Guild Wars 2

You have an additional layer of cooldowns to manage, and much of your strength comes from combos.

Add to that the low HP/ Armor, and you have a class with more button pushing, more opportunities for error and less room to recover from mistakes.

Venomous Aura appears to ruin all venom skills from a balance perspective.

The class mechanic is the issue. For most classes, the mechanic is an additional ability. For elementalists, the mechanic is primarily a limit on their other abilities in the form of an additional cooldown to manage. Even after the 12/10 patch, speccing to reduce that cooldown remains critical to most builds.

Mosharn.8357:

im not saying thieves are hard to kill or anything..

So… you’re saying thieves are not hard to kill, yet it annoys you that some of them manage to delay death or even flee.

Clearly, this is a matter requiring urgent attention.

Mosharn.8357:

spamable. It costs 4 init

Criticizing a weapon skill as ‘spammable’ simply describes how the class mechanics are designed. Thieves are limited by initative, not cooldowns. Four initiative is not trivial.

If a thief does blow all his initiative by ‘spamming’ SB3 three or four times, he now has no initiative, and therefore has access to no weapon skills other than auto-attack. Initiative does not regenerate as quickly in the game as it does in your imagination. Also note that every thief initiative regen trait was nerfed on 12/10.

frans.8092:

For full berserker ascended gear hits about 30% harder then exotic gear (not a sliver in my opinion).

It’s not a sliver when you’re talking about the full set, including weapons and trinkets. The OP asked about armor.

In which case, it’s not even a big sliver. Other than those running high-end fractals, most people would probably be better off getting their ascended weapons and trinkets, then selling whatever bolts of damask they can make. The armor is very little bang for a whole lot of bucks.

Staff is generally considered the worst weapon set for solo. It’s excellent in groups, a remarkably effective weapon when used properly for support, AoE and spamming water/ fire fields. But it’s not meant for overland PvE solo.

You can make any weapon work in PvE solo, if you work at it hard enough and learn how it works. But you’ll have an easier time soloing with a scepter or dagger mainhand.

D/D is far better as a power/ precision set. Deathblossom just isn’t that good. If you want to run condition, then pistol mainhand is the best choice.

For leveling, give Sword/ Pistol a try (again, in a power-based build). It makes most solo PvE fights trivial. Start with 30 points in Critical Arts (for Executioner), and the others can go anywhere you like for leveling up.

Make an Ascended set for the build that is most important to you, the one for which a tiny sliver of stats and a little bit of extra defense might make a difference. If you do Fractals, the build you use there is probably the best choice.

Keep exotic sets for your other builds. And keep using those builds when appropriate. Ascended armor is not much better than exotic, and having the appropriate build/ gear for each situation is more important than 5% more armor.

Don’t let the pink lock you in

Because there’s no character progression.

If I wanted to play a straight fighting game, there are plenty of them to choose from. When I play an MMO, I expect long-term character and gear progression. If I want to play a MOBA or an FPS, I’ll go do that.

When I do PvP (and I engage in PvP in every MMO I play), I prefer open-world battles rather than e-sports. WvW is fairly well done in GW2, so that’s where I play.

Dee Jay.2460:

So really the benefits of Traveler Runes only apply to a very small niche or if people are too lazy to switch out Signet of Shadows before a fight.

And zerging with your thief is only for people too lazy to switch to an alt I use my staff elementalist or guardian for zergs. The thief is for solo/ duo roaming.

In all seriousness, though, you can only state the following as definitive:

- For any power build, Scholar Runes are probably the highest DPS (even if you lose the buff fairly often, you have plenty of access to healing through SA). Ruby Orbs are close.

- Everything else is less DPS, but provides some additional useful utility. You can get movement speed, help dealing with conditions, super-buffs (Lyssa + Basilisk is nice), additional survivability. Even a parrot, yarr!

You can’t really say whether X% more DPS is ‘better’ than the various other benefits. It’s all a matter of preference, playstyle and context. All you can do is explain the tradeoffs so people can pick what they want.

Dagger Mainhand is almost always a power build. Pistol mainhand is the thief’s condition weapon.

I prefer Traveler Runes for a Dagger thief in WvW. Thieves are roamers, and a roamer without constant speed enhancement will accomplish less and die more. Moreover, the stats on these runes are all useful. Not perfect — that would be Scholar Runes — but useful at least.

You can choose to run the signet instead, but utility slots are important. I wouldn’t give up Blinding Powder for the marginal damage increase I would get from Scholar Runes. I wouldn’t give up Shadow Step or Shadow Refuge for anything

The speed increase while stealthed is slightly helpful in catching targets for a backstab, but it does nothing for your overland speed. There are better uses for that trait point.

This is perhaps the thief’s biggest weakness. And I hate to say it, but perhaps it should stay that way. For the class to be interesting and distinct from warriors, I’d prefer the Devs build upon our more ‘thiefly’ means of survival (stealth, evades and in-combat mobility).

Anierna.6918:

Stand The Wall.6987:

I am not reading this because the grammar is atrocious.

Ditto. I didn’t read it.

However, I’ll say something on the topic anyway. I normally play s/d fresh air burst for PvP, but after the Dec 10th patch, I changed to bunker-condi.

d/d, 0/0/30/20/20, settlers amulet, 6x undeads, doom/accuracy sigils. Earth: V, VII, XI; Water: III, V; Arcana: II, XIII. I’ve found it’s stronger than the burst ele I used previously.

I’d be interested in hearing more about this, as my impression was the elementalists can’t easily produce the variety of conditions needed to kill folks. Though this particular thread is perhaps not the best place to post anything useful

Sanduskel.1850:

Anet needs to redesign stealth completely. the ability to steath during combat is a terrible design principle and it causes infinite rage in wvw. I am tired of being spam emoted, etc because players rightfully hate how stealth was done in this game. If you want anything to be improved for thieves, plead with anet to overhaul stealth. It’s a broken mechanice that allows abuse and encourages hatred for our class. With balanced stealth, other improvements can be made to make this class more enjoyable.

You should probably stop playing this class, then. It’s unlikely that Anet will redesign the core mechanic from the ground up to please you.

That’s a hypothetical — I don’t think there are three people in this forum who believe your main is a thief. I say “three” because I’ll give you your own vote and Burnfall’s.

Elm.8169:

The thing is, to fully utilize this style in GW2, you are going to need some ridonculous amount of knowledge on all the classes.

In every (good) PvP game I have played, that is what ultimately separates good players from great ones. You’re right, it’s a tremendous amount of work. More than I have time for

Dee Jay.2460:

Aren’t these video all the same? Chain Cloak and Dagger until enemy makes a mistake or has blow their CDs.

I think you missed most of the interesting bits in his videos. Certainly, every D/D thief understands the basic flow is CnD, and time your burst. The reason Yishis’ videos are so useful for learning the class is because he demonstrates and explains best practices for the balance of the decisions you must make:

- Which target do I attack first, in a group setting?
- Whom should I prioritize for steal?
- How do I separate one or two targets from the herd, and where should I fight them?
- When do I use my utilities, vs when do I preserve them?
- When is it time to burst someone down, vs when should I continue to bide my time?

Perhaps all this stuff is second-nature to you, and maybe you have the same situational awareness he does. I’m sure there are other people playing thieves this well. Most of them don’t film and narrate such useful tutorials, though

I like steal — it’s always useful as a gap-closer, and good players make excellent use of it. Look at one of Yishis videos for examples.

Also, be glad we don’t have the elementalist mechanic. Theirs is just an additional layer of cooldowns to manage.

Illusions.3108:

I am stacking toughness to defend against this crap and still am getting dropped faster than i can even counter it. Unless i am doing something wrong…

Unless you’re a tanky heavy-armor class, you can’t rely on stackings stats as your primary defense. You need to use your active defenses properly. Push the right buttons at the right time, and all that

I like the build, but I just find it impossible not to run 30 SA. Heck, I’d run 40 SA if I could, as you get 1) Easy condition removal, 2) AoE blind, 3) Perma Regen, 4) Decent Healing while stealthed or.. other good stuff. Note, my focus is WvW and overland PvE.

The SA traits are just too good

You’re running a build similar to mine, which is also an alt designed primarily for WvW. I moved the 20 points you have in Fire into Air. Bolt to the Heart nets nearly as much damage as Internal Fire, as it applies regardless of current attunement. In addition, that allows you to use Inscription. This is a fantastic trait for anyone who likes GoEH, allowing permaswiftness and other on-demand buffs.

For reference, here is my build:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImkbzR4QlDAkHocCLCFWQRRxOzA-jEDBYfAYLIkFAUBIpPKrJQCilhhtkKIVXRTZDTdiIq2bgIqWKA9EGB-w

I am very happy with it, though I am also not an expert on this class. Teefs are my thing

Depths.4051:

Then stay stealthed or whatever, it’s not an anti stealth trap it’s a trap that would stop you from running away and resetting. like a forced arena.

Post 12/10, thieves have access to one long-duration stealth. It’s a utility, Shadow Refuge. It has a 60-second cooldown, and any player of any class can counter it if he knows what to look for.

Figure this one out, find which buttons in your build make him go slow(cripple or chill), find a button that makes you go fast (swiftness), and… poof, you now have a reasonable chance, gear and player skill being equal.

Consider one of the most important lessons that several thousand years of military history have taught our species: Speed is a really big deal.

Depths.4051:

Lol, so I should roll a certain class just to combat this?

No, you should realize that rock-paper-scissors applies. If you choose not to build for mobility, people who do will outrun you and thereby escape. Note, every class that isn’t a necro can build to be just as speedy as most thieves. For some, it’s quite easy.

If you choose a class/ build combination that is not especially fast, you have presumably built your character to be good at something else. You made a tradeoff. So did the thief player, when he rolled a class with the lowest possible HP, no block, no stability, no protection, no aegis, minimal group support and mediocre AoE.

“Lol”

Depths.4051:

Lots of people in wvw don’t see it this way

Some classes can build to match or exceed thief mobility. Some cannot. These are class-defining characteristics, just like armor, hit points, access to certain buffs, etc. If you don’t build for mobility, don’t expect to outrun classes that do. You can keep a thief in combat just by keeping up.

If you’re sick of thieves fleeing, build yourself a hyper-mobile warrior or elementalist, and add at least one AoE skill to screw up their Shadow Refuge. That evens the race up considerably.

Sneaky.9713:

What’s the best site for leveing guides and class guides?

Leveling is straightforward: Do quests and dynamic events in any zone your level or lower. Try to complete zones, including all vistas, for additional rewards. You can also do zones a bit higher. WvW also works. Grinding critters is not fast or efficient. Also, make sure to do your Daily every day. Those laurels will make a real difference when you hit 80.

For your first character, I would ignore crafting. It’s a gold sink, and you can level it up rapidly later on.

For class guides, this forum is a solid resource — just go back through the past few pages and you’ll find many posts laying out different builds. The leveling build you have chosen for now, sword/ pistol, is probably the easiest way to progress due to the AoE blind on 5. Eventually, you will want to try other styles to see which you enjoy. I recommend hitting Youtube and checking out vids by “Yishis” and “Laela Blackbird,” which will demonstrate two of the most popular WvW builds (D/D and P/D, respectively).

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum is also a good site, though not as active as this.

Finally, get Signet of Shadows as soon as you can. The movement speed is a big help.

Thieves have no access to Protection, and Stability comes only with an elite. Add in medium armor and the lowest possible HP, and building a “tank” thief is probably wrong in its inception.

If you want survivability, we can definitely do that. We have tools to avoid damage, and we can build to heal ourselves. But if your plan is to stand out in the open like a heavy, and heal yourself through the carnage, you’ve probably picked the worst possible class.

Elementalists are the only class for which the mechanic is a limit, not a boon. It requires more planning and more button-pressing than any other class’s mechanic. Its primary effect is to add an additional cooldown to weapon skills.

Attunement does have good points, and many enjoy the unique playstyle. But think through the various classes and their mechanics. None are more complicated, and all of the others are about making the best use of a positive resource or ability. For ele’s, it’s primarily about making sure you don’t screw yourself.

Solution: Make Elemental Attunement the 5-pt trait in Arcane Power, and further reduce the base cooldown for switching attunements. Eles will still have to do more planning and press more buttons than any other class, but they’ll get a bit more reward for doing so, and be punished a bit less if the situation surprises them.

The Game Slayer.7632:

and you can’t stop them from running …….. Ill blow all my snares trying to land stuff on the thief, but when i get him low, my snares are all on cd because i used them to deal my damage by keeping him still.

I call that a loss

You can call it an ice-cream cone or a tractor, but most folks are not going to confuse “He ran away” with “He won.”

This notion that thieves are unkillable amazes me. Shadowstep has a 50 second cooldown (that’s also the only stunbreaker most thieves load). Shadow Refuge is 60 seconds. Yes, when all our utilities up, we’re slippery. Every class is more powerful when their cooldowns are up.

When our cooldowns are down, we have the lowest possible HP, medium armor, no protection, no aegis, no blocks, no stability (except an elite). If you find that matchup impossible, then it’s either a rock-scissors issue with how you are specced, or it’s how you are using your own cooldowns.

When playing your elementalist, your weapon skills have chill effects. Most weapon sets also have a short-cooldown immobilize, and some have cripples. You can load signets to immobilize or blind thieves. You have a plethora of ways to stop thieves in their tracks, from range. All of them have a shorter cooldown than the two main tools thieves use to escape. If you choose not to use these tools, the issue is not in the thief class.

If you don’t want to roam, a thief is not the best choice. We absolutely can contribute to zergs, but other classes are better. If you want a more action-based playstyle, in groups/ zergs, take long looks at engineers and elementalists. Both have higher skill requirements than your warrior or necro.

Staff Elementalist, with a balanced build (0/20/0/30/20). He does a bit of everything, and he’s built for medium to large group play. My thief is my main, but on WvW reset nights, I make a bigger contribution with the elementalist.

I also play a healway guardian, as it’s such a tremendous change of pace. You almost never die.

OP makes four points:

- Casters are a dying breed. I see plenty elementalists and mesmers everywhere I look. They’re both excellent classes, though they have their problems. All the light and medium classes have problems

- Power is better than condition damage. Debateable at best, given all the bunker builds in full Dire

- Warriors and Thieves are more mobile than necros. Yep. That’s core to the class designs, as the devs have explicitly stated. Necros are supposed to lack mobility

- Stun Breaks have long cooldowns. I have the same issue with my thief. Some classes can spam stuns more quickly than you can break them. I don’t think this is a necro or thief specific isssue

You have a hard case to make that necros are not powerful, given they they’re core to the current ‘meta.’ I think you’re right that certain things, like the lack of mobility, make them less fun to play, though. That’s why I don’t play mine.

Use a shortbow and learn which fields need blast finishers spammed. You can do a fair bit of AoE healing, for example, if you’re paying attention

Aaroneous.6190:

they become unpunishable… thieves simply have too many “I wanna go home mommy” buttons

It’s clear that you are posting dispassionate, data-based analysis. Right?

Your argument boils down to “thieves can get away easily, and they can never be killed.” The first one is true; the second one is kittenpuppy. If built for mobility, thieves can definitely pick their fights, and can usually scoot away from a bad situation. Keep in mind that running away is not the same as winning. That may frustrate you, but you don’t have some right to ‘punish’ us.

Immortality? Garbage, regardless of what your friend says after playing his alt (now that is some grade-A data collection). Thieves share the lowest base HP in the game with elementalists, wear medium armor and have no access to protection, block or aegis. Stealth, blinds and movement are our only defenses. They’re all active defenses, too, which makes your statement that thieves can just hang out, put forth zero effort then run off if they feel like it especially hilarious. Most builds are really quite fragile, and a well placed stun or immobilize can end the fight.

Should we consider this his official application to be our Mascot?

The big advantage of ascended armor is the defense stat. It’s similar to ascended weapons, where the biggest difference was in damage.

If you’re only looking at power, precision, etc, you’re missing the big picture.

For PvE, the common wisdom is full zerk everywhere to max DPS. In WvW, you generally need to build in some survivability. Valkyrie is one of the few ways to do that without reducing your backstab burst. I have no opinion on PvP.

You can still build up an excellent critical chance, even without Fury.

I like the dude who wants to live in the sewers

I hear he just found another entrance.

Does P/P qualify? I think it should

This doesn’t sound like a poorly programmed NPC so much as a player who didn’t take the time to look at what he was clicking — four times.

That is very impressive. Good planning, good execution.

Thanks for posting. A few comments to think over:

- Valkyrie Armor must be considered for a backstab build with Hidden Killer. You keep the crit damage that Knight’s lacks

- If you are going to mix armor types, where some slots do not have +crit damage, then it’s important to optimize what goes in what slot. Different slots have a higher stat cost for +1% crit damage. Read post #2 by Loperdos here:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84827-thief-armor-berzerker-knights-valkyrie-mix/

- The Shortbow is a fairly incredible offensive weapon. It is not just for utility. If you’re just after overland speed to run away, you’re better off spamming Heartseeker with no target. SB teleport is mostly useful if you know the spots where it will allow you z-axis mobility

- Hidden Thief is pretty cool. But there are so many great traits in SA, you might want to consider an alternative way to gain stealth on steal. From range, start CnD, then immediately steal to the target. You’ll finish CnD when you’re there. CnD’s cast time is not interrupted by the teleport. This is a pretty useful trick for a dagger thief to learn

- Critical Haste has a downside, in that it can mess up your timing of revealed. Once you have played a dagger thief for a while, that timing becomes muscle memory. Haste mucks it up

- Retaliation doesn’t hurt any more on a backstab than it does on an autoattack. It’s not a reflect. Though it always hurts, backstabbing thieves are far less likely to do real harm to themselves than, for example, their unload-spamming P/P brethren

Finally, when most folks post builds, they add a link to the completed version so people can see the whole thing at once (and tinker with it). For example, here is my current WvW build:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmiO3eS+E+5Ex2jeuTiy9wpJtpdFwKA-jEDBYfBCbBkoAksAiIAI9pIaslhFRjVXDTVSpW5KQmzCaeDK1SBonwI-w

Just some things to consider. I fiddle with builds more often than is probably healthy

Elemental Attunement, or some minor version of it, should be a base feature. As it is now, speccing for it is the only way to turn the class feature into a bonus, not just another set of cooldowns to manage.

From a WvW perspective…

D/D power builds are slightly better off than before. D/P builds still work fine, too, if you don’t rely on chaining stealth. P/D condition works very well — if you have never tried it, and you can afford a second set of gear, give it a shot.

Sword mainhand ate a significant nerf. P/P remains a one-trick pony, and probably has less initiative to fuel that trick now.

Shortbow remains awesome and underrated.

Daze/ Burst/ Evade/ Blind is a lot to ask for, and you probably can’t get them all in one build:

- There are two sources of Daze. You can go 30 points in Trickery for a Daze on Steal trait (powerful), or you can go Sword/ Dagger, which has a daze when attacking from behind in stealth

- Burst is mostly D/D, where Cloak and Dagger followed by Backstab provide the big numbers. For even more burst, go 10 in Deadly Arts for Mug. You steal to the target, CnD and Backstab, packing three chunks of damage into a very short period of time. You really need 30 points in Critical Arts for a power/ precision burst spec

- Evade is available, but it requires investment in the Acrobatics tree. 15 points gives you 3 dodges and a bit of vigor. You can also use Withdraw as your heal, which is recommended for most non-stealth specs

- Blind can be achieved several ways, either from sword mainhand attacking from stealth or from a pistol offhand. The latter is very powerful in PvE or for soloing camps in WvW

- None of the above touches the Shadow Arts tree, which is probably our best tree for WvW. That is where our best heals, condition clears and escapability lie, along with easy access to AoE blinds

Thief builds can do all those things you wanted, but not all at once. Unless you are doing a condition build, the basic rule is to start with 30 in Critical Arts, then build the rest according to your goals and weaponsets.

Turn “autotarget” on in options (for this purpose, and only this purpose, obviously), and run around with your shortbow spamming “1” and occasionally tapping the tab key. Bonus points if you have a sigil of fire on your bow.

There are times it will still be too slow, but only Daggerstorm is faster for a thief. Those 50+ person zergs break a lot of encounters. At least you’ll still tag vets and champs

I use it when farming. It’s permaswiftness if you’re running around Orr killing stuff and gathering, for example.

In WvW, that changes to either the fall damage trait (if I have a long way to travel) or the runspeed while stealthed trait. Five points in acrobatics yields a nice array of options.

That warrior vid is hilarious. Does this guy have a whole series of “I stand there and let thieves kill me” lessons?

Does he realize that to win PvP you have to… do stuff?

There’s one Heartseeker in that video. This is a thread about Heartseeker spam.

Also, 1-2-3? I count (traited) Steal, Cloak and Dagger, Backstab, Auto-attack, Auto-attack, Heartseeker… downed. So that’s six actions, during which time the ranger (is that you? ) took four actions:

- He told the pet to attack (melee pets are weak in WvW), which resulted in zero damage

- He tried to fire a ground-targetted AoE. This was countered by the thief’s elite, Basilisk Venom

- He evaded. At this point, he’s already eaten a traited steal, a CND, a backstab and some autoattacks. Against a thief, evade is not the right answer here

- He attacked with what looks like a Swoop. This mistake ends the fight

Against most thieves, you need to have your heal ready and fire it off early. A lot of things happen in many thief specs when the target hits 50% health (the thief probably gains Fury, and he may gain +20% damage, depending on spec). And at 25% health, you’re in deep trouble. You either heal above 25% immediately, or you need to toss up a blind, block or something to prevent the Heartseeker from hitting. You don’t have long to do either.

As I look at that fight, the thief took 50% more actions than the ranger. And everything the ranger did was either useless (melee pet in WvW) or simply incorrect given his situation. So, if the thief pushes more buttons, and the ones you push are the wrong ones, the thief is going to win.

Rangers are also tied with staff elementalists for worst 1v1 class in WvW. Thieves are not the best at it, but they’re top-tier. Moreover, this is a thief built specifically for 1v1 (traited Mug, Basi Venom). That was a mismatch from the start.

Of course, as you look at the fight, the poor ranger did everything right, yet was beaten by an omnipotent, invisible assassin of justice, or whatever.

1v1’s against competent players are hard. Learn, and you get better. Whine, and you won’t. Also… try not playing a ranger, especially not a solo roamer with a melee pet. That’s a recipe for losing most encounters.

Burnfall.9573:

Bazzoong.7145:

HS will never hit for 7k,not even if you have 0 armor and are below the 30% hp treshold, I smell BS in your post.

If it would you`d be dead after 3 hits (plus the auto attacks) that could hardly be called “spam”, I smell more BS.

On a side note: I have been called HS spammer while useing a short bow. Usually people do not even have a clue what kills them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTSlULPN768

That video is from September, 2012. HS was pretty ludicrous at launch, being the one-button-kill-everything skill that vid depicts.

It was severely nerfed. It’s still a good gap close (or opener, if you are trying to flee), but it’s only big damage if the opponent is <25% health.