Guild Wars 2

If you feel all thief has to offer is mobility, you’re doing it wrong. I’m sorry, not trying to offend. I can’t deny its current state is very good, things have changed, but most seem to refuse to adapt.

Thief is not in a great spot atm, so it’s gonna take some time to get it to work. When you do, it’s a great experience. I still love it. The main thing the DD spec adds are evades, making you less reliant on stealth. Staff in pve is pretty good though, has some nice damage.

If you want a change, just try it and have fun!

Thanks for the reply Caed, it clears things up for me. Unfortunately I have to agree with those just above me and conclude that even though Thief can cope, it can’t fairly compete at this moment.

Best of luck!

Thanks for sharing your builds and opinions Caed. I can’t however, understand how you can say Thief is ‘fine’. I’m not a PvP god, but before HoT I could definitely hold my own playing Thief. Nowadays I feel completely useless. Can’t kill except in +1 situations, all I can do is run and decap. Now, this could be attributed to my skill level, but upon viewing some recordings of your streams I notice that you don’t get a lot of kills yourself. For a player with as much experience in this class as yourself, this can’t be a good sign? Maybe I’ve been watching the wrong recordings, or we differ in our views on the Thief’s roll.

I’ve tried different builds and playstyles for a couple of days, but nothing seems viable enough to warrant me spending time playing Thief. I’m beginning to feel like the concept of the Thief is flawed. It’s either too powerful, or too weak. It’s squishyness is not balancing out the massive damage it used to have when played right, because of it’s stealth and mobility. Take away/nerf the damage and all you have left is a squishy class that’s only strength is mobilty. This, I sadly conclude, is quite an accurate description of Thief’s current state.

I really hope I’m wrong.

Thanks for the response. I must admit no stunbreak is a glaring mistake, so I’ve recplaced Blinding Power with Shadowstep SoA is too precious. I don’t much like Staff. It does a fair bit of damage and has some nice features in its skills (weakness, blind and a soft cc roll), but the lack of easy stealth kills me. While the 2 sec KD would be nice, its really hard to reach it without a few Stealth utility skills, which I don’t have anymore.

Like the Signet of Rage suggestion, although the cooldown is a bit high. 30 sec on 3 sec Quickness:/ Furthermore the Quickness would be ideal upon entering combat, making Fist Flurry easier to land in its entirety. As this isn’t the case, I feel it would be a bit of a waste unfortunately.

I’ll try switching the traits! Thanks again.

Hi Guys,

I’ve been having some fun/succes with this build recently. Thought I’d share.

First off, http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn0MBVmiFOBmPBkmiFYCzLNcGaDzfwTYLULBEAyAA-TpBBABVcCAkvMAAPAAKOEAFt/wGHBAA

Nothing groundbreaking here I guess. It can be very effective in dealing out damage however. Something I’ve been struggling with since HoT.

What I (try to) do, is the following:

1. Steal and hereby dazing target (hoping to interrupt aswell)
2. Mash Fist Flurry. If they’ve all hit and the target was interrupted, 2 Pulmonary Impact strikes follow.
3. Death Blossom around them
4. Cloak and Dagger
5 Backstab.
6. Depending on how much health is left, Impact strike.

Lots of damage here, but more important, it’s all done in very quick succession. This combination mostly results in Panic Strike and Executioner kicking in.

As the Crit chance is fairly high, there’s a lot of weakness being spread, resulting in less damage for you, but also a couple of Might Stacks due to the sigil on Dagger. If things get messy I pop Blinding Powder and Dash out of there. So far this has proven sufficient in getting out.

Obvious weakness is Condi removal. Could swap Bountiful Theft to Trickster in order to receive a Condi removal on Withdraw.

I’d love to hear what u think, and most of all how to improve this. In no way am I an experienced theorycrafter, so I’m sure there’s lots to be gained here. For instance, I’ve been thinking about switching to S/D (for a Boon removal and extra Immobilize) or even Staff, as its Stealth skill has a 2 sec Knockdown.

Thanks for reading!