Guild Wars 2

Just gonna pop in here and say that the sword is the best thing in WvW for thief. Yeah, backstab is all cute and all, but it’s not what really does the damage in the big fights that actually matter. Infiltrator’s strike is great for nailing someone trying to get away for just long enough for your team to wreck him and can come out of just no-where, and you can just get out of trouble too whenever you like. The basic chain is incredible damage and is crushing amounts of damage when used with haste for no initiative cost.

Also, I don’t quite understand why people complain about being hit with Cloak and Dagger and then Backstab, for that to work, they have to walk up to you while fully visible or use shadow shot or something, I can always dodge roll either the C&D and heal before the stab, or prevent the initial C&D even hitting. Back-powder or whatever. Then again, I’ve never been about to manage these crazy 9k backstabs either, maybe you have to hit an underlevelled player with white armour quality to do that, in which case the argument is more against the unbalanced nature of WvW scaling.

If the thief has an issue at all, it’s the fact that they’re way too mobile in combat and can pick and choose their targets with impunity and then escape easily. Even something as simple as a shadowstep trail from start to end of the jump would make chasing them down much easier.

What about the idea that the Nightmare Court are the sylvari that are merely reverting back to their original intended form?

So you tried something new, were bad at it, and rather than getting better at it, you quit. Did you think beginner’s luck was real or something?

Shadow refuge, Smoke screen blinding powder.

Then take master of deception trait and make the fullest use of it.

pyronix.4081:

The Asura have really good voice acting. Trahearne… well, let’s just say that all the things they did right in all the other aspects of the game was not done right with this character.

Can I second this? Maybe third it and fourth it too?

Basically, I never got the feeling that Trahearne was able to inspire and command a class of toddlers to eat their dinner, let alone a multi-cultural army fighting against a living abomination of nature.

Tulisin.6945:

Manta.7962:

You move around the world 25% faster than everyone and can just ignore fights that aren’t convenient to you using stealth. Makes PvE much less tedious.

If you’re using SoS for movement you probably move around the world slower than everyone except when you’re using movement abilities. If you’re running permaswiftness and using your movement abilities then you’re moving around faster.

But who can do that with just one skill and still being able to weaponset whatever they like?

You move around the world 25% faster than everyone and can just ignore fights that aren’t convenient to you using stealth. Makes PvE much less tedious.

Incoming thematic Sylvari:

Meet Mr. Stabby. I mean “Kargeneth”.

I realised that I had to do a bit of chaos with this character design, so he’s got a nightmare and a warden dagger. Here’s a shot with and without his cabbage on his head

The Seafarer’s Rest guys have, a ballista, arrow cart, trebuchet and a SIEGE GOLEM in the Eternal battlegrounds jumping puzzle. How bored are you guys?

Sword has probably the best slot 1 attack for pure damage against a single target. Then you multiply the damage by 3 for mutli-target hits. This is very useful in PvE and not without its use it WvW (Stabbing 3 people in the ankles with Crippling strike is VERY useful). This means you’re free to use those expensive blackpowder and CnD moves pretty recklessly.

Sword #2 isn’t very useful in PvE, but it’s incredible in WvW for keeping yourself in one piece, since it gives you that get-out-of-trouble-free ability, allowing you to get stuck into the middle of zergs and do big damage and get out the moment it goes sour. The immobilise on the initial strike is pure gold too, particularly at stopping enemies retreating into their portals when you’re attacking a tower.

Pistol whip is a nice combo of interrupt and Shish kebab, but is actually less powerful than the normal chain and has that annoying habit of routing you to the spot. Most players will dodge roll the moment they recover from the stun. I prefer to stay mobile, but there’s a lot to be said for the interrupt, even if headshot is sat there in slot 4.

Flanking strike is actually really good for damage and boon stripping, and the dodge can work…. only the homing on is flaky as all hell. I’ve had quite a bit of success however with using steal part way through the move to close the gap so that the move hits properly though. Makes a decent ghetto spike.

That’s why you should use a sword in a nutshell.

The cluster bomb main projectile is a blast combo finisher, however the smaller explosions are not.

A few things that haven’t been mentioned:

Shadow assault has a weirdly long range, longer than the auto, but then it only hits one enemy at a time. It also does less damage than the auto so a lot of the time it’s quicker not to bother, unless you’re having a proper battle in which case go for it or spam ninetail.

The two from-stealth skills…. errr… Firstly, how do we even stealth underwater without blowing our heal or using traits? Secondly, what we get are “The Ripper” (First a slow shot that does some bleeds, woo) or “Deadly Strike”, which while giving a bizarrely long bleed, is actually inferior to the normal combo ender, particularly when you probably have the lotus poison trait. Can I at least get some cripple here?

Yes yes, another thief spike damage topic. But here’s a thing that often doesn’t get mentioned about it much at all:

• Mug is more powerful than the thief’s sword combo ender,
• Stealing has no activation time or any follow through, and can be done during any other move (I’ve done it whilst using Dagger Storm without interrupting it, heck, I’ve done it flying through the air from being launched)
• Spiking thieves also have Serpent’s touch and lotus poison traits set automatically (Not really much of the issue though)
• Oh, and it steals an item too, again, unimportant.

It’s really the combination of the first two points, coupled with the big damage of backstab and then heartseeker/cloak and dagger that makes the spike so vicious and pushes it over the edge in terms of balance. A big single hit is fine, being able to do 3 big hits of comparable damage in less than a second is not.

Yeah well, as long as WvW doesn’t truly normalise gear quality, then yes, people will have a legitimate reason to complain since Ascended gear = better chance of winning.

Daecollo.9578:

With the way thief is, it pretty much HAS to have damage or its just not worth using, we can’t be like other classes and use our utility skills and damage skills, we have to pick, which is impossible because who cares if you interrupt them, you could of killed them instead with a damage attack!

Clearly you have never found an ally getting wailed on, headshot the guy performing a finisher on him, planted a shadow refuge over the downed ally and then revived him and got away with it.

Was an awesome moment, to be sure.

Minor detail, but why can’t I use blinding powder underwater?

I don’t think this needs much elaboration. It’d just be nice to have a backpack which matches the colours on the rest of your armour.

A few minor issues:

• Basilisk Venom uses the on-land skill activation animation when underwater.
• Shadowstepping while autorunning (Or just holding forwards) using steal or shadowstep skills often locks animation in reference pose (Sylvari male). This persists until the player causes some other animation to play (Stopping, dodging, attacking etc)
• “Thrill of the crime” trait will activate even if the steal itself fails for whatever reason (Block, out of range etc).
• Shadowstepping while in stealth will cause the player to appear fully visible, even though the stealth effect is still in play on the effect bar, from-stealth skills are also still available. I don’t know how this appears to enemy players. Tested using Shadow step, Ink Shot and Infiltrator’s arrow.
• It is possible, due to the slow speed of the projectile, to fire “The Ripper” twice from stealth, with both shots hitting, if the target is far away enough for the second shot to be started before the first hits.
• Using Shadowstep while underwater and then surfacing shortly after will trigger the use of Shadow Return without player intervention.

I use both blinding powder and shadow refuge, as well as master of deception trait (-20% recharge time for deceptions). Blinding powder’s strength lies in the fact that can be used at any time, even when disabled. It’s not about the blind, more the insta-stealth when stuff goes wrong.

Copy pasta from my suggestions thread that never got a response:

Let’s have a quick look at those main-hand no-offhand skills;

Repeater: Same cost as unload, 3 fewer shots, overall inferior in every way.
Twisting fangs: See above, a poor man’s Death Blossom.
Stab: Using initiative to do what your autoattack does anyway.

In the game’s current state, the fact that these three skills are objectively bad is of little consequence, after all, why would you ever not take an offhand when the slot’s available? So, in order for this suggestion to go anywhere there needs to be two changes made:

A) Make these skills actually good and distinct from their dual skill counterparts
B) Make these skills live in slot 3 at all times, and move dual skills to F2 (Function keys being reserved for profession skills after all).

I propose doing this to widen what the thief is able to do with the small weapon selection thieves have to work with. What I’m open to suggestion with however, is what to make these empty offhand skills actually do. Cheaper cost is one idea, but that’s really boring, I have some ideas:

Repeater: Slower firing attack that makes you stand still, but with longer range than normal.
Twisting fangs: Attack that inflicts both weakness and bleeding (Inspired by “Axe Twist” from GW1)
Stab: Add vulnerability to the attack

Obviously, these are just ideas as to what to do with them and can easily be changed. What think you?

BabelFish.7234:

I’ve tried it in dungeons and we actually did better when I stopped using the ability.
But then again that was 5 people, not 10…

If you were able to keep up 25 vulerability with this skill, then having 4 allies would just break even on DPS. You can’t stack it that high with body shot alone so hence it’s not a good dungeon skill, (I’d rather use that trait that inflicts vulnerability when you crit and spam unload). Part of the problem is that vulnerability is a decidedly weak condition, considering that its GW1 counterpart, cracked armour, raised damage against a target by 41% (Multiplied it by the square root of 2 to be more precise) meaning that it was better than even 25 stacks of vulnerability is now and a dead easy to inflict.

Guys, let’s not forget that this skill is absolutely fantastic when you have a group of 10 or more (Like with most champion and dragon fights). If you just stand there spamming bodyshot, then you’re amplifying other players’ damage far more than if you spend the damage on attacking normally.

Different dyeable zones for each? Realise that it’s not that big a deal?

The issue I have is that all those cheap pearl exotics basically only look good if you match your own colour scheme to them, basically meaning you’re stuck with Blue, a different shade of blue and white.

/Bow for a fight well fought.

Not sure either, particularly when I saw a prominent character in the Sylvari story was called “Gavin”. If you’re from where I’m from, that name’s as common as muck. It had me wondering when we’d see Dave, Darren, Matt, Colin, Tracy and Lexi.

Shameless bump since I would like some input here please.

Learn to use your evasive tricks with large mobs. Death Blossom evades and multitargets, Shortbows are generally good at hitting multiple targets and playing keep-away.

And when it starts going wrong, stealth. What heal skill are you using? After a bit of trial and error, I wouldn’t use anything other than Hide in Shadows now.

sPvP also has that thing where the conflicts are much smaller and Daggerstorm isn’t nearly as good when it hasn’t got so many targets to work with. In WvW most Thieves take it mostly because the alternatives aren’t good. Thieves’ guild just gets murdered and basilisk venom is simply awful. There’s the racial elites too much they tend not to merge well with the thief’s style and offer little in the way of survivability.

In fact, I tend to forget that I even have Sylvari skills.

I was most of the way through levelling my thief before I really realised that these skills existed at all, you know, the ones you get for not equipping any offhand at all. Let’s just have a quick look at them:

Repeater: Same cost as unload, 3 fewer shots, overall inferior in every way.
Twisting fangs: See above, a poor man’s Death Blossom.
Stab: Using initiative to do what your autoattack does anyway.

In the game’s current state, the fact that these three skills are objectively bad is of little consequence, after all, why would you ever not take an offhand when the slot’s available? So, in order for this suggestion to go anywhere there needs to be two changes made:

A) Make these skills actually good and distinct from their dual skill counterparts
B) Make these skills live in slot 3 at all times, and move dual skills to F2 (Function keys being reserved for profession skills after all).

I propose doing this to widen what the thief is able to do with the small weapon selection thieves have to work with. What I’m open to suggestion with however, is what to make these empty offhand skills actually do. Cheaper cost is one idea, but that’s really boring, I have some ideas:

Repeater: Slower firing attack that makes you stand still, but with longer range than normal.
Twisting fangs: Attack that inflicts both weakness and bleeding (Inspired by “Axe Twist” from GW1)
Stab: Add vulnerability to the attack

Obviously, these are just ideas as to what to do with them and can easily be changed. What think you?

Shortbow is always one slot for me. The best choice for firing onto or from fortification walls by far.

iSinner.4285:

Shadow refuge still bugged, you get revealed if you leave the refuge before it disappears

That’s intended behaviour.

" Shadow Refuge: This skill’s stealth removal tripwire has been updated to properly match the skill’s effects."

Implies that the tripwire should still be there, but only when the skill is actually active.

Why? What’s wrong? They attack in hugely telegraphed ways and really slowly, Ninetail practically hard counters PvE.

DavidMonthen.4398:

You should be very cautious with accusations like that.

I don’t make them lightly. Coming from admining a TF2 server and also being on the receiving end of undeserved kicks from servers for hacking when I was just playing well I know that 90% of the claims of hacks come from ignorance than anything else. So if you know of any other way of players legitimately getting into towers (at least, not with hacks), perhaps through jumping on a badly designed bit of the area or whatever, then do tell me. I’d sleep better knowing that it’s people taking advantage of game mechanics rather than ripping the game open.

Yeah, improve the tracking, perhaps even so far as giving it leap-finisher properties too would help make the skill more reliable.

S/P or P/P work well too. Pistol whip is very good and I’ve used headshot numerous times to stop an enemy finishing off an ally. Pistols akimbo gives you nice damage that doesn’t require you to get your squishy self right into the battle.

Thieves are great in PvE because the AI instantly disengages when you stealth. Just run past everything (25% faster too) and mine like there’s no tomorrow.

Vigour, and then the next trait that refunds some energy when you dodge. I’ve heard of facerolling around a map but I’m pretty sure that’s not what they mean.

The initiative regain was only there to refund what you spent going into the block stance, if any of you were thinking that you should be able to gain initiative overall need to remember what having no-recharge time does to a mechanic like that.

The change merely brought it into line with its original intention by the looks of it. Nothing wrong there.

I don’t like pointing the finger like this, but I don’t understand how this can happen in any other way.

We’re getting players getting into towers that still have their doors and walls up. “Mesmers” you all say, but this is happening on towers we’ve somehow kept for hours, and towers have no hidey holes like a garrison or a keep would have. I’ve seen this happen in sunnyhill (They just trash all of the defensive stuff) and I’ve heard other players saying it’s not the only time.

If there is some hack or exploit going on here, then suddenly the arguments against nightcappers becomes one against exploiters, and it would explain why Desolation seem to always have all three orbs.