Guild Wars 2

Blackari.2051:

ofc, it is porting you in the opposite direction of your target, it didnt state it will port you backwards but away from target

Can you spend at least 5 seconds researching before spewing out misinformation?

Directly from the tooltip on the wiki, which takes 5 seconds or fewer to get to, it says, “Shadowstep backward and lose conditions. Poisons foes at your starting location”.

And yes, I checked in game too.

Actually nowhere in the tooltip even states that it grants evasion or list the evasion duration. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out it evaded when I was doing dungeons a couple of years ago.

Pistol-whip your foe, stunning them, then slash repeatedly with your sword.

The wiki states a 1.25s evasion frame. From my experience, it’s basically the start of the sword swinging animation, and ends on the last hit.

Thanks for the jumping tip. It’s better than not jumping, but it can still fail.

However getting “no valid path to target” is a pretty bad “bug” if you can get it when you aren’t even moving. I think losing 6 initiative for something basically uncontrollable and pretty rng (“no valid path” only, most/all shortened teles due to terrains is legit).

But it’s also understandable that anet wouldn’t bother about this since this is kind of rare, and only a major problem in pvp and meh in wvw.

I came back to guild wars 2 recently, and failing sb 5 makes me greatly unhappy. I don’t understand why we can’t have out initiative refunded if the shadowstep fails. I’m not talking about where it only teleports you half way because your arrow clipper the terrain, it’s when you fire an arrow, which the game says is a valid teleport (with a green aoe circle), you use your initiative , and then the game’s like jk, it wasn’t valid.

Here’s an example where I’m trying to shadowstep to a valid location, but it fails.

saerni.2584:

I think on reflection it won’t change anything because people would use multiple fields anyways.

Each field comes with its own daze and it takes multiple fields to stack enough poison anyways. And with the duration increase on poison fewer fields will be required before daze begins to apply.

It will reduce the total number of interrupts but still afford significant aoe daze that will remain relatively spammable. And with the duration increase it will hurt players much more in all situations.

Edit: so I guess I’m arguing this is an “adjustment” more than just a pure nerf. We will see how it plays out in practice.

Don’t think this is true. Try stacking tons of choking gas on a boss and you’ll see the break bar go down as slowly as one choking gas field. I think the “Daze Interval is unique per Choking Gas AoE.” applies to different thieves’ choking gases.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

snip

Thanks, but I’m in NA and probably won’t play GW2 for like another 2 months. DD DB is pretty gimmickly, but it can work really well at times.

The people in PvP are probably even more toxic than those in League of Legends. There was one thief called Glock (with dumb accents everywhere) that I thought was pretty decent (he could beat me 1v1 like 75% of the time), but his team always lost. I would say we faced off eight times in two days.
Late last night, I played a game, and he was on the other team. My team won. Then the next game, he was on my team. Before the game even starts, he tells me, “Use a different kittening build you moron”, and then leaves the game, making it 4v5. The next game after that, I was facing him again, and he lost again. But yeah, the community is kitten in PvP.

Nvm, the amount of 4v5s I get made me quit GW2 again

Hey guys, I’ve been playing some solo Queue with this build, and at the moment it works pretty well (but I’m probably also in wood tier).

Do you guys have any suggestions/improvements on this build, and more importantly, do you think this build will be viable against higher-skilled players?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY4Yl8Mp5plPxtJ0PRBNBxVN8+KfpMaFgOPSfB-TJRAwAAeBAkLD45oA0b/BA

Generic way to approach an enemy- dance your way to the point. Pop caltrops (maybe trap) and db ~2 times. Then keep poking him and db when you think the opponent will do something ouchies. Weapon swap if out of dodges.

Noticeable cons:
No good way to attack someone on point (got to expend a steal or a couple of dodges to get in range).
No range.
Plague signet gives you 20 stacks of bleed.

Noticeable pros:
Physical attacks are comparable to S/D with fire/air.
Enemies are perma-crippled.
You can harass them for about 10 seconds and then run away and leave them to get downed from bleed.
Combo finishers.
Your signet is now a Healing Signet.

So-So:
Dodge->swiftness->HS still gives decent landspeed
Blinding powder can be used as a gap-close, reposition, or for fleeing.

Maybe I should have one sigil be Burning on weapon swap?

I’m pretty sure that depending on the delay, your steal can miss just because someone was running away with swiftness.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

style.6173:

@OP:

There will always be complaints about thiefs. That said, the two biggest PvP specs, S/D and D/P both took a big nerf. I think it is much more likely that you will see fewer teams running a thief in tournament play as time goes on.

Are you kidding? Venom Aura and lite-cleave of dagger AA is something we’ve always wanted. Applying venom to twice as many per stack is godsend.

Yay for ArenaNet for knowing what is good for the Thieves!!!

First, I’m not that good at detecting sarcasm, so if that is sarcasm, then oops.

Venoms don’t work that way. If you auto 3 enemies at once, that venom stack is going to decrease by 3 not just one. You can try it out and see if you can petrify multiple people with basilisk venom.

So I guess that it is agreed upon that attacking someone who is standing in bp while not getting blinded is extremely easy.

EDIT: Just tested it. You can hit someone from 190 units away. Don’t ask me how I found out. (If someone read this before, i kitten kitten ed).

DeceiverX.8361:

But the thing is you CAN. I literally just said this. The radius on BP is 120. Melee attack range is 130 on ALL MELEE WEAPON AUTOS. If you move a mere 10 units kiting inside and maintain the distance, ta-da, you’ve now just become unhittable for the entire duration of BP unless a multi-hit combo is used, in which case, you dodge and laugh at blown cooldowns. I don’t understand how this is hard for you to understand.

Helpful picture of what 10 units is.

Lol jk, you forgot to consider the size of a player’kittenbox.

EDIT: Would have took better pics, but he was the only thief online in my guild and I don’t think he knew how to stop autoattacking.

Where I was initially is where my back feet is. The tooltip says 130 range, that is when your autoattack will “fire”. If you are outside of range 130, you won’t autoattack, but if you press the “1” button, you will be able to hit people further than just 130 range.

Watch it do 0 damage with 0 scaling.

“When in doubt, go for the kitten joke.”
-Robin Williams

evilapprentice.6379:

snippy snip

Thanks for the input. I agree with you and I changed it to mostly what you said. Removed boon removal from cons, but didn’t put it in pros cause it seems on par with the other professions.

Mesmer F1 skills requires: clones. No clone, why the hell did you press F1-F4? Warriors F1 skill requires: adrenaline.

Therefore, if someone dodges a shatter, the clone should…unshatter, right? Cause otherwise they will be losing two resources from one missed skill.

Thief venom: Basilisk Venom: 45 second, one stack of venom. You miss. You lose the venom and it’s on cd. Two resources lost from one missed skill. Totally unfair, right?

Let’s see how spammy these classes are.
For a P/D, you can only spam in quick succession 2, 3, 4 and NOT 5 (Heart seeker , shadow shot, head shot).
Every other profession? They can spam 2,3,4,5 in quick succession.

Long term? Let’s see.

Average initiative cost for an attack is 4 initiative (it’s actually 4.4 initiative, but let’s round it down cause we don’t want thieves to seem underpowered). We regenerate 1 initiative per second. So starting with everything on cool down, that is .25 attacks (not auto attack) per second. 0.227 attacks per second if we use 4.4 initiative. Let’s take greatsword warrior for example cause we all hate warriors too.
Burst, 10 seconds. HB, 8 second. Whirlwind attack, 10 second. Bladetrail, 15 second. Rush, 20 second. That is .44 attacks per second (.342 attacks per second if you didn’t know you had an F1 skill that does something). If you guys weapon swap, oh my goodness, it’s as if someone just entered a cheat code.

Just as warriors can trait for lower CDs, so can thieves regain initiative. How do thieves regain more initiative? Steal. That’s 2 extra initiative every 25-35 seconds. Barely anything.

Every single profession can spam skills faster than thieves can (unless it’s heart seeker or dancing dagger, but that is it), just not the same skill over and over.

Some of you guys are like, shadow shot OP! I dodge the first one, and then he shoots me again, and I’m out of endurance. Ok, the thief just used 8 initiative out of 12. If they are going trickery, that just means they are doing less damage. Are you guys really going to be auto attacked to death?

The only thing thieves are better at than every single other profession is their ability to use an attack more than once. What other professions do better is their ability to spam their attacks faster than a thief can.

I just showed you how a profession can basically use their attacks about 1.75 times more often without even swapping weapons. Even a warrior with a hammer can spam skills faster than a thief can. Look up weapon skills for each profession, tell me which one can’t attack more than once every 4 seconds.

I’m not saying that other professions are OP, I just want to show you guys that in my opinion, it is a good tradeoff, using half as many skills as any other professions can, but being able to spam a skill multiple time.

If you guys think there’s something wrong with what I wrote, or there are anything else you think make thieves too OP, reply, and I’ll either agree with you, or try to prove how it isn’t OP.

On topic: If a thief can’t catch someone, and if a thief can no longer burst anyone in 3 seconds, and a thief is squishy, and a thief can’t support anyone unless they go that kittenty venom share, what is a thief supposed to be good at? Are they supposed to be good at trolling? Giving out legendaries from their dead bodies? I’m pretty sure that a thief carrying a Banner of Strength everywhere so people will always get the aura is better than venom share.

Thieves pros: good dps, good mobility, stealth. Consistent Might, vigor, fury, bleed, poison, vulnerability, immobilize (1 second, lol). If you want to talk about S/D, replace good dps with being able to steal other people’s boons.

Thieves cons: No team support, low hp, low armor. No other conditions or boons. Subpar condition removal. Don’t underestimate how squishy thieves are – no blocks, no invulns, no access to protection, Lowest base HP, no practical access to stability. Poor sustain, Zero bunker ability.

coglin.1867:

Platanos.8107:

If you do any pvp, you would know that sanctuary is one of the best elites there is.
Also, thieves can also backstab with a dagger when they are stealthed.

See how useful it is to to further one’s argument when talking about thieves?

It is not an elite. It is a 120 CD utility skill.

Sorry, my bad, that’s embarrassing on my part. But it still stands that sanctuary is super useful in pvp.

Esplen.3940:

Like the amount of Warriors soloing Arah P1 and 2?

Except that thieves aren’t warriors, so that totally isn’t okay.

Caltrops don’t break stealth.

Someone on the PvP forums said this, and I thought it seemed legit. It was along the lines of, " blackpowder got nerfed because Anet got kittened off by the number of thieves soloing Arah p1".

If you do any pvp, you would know that sanctuary is one of the best elites there is.
Also, thieves can also backstab with a dagger when they are stealthed.

See how useful it is to to further one’s argument when talking about thieves?

I don’t know if I missed my bp on a guardian before, but I’m pretty sure he was either really lucky or was good at timing his downed 1 to remove the blind and then used Wave of Light to push me back. I was like qqwtf guardians op.

babazhook.6805:

Platanos.8107:

I was going 6/6/2/0/0… with full zerk

I was 2/6/0/2/4 in THIS incarnation with assassins/zerk mixed. No stealth. Not even as a utility. I try and make a no stealth power build work for me. I started with 2.4k armor 17k health and have slowly been scaling back on armor/ health. It not where I want it yet.

First off, I think 2/6/0/2/4 is a bit weird. I hope you can tell me what traits you put in trickery and acrobatics. Second off, I should not have dismissed invigorating precision that quickly, because of course it helps with extra sustain, and for enemies with high health pool, executioner only makes you kill things ~8% faster.

Alright. I’m going to go through the numbers (as of this moment, I do not know if 8% is “good”). So, I think it would be generous to say that pistol whip with zerker stats, ruby orbs, going 5/6/0/0/3 does about 9k of crits with 2533 power and 88% crit chance. Note, this is including Combined Training Trait (+5% damage), initative > 6, assassin’s signet, signet of agility. On average, I would say you do 6k of crits. The attack takes 2.2 seconds to do, so that’s about 4.1k damage per second if the rng god is on your side, and 2.7k dps if everything is normal. With god rng, If you attack three people, that’s 12.3k damage per second. 8% of that is 984 hp/sec. With normal rng, that’s 648 hp/sec.

I’m assuming you don’t stealth because you want to keep attacking and be continuously doing damage, so basically you would take executioner if you could sustain a bit more. If you have signet of malice, you should take caltrops (10 sec, 30 sec cd). With 3 enemies in caltrops, that is ~400 hp/sec for 10 seconds. So yes, when fighting 3 enemies that have high health pools, people may take invigorating precision. But when there’s 5, you get 665 hp/sec + condition damage.

How to survive longer without invigorating precision? Take caltrops. Or take shadow refuge or take both. Shadow refuge heals 335 hp/sec. You can use dancing dagger to get 202*4 hp(808 hp) per use I think… Shortbow is useful too for damage and healing; you can quickly kill trash mob and regen hp by spamming 2. Dagger storm is basically auto-fill hp.

In a nutshell, these are the numbers I got and it is up to you to decide whether taking signet of malice + these utility skills are worth taking and getting executioner. For me? I think it is worth it. For others? Maybe not.

EDIT: And also? Can they change the animation on FS and LS if they are going to implement these changes? It seems strange that the dagger hits up to three people but the sword only hits one.

I was going 6/6/2/0/0… with full zerk

IP is useless. If you survived with IP, you could have survived without IP. I duo’d that champion with signet of malice and didn’t get downed once.

I would be happy if they just replaced traps with combo fields.

I’m confused about the BP blind spam complaints. I can even autoattack and backstab someone with a dagger outside of bp’s range. Sure perma-blind is OP, but how difficult is it to hold down the “S” button for one second? It takes one second to be unblinded from a thief skill that uses 6 initiative.

IP sucks. In my opinion, it would be balanced with other traits if it deals additional life steal on crit damage (5% crit damage is life steal).

Note: I don’t play d/p. The only reason I’m complaining about this is because of pve content. I guess I’ll just stick with pistol whipping everything instead, which is basically the same as black powder, except I’ll be doing like 5% more damage but not helping my party in any useful way.

Edit: I’ll be so kittened if they implement these changes before they fix Steal. Anet, you should rename the profession if thieves can’t even steal in this game.

All weaponsets will be nerfed so more people will use p/p.

The skill description is wrong. You get 1 whole might for 5 whole seconds every time you are hit and is under 25% health. And it works with DS.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

When a engi runs in and uses his supply crate when you have the point.

Assuming you are not using S/P:

• Dodge CC
• Steal gunk and throw it in the middle of the point
• Use shortbow to kill the turrets, and #3 to evade
• When turrets are gone: kill engi

That is fighting inside the capture point? I suppose it is easy enough to trait signet of malice and spam 2 while in the capture point, but other than that, I think it’s difficult to camp the point and still stay alive.

Alrighty, thanks for your tips! I’ll probably just run away when an engineer supply drop + turret drop then.

Yeah, I now open my attacks by bum rushing the enemy or wasting Basilisk venom on a projectile just so I can get near. Not worth the chance of steal going on full cd and wasting a precasted skill.

I’ve lurked on the forums a long time and there is more QQ about S/D evade spam (no counters to evade) than D/P. So if anet is going to nerf something because thief is OP, it’s going to be S/D first, not D/P.

Hey fellow thieves,
I tried to do some sPvP and I probably 3/8 games I’ve played was against a 5 team engineer. When I see turrets on the point, I just sb a bit and then go in and poke the engie. However, when I am defending a point, they just rush up to me and places tons of turrets on the capture point (4 or 5 turrets per engineer) that I think are heavily traited (for sure Fortified turrets, takes ~15 Autos/5 auto attack chains to kill). Do I have to lose the point in order to kill the turrets? With 4 turrets, it’s impossible to kill these turrets with just S/D (of course I could be doing something wrong).

Any tips on how to deal with these engies?

And as a random question, does flanking strike automatically count as a flanking strike? Does it benefit from stuff like +10% damage when attacking from sides/back?

There’s been a post before about how steal is acting up linky

Besides that, I’ve found some more unpredictable steal affects that is in no way better than the bug that anet fixed.

If you pre-cast a skill (take CnD for example) and then Steal. There is a chance to shadowstep to the target, use CnD (target takes damage and you stealth) and then get slingshotted back to where you started and it says “Out of range” with Steal on full cooldown, no item stolen. This is easily shown in CoE p3 unique boss (the one you need to shoot 3 lasers at his shield). When jumping down, on the last transparent platform, pre-cast CnD and steal from the boss. You’ll see the damage pop up and that you become stealthed, but end up back on the transparent platform.

With all these bugs, I hope that anet just reverts back the Steal fix (it wasn’t that convenient to exploit anyways, and in my experience, doesn’t even help greatly in PvE).
Hopefully anet doesn’t fix this bug by reducing Steal’s range to 50.

I’ve been getting this too, well inside steal range too. Sometimes I shadowstep to the enemy but it says “out of range” and nothing is stolen, full cooldown. Some times I just shadowstep in place and it says “out of range” with full cooldown; some times I shadowstep to the enemy, and then shadowstep back a bit (I’m guessing that is where the game thought I was obstructed or something) and it says “out of range”, full cooldown. Maybe anet wanted Steal to be as dependable as Scorpion Wire.

Kuunan, do you think it is possible for around 10 thieves against ~50 zerg to win? Spam CnD on random people until they start to stack (for count, cap, or to attack a gate) and then do Dagger Storm + Signet of Malice or Steal warrior axe, then DS?