8.1c.h17.a.1c.h1j|1c.b1j.1g.71j.1c.71j.1g.71j.1g.b1j.1g.71j|2s.d13.2s.d13.3s.d16.2s.d13.3s.d16.2s.d13|0.k16.u45b.k69.0|55.7|57.5b.5c.5f.5u|e

Ya that makes sense, thanks guys. I guess we get to be home wreckers if we are blue or green.

So in EB near red keep there is a village, yet 2 houses have names, Fergie’s and Tyler’s. Anyone know why?

Option 1 would be good, but would need A LOT of balancing. Option 2 IMO will never happen, do you want to be able to attack from stealth and not cause reveal? That is OP. If your talking about already being in the reveal state and Last Refuge triggering and not stealthing you again it’s also OP, double backstab anyone? Mesmer’s don’t have their DPS tied to stealth attacks, which is why they can stealth while being in the revealed state. It sucks when your going for a CnD and LR triggers during the animation yes, but it can also happen when your buddy drops SR or BP. IMO the only thing broken about it is it not triggering due to high stacks of condition damage, but due to the way condition damage works I doubt they can fix it. If this is constantly happening to you it’s a L2P issue, b/c the game makes it VERY obvious that your getting low on health.

Infusion of Shadow needs a 3 sec inner CD. Does D/P need a nerf though, no.

Here’s some pics for ya

Trying to recruit for your server is absolutely fine, just not in this sub-forum. There is an entire sub-forum devoted to such a thing. A/w I’m enjoying the match-up thus far, there seems to always be some good action somewhere.

stof.9341:

You cannot use P/D #3 in a rotation. Not easily at least. You need to be in melee range to use it and when you do, you’ll not be in melee range anymore. It’s a situational escape tool after all

You can definitely use it every rotation its just a different style of p/d then normal.
0-0-30-10-30
IV-V-XI
V
VI-VII-XII

HIS, Shadowstep, Shadow Trap, Inflitrator’s Signet, coupled with 21 sec steal cd.
You can literally get all the teleport’s on rotation with practice. D/P is a very hard counter though be warned.

CND – Steal – Shadow Trap – Sneak Attack – Shadowstrike – AA- Shadow Trap – Sneack Attack -Shadow Strike – AA – CND – Signet – Sneak Attack – Shadow Strike – AA – CND – Steal – Sneak Attack – Shadow Strike – AA, and so on using Shadow step as a replacement tele when the others are on CD if needed, try to just do a regular CND/Sneack Attack combo if things are on CD best to have a stunbreaker always available.

Its gonna be fun

Judging from the shadow made by the flag, and the fact that your mark is at the next piece of wood which is slanted towards the front of Mendon’s, again beside the shadow, we can reasonably place your mark on Smit’s picture. Your mark is legit, however that is not where the AC was aimed. You can clearly see that there are no red AOE circles centered around your mark.

Other than that great fights all around, been having a blast. Cheers everyone.

There really is a startling lack of players pveing these days. You used to go shelter’s/pent/Plinx and there would always be people, not anymore due to Champs and Respawn timers. Lyssa/Jormag/Grub farm were more or less staight loot nerfs but have a had similar effect unfortunately, this is more human nature time spent vs reward. Now I’m not saying that all nerfing is bad, in fact if events weren’t nerfed it would be worse, everyone would farm Lyssa and eventually that 7g an hour would go right back down to 1-2g an hour due to overstock and price drops, so unless you were farming Lyssa 24/7 to keep up you would just be left in the dust, literally. Not nerfing Lyssa loot would only further the barren waste-land of PVE as you would either be at Lyssa or in LA, lol. However the constant nerfing everywhere to people’s favorite events is just silly, and I’m not talking loot I’m talking respawn rates, timers, added Champs etc. It isn’t just about the drops for me tbh, having a couple random PUGS farming certain areas brought life to GW2’s some-what desolate PVE. You could actually meet people doing these events and have some fun as well. Now no one is around, no one helps, u see someone farming an area (Icebrood colossus for example) and join in to play with them, and 9/10 they stop and either WP or move on. Is it b/c previous games have trained them to do so, well yes, however IMO those actions would not happen at events such as Shelt/Pen/Plinx/Lyssa/Jormag b/c hey it’s a GROUP EVENT. Now most of the group events that had quick timers are gone, ANET could have just nerfed loot a bit not the actual event. These events were something to do without having to wait another 1-2 hours for something else to do after, hence IMO why a lot of people did them, and why no one does them now. It isn’t about loot, it’s about something to do.

Mortifer.2946:

I acutally think that it is not a matter of of full MF set, but rather the amount of time you spend in the game… It is obvious you spent there at least 1500 hours, I remember your posts about legendaries and now you tell us how you spent 700g on MF… You see I play since BWE1 almost everyday, run with full MF set on trashmobs since December too. But never got any precursor yet. You know why? I played twice or thrice as less as you did…. That’s the whole concept of getting precursors… you have to invest your time, not count on luck.

Luck is involved, 2700+ hours played, the other 3 gifts for Incinerator, 250+g at forge, best drop I’ve had is Khilbron’s Coat (12G+-) got it today in WvW from a Vet Scout, Vol was lucky. Either that or I’m extremely unlucky. (leaning more towards Vol being very lucky) Seen people who literally are new to the game and get one from the MF, luck is involved (a bit too much IMO).

In WvW capturing/holding points in stealth needs to go, my main is thief and I have absolutely refused to use this tactic. Takes very little skill, much less than actually fighting the enemy imo, and no other class has a hope of holding a camp for 30 minutes with just 1 or 2 skills. Also the minor trait Hidden Assassin grants 2 stacks of might on stealth, idk if this is intended as it just says “Gain might on stealth”. Still also getting random steals/shadowsteps into objects, much less now though. As well as what others are saying; the rendering issue is probably the biggest problem atm in terms of class balance.

As for buffs/changes it’s really hard to say, but it seems to me that there are a variety of more complex builds available to the thief, yet no one is trying them/using them b/c the easy builds are winning due to the rendering issues.