Guild Wars 2

I’m thinking maybe its because with detonation, it can reach a greater distance depending on your detonation height, which would allow 1 or 2 clusters to reach 1500 plus range. Not sure why this would be a severe problem. Anyways. Life moves on. It’s so slow at 1200 anyways. I think a person could regenerate before the next one hits anywayd

I want to clarify that I do not think that the thief sucks in PvP or PVE, I really enjoy my thief in pve especially, its a game, I have fun. I just meant to say it is very far from over powered. Its right in the middle ground. Not the best, not the worst, and some do way better with it based off profession knowledge and knowledge of the dungeon.

I’ve mained a thief since I bought the game about 5 months ago, my highest level alt is the asuran thief I’m working on just cause my human one feels boring now.

I’ve tried the other classes, just never really clicked with them.

So I hear all this rant about thief and stealth and blah blah blah, and I hate people who write posts like this but I just hope someone, might just get something out of it.

So lets take pve.

Thief in dungeons, I do alright personally. I’m by no means the vip on an equal playfield unless I know the dungeon better. I offer blinds, blast finishers and I have a couple reflect skills which all come in handy in the dungeons. I also play the medic role pretty good.

Obviously though, this can’t be where thiefs are op, I mean common, you can’t say were the best here.

Next, structured pvp.

So, we can’t capture points while stealthed, PVP is based off capturing points. So the thief, can kind of take out stragglers, but any good team will travel in atleast a pair or maybe 3 in a group. Thiefs are alright here but the metagame has seen that tank builds such as elementalist and rangers are really strong in this department. Thiefs are really more just annoying, they offer nothing another class could do better. Its all about taking points right?

WvW,

So I’m pretty squishy, I gotta stay in the back usually in zerg vs zerg fights, which leaves me with the bow or p/p. I know i got a pretty good blast finisher but I mean, its not game changing. I can take down stragglers too but I mean, don’t take long for a 5 man team to chase a straggler down either. Nothing special to the thief or the stealth. WvW is all about capturing keeps, castles, towers, and camps. Thieves have nothing special about doing that, maybe soloing camps, any class can do that though, they have leashes on them.

So this leaves me with roaming wvw thieves. Yah, I’m pretty solid here, “BUT IT DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BENEFICIAL TO MY SERVER AND IT DOES NOTHING TO MY OPPONENT BUT MAKE HIM RESPAWN”.

Thieves have one area that they shine in, roaming and outnumbering players not built to deal with it or inexperience, thats it, purely being annoying. Most players that I’ve tried to kill in roaming know to just keep running. I have a few gap closers that cost initiative, so just do a little counting in your head, when he shadow shot or heartseekrs a few times, stop and kill him, he’s stuck.

Good thing is, if he kills you, nothing happens, he gains maybe a badge of honor, you res back to wp and go back to helping your server in a small group or zerg and do what the game actually needs you to do.

Everybody and their dog has a thief that they’ve watched some outnumbered video, cool, wheres the video where the thief did something beneficial like changing the tides of battle with retaliation or something?

Heres example A)

Bob and joe(guardian and warrior) decide to go out and wander wvw, they just want to find solo newbs and stomp them(what other reason would you wander around? it servers no purpose to the whole wvw thing except to spy but we all know what bob and joe really want to do). Oh crap, a thief rolls in and bounces around like a ninja and slaughters them all, guess what the thief just killed 2 guys that really, all they wanted to do was stomp someone themselves but they got stomped, big deal. Respawn, repeat. The thief is not getting any further ahead then most players.

This game is not balanced around 1v1, its balanced around 5 man groups. So give up people. The only way to balance it now would be to redo the whole class which isn’t going to happen and any more changes are going to make an alright class unplayable in every aspect of the game except roaming, which is such a small, tiny, miniscule part of the game that it doesn’t even matter.

Red tiger camo

15/char

K. So the revealed debug only comes Ito effect if you attack while in stealth. It can be any attack including stolen skills or using mug(deal damage when stealing trait). So. A thiefs normal attack would be to use auto attack web in stealth to get backstab if you attack from behind(x2 damage).

What this thief probably did was just used cloak and dagger non stop. All he has to do is use cloak and dagger( skill 5) which had a decent damage output but initiative heavy which will cloak him. Now all he has to do is wait for cloak to finish in 3 seconds( 4 if he’s rewired in shadow arts) and then he can cloak again. There’s no debuff since he came out of stealth without attacking. And if he’s use to this, you can just perfect the timing and make it look like he’s perms invisible since you can start casting Cnd before yiu come out. In your situation. You’d need aoe to take care of him. Only way to do it. In a 1v1. This tactic usually ends up being more annoying then a good strategy.

I feel bad for your friend, and I hope it was not a huge amount of gold. The reason why this game has no trade system between player to player is so we have to use TP which basically taxes us, This helps put imaginary made money back into the game to keep inflation down.

This was done on purpose and I highly suggest anyone that if someone can’t afford the listing fee, its probably a high price item and I wouldn’t trust someone, and if its a small priced item, in my opinion, its highly unlikely they will voluntarily sell it for cheaper.

Hope it works out.

Man I love this skill in WvW. Its won me two 1v3’s today so far lol.

Both included the same 3 man group, 2 rangers and 1 warrior. They weren’t up leveled either… They just didn’t seem to know to stop shooting. The 2 rangers dropped like flies and then the glass cannon warrior was just there for the taking.

I use to try and run thieves guild and basilisk venom but man this thing is like kill noob mode sometimes.

So I’m in the process of remaking my thief and the only doubts I was having was losing my fused bow. So I decided to try and transmute it into a white like I had done to make a hood for my thief.

So all I did was used a transmutation crystal (level 80 stones) and used a level 10 white bow with no other stats besides the white basic stats(I’m pretty sure this is the key part). And I also left my sigil out (too bad, it was the superior sigil with the 30% flame blast) but I’m pretty sure putting any magical stats into this transmutation will leave it souldbound.

Anyways, I got a level 10 white bow with a fused skin now on it. Only regret I have was not putting it on a dagger but at the time when I used it I was really into dungeons and the bow is my go to weapon for unfamilliar content.

So if anyone has been wondering if it’ll work, go for it, it will become account bound.

I know what you mean. I play a thief and if my team mates throw those girls out ill spam my bows blast finisher all day( its so boring though) but man watching everyone around get a perk from it is awesome. The good players know whrn to stack on me. Like if yiu see a thief spamming cluster bombs in a rangers healing spring, get in it, it heals so fast.

In the same boat as you. I have a male thief that I’ve got about 80 percent of my playtime on. He’s got multiple exotic sets and full ascended now plus he has my fused ticket I found.

After playing a lot more wvw, I had a few duels against asuran thiefs. Man they were like little ninjas, they were flying in and out of stealth and if their in a group , its hard to click on them. I decided to make one and I like it a lot so far.

Only problem I have is ascended gear and the fused bow. Hoping I can get the bow transmuted into a white maybe to make it account bound. I’m a little terrified to try. Other then that , let the fun begin. Enjoying the asuran story too. Can’t wait to get higher level and try some wvw. I use to for human t3 cause I liked the look. But after getting killed a couple times by an asuran with p/p with quip, I felt like I was being grilled and being a thief is all about trolling. Hehehe

This is too frustrating. As a SBI player, I recently starting wvw as I’ve explored the pve world and wanted to home my pvp skills.

We played SOS and cd for awhile and lacked begin usually on numbers everyday. I mean I once saw a 50 man Zerg roam out borderlands while we struggled to get 20 on eb to gather on a tag.

Our biggest problem is the lack of downgrading commanders. I watched one day this one commander rudely comment on our server and another commander cause we were losing, he called us crappy and all that. The commander was trying to protect two fronts from cd and SOS since they usually attacked us the weaker server.

So take any new player to wvw who has to follow this crap. Would you follow a person with a crappy attitude? But the general player would join them and leave our already underpopulated map sepersted Into two.

Or the other night, eb was full for us so we had some work going on in SOS. Other commanders started joining and turned our 40 man zer into 3-4 groups(most players just follow tags, they don’t use the ts server or anything). So yah , our too many tags hurts us at time and they won’t step down.

Theirs a few awesome commanders if follow to anywheres but most new players just follow any tag which sucks which leads to a big loss which leads to less interest

The new daily change as the new chest greatly increase out server participation. I had a hour queu on Tuesday for eb whckh has never happens for me since I joined February and we had 40 guys on SOS and 50 on SBI borderland( never happened either)

Now players cried for these new matchup a which i have no idea why. The stats out us where we are. It’s not like its the same players over and over. It’s server vs server. What’s the possibilities of new matchups? Their designed to be even now and now you want a greater range? It’s all about numbers.

Here’s my theory. Since I started playing in February, I’ve seen all our guilds most active wvw players but transfers to wvw servers. Why would a person who hates pve and loves wvw stay in SBI? No reason. So all these players congregated in tier 1 servers. Now you want to mix them all. This is the stupidest idea unless you Limit the amount of out numbers or maybe make kut unnerved buffs stronger. Nothing about db proves skill it proves more winning and more players. SBI player base has given up and moved on if it matters. To those it doesn’t matter, they just pve and pvp.

It’s really a joke to be honest and any db player who thinks they have skills for dominating. My dog can follow a laser pointer that looks like a blue icon and he can also roll over, sit and stay. Oh, he can sit pretty too , its not rocket science.

Basic formula

200 vs 50 , guess who wins?

MrRuin.9740:

Metamega.9025:

all I really need is one more dagger and one more pistol and I can run any combo (3 daggers for s/d and d/d)

Huh?
You know you don’t need to do that, right? Equip sword main and dagger main. Put one dagger in one off-hand set. Switch sets, off-hand dagger stays while main weapon switches.

WOW!!!! thanks, just tried, it worked…. I honestly never tried. Thanks.

So I’m in this dilemma, I have this human thief who I currently have in tier 2, slowly working towards t3( i know a lot have it but I find medium armor lacks), I have one ascended accessory to get and he’s pretty much maxed. He has a valk set and a zerk set and a pieces of knights at his disposal. Currently working on putting divinitis in the valk and all I really need is one more dagger and one more pistol and I can run any combo (3 daggers for s/d and d/d)

To some its not that much work, a lot of players have this much on multiple toons.

I recently started playing wvw a lot and man, when I run into asurans(especially thiefs) it just wows me. Their like little ninja’s and if their in a small group, no way can i pinpoint him out for a backstab or anything.

The animanitions are very small so seeing cnd coming is a lot harder. I really feel like making one.

Any thiefs here re-roll an asuran and feel a little more trickier? I know it sounds lame but their pretty cool to me.

Also, any asuran thiefs have a legendary, thats my only concern really. I’m working on incenerator and I’m a little worried I’m going to be let down with the weapon since itll be so small. I mean we all get a legendary so we can enjoy it right?

So I’ve really started to wvw and I’m still experimenting to find my play style. I get owned a lot, mostly cause I don’t alt and don’t understand other classes really. Especially necros and engineers it seems but that’s a different story

So as of now I’m running 2 sets of gear. My trinkets and weapons are all zerk. I have a zerk armor set with ruby orbs and a valk set with ruby orbs. I’m currently thinking I’m going to put divinity s in the valks when I get the gold

I currently got some bids in a full knights set. I’m just debating on what type of runes or orbs to put in. Will lacking the critical damage I’m use too really hurt me? Should I get some crit damage? I was thinking maybe something like scholar for more sustained damage or maybe wurm since I’m going to lack in hp for conditions.

I also tend to run 30 in shadow arts and usually run atleast 15 in acrobats.

Right now I’m running 0/20/30/20/0. D/p with s/d for roaming and bow for zerging

Just fooling with builds right now, trying more defensive heavy traits. So I’m running a 0/0/30/20/20 build right now and for some reason, I’m getting two stacks of might per stealth with my d/p.

I’m use to the 1 stack a second from the shadow arts tree. Wheres the other coming from? I like it lol, but I’m a little confused at the moment. I was in a battle and I noticed i was up to like 14 stacks of might and I was scratching my head figuring out where it came from.

I’ve seem to get more damage of the critical hits. Sb isn’t much for conditions to me. A little bit of poison and some bleeds. The bleeds aren’t that long. I find it better to crit on the cluster bombs.

Plus yiur going to probably bs with the d/p and its only poison on the dagger auto chain and some blinds that last long enough anyways.

I think you’ll enjoy the thief more if you play it how yiu want/like to play it. I think too many people ask how Anet wants them to play it or how they fit in. In sure when they came up with the professions they didn’t know. There is no worst class in my mind. It’s a game. Sit back, relax , enjoy the thief play style and you’ll have a fun time.

Their right according to your link. Yiu can’t get Zerk or knights with karma vendors.

I will agree that I’ve started to get into wvw now that I’ve pved a lot. I find it disheartening. I play on SBI and we’ve played SOS and CD for awhile now. It’s pretty bad most times. Like today, SOS had a Zerg larger then we had in eb running trough our borderlands. It was like uhhhh, now what.

Today we were in a constant struggle of about 30 vs 100. Just wasn’t even fun.

I wish we had a ban commander because a few have basically scared new players away. Their constant negativity, their constant ragging of other commanders(even when they had their tag off and he refused to step up and take over, yet he kept trashing him and calling our player base crap). It leads to an overall bad experience. Who would follow a commander who talks trash to you?

Only time I have fun is with our guild wvw night. Usually Saturday evening we’ve been running an event. Usually 50 or so turn out and we have a guild member with a tag now. We did eb tonight witch was alright but it’s way more fun running the opponents borderlands with a 50 man Zerg( its a big boost to our server since its 50 people who don’t normally play. Plus I know its frustrating for the other servers to have to pull out of eb to deal with our Zerg.

But there lies the problem too, I’m having fun mostly cause of guild mates, but also cause were just rolling towers over.

I see all this rant about balance of classes and such and then I wonder why it really matters. Most my wvw experience is maybe a few small skirmishes here and there but most is Zerg vs Zerg and its really just chaos if yiu think about it lol.

I play a thief and ill see these videos of those awesome thiefs, yah they take out 9 guys, cool. But this isn’t pvp, its wvw. Yiu need to take towers and keeps. Yiu don’t win by killing guys.

I wish my server was placed as medium pop. It says high but it has a low active community. I know our guild is back up to about 60-70 actives at peak times again after a major recruit. We used achievement points to figure out inactives.

I have no idea how you say you can spam it. It’s pretty easy to dodge. I have guys walk out of its way all the time. When yiu see a flanking strike, stay out of the way. And in a Zerg fight, who cares. No balance in a Zerg vs Zerg. It’s numbers vs numbers and a thief could spam flanking strike the same way necros and eles spam aoe conditions.

I like it. I use s/d and d/p since my sb seems useless now with no heat seeker. Yiu can strafe out of the way. If someone tries to run away. I shadow step with 2 on the sword, immobilize, Cnd then 1 that outs a daze on and then sometimes, depending on the class, they’ll throw their boons up when retreating so I can just remove those.

With this setup I feel like I can tango with guards and eles now.

Looks pretty solid to me. Only thing I could really suggest is maybe trying moving the 15 in trickery to shadow arts line f you want to be a little tougher. Utilities I personally change a lot depending on the dungeon. Some dungeons for example I get a lot more use out of signet f malice if I’m using shortbow or dagger storm with lots f junk mobs. Smoke screen is a really good skill too, especially for fractals. And maybe signet of shadows to help with the run by parts too.

Other then that, I’ve really started to figure out that as long as yiu have some toughness/vit somewheres to help out, you can get away witha lot of builds in pve.

I’m guessing yiu just got trolled. As a thief, I can do that but I do nothing. It’s more of a rogue spy. Between 10 of you, just get some immibolizes and when yiu see that little house on the shadow refugee, spam aoe and use great sword number 5. He wot survive. I’ve also been hit hard by some shatter builds from solo mesmers, far worse then a backstab.

Just stick together if your in a group, he’s waitin for a stray. I see no need for a counter for a spy. Kind of a good role for a thief.

And to people who said he got flamed here, he really find ask for thief help, he was crying out to Anet fr a nerf.

Doom, that makes sense. Guess there are other skills to allow going into stealth but the dodge CnD is a valid point. Never thought of that.

Thx for the offer. Probably hit you up on that. I’m not much of an alt and love my thie class. And as my pve experience is wearing off(90 percent map and about half way through my dungeon master title) , wvw and pvp are becoming my favorite. Pvp not so much. When I pve, I rarely see any thieves. When I pvp , everyone and their dog is a thief lol. And I feel jipped for some reason. I see them flying with their d/d and I imagine it probably only a level 1 pve thief and he only pvp’s with a thief. Just how my brain works.

But I’m always up for learning the class. Currently just finished getting my valk set for wvw and fractal 10 and up. Working on a skin choice for it. Next is a power/precision/vit gear I think. I much prefer learning one class to its extremes and every build possible the just leveling a character and putting exotics on it and then doing another.

Should try s/p. never really used it in wvw. Be sweet if I could make it work, just seems like it is asking for trouble lol. S/d is my secondary( used it before buff in pve) but its fotm(for good reason, its a weapon set that works).

As a thief just starting more and more pvp/wvw. I just never find myself this steals thing op beast. I’m annoying for sure. I’m able to get away. I can see the skill diference in my opponents though easily. If I’m in open land and in trouble and throw down shadow refugee the smart players know what to do. A lot of times though, people other then thieves don’t roam solo a lot so the safety for them is there and in just annoying. I’ve learned if an opponent keeps running while I’m hitting him is that I should be ready for a Zerg up a head. Chased way to many guardians to my death lol.

But , in that case I’m just a scout/infiltrator class and other then that, how do I benefit wvw. I’m killing people sure, but wvw isn’t about killing people, and pvp isn’t about killing people, its about capturing points. Which my class offers little too.

Type in YouTube ( thief wvw). Nothing about helping a Zerg pops lol. This was a bit of a tangent rant but all this negative thief talk makes me wonder. Game is balance for wvw and pvp play, not 1v1. It dueling exist I could see the complaints, but it doesn’t so why the hate?

Just to note. Wvw yiu can’t guest too. But if you pick a we orientated server, yiu can guest to pve with your friends. That includes dungeons, fractals, general maps.

The next issue with the wvw servers is that eternal battlegrounds will have overflow at peak times. Not sure on general wait times but just a consideration.

Hmmm. I find toughness helps a lot for myself(thief) but i actually use valk gear mostly (power/vit/crit damage) since our h kitten o low to begin with. Toughness and good condition removers should keep you of trouble. Bigger problem I find is, this game, especially dungeon bosses and champs have signature moves that will one hot the hardiest players. It focuses a lot on dodges and evades. No class can yank these guys really. The big guys ate easy to spot the signs for the move coming but ki find some f the smaller human models, are hard to see so warriors/melee thieves go down a lot it seems. You put 5 guys on a boss with melee and with all the flashes and effects, any sign dissapeard and one guy is going to go down. This is why warriors are kind of a dps ole class. Dodge and hit hard. Maybe you’d do we’ll with a valk setup? Gives airy le more room for error but yiu can still hit hard and full yiur crit chance with some buffs. Get some fury going.

Different times maybe? I’m on storm bluff isle. We’ve been up against crystal desert ad sea of sorroes for awhile now. Usually when I log on after work, SOS has most out stuff captured , then all us on SBI log on and take it back. I asked a commander in our guild about it, he mentioned SOS had a large European population and played at a different time in turn. They still have a stronger population then us but yah, his story made sense since it happens everyday. They claim us, we kill them, rinse repeat.

The other theory I’ve thought of(noticed out wvw pop has lowered) is that most the avid and die hard wvw players, have switched to high tier servers. If yiu really like wvw, would you play on a low wvw pop server? And it appears most wvw servers have been in a standstill in the brackets so this theory makes sense to me. People go where the action is.

I’ve recently started wvw after 350 hours on my thief? I’ve started to do pve and wvw 50/50 with my time. Didn’t like wvw at first but its growing on me now.

So in pve, s/x and sb or d/d for stuf like cof where dps is key are what I use. In wvw, I’ve found sb little use to me except for the big zeros where I lag at the battles and really have no idea what’s going on lol.

I’ve had the most success recently with a mixture if builds and some mix and matching and experimenting. Most using different combinations of critical strikes, shadow arts, and acrobatics. I really like the sword/dagger and dagger/pistol setup. I feel like I go in a fight with every tool I need at hand( I’m an electrician by trade, nothing worse the. Tryin to do a job with missing or wrong tools).

Buy I’ve seen here and been told from thieves in wvw that I’ve downed mentioned how d/p is newb? I can’t see how d/d is the tip notch way? I mean bp plus hs allows me to do things Cnd won’t. I can stack stealth to get more time to analyze te situation? I can blind a further opponent while blinding te one on me with the cloud.

Anyone care to share an opinion? Is there something I’m missing

Quick question, first battle , yiu cast basilisk venom and get like 8 Boons. It’s similar to that steal item yiu get but yiu didn’t use that. Is this a certain trait that allows this? 500 hours in (350 on thief) and I still learn something.

Good stuff man. I’m constantly teaching guild mates dungeons. Ill post “looking for 2 more for fotm level 10”. Then a guildy will say ill go, so I invite. Turns out his height at level chat is a 33 necro, the other 3 say let’s do it and I can’t kick a guildy for level, that’s not right. And we usually have a good run. Actually it’s a really fun run because watching people that aren’t use to dungeons is interesting. Especially in fotm, you can really start to see some improvement in there play. Teaching is frustrating and some people won’t listen( I’ve had some horror stories, especially the dredge fractal, some people love aggroing him from behind). I love teaching though when they have team speak. Chatting with typing is hate and confusing during fights. With ts, its just so much more fun and easier, but some people refuse to use it ?

I’m guessing you mean the one where it use to drop aggro? That had nothing to do with pvp or wvw. That was done because in some instances, dropping the aggro in stealth would let a mob regenerate too full health.

I do think sometimes that npc’s are too smart lol. I can understand if if I stealth and run straight that they can probably guess my position. But if I hang a hard left or right in stealth and they still follow me with an attack, that’s like they know and are hacking lol.

I know what you mean by human female mesmers lol. I made 2 mesmers. One was asuran( now level 66, pretty sweet). I tried making one really different. I made a male human mesmer. Made him the biggest and widest possible with a shaved head and a beard, it was just too much lol. All the light armor made him kind of flamboyant lol. Had to delete it.

I noticed yiu said yiu felt slow on the bs, wondering if you have turned melee assist off? This allows yiu to run through the enemy instead of around. That plus right mouse button turning will make you turn really fast

For skills, I like to use signet of malice, the aoe from bow, dagger storm and sword keep my health up. I use hide in shadows too if I feel like a certain part needs that big boost at once, like at final bosses if you have low agony resistance. I like to keep shadow refugee on my number 6, lets face it, as a thief your an awesome team medic. For my other skills, I usually keep signet of agility and signet of shadows up for the passives, plus the blind and the condition remover are nice for certain parts. Certain levels, I’ll use shadow screen to really help with the projectiles. Me and some teammates had an awesome success with certain parts when we all use reflects. Like the asuran fractal, keep rotating and keep the screen between you and the asuran and you can bounce back those agony attacks all day. Also I like to use daggerstorm and keep on my teamates if I notice a lot of projectiles, I just tell them on ts to get on top of me and were good to go. I think you should learn and adapt to each fractal and switch the tools in as you need them, there all situational I find. I like my immobilize trap for the dredge fractal, I can get that elemental be immobilized under the spot or I could use blinding power and my bow number 1 to immobilize.

To the pro’s here, if you see anything I could switch up, give me some tips. This is just to share my experience with other newbies, if it works for me, it’ll work for you.

I find a lot of thief builds I find are mostly for wvw, and pvp.

So after trying to alt so I could feel less selfish ,I came to the realization that its a game, and I really enjoy the mechanics and style of the thief. But I always felt squishy and had really leaned towards zerk just because killing stuff fast in open world usually seems like the best solution.

I started recently doing fractal daily’s at 10 to try and get some rings, recently aquired 2 rings through daily chest and threw some agony resistance in ( wow, 10 ar is enough to keep that stuff off me thank god, use to suck watchign that stuff tick me down).

I usually do my fractals with guildies, sometimes, well most times, trying to fill a group, a level 30-40 will join not ever doing them, and I refuse to kick a guildy who wants to learn fractals. I usually warn them that this is level 10, it is a little tougher then it has to be for your first time, but agony is the real issue.

So after running mostly zerk, and throwing in a few piece of valk., I always found myself squishy, I tried 10/30/30 builds and 0/30/30/10/0 builds and still found myself squishy.

So I decided, lets try to get a full valk set for just fractals, I can usually run most other dungeons with my zerk gear. So I picked up on tp some valk crafted stuff (not the prettiest but I might put the stats on my t3 human when i save enough )

This build focuses on s/p and sb. I do use a s/d , especially on the charr like fractal, those vet ascolonians get a lot of might on them and you can basically number 3 all their might all day long, (25 stacks of might is pretty sweet).

I decided to put emeralds in my valk gear( just to try a little tankier) not really use to it but man what a world of difference i can do now. I sit at around 17k hp and a good chunk of toughness. My weapons and trinkets are berserker (my trinkets are still greens lol, saving for ascended now and the rare stats aren’t that much higher and exotics are too much gold for temporary for me ) .

So, I really started noticing that one of the best tools we have is blinds, if I can position myself right with my guardians and warriors, i can allow us to basically faceroll junk mobs and not take any hits, so there is no downtime on killing.

The stun too on number 4 and the interupt on pistol whip comes handy too against golem spin attacks and such on the asuran world fractal.

The build uses 0/30/0/20/20. With all the gear and such, my crit chance is a little low, sitting at about 49% and my crit damage, with the emeralds drops about 12-13% i think but its a decent trade off I find. This is with guildies who we do this for fun, were not speed demons or trying to be the fastest. Its a game, I don’t go down a lot, and we have fun.

I use practice tolerance(%5 of precision turned into vitality), this can be changed out, I like the extra vit(its not much running valk and the emeralds but it helps), furious retaliation(the fury really helps since my critical % is quite a bit lower then a full zerk).
I use executioner aswell since with the fury i get off this build, I sit around 70% most the time, I don’t have a lot of stealth in this either so the 20% is nice.

I use gain might when I dodge, with the 20 in this tree, I get those 3 dodges, and 3 stacks of might most the time from this so I personally find it nice to use. I also use pain response to get some regen and condition remover when it procs, kind of a set it and forget it skill. I mostly use this acrobatic tree for the 3 dodges, I decided to put the extra 5 in it and get the trait skill. You could easily put 5 in deadly arts for the poison on steal.

I use Thrill of the crime and bountiful theft. I have had little experience in the trickery tree, but I love these 2 for support. When I steal now, nearby teamates get fury, might and switftness, and vigor. They also get the 2 boons that I steal off the opponenent(if any exist) . I kind of feel like a guardian with this skill tree, its pretty sweet watching my teamates buff bars fill up. This I find is the most important part, you really got to watch where your teamates are and see what their doing. I like to wait till atleast 2 are on one opponent and then steal in.

With the sword/pistol, I can spam the blinds and interrupts where I seem fit. Since i got 20 in trickery, I get 4 extra initiative which to me almost feels like I got infinite blinds and pistol whips at times.

Just buy level 8o exotic gear that has berserker in it. This game isn’t about fear grind so just make sure it’s a level 80 item and has berserker stats( power precision crit damage).

The hard part of this game is putting the look you want on it. Since most fear that’s us reasonably priced on the tp are crafted( all crafted goods have te same skin at that level) so then you need transmution crystals to out level 80 gear on a skin u like

I basically farmed cof when I hit 80. Purchased green 80’s and did path 1 twice and path 2 once a day for 140 tokens a day plus maybe a few path 1 a day. Quite a few dungeons have berserker stats. Soni did those and transmuted them to human culture tiern2(working in tier 3)

Any more questions just ask here

This game k actually enjoy. I came from a console background which meant mostly I played cod and halo since te multiplayer gets a lot of replay value. Then I picked up a decent comp and picked up sc2 since my childhood consisted of sc1 and diablo. The game was actually affecting my personal life. Ladder was so competitive and the whole game wants you to win 50 percent of the time. There was only win or lose. And coming home after work and losing 3 matches in a row would kind of enrage me. Then I liked up d3 a couple months after its release and the market was so inflated, I couldn’t compete with the gear grind and the game was just about gear grind.

Then I licked up gw2 being as it had no subscription. I was a little worried because I had friends who had played wow( which was the only other MMO I knew of, ne’er played it myself) and I kind of saw how drug out they got with gear grinds and such.

This game makes me happy. I log on, do stuff for hours and leave going, we’ll I didn’t do what I wanted to do, I got side tracked but I had fun. I never leave gw2 frustrated or let down. But I can see some people who thrive off hardcore play and achievement hunters could get frustrated. But this game is for a certain casual market.

Yiu can’t say, " I like this game, but it needs more gear grind". If yiu say that, yiu actually don’t like this game, yiu want another game, all yiu really like is maybe your class or the world design. The whole game mechanics and game play is for casual. I think it’s an interesting market to target ad I think it has been lost in the gaming industry where most games make more grind and more achieve td to keep people interested.

Oh and another note, not sure if you knew it( I was level 40 before I figured out), I turned ff melee assist so yiu can basically run through the target and backstab it instead of running around. And if yiur use to tanking with a warrior yiu might not have used right click for moving. I use right click to steer and changed my strafe to a and d so I can circle strafe with bow easily and turn around faster and backstab

My best friend while learning the thief was the bow. Keep a medium distance because it travels slow but hen yiu learn how to time the detonations it’s amazing aoe. Of they get too close. Hit number 3. It’s like an extra dodge but uses initiative.

And if yiu get in a real pickle and there too fast. I learned you can actually shoot cluster bob behind you as your running forward and just spam.

And another good weapon like stated is the sword pistol. You can basically spam blind all day and just hack and slash with the aoe of sword auto attack. Since in pve, most mobs have a slower attack rate so one blind will usually miss there attack and just out up another one.

Since most pve content is about killing small groups of mobs, I find dagger/dagger fun but since its a single target thing, it takes awhile. Back in the day when stealth caused aggro to drop, yiu could stealth and backstab and then stealth again and re assess the situation and go in again. But they removed that so I just aoe the trash

In dungeons or champs dagger/dagger works well dive its usually one mob and yiu just want to dps it down

For general roaming in pve I use signet of malice. With dagger dagger it doesn’t help much but with the aoe of bow and sword, yiu get some good healing. Dagger stem works great with this too with lots of mobs. Yiu self heal fast. Also cluster bomb, signet of malice and shadow refuge combo field will heal you even faster.

Sword/dagger is pretty good for face tanking too once you can get the blind on stealth skill in te shadow arts tree, it ten becomes kind of like sword pistol but Cnd hits hard and now you can daze with your sword web you attack out of the stealth.

I usually just run signet of shadows for the speed boost and the blind if you need it and I think it’s calle signet of agility, gives me a boost in precision and a condition remover. And I usually keep shadow refuge on just as a utility if I want to skip by stuff to grab a poi or vista without killing trash.

In pve though for leveling, yiu can really just out a bunch of stuff yiu want together. I don’t find any combo bad. Maybe run some venoms to kill stuff faster

Oh and 15 in acrobats will also give you kind of an extra dodge so now you got 3 plus your bows number 3 so mobs really can’t touch you.

All this stuff kind of makes it easier while you learn the class.

Problem is when you hit level 80, you’ll need transmutation crystals which are available in the gem shop. Yiu can transfer gold to gems. There not that expensive but you need them for level 89 gear

I don want to sound like I’m being negative, I’m mostly a pve thief but I’ve dabbled a bit now with wvw and pvp and it seems like te general meta game is bunker builds for of course survivability.

The main issue I have is guardians, elementslist( their crazy in pvp, the mobility , aoe and regen just stuns me) and to my surprise from what I’ve gathered from the forums that rangers suck, but I’ve yet to take one down. Even with glas cannon d/d I’ve yet to burst them down past 50 percent and then they seem to have some awesome healing capabilities.

Most my gear is berserk and I’ve been working on adding valk to it. I usually try a build with 30 deep in acrobatics or shadow arts for some help.

I’ve been thinking I might start on a pvt set, will this help?

Just seems like trying to compete in te health and toughness will leave me behind. No point in trying to play catch up in my mind since my toughness and bit will be behind.

My usual option is to disengage but it seems ki of lame that with my skill level, I can only consider taking on mesmers, necros, warriors engineers and other thiefs.

Any websites with guides or video channels you could suggest. I’m sure there’s a way, just need some guidance. I’ve had a little success with my sword dagger even pre patch for mobility and having my 30 in shadow arts with blind on stealth and regen but I’m sure there’s a good way to open up my thief play.

So been playing my thief as a main for a couple months now. Just love the mobility and burst damage numbers. I have tried making a mesmer and warrior alt because I like dungeons, but at the end if the day, its the challenge and maybe some skins your after. So I always go back to my thief. I’ve decided to try and get the dungeon master title with him for a challenge. Currently working on putting a group together with guildies who want to do the same and learn to work together since in my experience, path 3’s are where things tend to fall apart lol

So between that goal, trying to get ascended rings and trinkets and possibly a pvt or complete valk gear with a skin I like, world bosses and helping guild mates, aswell as map completion(65 percent) and finishing personal story( level 72) and honing my wvw, I’ve started thinking about legendaries.

I saw a female thief the other day with the dagger(in venerate I think it’s called) and the flaming sword gw1 users got. It was a pretty cool setup.

I’m a big fan of sword/x even before the flanking strike buff. I loved the 30 shadow art line with regen and blind on stealth. That and the mobility and aoe made general pve a breeze and familiar dungeon content was easy.

I got a fuse skin on my bow. It’s my go to weapon when I’m in new territory. I had te ticket for awhile. I checked the weapons out and thought meh, looks like destroyer stuff. Finally decided to use it and WOW!!! my bow is on fire. It’s like my legendary wannabe.

I thought of dagger but if I decide to use dagger dagger, I like them to match. I can’t see myself with a legendary bow, too feminin. I was leanin towards bolt I guess. Haven’t seen too many lengendary pistols around but again sword/pistol to me is kind of a pve thing and the matching thing comes up again for p/p.

Just curious as to what others think.

I need some gold lol. I was checking out ascended back pieces and I’d love to have the quiver but the 250 powerful blood is pricey. Even if I farmed it I estimated it at about 75 gold since they go for a minimum of 30s on tp. Between that and the human t3 I want( currently running t2), I’m stumped on where to start lol.

So I keep trying to alt, but I’m not an alt guy. I feel like my thief is me, it’s what I like. But I like dungeons too. I’d really like to try and get into te 20 and 30 fractals and I’m sure it’s possible with a thief, just I feel like I bring nothing

I open up my skill slots and I look at what I got. I usually em up running shadow refugee (my one skill I think I bring to the team, I’m like a super medic), signet of shadows for speed and the blind and signet of agility I think? The one with precision and condition removal. Oh I seem to use dagger storm most the time

I look at the others and kind f go meh. Smoke screen has its spots. Scorpion wire would be awesome if it had a smidgen more range.

I just feel so selfish. I’ve tried some support type buiks and run stuff like the traits that gives my teammates regen when I stealth them and the swiftness might one from the trickery line.

I’ve been making a mes just to maybe get a feel of group support. I look at the skills they have and I can see the purposes and the possibilities.

I know ill probably end up playing my thief after an hour of my mesmer a night but I always have not too much problem in dungeons with him. Well lately I’ve been sucking but that’s just me getting too bored and just clicking and doing rotations and just aggroing everything at once for more of a change lol.

Maybe when I get this mesmer in ill feel the same way. Just feels like I’m missing something.

So after building my thief up and usually I find myself so busy with guild bounties, doing dungeons with guildies, map clearing, fractals, wvw and pvp. I usually lose track of time.

I started making an alt to just enjoy the story and try to take in everything. So I’m walking into lions arch and right by the mystic forge, there’s a guild keg, a guild banquet table( don’t know how they got those, pretty cool), a bonfire and a couple super fun boxes and some firework machines out. It was like a little party.

Made me stop and smile actually. Sometimes I forget were all playing together for fun. Just thought I’d share a happy experience lol.

I’ve finally started really working on an alt and getting into it. I built my thief to 80 with lots of enjoyment. But like other posters said, most the game really starts at 80. The game is more build around play style and builds and gear and leveling is this thing that’s kind of in the way lol

I went through my thief and kind of payed little attention to my story. This time though with my alt. I’m taking in the story, I’m taking in all the vistas and just trying to check out all the details in the map. Ill get to 80 when I get there I guess.

I’ve heard before on here about how they thought of having no levels but figured it’d probably shake the mmorpg community too much.

I do agree however that levelin can be a pain since it usually revolves around clearing te same maps you’ve done before. My suggestion is to just try and let it all sink in. I’m not much of a story guy but I’m finding that tryin to let it sink in is making for a fun game.

I think te above poster is right. Have to check. Got my first ascended ring last night and I think it was berserk top half and beryl bottom half. Have to check tonight. Definitely had crit damage and vitality in the mix.

Not to be " that guy" but it does sound you’ve got good money’s worth out of the game. Come back in a bit and see what new.

On a side note, everyone seems to get this feeling of entitlement like this is their game. It’s Anets game and we all purchased a licence to use this software. What they do with it is there’s and no matter how much you all think they screw you over, it’s their game and I’m sure they have the numbers and reasoning to design the game as they see fit to fit the majority of gamers.

And I would like to say, hey developers, great game. I couldn’t imagine having to read these forums. Imagine if you had 1000 people callin yiu out at work all day sayin yiu suck and did a horrible job.

I can see an expansion having an increase to 100 but an update to 100? What purpose would a level update have anyways. The game scales yiu accordingly so let’s say we’re all now 100, we go to an old dungeon and now were downscaled to 80. I just don’t see any reason for this game ever. This game focuses more around builds and play style. Leveling is this part that’s in the way of that all and increasing the level cap would do nothing or prove nothing positive. I’ve yet to hear why increasing the level cap would have any positive features at all?

I ran one the other day with a guildies level 32 guard and just last night with a level 34 ranger. I think they were level 6 and 9 fractals. Didn’t see any issues or any restraints on capabilities. I probably wouldn’t want something lower then 30 in my group just because you haven’t unlocked all your skill slots. That and maybe do some tweaking to find a build that works with what skills you have unlocked. I know that would be the biggest drag is a poor selection of skills that work together with the traits yiu have available. Other then that anything below level 10 I find easy. I’m working on the level 10 and up stuff now but with no agony resistance, my thief hates it lol