im doin sPvP mostly with S/D , 0/30/20/0/20 the main purpose isnt the damage, but for crowd controls. It does descent damage with good control , esp the daze, i love dazing peeps with Tactical Strike. S/D #3 is very good when you are fighting in a crowd, because it does an evasive-descent-damage + boon strip, but yes, the animation is a bit ridiculous, but if you already got the grip, #3 helps alot.
I find that , that my personal build for leveling is quite useful (although i used it while doing map completition, still i think it ll be usefull for PvE leveling)
The main idea is to survive while you tank many mobs with healing while you re attacking. You must never hit your Signet of Malice hotkey, you must spam Death Blossom as much as you can because you will heal a very descent hp, if you run out of initiative, dodge all the way, if your endurance is empty, hit Signet of Agility and Steal for Vigor from Bountiful Theft ( Trickery VII ) , when you feel in a deep danger, hit your Dagger Storm and kite your mobs , the more mob you engage, the more hp you recover, in my experience, Dagger Storm will heal you until full health lol.
Hope it helps, critiques and thoghts are very welcome
The problem is, if it procs mid-swing, you will instantly leave stealth, triggering revealed for 4 seconds. Remember, you were on 25%? Oops, so you needed that stealth to survive?
Best if it procs in the mid of a CnD animation
Haha yes i understand the deffect, i remember experienced that silly moments when last refuge proced and iam at mid-swing and revealed pops out, then i died. Then yeah, ill agree that this trait is kinda broken, need a bit tweak
Theif doesn’t need anything but a tone down in damage and increase the debuff so you can’t go back into stealth.
Thieves’ damage is normal, Backstab only hits 1,5k-ish , what makes it big is just the damage modifier such as might stacks ,utilities, traits crit damage , etc. Nothing to be toned down. IMO , i think Thieves with no stealth=dead , except you play ranged weapon , dodge Thieves still a no-go for me (on WvW / sPvP) , especially in 1vX fights, in PvE it will do well enough.
As far as i remember , last refuge saved my kitten a bit much, dont know why if its bugging you guys, yeah but maybe not that much. If you guys think that <25% hp – defensive-skill-proc is useless, try to look at Runes of Vampirism’s #6 benefit ,which turns you into a mist when you fell below 10% hp, which is 1.) You’d die before it procs or 2.) It proc, but you’d die because of condi damage, which is a pain in the kitten while having 10%hp, or less. But all around, last refuge DID save my kitten a bit much , and still i think, if the devs plan to change that trait, ill still agree.
Basilisk venom sharing is quite useful in dungeons, you can stun boss for +3sec, which is can dish out more survivability for your party, i will probably sacrifice my dps trait for venom share + leeching venom trait , for being a semi-support thief in dungeons. Because, anyway, thief’s dps is quite unreliable in dungeons IMO , because we have to use S/x ‘s hard cleave or backstab/HS spamming, which is melee, which is Thieves’ are too squishy to fight boss head on lol
The problem is that the Thief isn’t an assassin by default, more of a duelist actually, I’d prefer having more creative ways to fight and adapt rather than a set of weapons that give you the opportunity to clone whatever assassin or ninja you’re drooling at.
No its not, but when you re a thief, you can be a duelist, trapper, assassin, ninja , archer, rogue, or everything any medium-armor class on what all mmo games could have. I believe why ANet pick a word “Thief” instead of “Assassin”, is to widen the play style of any gamer could want , if you re a ninja, your playstyle would be narrowed, its abit ridiculous if a ninja uses a pistol and pew pew pew in revealed manner when , imo, ninja should be 80% cloaked in shadow , unrevealed by enemy’s eyes.
1. Im Sylvarian thief atm, for character model i think human still get a better look, then Sylvari, 3rd ill pick Asura. Because you can make your Asura a full pitch-black skin + white/golden shining eyes, which is a potent coolness. But now, if theres some race change feature, ill change to Asura and make my pitch-black assassin
The main problem i see clearly is the idea of dual-wielding in gw2, while you reholding weapon on each hand but still attacking with only 1 hand ~__~ D/D still a bit tolerable , but when it comes to S/S , like when you have 2 relatively big weapons in each hand, but you re attaking with only your main hand, your off hand is dead except you trigger your offhand skills, but still it looks lacking of something, youre still auto-attacking with only your main hand. Dual Claws/Katars too, its a bit ridiculous that youre attacking with only 1 hand whilst the weapon has assassin-dual-speed-slashing theme.
At least, ANet should make #1 wep skill a dual wield attack animation too, which is weaponset-unique-wise , like if you’re on D/D your #1 D/D will be dual dagger attacking,if you’re S/D your #1 will be a combo chainof Sword slashing and Dagger stabing or else…
For the gear set, i think valk armors+full zerk acc is the most reliable dps gear for thief (non cond-damage) . And atm i run 0/30/30/0/10 , with Sigil of Rage + force , because i think quickness is a very powerfull buff for Sword , with a very high cleaving damage.
Oh yeah, i frequently saw many people said that Sword only deals descent damage, i think its totally wrong, well compared to GC backstab that can deal 10k damage, but with 30 Crit trait IX(executioner) , full chain #1 can deal massively 8k damage, and its still modifyable , with Rune of Infiltration or Rune of the Thief. Even Infiltrator’s Strike+Flanking Strike can deal a massive damage nearly equal to Back Stab
I don’t really see quickness as a problem. Probably because i’m playing the classes with teleports ( ele, thief, mesmer), but a simple stunbreaker will totally void all those “haste spammers” efforts.
The only thing the sword needs is a good redesign of FS, nothing more.
Agreed. Even if the opponent is standing still, or moving, FS is a total random strike. The animation mechanism is broken to the core , when i hit #3 , FS sending me to nowhere
Weapon swaping triggers Skill slot swap maybe, to improve tactical playing. Like when i use my main weapon set the slot skills are A, B and C then i swap to my second weapon set and my slot skills swapped to D,E and F
Gain 2 initiatives when using skill that stealths you
Then when i use CnD (it costs 6 init) , it should be lowered to 4 initiative isnt it? well it happens like that (lowered init cost) but sometimes it costs normal 6init. Dont know that its a bug, or did i miss something?
yes it happens frequently to me, it bugs me especially when trying to escape, my point of view kinda disoriented and confused about which direction should i go lol
So, people are super frustrated because thieves can constantly reapply stealth, making them hard to pin down, even if they’re nearby because you have no way to tell where they went.
So what is the point of stealthing then if i stealth and everybody knows where i am? Seriously , if you ever play thief then the only saving-your kitten stealth skill is Shadow Refuge. CnD ’s Stealth only give total of 4sec Stealth in maximum, its if the thief isnt immobilized or whatsoever control applied.
This video gives me a fresh prespective to play Thief that i lacking off. But i find 2 core problem to play like the way you play, it needs a good latency and at least descent fps. It really hard to land CnD while i get a BIT lag and a BIT fps drops , it cause my target like blinking everywhere lol. But so far , this is my best reference of my Thief’s playstyle
If IS is bugged it needs to be fixed (I haven’t plaid s/d in a long time nor tested this though). I don’t see why that’s even up for debate…
@Noktern… FS can save your hide. It’s great for evading when you’re out of endurance. It’s great for ripping off protection/fury/stacks of might. The 2nd hit of it does the same damage as C&D so make sure it does that 2nd hit. It’s not something you spam though.
for evading purpose, yes. but for ripping off boon, its quite a much failure because of the animation isnt it? its like random accuracy. Its not spammable i understand, but its not reliable either. Out Of Topic btw.. sorry
i think IS doesnt need any SR range fixing, bcos SR cant gain altitude, SR is stopped if u re infront of something (like, u cant SR to ur exact save point) , even i think the IS initial blink range is quite short, well IS is very usefull for chasing but, with 600 range i rarely hit my target (or its me who is a noob thief anyway) .
And im gonna mention Flanking Strike that ive never hit the button for wvw battles..
^^ any thoughts about FS ?
when i tried it, it was a mess… it only worked if there was nothing between me and marked foe. A tree = stop. A corner = stop …
i don’t even think we can find 10,000 units of plain terrain.
It could be one of the most funny and tactical skills ever, but it has to work properly.
Moreover, since 10000 is a lot, a distance tracker should be glad.
seems like everyone experiencing this bad lag in recent few days. I tried win+r to ping gw2 server and i got 200-300~ms , but in game i find it different, the lag is unbearable. Then i try to browse some sites and they are able to load flawlessly , so it supposed to be server lag instead of my connection. please ANet , consider this problem. I really can do nothing with this lag, no dungeons, no wvw , not even map completition!
when im trying to kill >4 mobs, i use short bow and kite all of them by spamming Cluster Bombs and poison AoE , and i could kill them with >50% health pool still up. maybe it helps inspiring how to mob as a thief. And i able to mob with S/D spec, with a lot of dodge via evasion an combined skill (flanking strike) , but its much effecitive with SB as your weapon
