Guild Wars 2

I swapped to bound and equipped signet of shadows to test it a bit.

I’m finding it quite strong in small scale fights and even 1v1, the 1200 range AOE blindness, weakness and vuln (which helps to setup bound-steal-backstab bursts) is really good. Probably wont make it onto my util bar 24/7, but it will find some uses I believe.

No more runspeed issues while running bound is another bonus.

Anyone else tried it yet?

After 2k PVP games on thief I switched to roaming in WVW. Roaming (compared to PVP) to me is more fun and relaxing, and offers a open-world environment where I can choose to do what I want (be it flipping camps, contesting key enemy structures, cutting off supply, scouting, etc.)

And of course looking for challenging 1v1 fights. I often target other solo roamers that are running builds that I find challenging to fight against (DH, Condi Mesmer, etc.) After a good fight vs a skilled enemy player, I often invite them into a party and we end up dueling at that same spot for a couple of fights. That is how I improve my own skills.

Do I gank zerg tails running back to a fight, of course – but it’s not about me trying to be a bully (as another poster has suggested about roamers in general), it’s because it benefits my server zerg/commander. Those extra few players that I hamper getting back to their zerg could be running a lot of supply, or even tip the fight in the enemy server’s favor, etc.

Is it rewarding in game monetary terms? – Probably not, but I find it fun and therein lies my reward.

Fun is a relative concept. I think it would be fun to burst snipe for 20k from 1200 range. Healthy for the game? Certainly not! Fun? For me hell yeah!

It would be more fun to have an elite skill like this:

‘Murder from above:’
120s cooldown
If a tree is in 360 radius vicinity, teleport onto the top branches and stealth yourself for 15 seconds. Range of ‘20k burst snipe’ skill is increased to 3600 range.
Reveals you to other enemy snipers, making you vulnerable to get sniped.

I love the concept of it, unfortunately it’s quite hard to land all hits vs other players. If I do decide to run it in WVW, I swap ToTC for Flanking Strikes. It’s easier to land fist flurry from an opening stealth burst with a quickness proc and basi venom.

The damage is absurd though if you land it all.

I assume you are a staff ele? You didn’t mention. I also assume WvW.

It’s easy to slam 20k burst on a squishy ele, even for a marauder thief. Thieves unfortunately prey on squishy eles, however you do have a few options. This is what squishy eles do when I jump them.

a.) Run the Arcane Shield utility/trait that blocks damage for a few hits. That should make you survive a bit longer, enough to blink away.

b.) Pop mist form and escape into the nearest tower/keep.

c.) Don’t leave the tower/keep wall. Use /wave /dance /laugh to taunt the thief. Slam 5k meteor showers ticks on the thief as he tries to scorpion wire you off the wall.

Forget that I’m a daredevil crying about yet another reveal in the game that counters 1 of 2 active defense mechanics I have (I, being an old-school sneaky archetype player preferring 1-2 stealths as defense instead of 6-9 dodges). (I don’t consider Bandit’s Defense in this post as I do not run that utility.)

I cringe when considering a poor vanilla thief out there getting roped by a DH now).

The whole process is quite tragic when looking in from the outside.
a) The timeframe shortly before HoT release was considered as one of the best in terms of class balance.
b) HoT arrives with massive powercreep as well as Anet handing out passive defenses, passive traits, blocks, invulns, stealths to almost everyone.
c) Instead of toning down stuff in b), starts handing out unblockables, reveals, etc. to almost everyone, to the point where classes who do not have access for instance to reveals feels cheated.
d) Anet buffs already strong skills/utils (i.e. signet of agility) to proportions where they are almost mandatory in all builds, thereby reducing build variety even more. Whilst other utils that have been begging for attention for years are left untreated (i.e. Signet of shadows).

I know I’m on my soapbox preaching to the choir.

@shadowstep

Yeah I was just in high spirits and in the mood for some poetry.

But, no skill should hard counter a whole game mechanic shared across many classes. It opens up the debate of for instance buffing steal to disable all invulns for 6s. Or buffing Mesmer Mind Wrack to disable the use of all blocking skills/Aegis boons for 6s. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Quite unhealthy.

DH burning rope
added reveal makes me mope
200 ping I cannot cope
Anet please nerf
make it less dope

Quit fighting everyone, to balance rifle thief Anet will make it melee weapon as I already stated previously.

Assuming Anet logic where Mesmer 2H-greatswords and Revenant 2H-hammers are both ranged weapons, I’m assuming they will troll us and make rifle a melee weapon.

New elite skill:
Elite: Add Bayonet to rifle. Increase backstab range to 180.

Incoming cries Nerf thief OP.

15 chars forum bug go away.

@saerni Add infiltrator signet too!

I can backstab-steal for 12k dmg from 1200 range on a 21s cooldown. Not many other classes can turn any of their high damaging melee attacks into 1200 range like we can.

Cluster Bomb used to be 1200 range back in the day, but it was nerfed to 900 for some unholy reason.

@jugglemonkey Yeah I think thief traps need to be brought inline with DH and ranger and have them made bigger circles. That’s what I meant in my post with ‘bigger trigger zone for thief traps’.

The people on the forums advocating for ghost trapper thief rights must understand they were essentially playing a rampant exploit carry-me-because-im-lazy build and saying ‘git gud and use stealth traps’ just shows their ignorance. Be a man, grow some balls and play a build that other players (who don’t have access to reveal) don’t have to spend in-game currencies to counter.

About the 1second arm time. I believe all traps in the game should have an arming time. Arming time on traps make sense. IRL I would never run up to a bear in the wild and try to place a trap under it, I would place the trap and lure him into it.

@DH teleporting under someone’s feet and dropping a 0sec cast time insta-proc trap that critical hits for 12million damage is bullkitten.

IRL Trying to throw a trap doesn’t make sense either, it could land upside down on the ground and be useless.

That being said, thief traps need a bigger trigger zone, and I’m a bit drunk.

I PVP often and do WVW most of the time, so I’m kinda perpetually broke. The ascended gear was a nice bonus so that I could gear some WVW alt. Anyway, went oversees for work for about 3 weeks, couldn’t play GW2 and came back and saw I can’t buy the armor anymore. Nice!

Mix in some marauder gear for open world HoT, keep berseker gear for raids. And run Bandit’s defense utility, it’s good in open world as a damage blocker and low cooldown stun breaker. And use staff if you aren’t, it offers good evades with aoe damage that will keep your health ticking due to the Driven Fortitude trait.

Hi Link.

Condi mesmers pose a bit of a problem of course, but I agree with what Ruru said. You shouldn’t be having that much trouble against a power mesmer (you mention glass mesmer, so I assume power) in a ‘fair trade’ (assuming both have full cooldowns and full health at start of the fight).

Best option is to duel them really, and figure out where you are struggling. We can’t give you solid advice if we haven’t seen you fight them. Maybe post a video if you can.

Edit: You also don’t mention which build/weapons you are using. That would be a helpful start.

While I love the added 2 condi clears on SoA, Anet has buffed an already very strong skill to the point where it is now almost mandatory to run it in every thief/daredevil build (from a WVW perspective). I know it has been nerfed with endurance regen in PVP.

Although this is a good change, I think build diversity is even a bit less now than it was before.

Hi,

All of us regular thief pvp’ers could write a full length essay on the topic, which would teach you in theory.

In my opinion your best bet would be to watch one of the streamers’ Twitch recorded videos such as Sindrenerr.
He also explains his thought processes throughout the match and what he is doing and why. You could learn a lot there and it would be visual, better than reading lenghty posts on forums.

Good luck!

Unless you constantly want to change your runes, get 2 sets, it might actually work out cheaper in the long run.

If you plan on doing just a little bit WVW, a set of Exotic armor will do the job just fine and is way cheaper than ascended. (You can buy exotic armor from WVW vendors for little gold and a few badges)

Wargameur.6950:

I kinda like dancing dagger idea, it’s quite easy to land but still has counter play. The problem is, if it’s reflected does the enemy goes into stealth instead of you ?

Probably – this is what happens when Ranger gets his LB stealth arrow reflected IIRC.

Wargameur.6950:

I like the 2nd version of cloak and dagger better. There is more flavor to it. In the end your dagger off hand is really heavy in terms of initiative, I suppose trickery would still be mandatory to make it work…

Could probably reduce both my ideas to 5 initiative and still be viable?

Hi guys,

Just some thoughts I had. This isn’t well thought through, so flame away!

Dagger skill 4: Dancing daggers:

*Add new effect: Gain 2 seconds of stealth on initial hit, plus 1s of stealth for each extra bounce that hits.
*Increase initiative cost to 6.
This could mean 4s of stealth if all three bounces hit (+1 second if traited Meld with Shadows). You cannot stack this though, since you would reveal yourself if you used this skill again to do damage. I feel this makes it balanced. If an enemy blocks or evades it, you gain no stealth, this adds some counter play. Gives x/d sets a more reliable stealth than cloak and dagger in the current meta.

Dagger skill 5: Cloak and dagger

*Remove the stealth effect from this skill.
*Add new effect: If you hit an enemy (i.e not blocked or evaded), grant 1s of quickness for you and each nearby ally: Number of allies 5.
Radius: 360
This would give d/d some party support and maybe open up some +boon duration builds.

OR if the AOE quickness might be too OP

*Add new effect: If you hit an enemy (i.e not blocked or evaded), gain 1s of quickness for yourself and blind up to 5 enemy targets: Radius 360

I tried to introduce unique stuff that would augment sword, pistol and dagger if combined with offhand dagger. That’s why there are no shadowsteps (sword main can do this), leaps (dagger main can do this), evades (dagger main and sword main can do this), immobs (pistol main and sword main can do this), or kiting (p/d 3 can do this) in my offhand dagger ideas.

I hope this makes sense.

Ghost thief can be countered by adding a physical damage attribute to thief traps, which would stop ghost thieves from stacking stealth during combat while traps are going off. This has been suggested many times on this forum. This would fix ghost thief without gimping other builds.

Currently pulmonary impact triggers reveal if the thief is in stealth, traps should do the same in my opinion.

Granted ghost thief will still be able to stack stealth outside of combat, but whatever. The problem with ghost thief is the fact that they abuse stealth while doing damage via traps and often caltrops.

Other classes can stack stealth (engi, mesmer), while they also have active and passive defenses (blocks, invuln passives, etc.) Why should daredevil/thief have to give up our defenses (stealth and evades)?

Edit: It’s quite easy to interrupt a d/p thief trying to stack stealth with pistol 5 + heartseeker. Just interrupt his quite lengthy heartseeker animation, then he has just wasted 8 initiative.

@huskyboy Yeah his idea wasn’t bad. Our mesmer just didn’t communicate and/or did these things at moments where it was difficult for us to back him up, because we were engaged in other fights in situations where if we go assist him, it might cost us a mid or a close.
Nor did he place down portals to assist him in escaping or assist us in porting in to help him.

I try and call out my moments beforehand, where I’m moving, if enemy team members are sitting on points, where the enemy is moving between points, etc.

Sometimes it’s just impossible to do your intended role as a thief, because of your teammates.

Few games ago I was going +1 on close to make it 2v1. Our mesmer starts screaming at me to go decap far. I finish the +1 at close (in our favour and we get close back). Decide to make a run for far – but wait, mesmer decided to go contest far, and dies to druid and DH. Enemy Druid decides to camp at far – I see this and ignore far for now. Mesmer goes far again, dies almost instantly- he probably didn’t anticipate DH just left him some trap bombs under the druid.
Our team asks him why he is dying at far again – he replies – COZ IM DOING THIEF JOB. THIEF GO PVE FARM MUSSELS OR SOMETHING.

Because the pigeon-holed view of thief in some players minds are so obscured, they think when the thief is not on far – he isn’t doing his job – and then they decide they should be doing it. Sometimes there is good reason not to be on far – and while the mesmer above decides to go and try to cap a point with an enemy on it (and dies in the process) – our team is missing out on the great pressure he (condi mesmer) could have applied in team fights. Players like him make our ‘thief jobs’ so much more difficult.

Hi Vavume. It’s an effective build, I’ve roamed with you while you were playing it and it was easy to do outnumbered fights. One question, though – since the build is reliant on bound and you don’t run Acro – how do you deal with immob? Especially when outnumbered 1v2 or so.

@OP I heard you are a DH.

I will trade you one of my evades for your burning rope semi insta-pull skill (since my scorpion wire doesn’t really work).

Or even better, I’ll trade you one of my evades for one of your 10 minute invulns.

No, no, no, what am I thinking? Give me all of your teleport skills, since I don’t have enough. The amount of teleports they have (between their actual teleports, teleports regen and weapon skill teleports) is just absolutely ridiculous.

Heavy armor classes shouldn’t teleport at all. It defies MMO RPG logic. In Diablo1 my warrior could teleport though, but had to wear all mage +Intelligence gear that I had to buy from Wirt. So I could teleport around the maps but not kill anything. That’s balance.

L2P

kash.9213:

godmoney.6025:

Sigils- I have been toying around Sigil of Generosity instead of Fire. Air is still main as always. According to wiki – Sigil of Generosity’s Transferred conditions use the original applier’s condition damage. Meaning that if I get lucky and transfer one of the deadly conditions it could rack up a lot of damage and revert pressure back to the applicator, and condi clear is always welcome on thief – given the condi spam meta.

Does it feel like it’s actually transferring often enough to make the rate worth it? I used that and Sigil of Purity in WvW for awhile and found Purity to be more noticeable to me, similar cool down but more chance on it. But, as a non spvp player, from the videos I watch that all of you post here I understand that rate of fire and sources of damage are so different, in the way that something like Scholar Runes and Flanking strikes makes sense in that setting.

I’m asking because there are fights I can get stuck in for awhile that get too close to spvp size and dynamic that my Escapist Absolution build isn’t ready for. I’d like to carry a more meta build some stretches and am wondering if a sigil like that can be legit as a minor condition clear or if you’re using that almost more as pressure back.

Swapped back and dropped Generosity for Fire again. It’s just more constant, you know what you are gonna get, higher burst – which is what you are there for. Generosity is good for a laugh once in a while, but it’s very situational. If I do happen to eat a condi burst, the first reaction is to GTFO, not to attack the applicator to try and see if I can transfer a condi back to him.

Mug, poison on steal, weakness on poison, panic strike, Improvisation. CS just cannot compete unless you are running specialized builds like life steal on crit, etc, p/p even for pistol trait, etc.
CS fills certain niche roles, but it’s arguably a worse traitline than DA.
None of DA’s core traits are bound to specific weapons, making it universally better for almost all builds.

Edit: Thinking back, a fun CS/Daredevil build I used for a while in wvw was staff / sb vampirism runes, lifesteal on crit food, leeching sigils, high crit chance (90% with fury) as well as CS traitline with life steal on crit GM trait and ofc healing sigil. Could easily solo T3 camps and cap towers solo. Also very good in team fights where you could slam massive aoe attacks healing yourself for absurd amounts.

@kash

Haven’t had much time to play and test Generosity. Will after the new year.

I have used stealth trap only once, and that was to reveal a ghost condi thief so that the angry mob with pitchforks he was trolling could beat him to death. It was glorious.

I run Marauder armor -Scholar runes. Since I focus on decapping and joining in existing fights to burst a target, I’m almost always at full health when engaging to capitalize with Scholar runes +10% dmg. I’m also selfish and run Flanking Strikes instead of TotC, those extra few hits I can land with 6s quickness hurts a lot with Scholar’s +10% dmg modifier.

Sigils- I have been toying around Sigil of Generosity instead of Fire. Air is still main as always. According to wiki – Sigil of Generosity’s Transferred conditions use the original applier’s condition damage. Meaning that if I get lucky and transfer one of the deadly conditions it could rack up a lot of damage and revert pressure back to the applicator, and condi clear is always welcome on thief – given the condi spam meta.

Utility – I prefer Blinding Powder over Bandit’s defense, having run the latter for almost 6 months, I reverted back to Blinding Powder for PVP. Both are great, but since I focus on sneaking out of fights unnoticed to quickly move to another point, offhand pistol 5 + blinding powder + Heartseeker is a quick 7s stealth escape. Also Blinding powder offers more team utility for stealth ressing if needed, quick blast inside a water field, aoe blind in teamfights, allowing teammates to stealth stomp if needed, etc. etc. The list goes on.

Edit: Generosity is fun vs pesky burn guards and their one-trick pony build. Just transfer all that burning back to them

When you decap far so often, they permanantly have 2 players camping it whole game to try and kill you.

Thief can still be weak if the soloQ team you get does not know a) what your strengths are b) how to play with a thief in the team. This perpetuates the perception that thief is weak in sPVP, which it isn’t IMHO. I personally think it is very strong, especially this season – but you need a team who understands the dynamics you bring.

Personally I always duo-queue this season when I’m playing as a thief, and always with a friend or guildie who is built for sustained mid point fights (scrapper, druid, ele, DH, etc.) It opens up my game knowing there is a solid player who knows how synergize with my thief play.

You can decap far 10 times during a match, but if your mid guys keep losing even numbered fights it doesn’t matter.

I have in the past made mistakes like accidentally buying 2 Unique Items like Red Ring of Death that I could not equip at the same time. Opened a ticket, explained the situation and Anet refunded my laurels whilst deleting the item I accidentally bought.

I’m sure they can help you. They can afterall check your achievement and item history, etc. to ensure that you did actually earn it legitimately.

I don’t PVE a lot, but when I do open world HoT content I use bounding dodger trait, brawler’s tenacity trait, staff, channeled vigor heal, signet of agility and Bandit’s Defense. Excellent damage, AOE damage, weakness, blinds, many sources of evades, immob removal on staff 3, and a block stunbreak on 12s CD. You really shouldn’t die unless you are trying to solo legendary wyvern.

I also use some marauder gear mixed in with zerk gear to up the vitality (pretty much my WVW gear setup)

Would really love to see DeceiverX’s 1v8 gameplay vid, can’t wait.

Personally (as a daredevil facing other elite specs) the most I’ve managed to beat and stomp simultaneously in WVW was 1v3 on power build and 1v4 on condi build (and they were all clumped up capping a sentry point). These were all really average to bad players though, they had to be, because I suck righteously and I was able to beat a group of them.

I’ve also had one 1v5 I won, but that was like in a bad Kung-foo (typical spelling replaced by kitten) movie where they all run up 1 by 1 and get their kitten kicked because they refuse to stop ressing their downed friends and get interrupt spammed.

When my shadow trap plays work it’s so satisfying. But when I go through a whole fight and they don’t run over the trap once I want to die a little inside.

Sometimes you can make nice confusing plays though by just placing it out of the fight where no one will ever run onto it. Like trolling in front of red keep in EB then teleporting back to the hills outside of the wall about 7000 units away. Then watch the angry pitchfork horde running around in circles for 5 minutes, spamming reveal skills trying to find a thief who is a mile away.

Toasa.1236:

Open with staff 5, then 5, 5, dodge, dodge, heal 5 5 5 finish.

No, no, no, no! That’s all wrong, completely not optimal! You open with Steal+2, 3, then 5, 5, doge, stealth. Wait for ressers, then 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, dodge, stomp, stomp, stomp.

10k? Pfft, 12k? Whaat? Man I slam dunk 14k vaults whole day, every day. Then I run into a competent D/P thief and die to 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, while I 5, 5, 5, 5, 5.

But yeah need moar dmg.

Favourites: Mesmer plasma, Necro skull fear (AOE fear with interrupts/pulmonary impacts are awesome), thief stealth item, revenant essence sap. All great with improvisation trait.

Least favourites: Throw gunk and Ice shard.

I think we really need an elite trap, that’s really OP.

Smoke trap!
Creates a huge swirling column of smoke 2 meters high.
Smoke combo field. 360 radius.
While an enemy is inside the trap, all his/her block and immunity skills are ineffective.
(Thus all attacks on targets inside the trap are unblockable)
Pulses blind condition every 1 second.
Pulses 1 stack of confusion every 1 second.
Lasts for 5 seconds.
Cooldown 90 seconds.

:D

I’d propose a backstab knockdown or stun effect. Might it be OP, well who cares at this stage with the 1sec CD on stealth attacks it might just be justified!

If you happen to BS and interrupt and proc a pulmonary impact, oh that would be glorious.

@Blaqatak

When I see a roaming condi mesmer I quickly swap traits from DA to SA, select the condi clear and both regen in stealth traits and select blinding powder and shadow refuge utilities. Then proceed to give them the kitten beating they deserve, their condis are useless vs SA and traited Withdraw.

For added effect, use the Llama finisher on them. Then enjoy the smell of two strong cheese vapours hanging in the air around you.

Lexander.4579:

thats pretty much uncalled nerf but the lame d/p weapon set situation had gotten out of hand and needs to be dealt with

however i dont understand why all thief builds once again have to suffer because d/p should be nerfed instead of just removing smoke combo field from P 5

Please stop asking for nerfs to d/p – rather ask for buffs/reworks to the current underperforming weapon sets. That’s what we need.

I like your ideas, anything is better than this passive self preservation traits that don’t even require any of the player’s input to activate. It’s lazy and bad design from Anet because they needed a quick fix to counter the 100-0 insta-gib builds that existed pre-HOT. (like thief d/d 66200, etc.)

I wouldn’t mind any of these traits if they were coupled with existing defensive utilities, so that they activate when the player chooses to, much like Engineer Elixer S, but then remove it from automatically triggering on CC effects or when certain health thresholds as reached.

You Mr. Enemy played bad to allow me to get you to 25% of your life pool, now the game is punishing me by giving you auto immortality for 3 seconds to run back into your tower – such BS.

/rant-end

For WVW I prefer Marauder. The damage loss is minimal, but the increased vitality is worth it in my opinion. When I do happen to do PVE (which is minimal) I still use my marauder set. I’m too lazy to keep separate gear sets.

For heavy coordinated PVE groups (fractals, etc.), Berserker should be better, since thief role is DPS. PVE experts should advise you on this, I’m no expert on high-end fractals or raids.

I think OP was referring to the stuff that happens like, standing in a camp shooting at camp guards, then suddenly have your attacks not hit and getting the ’’Obstructed’" message – while there are no obstacles between you and your target.

Happens to me on Borderland’s South Camp sometimes, etc. etc.

I agree with what NickPrice said. Some of the stolen items can be deceptively powerful.

I like to heartseeker through Throw Gunk in the thick of battle. Those random boons/conditions it triggers on attack can change the fight in the thief’s favour.

I’ve even downed other thieves by tossing 2 x throw gunk at my feet and waiting for them to steal onto me and then hit them with an immob or a stun.

emkelly.2371:

Honestly, the only two that are really any good are the Thief Stealth, and Warrior Spin.

I don’t agree with you. Some other stolen items are really powerful – one might even argue it becomes borderline OP if you run Improvisation having access to two of the stolen items at once. If you have two of the following stolen items, use them in the fight, then steal to get another two, it becomes pretty ridiculous.

Consume Plasma: very strong , especially against the popular Condi mesmers since it also has resistance boon now.

Essence Sap: Ranged attack with a fast projectile that can hit upwards of 5K + slow condition.

Skull fear – Aoe fear that also procs big damage if traited with Pulmanory Impact.

Since most of us agree that Ice Shard is crap nowadays – I think it would be cool if we can steal this item off Ele/Tempest.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Use_Staff