Guild Wars 2

oversoul soldier.1742:

Zerker isn’t really going to work for P/D. The only skill on the bar that may benefit from zerk gear is CnD, everything else is really condition heavy. Yep P/D is really only viable as a condition set maybe could work as a hybrid set too with celestial gear but Zerk is not really optimal. The 2/0/6/0/6 build with perplexity is what I’ve seen rolled quite a bit. It’s cheese and people will hate you, but whatever. People also play as warriors, so fight cheese with cheese I guess.

Sorry but this is just wrong. P/D can be played very well in berserker gear, and has the benefit of doing good damage from range. The second part of Shadow Strike (#3) hits quite hard, as does sneak attack. Additionally, the conditions don’t do much damage in berserker gear, but it is noticeable. Lastly, the sneak attack can be used very effectively by shooting through shadow refuge to combo and cause life leech, giving it a large burst potential.

A lot of people only see P/D as a condition set, which works to your advantage when you burst them down. The playstyle is very similar, and you can even try the standard 2/0/6/0/6 condi trait setup (switch uncatchable to thrill of the crime) with air and fire sigils to make up for the burst you lack for being in shadow arts.

Cheers

Beauty vid, keep em coming!

The great thing about P/D is that it can be used as both a power and condition set. Used as a condition set, you mainly do not swap to different weapons so it lacks a bit of diversity there. As a power set it can be used quite well with many other weapons, I personally prefer a S/D – P/D combo, which gives you melee and ranged abilities. I’ve got hardly any experience with P/P so I can’t help you there.

This is an incredibly pointless thread, and I’m questioning why I’m even posting in it. Your post has hardly any substantial material, and is has the sole intention of venting your frustration, which makes you sound like a child. Who cares if you find P/D to be an easy play style, honestly for 1v1 situations it is. It may surprise you, but PvP is not balanced around 1v1’s, and the effectiveness of a P/D thief diminishes in larger fights, because of its slow kill time and single target effectiveness. P/D has a easy entry skill level, but just like every weapon set, it has a high skill cap.

You then start to argue against yourself by pointing out that it is a virtually useless build outside of hotjoin. Great! That means it has no effect in competitive matches. Hotjoin exists for new pvp players and to try out new builds, obviously a weapon set with a relatively easy entry skill level will be abundant in hotjoins.

Also your point on the resetting abilities of a P/D thief being greater than any other weapon set’s is illogical. It has the same abilities of any offhand dagger thief to access stealth. D/P has a much easier time accessing stealth, and does not require an opponent.

Because of the limit of 25 stacks per condition, once there are a few condition classes fighting the same enemy, the DPS they can provide is essentially capped. Condition classes are fine for solo or small group PvE content.

One guy was ranting at me for killing him in WvW, but the most memorable thing he said out of all his messages, was that I was a true thief at heart, and that the way I play in game, by cheating people with stealth and teleports, is how I act in real life.

Honestly, I almost took it as a compliment, he must have put a lot of effort into that one.

Above is an overall good build, though I would recommend switching thrill of the crime for uncatchable (adds bleeds) or longreach (improves the use of steal). Also, this build doesn’t have the best condition damage, so you can put the sigil of corruption on the shortbow and replace it with a sigil of bursting for 6% more condi damage. Other runes you can try out are perplexity, balthazar, and afflicted. I recommend tweaking each build you come across to fit your own playstyle, which you can easily do in spvp.

shadowpass.4236:

I hate ppl who run like that Mesmer. “can’t win so ill cya later”… smh

And then they see their teammate approaching and they get a bit more courage to attack you again. Funny how it works eh :p

deepwinter.9015:

Name aside, loved the gameplay.

Thanks … I think haha

mango.9267:

I’ve run this exact build for a couple of months, and, to be fair, it’s pretty cheesy; this is one of the best examples of the condi bunker builds that plague the WvW roaming meta. That said, I don’t fault you for it, since everyone else is running cheese as well, with all the PU mesmers, nike warriors, perplexity engis, dhuumfire necros, etc.

Oh absolutely. I’m not at all discounting how powerful this build is, which usually ends up with it being referred to as cheese. But this is exactly the reason why I don’t include any fights where I’m not outnumbered. Sure I may be running a powerful build, but I’m facing multiple opponents which makes it a much more challenging fight. And you’re right, for all I know when I go into an outnumbered fight, my opponents could be running a build as powerful as mine.

The build is tailored for outnumbered fights, which I find pretty exhilarating. This is the main reason why I use it.

Enjoyed your personality in the commentary. Keep it up man.

LootBag.8142:

Spamming Headshot must be really exhausting! Here, have some more cheeze to regain that lost energy…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umKuvv_d-4o

1. I do not use headshot at all. It is P/D not D/P.
2. That video is two 1v1 fights, one being against an uplevel. All of my fights are outnumbered, I rarely ever use food and I have a mini following me around in stealth.
3. That video is pre-Nerf, even if I could spam interrupts it wouldn’t apply confusion every time.

Overall 0/10 troll attempt.

Volrath.1473:

fun to watch tks! what is you setup btw? build / runes / gear? I feel the appeal to try it out myself

Here you go.
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.3|a.5q.h1n.8.5q.h5.e12.0.e12|5.1q.h1j.0.0.0|1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.0.0.0.0.0.0|1q.62.1q.62.1q.62.1q.62.1q.62.1q.62|a3.0.u46b.0.u67c|30.d|57.5a.5c.5h.0|e

panicbutton.1053:

You have some fancy footwork! Props for sticking with that group, that looks like it was a lot of fun.

Thanks! Having the outnumbered buff all night lead me to being a bit more reckless than usual haha.

P/D Thief Roaming. Enjoy

I was feeling anti-social last night so I recorded a bit of solo outnumbered stuff. Going to be my last video before the 15th patch, and then hopefully I’ll have a couple new interesting builds.

Enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NCfDCOPGnc

Intensity.8964:

I hate to be that guy, but I watched the first 2 clips and although you might start the fight outnumbered, before the fight has been decided you outnumber the opponent. An example would be at the sentry by bay, the second clip in the video.
tl;dr, probably not outnumbered.

Don’t worry, you’re completely right. I included the first clip because we had basically killed most of them until another guy came, and the second clip because it initially was just msandmann and I thinking we were about to go up against 2v5 or so. But in the end of both those fights we did outnumber the opponents. My reasoning is that I still found these clips pretty enjoyable, and I wanted to put something new out relatively fast. If you want purely outnumbered action you can check out my first video.

P.S. – The next three clips in this video are all outnumbered.

Interceptor.2653:

Wait until April 15th before you make any rune decisions.

Agreed, many runes are going to get a major overhaul and probably become more effective as a result.

Xhean.3452:

so, what sigils are you using then

Have to keep a little bit of mystery :p

But if you really want to know just message me in game, though I’m not sure the sigils will work after the 15th patch.

Dat finisher! I had to buy it too cause it goes so well with Quip hahaha.

Oh also nice gameplay :p

Hawkeye.9687:

I always like watching thieves killing people with any spec .
The irony is that after all these nerfs we are a very effective class in a lot of aspects of this game .
Nice video keep up.

Thanks for the support! I find I enjoy watching videos from all classes, not only does it help me understand the builds and classes better, but I’m always impressed by the skill of the player. But my personal favorite are thief videos, I just enjoy the playstyle a lot.

mPascoal.4258:

Let me guess

Full Dire
Perplexity Runes
10/0/30/0/30
Sigil of Energy and the one stack condition damage

kitten I have to try some cheese build soon

Pretty close :p. You’re wrong on the sigils but correct on the armour, runes, and trait lines. Honestly I’ve heard so many specs called cheese, the word has really lost any meaning it once had. I try and include only outnumbered fights, so it tunes down the amount of cheese for the lactose intolerant. P/D before perplexity was definitely powerful, but it’s Achilles’ heel was that it relied so heavily on one condition. The #3 torment addition, as well as perplexity, really changed this. Overall, the build is one of the strongest P/D thief has right now, and as long as I enjoy it, I don’t feel the need to intentionally nerf myself.

Funny I say that though, because I never run with food and most of the time have mini Lord Faren following me around giving out my position in stealth. But that’s more because I’m a cheap kitten , and Lord Faren is my buddy.

What I’m really looking forward to is the April 15th patch. I’m going to spend a lot of time looking at the updated runes, and see if there’s something that could possibly be better than perplexity. Right now my build really lacks condition duration, so if I could get that, but keep the confusion with the new trickery trait, it could open up a lot more different options.

mompen.7952:

I also play P/D atm, but without perplex.

One can always criticise one others gameplay watching a video, and I saw alot of dodges where you really didnt need to. But if you dodged to gain swiftness, thats another story I guess ;-)

Cool vid, keep it up.

Thanks for the tip! Now I need to go through the videos and see where I’ve been making that mistake… I don’t have the swiftness on dodge trait so ya its just poor play by me :p

Hey guys! This is my second video, which features Thief P/D gameplay, both group and solo. It is much shorter than my original video, and has more group play in it.

Hope you all enjoy.

Hey guys! This is my second video, which features P/D gameplay, both group and solo. It is much shorter than my original video, and has more group play in it.

Hope you all enjoy.

Here you go savchris: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.3|a.5q.h1n.8.5q.h5.e12.0.e12|5.1q.h1j.0.0.0|1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.1q.71p.0.0.0.0.0.0|1q.62.1q.62.1q.62.1q.62.1q.62.1q.62|a3.0.u46b.0.u67c|30.d|57.5a.5c.5h.0|e

Thats my main build that you see being played in the video. Something that the build editor wouldn’t let me do, is instead of having a kill stacking sigil on the dagger, I actually have a major sigil of bursting. Since I have a Superior sigil of bursting I can’t put another, but Superior and Major do stack, so its 6% + 5% condition damage. The kill sigil is usually on my shortbow.

My second build uses the same weapons, and sigils, but instead uses carrion armour + trinkets, and 3 afflicted and 3 krait runes on the armour. The traitset is 0/0/30/20/20, with the same traits used in shadow arts, acrobatics uses II and III, and trickery uses III and VII. The whole point of the build is to be a dodging machine, and let the dodging and stealth build up your might stacks. Using the might on dodge food also really helps. The utils are the same, except I use withdraw instead of HiS.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the feedback BFMV. Honestly I think I have Signet of Shadows on for both quality of life, and usefulness. I agree, shadow refuge is probably better, but I am used to the improved run speed and I find without it, a cripple or chill will be extremely effective on you and make it difficult to land a c&d.

But besides the run speed, the signet is most useful when stomping. It can negate the downstate mechanic of a gaurdian, warrior, ranger, necro, and engineer. And I also can use it to negate a basilisk venom, or any other telegraphed heavy hitter, like warrior’s eviscerate. So ya, SR is nice, if not better, but I think SoS is more useful than most think.

Thanks for the replies! And yea Travlane, I think everyone eventually gets negative comments about any build they play, so I tend to just live and let be. In this video I have two builds, 10/0/30/0/30 and 0/0/30/20/20, both are pretty fun.

Hey guys, just a video that I’m putting up, which is a mix of solo and group roaming. I’m bracing myself for all the “p/d thief cheeeze” comments. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjVETLRsC5Q

Hey guys, just a video that I’m putting up, which is a mix of solo and group roaming. I’m bracing myself for all the “p/d thief cheeeze” comments. Enjoy.

eleshazar.6902:

I just love all the people that say “They can’t mass test what it would be like to have so many users connect!”

Well if you worked on any server system you would know that is false. Test environments can indeed be set up to test performance when being massively hammered by requests. And not only that, with a virtual infrastructure, you should have a plan in place to be able to spin up additional machines in the pool behind the load balancer should you notice that your traffic is more than you prepared for.

Now I will admit that I don’t know their environment, so maybe they don’t budget for performance testing, or plan for the redundancy that they need to handle more traffic than they expected, but point is neither do you. All I can say is that the tests are possible so they theoretically could do them, they either don’t, or gasp it isn’t triggered by massive amounts of requests, and is caused by something else entirely that they missed.

Curious, if these virtual environments are able to identically simulate the conditions that a real environment does, why do MMO’s typically perform stress tests with real players before launch? Wouldn’t these be redundant if the simulation already exposed these issues? Or is it possible that a test simulation does not create the same conditions as the real thing?

A thought could be that they underestimated the amount of requests on the server, which isn’t an issue of improper testing.

Darkobra.6439:

Nex.2450:

Shinzan.2908:

For the future I’d suggest testing content before it goes live.

Right, that’s why they had a beta period. Fact is, you cannot fully test the system against thousands of simultaneous users until you actually release it to the public.

Except this is affecting everyone, they’re aware of the issue affecting everyone and fixing it as it affects everyone.

Also, where was the beta for this patch again? You know more than you’re letting on. Spill it.

There was a public announcement letting guilds sign up to participate in the EOTM beta a couple months ago.

Edge of the Mists was in a closed test period started on November and ended at 01/09/2014. There was no NDA upon the test.
- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Edge_of_the_Mists

Shinzan.2908:

For the future I’d suggest testing content before it goes live.

Right, that’s why they had a beta period. Fact is, you cannot fully test the system against thousands of simultaneous users until you actually release it to the public.

Thanks for the reply Spicy,

I agree, the argument that 3 players should be able to beat 9 is not a good argument, the large group only wins because of sheer size rather than skill.

While I want to keep the thread on topic, I will share my opinion for your second half of your post. I don’t feel as if rallying off mobs should be removed, I feel like this happens infrequently enough, and requires the downed to specifically attack the mob instead of a player, as well as punishing the downer if they decide to be reckless and not pay attention to what they hit. Anyways I would like to keep the topic on hard ressing but thanks for your feedback.

When I say hard ressing, I am referring to players resurrecting a defeated player (has been stomped).

The point of this thread is an attempt to change the fact that players can hard res a teammate while they are in combat. This has the negative effect of amplifying the effectiveness of running with a large group, making it harder for the underdog to defeat them. This is a problem for both roaming and zerging, and being a roamer, the problem is quite frustrating.

Ex – facing an outnumbered fight, say 3 vs. 9, the group of 3 will almost never be able to completely win this fight. Throughout the fight, any players that the smaller group successfully stomps, will be resurrected by 1-3 players on their team. This continues until the smaller team eventually gets overwhelmed.

My suggestion, which has been suggested before, is to please only allow hard ressing when the person is out of combat. This way, it still requires the smaller group to ensure that they keep resurrectors in combat, but denies the larger group to spawn back like the heads of a Hydra.

TL;DR – Eliminate the ability to hard res in combat to give the underdog more even ground.

Appreciate all feedback, thanks.

Turamarth.3248:

Warrior was always a popular class in WvW and PvE.

Warrior was always a popular class in WvW zerging and PvE.*

They are now even more popular in both, and in a new category as WvW roamers. Before the plethora of buffs warriors were in a dismal state for roaming (small group combat), and now they have been tipped a bit too far over the scale. Personally I feel like small nerfs to the survivability and near condition immunity are needed, but this could be my bias because I play a condition build.

Stx.4857:

Those things are definitely worth noting, but every spec in any game has little things like that. Things that separate the average or above average from the masters.

What I am talking about is the actual mechanics of the spec and the options available to you. Also the risk vs. reward.

P/D is linear, rarely even makes use of the weapon swap function, and in my opinion is very cheesy. It is a safe build, with much less room for error compared to D/D, S/D, even D/P.

Compare the playstyle of P/D to a thief using S/D and D/P. With the first, you have great survival, steady damage, lots of escapes, but if you can’t kill something, you’re done.

The second thief doesn’t have that issue because he has options available to him, choices to make when playing. He could boon strip or evade with S/D, he could burst with backstab, he can tank melee opponents with black powder, or chase casters with heartseeker or infiltrators strike. He has the tools to setup effective combos with his weapon skills, and either die or profit from it.

Bottom line is, I am not trying to say P/D is completely ineffective, or takes zero skill. What I am saying and what I believe is that P/D is much more forgiving than other thief specs, that it requires less skill to be effective with, and has a lower skill ceiling or has less potential than the other specs. I would define P/D as a one trick pony spec. When you fight one, you know what their plan will be and how they will try to kill you, because they can only do it one way. Positioning and timing is apart of every pvp game, you can’t claim those things as factors when talking about a certain spec.

I definitely agree with some of the points you made, and a lot of this really has to do with opinion and what playstyle suits you best. I agree P/D can be very linear. Hell, before #3 was given torment, I used to run a venom build meaning I literally wasn’t doing much more than 1,5 and activating venoms. In the past few months Anet has really spruced up the abilities of a P/D thief and they have become much more fun to play.

I also agree that P/D rarely swap weapons, and a S/D + D/P setup provides you with many more ways to apply damage. Though, I do not agree that these require any more skill to pull off, nor are they any less forgiving. Any player has to adapt to their opponent, and P/D does as well, but instead of swapping weapons, or using different skills it has more to do with the movement, evading and aggressiveness of how you play.

I don’t really see how you can find P/D as more forgiving than D/P. D/P do have to trait as quite glassy, but the sheer fact is that they can enter stealth nearly guaranteed, and from range. Where as a P/D has to go into melee range, and make sure they land the C&D. Moreover, D/P have a heavy access to blinds, and can negate kiting with #3. As well, they rely on stealth just as much if not more than P/D. In my opinion I rate from least forgiving to most as: P/P, D/D, S/D + P/D, D/P, but this is all just my view of things.

Lastly, this somewhat linear playstyle doesn’t detract from the skill of the build, just the popularity of it. In a sense, it should be easier to counter a linear playstyle build. So it could be argued that playing well with a linear build is more difficult than a non-linear one as it is easier for your opponent to counter you.

Just my two cents though, I enjoy the playstyle, and I think it deserves a bit more credit for playing well than it gets. But I’m not out to convince everyone of it, because honestly I couldn’t care less XD.

Stx.4857:

Would you mind briefly explaining what you mean when you say the ‘skill involved’ with P/D? I am genuinely curious, because to me, it is an extremely simple set. Landing Cloak and Dagger is the only thing I can think of really…

Absolutely, P/D can definitely seem like an extremely simple set, but you have to realize that a lot more goes into the complexity of a build than the amount of weapon skills you press. Nevertheless, with the addition of torment to #3 I am constantly using 1,3, and 5, even though I know Laela doesn’t use it herself. I’ll list a few things that I think require a bit more skill/thought than average play:

- As you stated before C&D is definitely harder to pull off than say the BP + HS combo of a D/P thief. Checking for blinds, aegis, and blocks are something that a skilled player does to ensure it lands. Also, baiting dodge rolls can make them waste their dodges on autoattack vs C&Ds

- When and where to appear from stealth to land your Sneak Attack is pretty important. Good players tend to dodge most of the sneak attack, so being unpredictable about the amount of time you wait until you attack can counter this. Also, attacking from behind the player forces them to swivel their camera to target you.

- For our form of burst (which is hardly saying much) I like doing a sneak attack right beside them, immediately followed by #3 to apply torment, and running back into them to do another C&D + sneak attack.

- Knowing that #3 can save you when you’re rooted and have your stunbreak on cooldown. As long as you aren’t stunned and the opponent is attacking you face on, you can use #3 to break out of the root.

- Using #3 can be excellent for kiting, as well as confusing the enemy. Since it has an almost instant cast, it can be better than #5 in some situations. I love wasting a warriors gap closers by just hitting #3 right when they get to me.

All that said, there are many more little things, those are merely the first that came to mind. It can be really evident to tell the difference between an experienced P/D user and a new, inexperienced one. The experienced one will be unpredictable, and be predicting the enemies moves, while a new one will be relatively easy to lock down. Hope this enlightened you a bit about the weaponset.

PS – I thought I’d add one more, which is extremely situational but I find to be really good. When you use throw gunk on an opponent, and they move off of it, you can go on top of it and use blinding powder to 1. Give yourself and teammates chaos armour and 2. Sneak Attack in the combo field to apply 5 stacks of confusion.

Awesome video.

I, like you, enjoy the P/D weaponset, and can appreciate the skill involved in it. Also have loved the addition of torment to #3, and now the immobilize to #2. While they are all situational, they have added a bit more variety to the set.

I don’t think I’ll contribute to this discussion on the most “cheese” thief build, because its utterly pointless, but I had to laugh at the list of cheese compiled by Frowny.

Anyways, once again good video! Too bad you’re EU, would have loved to do a couple duels.

Look at mah muscles. roar

Lokheit.7943:

I don’t understand how you guys are randomly breaking stealth with throw gunk.

It only breaks stealth if you use it when stealthed (same as any possible attack you use while stealthed), you save it for the next rotation, while waiting for revealed to go you throw it, then CnD and combo through it. The pulsing doesn’t break stealth (like choking gas and caltrops pulsing). If you just can’t wait to push f1f1f1f1f1f1f1f1f1f1 then it’s not the item’s fault. Last Refuge is umpredictable chaotical garbage that can kill you, Throw Gunk gives tactical advantages and only breaks stealth if you (intentionally) use it, like if you hit CnD a second time for example, if you break stealth because you kept attacking it’s your fault, not the skill.

I admit that during the first days many times I used it while stealthed, but it’s just learning that you use it before CnD and that’s all.

Throw gunk does reveal you for each pulse, as it applies a condition and direct damage to enemies standing on it. It seems a lot of people who are posting about this skill, whether for or against, are uneducated in the full effects of it.

PS – I like this skill, not everyone plays a GC thief.

Bud.5617:

Lol let’s set up a duel between your D/D thief and any D/P thief and let’s see how you fare.

Honestly have you not seen the new meta, where every sort of condition is being spammed ad infinitum? This is the catch 22 for any D/D thief, to cleanse condition you need to enter stealth, but to enter stealth you need to first cleanse condition.

Not to mention evade, block, which is easy coz of the short attak range of dagger and slow kitten cast time. Even if you learn to time it and use shadow step to make it more reliable, you lose a lot of sustain, and utility, all for measly 1.5k more damage and an extra init? I think not.

Then there’s lag, which’s completely out of your control. And I have been noticing an increasing amount of that is sPvP with a few occasional rubber banding effect.

Lets realize that not everyone who has offhand dagger plays D/D GC thieves. I play a P/D thief and still beat D/P thieves even though they are a direct counter to P/D.

Firstly, C&D is not the only way to enter stealth, you have utilities and a steal. Plus, you can predict where they are in stealth and C&D off them. Secondly, making the animation faster is in no way going to help you stop the thief from BP + HS stealthing, or land a hit on them in their blind field – you need an interrupt. Thirdly, lag affect all skills, it doesn’t matter the cast time of the skill, it will still occur at a different time than you wanted it to.

PS – Lets stick to the facts and not downplay the damage from C&D. It is much more than 1.5k on a GC thief when it crits (which is more often than not). Hell, even I get 1.5k-2k on my condition thief.

If you admit more practice is needed, then please practice before you try and change a skill. Sure it isn’t the easiest thing to land (god forbid some skill is required!) but with situational awareness and practice you will land C&D reliably. Posts like these that make skills easier to execute just decrease the gap between inexperienced and experienced players. Sure d/p is easier to access stealth but it lacks the extra damage from the C&D (2-4k) and honestly is frowned upon by many.

Knew I had to be wrong about something. Thanks Clockwork!

Zietlogik.6208:

…

Define Counter: to react to something with an opposing opinion or action, or to defend yourself against something.

Nothing you listed counters stealth, they are simply things you can/should do when someone stealths.

Facepalm. That’s exactly what a counter is. The things I stated either prevent access to stealth, or negate the damage that is applied from stealth.

You’re definition of countering stealth is much too limited. Everything I have suggested is a way to react, and defend yourself when a player attempts to stealth or attack from stealth. These tactics are not limited to thieves, as other classes have access to this mechanic.

Endure Pain? Blocks physical damage….thats it, you are still free to be conditioned, pushed, pulled, blinded, knocked down, immobilized, slowed, and basically everything EXCEPT take physical damage…this has nowhere near the utility of stealth.

Stealth drops target, makes the player invisible, and any traited effects take action. It does not protect from anything that you listed that endure pain does not protect from, nor does it protect from physical damage. I am not saying that every utility is exactly on par with stealth, there are ones that are better and ones that are worse.

Also, you made no rebuttal to how stealth DOES cost something, and by “countering” it like I said, the person will lose the opportunity for that stealth, yet still have to pay the cost.

Anyways, it really helps if you try it out yourself by playing a thief. You’ll see that while stealth is very helpful, it is not nearly as overpowered as you make it out to be. And if you have already played a thief thoroughly than I guess we shall agree to disagree.

I’m really surprised about the amount of people that state there is no counter to stealth, or that it comes at no cost.

Weapon Skills

C&D: Not the easiest to land, comes at a high cost of initiative, and the thief has to come into melee range. Dodging, blinds, distortion, invulnerability, aegis, cc’s and teleports all counter this skill from landing.

BP + HS: Comes at a massive initiative cost but is easier to pull off than C&D because it requires no target. Can be countered by interrupts, and push/pulls, leaving the thief with next to no initiative.

Utilities

Most stealth providing utilities cannot be countered easily. This is like any profession’s utilities, a warrior’s endure pain cannot be countered, and an engineer’s invulnerability cannot either. Shadow refuge can still be countered by using a push or pull in the field, or laying down multiple aoe’s. All utilities come at a cost, which is using a space on your limited bar.

Countering stealth in general

The best, yet hardest way to counter stealth is to predict the opponents movements while they are in stealth. The thief usually has 3-4 seconds to make an attack from stealth, so predict when they will attack by their distance from you when entering stealth. A well timed dodge or block will waste their attack, then they will have limited time or they will be revealed, and then you attack them.

I find it funny that people complain that they can’t track a thief in stealth; that seems like it would completely defeat the point of stealth wouldn’t it? Predicting a player’s movements isn’t the easiest thing to do, but it’s definitely possible, and is a skill that is acquired after familiarizing yourself with your enemy.

Other simple things are using your auto attack to hit them while in stealth, laying down aoe’s underneath yourself, and popping invulnerability utilities.

Stealth is hardly a free, un-counterable mechanic, and is merely in line with the numerous other survival traits that other classes possess.

I’m more wondering how he even got second place. He scares the kitten outa me.

My thief

/15char

7/10, looks great but a bit too generic.

Here’s mine, made to resemble Dante from Devil May Cry.

Yooo lets do a fight klub tonight ok? Say 8pm EST @ da YB windmill? I know Yb aren’t usually down for dis stuff but like bro… cmon bro.