Yea I agree with you. Hope it opens up new styles as well. I’ve been playing the game for awhile and haven’t seen many thieves take advantage of smoke screen, this is my first example. Fun facts… Cluster bomb and smoke screen stacks stealth up to 10 seconds (master of deception, downtime is only 24 seconds!!!!), heart seeker and smoke screen hits mob and puts you in stealth, dancing dagger and smoke screen hits up to 4 mobs and gives 100%!!! Again 100% blinding to all mobs it hits, other moves are 20%!!!! Also shadow refuge is a fun combo with a lot of moves as well, especially “area blindness” with cluster bomb, dagger storm elite combined with smoke screen gives 100% AOE blindness to all Also cluster bomb creates boons with other people’s combo fields.. I mean, the list goes on. One of my favorites are the fire fields that give area might.. spam that and enjoy your 20 stacks of might instantly. I really don’t hear people talk about this stuff… Maybe the good thieves keep this on the down low, not sure…
With a stealth build and certain skills you can stealth yourself for longer than 10 seconds as stated above. No, I don’t believe this will be good because its basically slapping easy mode on the stealth skill. I enjoy the way stealth is right now in the game and its mechanics
As advised in the title. I seriously don’t believe the patch broke the job. Yea It does suck that stealth doesn’t break aggro like how it used to, just gotta change up your play style a bit. I mean, if you are running a stealth build, there are many ways to stealth yourself for long periods, long enough that you can get away from the mob or long enough for someone else to take aggro. The way I see it is that you can’t be a Zerg thief anymore, gotta plan your bursts and play smarter.
I’m also reading that thieves are no good in dungeons. Hmmm, I’m usually a great help in dungeons and sometimes thanked by my party members. I always hear this and that about stealth, attack power, etc but not one is talking about combo fields. I haven’t really played around with other jobs much but as a thief I abuse the hell out of combo fields. Thieves have a lot of skills that compliment fields and also moves of their own to combo by themselves. The fields help the party so much as well, especially in fractals and dungeons. So no, I don’t believe thieves are useless in dungeons at all.
If you open with Cloak and Dagger and use back stab you will get the revealed debuff. If you keep going into your full auto attack chain (one rotation) and after the last skill finishes you recast Cloak and Dagger it will land the stealth RIGHT at the end of the revealed debuff.
Using the above will maximize your DPS to its fullest when using the D/D spec. When I was leveling I would throw down an ambush trap when standing beside my target then start the Cloak and Dagger chain. The stealth would cause my pocket thief to take the damage and I would be able to just unload on my target.
Hope this helps
Thanks Professor!! I definitely need to check out that debuff. I didn’t know after cloak and dagger that you get the revealed debuff, I have to confirm later on when I play. I could swear playing that I didnt notice it buy ill pay extra attention to it. Naphack said the same thing so I guess I better check that out & thanks for the tip! Just started playing 2 weeks ago and I enjoy it.
Also just to add.. it works fine while im running around spamming skills. The only problem I run into is only during battle that it sometimes fails to activate.
(did a huge, “IMMUNE!” pop up when you attempted to stealth)
Actually, I remember seeing that “sometimes”. I’ll try again later today to keep a eye out on the debuffs. I was curious about this so I tried it with different mobs and also in dungeons. It happened too frequently and im sure I’m not that blind to miss the multiple IMMUNE pop ups though. The fastest way I usually tested to see what was wrong with stealth was fighting mobs while using action skills cloak and dagger, waiting 2 seconds then doing a steal for stealth and it just steals, no stealth. The steal +stealth works fine as a battle opener or say if im running away and need a quick stealth.
Not going to lie though, sometimes right after cloak and dagger + attack, I use blinding powder to restealth again but it doesnt stealth (sometimes I even follow up with a steal/stealth), thats why I thought it was some kind of cooldown.
I tried to find a topic about this but I have 4 stealth abilities with my thief. Steal (w/ 2 sec stealth trait), hidden assassin (health skill), Blinding Powder (utility skill) & ofcourse cloak and dagger weapon skill. While playing PvE, I cycle through these skills to take advantage of the backstab, I try to cycle through every 5 sec. With that said, sometimes the stealth activates and sometimes it doesn’t, it gives the animation but no stealth. Bug or stealth cooldown?
