Guild Wars 2

Agony.3542:

-Don’t run Dueling X.

I lol’d … seriously wtf?
Running Duelling X has its purpose in some builds, not running it would simply be dumb.

This was my point. If you can’t handle the trait, reroll or swap builds. Thanks for obviously having taken this into consideration.

maltodextran.3928:

that shouldnt be a kitten factor thats just kittening kitten ( not mad at you just the stupid system )

What the kitten kitten man this kittening kitten kitten of a kitten system is kittening me up what the kitten ANet I can’t believe that you kittens would kitten us like that.

On topic… First response after OP would be my response to this as well.

Bump.

/15chars

Oh My God.8423:

Arganthium.5638:

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

My idea of support is very similar to being a force multiplier: in other sense, being a buffer or a debuffer. So I am interested in builds that makes the team or any one around me better.

So based on that premise, is thief still a good class?

If that’s the case, then no, I think you would be much better off rolling guardian or mes.

Also, loving this matchup. Really balanced, I think, and really exciting. Lots of zerging tonight, though. Not that I really had a problem with it- I threw my thief into the bloody frontlines and wiped them.

On another note, thank you for all of your underleveled zergs, FC and GoM. We were laughing our kittens off as we crushed your undergeared forces and reaped the rewards.

Jayne.9251:

Arganthium.5638:

Shanks.8793:

Jayne.9251:

We’ve had trolls like that on TC ever since we hit Tier 2 back in December. What I like to do is be unbearably upbeat and sing the praises of our server and drown them out. Soon others jump in saying what they like about the server, and then more join in … and eventually the troll just gives up and goes away

Never underestimate the power of positivity! Flip his negative with a positive .. it boosts morale for your server and frustrates the troll.

Another way to drown him out is to start doing wvw tips in /map chat … asking others to chime in and add what they know. It educates your map for those new to WvW and drowns out the troll. Win-win.

The problem with that guy is, it is different LOL cause he is here just to annoy us really he doesn’t care what we do even if it was perfect he will still do his thing. For example someone asked if he should order the next upgrade in SM while we had 0 supplies, I said wait till supplies build up to 700 cause we were having bad times and expecting an attack 700 would’ve been perfect cause we will see till that time if they are going to attempt to take stonemist or not and if it happened we have 700 supplies to use . What he did is he ignored the whole thing and trolled the 700 part cause its a random number and kept trying to annoy me which he does with each person in ET. Whenever a commander steps he says " you are as bad as the 10 commanders who commanded before you." and keeps going on and on and on it never ends it is what he is here for that’s his job. Everyone in ET is irritated and we keep reporting.

I know it looks like a subject that is not THAT important cause there will be trolls everywhere BUT what should we do if someone took it as his main role? we all know its hard to stop fights in map chats if there was someone trolling the map chat will just be fired up and heated and as I mentioned its BAD for new comers who wanted to try WvW and something needs to be done about such behaviors.

I am here to speak for a whole server, not myself FYI.

^

I’d like to believe what you’re saying, Jayne, but Shanks is right. The troll is certainly not the type to just give up quite so easily, and one of the things he does, if he can’t manage to insult the entire server, is just insult one or two people in particular. It really bugs me, and I feel sorry for whoever the troll suddenly decides to just rant on about for no good reason.

Want me to transfer my second account to ET and see if I can’t wrangle him? I’m pretty good at it

Haha xD thanks, but you might just die of frustration.

Entropy.4732:

Dear GoM,

I know we had our spats at times. I know we fought bitterly towards the end there, but we really, REALLY miss you and we’ve been thinking we made a terrible mistake leaving you for SF. At first, Sorrows Furnace seemed like it was everything you weren’t. On our first few dates, SF was super easy to get along with. But after we started going steady, SF turned into a total nightmare to live with. It’s just not working out. SF is, like, totally wrong for us.

Look, we… we might have rushed into things. We regret breaking up with you, GoM. You should move back in with us in T7. SF just doesn’t get us. Last night at 4:00am they camped our spawn point for hours with a massive zerg while they simultaneously hit our keep so we never had a fair chance of defending it. I know we accused you of cheating on us with HoD, but you would never have camped our spawn point like that. Never. You always took our keep fair and square. SF is super insensitive to our needs. They mercilessly taunt us on the forums and mega zerg us constantly. It’s just not the same as it was with you, GoM. No more razor close matches, no more waking up on sundays and going shopping with you at the Skritt farmer’s market for shinies. Sigh. We want you back GoM. I know you’ve got a new tier now and you’re seeing somebody else but I think we should give this relationship another chance. Come back to us GoM. Fight your way out of this T8 mess so we can break up with SF and get back to some fun, sexy, romantic WvW. We miss you.

Love,
NSP

P.S. I found one of your old loot bags in Golanda and it still smells like you.

Dear NSP,

After a seemingly endless, abusive relationship… They’re your problem now.

Love,
ET and FC

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

Authority.6145:

Arganthium.5638:

I’ll be trying out some purely SB-based builds when I can, probably add those under the “Ranged” section. I’ve tried a few before, they’re actually pretty good, although they rely on CB a lot. -_-

I am really against those because if you purely go for ranged builds then you might as well reroll to a ranger but that is my opinion.

I know what you mean, and while I partially agree, Rangers don’t have the stealth nor mobility that thieves have. Also, Rangers’ bows don’t give them a lot of versatility, whikitten n the thief is a highly flexible weapon. Still, overall, I might be inclined to agree with you.

Also, I’m not saying that illusions should be used defensively exclusively- in fact, I vehemently disagree with that point of view. Rather, I think that illusions can and ought to be used both defensively and offensively, similar to how a good thief can use stealth both defensively and offensively, switching between roles when necessary.

wads.5730:

thats not the point of the trait, or illusions for that matter.

spawning illusions isnt to confuse or distract your enemies, its to do damage via shatters.

any decent player will instantly spot the real mesmer regardless if they dodge or not, a mesmer should always assume the enemy knows which is the real one at all times, and only use illusions summoned by skills or dodging to time shatters.

That’s all well and good, and, if you’re a more defensively-based mesmer anyways, it might work out well, but remember that mesmers are a class that wears light armor, and whose main unique mechanic is the illusion. If your opponent knows where you are at all times, and you start running away because you can’t do as much DPS to them as they can do to you, you’re going to die. To make up for this, then, mesmers have to be willing to either follow one of the things that I wrote in my post, or learn how to act similar to their own illusions and thereby making it more difficult to tell which mesmer is the real one.

wads.5730:

Arganthium.5638:

Squee Squashington.5189:

I don’t know if I can speak for everyone but I was a little peeved with the Time Warp/Quickness nerf in this past patch, for obvious reasons, but it wasn’t until I reread the wording on the patch notes that I had a real problem:

As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.

Then I came across a thief in WvW today.. (see attachment)

I run a shatter build, 10/20/10/0/30, with half knights and half berserker exotic/ascended gear. While I don’t plan on tanking champs anytime soon, I do have some defense. Fighting the thief I got one dodge off, which he instantly followed with heartseeker, and one mind blast (downed 1).

He was a very good thief, and I’m by no means the best mesmer, but 22,000 damage in 3 seconds.. that seems a lot like “massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time” that “gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities.”

I was going to take my complaint to the Thief/WvW forum, but that’s probably a long wait for a train that won’t come. Instead, how do you guys deal with thief burst, do you have similar issues with them, should I build differently?

Any advice is welcome.

22,000 damage in 3 seconds? O.o to the extent of my knowledge, that’s only possible if

1. You have awful gear
2. You have ok gear but the thief has the best gear in the game
3. Somewhere along the line you counted incorrectly.

I can tell you that the thief sure didn’t backstab you for all of that damage; it’s just not possible. So the only thing I could guess would be a backstab followed by a few HS. Even then, though… The damage just seems wayyyyy too high to even be slightly plausible. That’s +7K DPS; that’s way more than I’ve seen anywhere, with any build, ever. I’ll have to look more into it.

a gc d/d theif vs another gc in full 80 exotics will do that much damage.

i’ve been hit for 7k mug, 7k cnd, 12k bs before in less than 1 second, of course this is before the quickness nerf, now it will probably take a little more than 1 second.

this is all very standard, every gc class is able to output that much damage to another gc class. if i do a similar damage rotation under quickness, it takes about 2 seconds to do similar if not more damage.

Ah yes, that too. :P

In that case, @OP: run a more bunker-type build in order to avoid bursts like these. A few reasons:

- GC thief initiative pools tend to be somewhat low, meaning a lack of sustainable damage over time
- It’ll give you a little more time to orient yourself once a thief/whatever blasts you with its attacks. Those few extra seconds are absolutely precious.
- If you have enough defense/health, it becomes almost ridiculous for thieves/etc to try and burst you down like that.

Personally, I run what would seem a rather defensive-seeming thief build (0/0/20/30/20) which I balance out with good gear. Thieves can hit me pretty hard at first, but I usually just stealth, heal, orient myself, and proceed to absolutely rip my opponent to shreds. I think that defensive builds like these will, eventually, kill GC builds completely. To me, thief GC builds have a lot of power and crits, but their traits are somewhat “clunky” and make have very little synergy between themselves, with perhaps the exception of the 10/30/30/0/0 D/D build, but even that suffers from lower initiative pools, and a complete reliance on stealth in order to do pretty much anything. Those are my thoughts for countering, can’t give much better advice than that. All I might add is that, for a bit more of a “bunker” build that does good damage, you might want to lax down on the zerker gear and perhaps focus on more knight’s, since you already have somewhat lacking health, toughness, and healing pools anyways. With my build, I run pretty much full zerker gear because my thief build gives me an automatic 200 toughness and healing, as well as 300 vitality and 30% boon duration, so I can run practically full zerker gear with virtually no cost involved.

Vekk Gunslinger (good for P/P, IMO)

Hey all. I just wanted to come here briefly to discuss the way that it seems like how many (most?) mesmers spawn their clones: via dodge rolling.

Now, while spawning an endless stream of clones is all well and good, one of the problems that I see a lot of mesmers have also involves their rolling. See, Dueling X is a bit of a double-edged sword: while it helps you pop out another illusion, what it also does is instantly reveal which of the mesmers that I’m looking at is the real one. Typically speaking, the instant I see that, what will happen is I’ll change targets and go straight for the mesmer, get them running away, and (assuming they don’t have stealth) I press a few buttons and down them fairly easily. Stealth, stomp, gg.

So, here are a few tips I might have for mesmer players that are having difficulty with issues like this. If anybody else might like to add, that would be great.

-Don’t run Dueling X. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, IMO, Dueling X, when used right, is a great trait to have, so you might not want to give it up that easily.
-Have stealth. Once an enemy sees you, just Decoy or whatever, and, by the time you pop back out of stealth, it’ll be much more difficult for the enemy to see you again.
-Use illusions more like obstacles than as distractions. That way, it’s more difficult for the enemy to see you when you’re dodging or healing, and thus more difficult to discern what is an illusion and what is not.
-Blink. Doesn’t matter how- Staff #2, the Blink utility, Portal- whatever. Makes it much more difficult to see where you’ve gone if you blink away before they can catch you.
-If your enemy isn’t going to attack your illusions, then use them to your advantage. Either use phantasms as virtually permanent allies, bust your illusions at every chance you get, or whatever you have to do.

Anyways, there’s a small list that I’ve started right there. I’m sure many of you can add to it. I just wanted to bring attention to it, mostly because I’ve caught so many mesmers because they were dodge-rolling or healing at the wrong time, and I could tell what was an illusion and what wasn’t.

Squee Squashington.5189:

I don’t know if I can speak for everyone but I was a little peeved with the Time Warp/Quickness nerf in this past patch, for obvious reasons, but it wasn’t until I reread the wording on the patch notes that I had a real problem:

As we push to improve balance in both PvE and PvP, a few mechanics in the game will be receiving updates to promote fun and balanced play. In the past, quickness has granted double the action speed normally available to players. In PvP, this speed gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities and allows for massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time. In PvE, the increased attack speed can trivialize a lot of content that would otherwise provide a good challenge. Therefore, we are reducing the speed that quickness allows by half of its current potential while slightly increasing the duration on player-activated skills.

Then I came across a thief in WvW today.. (see attachment)

I run a shatter build, 10/20/10/0/30, with half knights and half berserker exotic/ascended gear. While I don’t plan on tanking champs anytime soon, I do have some defense. Fighting the thief I got one dodge off, which he instantly followed with heartseeker, and one mind blast (downed 1).

He was a very good thief, and I’m by no means the best mesmer, but 22,000 damage in 3 seconds.. that seems a lot like “massive spike damage in extremely short periods of time” that “gives most players almost no chance to react to incoming abilities.”

I was going to take my complaint to the Thief/WvW forum, but that’s probably a long wait for a train that won’t come. Instead, how do you guys deal with thief burst, do you have similar issues with them, should I build differently?

Any advice is welcome.

22,000 damage in 3 seconds? O.o to the extent of my knowledge, that’s only possible if

1. You have awful gear
2. You have ok gear but the thief has the best gear in the game
3. Somewhere along the line you counted incorrectly.

I can tell you that the thief sure didn’t backstab you for all of that damage; it’s just not possible. So the only thing I could guess would be a backstab followed by a few HS. Even then, though… The damage just seems wayyyyy too high to even be slightly plausible. That’s +7K DPS; that’s way more than I’ve seen anywhere, with any build, ever. I’ll have to look more into it.

Actually, I think legs should be removed from the game entirely. They allow for too many shenanigans, like running and other such bullkitten. Please nerf.

Shanks.8793:

Jayne.9251:

We’ve had trolls like that on TC ever since we hit Tier 2 back in December. What I like to do is be unbearably upbeat and sing the praises of our server and drown them out. Soon others jump in saying what they like about the server, and then more join in … and eventually the troll just gives up and goes away

Never underestimate the power of positivity! Flip his negative with a positive .. it boosts morale for your server and frustrates the troll.

Another way to drown him out is to start doing wvw tips in /map chat … asking others to chime in and add what they know. It educates your map for those new to WvW and drowns out the troll. Win-win.

The problem with that guy is, it is different LOL cause he is here just to annoy us really he doesn’t care what we do even if it was perfect he will still do his thing. For example someone asked if he should order the next upgrade in SM while we had 0 supplies, I said wait till supplies build up to 700 cause we were having bad times and expecting an attack 700 would’ve been perfect cause we will see till that time if they are going to attempt to take stonemist or not and if it happened we have 700 supplies to use . What he did is he ignored the whole thing and trolled the 700 part cause its a random number and kept trying to annoy me which he does with each person in ET. Whenever a commander steps he says " you are as bad as the 10 commanders who commanded before you." and keeps going on and on and on it never ends it is what he is here for that’s his job. Everyone in ET is irritated and we keep reporting.

I know it looks like a subject that is not THAT important cause there will be trolls everywhere BUT what should we do if someone took it as his main role? we all know its hard to stop fights in map chats if there was someone trolling the map chat will just be fired up and heated and as I mentioned its BAD for new comers who wanted to try WvW and something needs to be done about such behaviors.

I am here to speak for a whole server, not myself FYI.

^

I’d like to believe what you’re saying, Jayne, but Shanks is right. The troll is certainly not the type to just give up quite so easily, and one of the things he does, if he can’t manage to insult the entire server, is just insult one or two people in particular. It really bugs me, and I feel sorry for whoever the troll suddenly decides to just rant on about for no good reason.

/signed

I don’t know why (troll) hasn’t been banned yet. I finally just reported him and /ignored him, but I hate seeing how much the people who don’t know the /ignore command are being split up among themselves by the troll. I, for one, hate the dissension in our ranks by somebody who’s clearly on ET just to annoy people, complain about virtually every thing that the commanders do, and throw out insults left and right.

ANet, please ban.

TimoFTW.8017:

Could someone give me a thief guide that is up to date?

I literally suck at making a own build haha.
Im looking for an PvP & WvWvW & Pve build.

Mostly to deal alot of damage
Thanks

Hello!

Currently, I’m developing a “Guide to Thief Guides” (which is a bit more like a “guide to thief builds”, although it does include an actual guide here or there), which you can find here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Guide-to-Thief-Guides/first#post1650361

I would usually suggest for people to look at other builds and draw inspiration from them to create their own builds, but don’t let that stop you from just copying a build from there, if that’s what you want.

Now, if you’re looking for a high-damage build… Well, I would mostly suggest one of the Burst builds to you, which are almost exclusively D/D builds that rely on backstab to do tons of damage. Some of them might be slightly outdated, but, to the extent of my knowledge, they are all perfectly viable builds to be used. Luckily for you, bursting happens to be one of the thief’s specialities, and almost all builds that you see nowadays from thieves seem to be bursting builds, so, as a result, the “burst build” section has become the largest section in the entire compendium. I think that, if you’re looking for something that focuses on all three parts of GW2 play, that the best bursting builds for you might be:

- JakobGW’s S/D Bursting thief
-Selver’s 10/30/0/0/30 Burst Build
-Sharpclaw’s S/P Zerker Thief

However, IMHO, bursting builds that rely on backstab are somewhat unreliable for PvE. So, I might add Authority’s GC D/P build (the only GC build currently listed on the Guide). The advantages would be that you wouldn’t have to rely on backstabbing so much for your damage, which is a major boon for you. That being said… Like any GC build, you might run into some issues if you don’t know how to abuse your highly aggressive play style, so I might not suggest this to you.

(Note: before I continue, let me just say that all of those builds are completely viable as PvP and WvW builds; their main issue, instead, might be with PvE)

Now, if you’re looking for something that’s good for PvE, you might want to start looking into slightly more defense-based builds. For example, I run a 0/0/20/30/20 D/P build (listed in my signature at the bottom) that focuses on stealth, shadowsteps, blinds, and evades. However, don’t let the description fool you; I run pretty much full zerker gear, which balances out with my trait points to give me a very balanced build. However, the key word here is “balanced”; you won’t get the huge damage that you might get from, say, Ninja’s “Juke and Nuke” build, but you’ll probably survive more hits than he would, as well as have more initiative and access to conditions like blind, cripple, and bleed.

Another example might be my old 0/20/20/15/15 Sword/Pistol build, which is a bit of a “jack-of-all-trades” kind of deal. It gives you a blend of dodging, shadowsteps, and burst that you might not get with other builds, but, unlike other builds, you might not be dodging and shadowstepping quite as often, or bursting for as much.

tl;dr: if you want high damage, you have a lot of really good PvP and WvW builds. However, for something that also works in PvE, you might have to go a bit more defensive. :c

I’ll be trying out some purely SB-based builds when I can, probably add those under the “Ranged” section. I’ve tried a few before, they’re actually pretty good, although they rely on CB a lot. -_-

Victory.2879:

OP: nothing much has changed, now they go around in groups of 2-3 thiefs and a d/d regen ele picking off strays.

In the higher tiers they are not much of a problem as it’s a lot of zergs, and they tend to try and camp near respawns to pick off stragglers moving to rejoin the zerg.

On lower tiers and at quiet times they are still out in force thinking they are somehow decent players being able to exploit a broken mechanic (stealth).

Roll an engineer, take grenades and elixirs and the supply drop- then you can kill 3 of them at once, as I did on my not so noob engi last night:-)

“Lol stealth is such a broken mechanic, I killed three thieves with my nooby engi while they were in stealth!”

Oh… Ok, then.

It kinda makes me sad to see GoM suddenly drop to T8, and, on top of that, score as low as they are (last time I checked). Having come from GoM myself, I’m surprised that the server declined so rapidly. When I was with them, they were having a fantastic race against NSP. Now… Even SF, a server that we used to beat often (no offense, SF, though it’s true, we did beat you pretty often when we were together in T7) has completely surpassed them. :/

That being said… I’m really looking forward to this fight. It looks like a really intense set of battles is going on between FC, and right now, these two servers are right up at one another’s throats.

Authority.6145:

Arganthium.5638:

Authority.6145:

Copy Paste to see it.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQBgiY7xO1JR9PQWtC0s/wVB

Runes of Strength
Sigil of Rage Main hand.

Arga try this build and let me know what you think of it.

Lol, I noticed you didn’t add any utilities or weapons to this build. c; However, if I had to guess, it would be a D/D burst thief with SB secondary, runs HiS, and has the utilities Shadowstep, Last Refuge, and Blinding Powder (? I just use this as a placeholder for whatever actually belongs there. It’s just a safe option, IMHO). Elite = Basilisk Venom.

To me, looks like your idea is to have a bursty D/D thief that has more evades than the regular setup. Like the idea, although I’m not sure how the setup will work given to D/D’s reliance on stealth. :/ either way, don’t have the time right now; I’ll use it tomorrow, and tell you how I like it.

Thank you.

EDIT: oh, here’s the version with the weapons and utilities added, by the way.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYFlUmiO3ei/kiY7xO1JR9PQWtC0s/wVB

Kitten me.

I was testing it on D/P. Decided to stick with this one [attached in photo]. I honestly do not feel comfortable with D/P still. My problem is that I still cannot see it as being an aggressive one so gradually I will adapt to a more defensive play-style starting with this one.

Runes: Scholar
Sigil: Air
Sigil off: Force
Sigil: Fire

I think I am done experimenting at the moment. Hopefully I can stick to a kitten build and not have second thoughts about it.

Having come from purely Sword-using origins, it took me a while to really appreciate D/P as well. Now, I run it all the time, and I can tell you that I run a much, much more defensive build than the one above (0/0/20/30/20). And yet, it works. I guess it’s (in part) because I run pretty much full zerker gear, or, failing that (don’t have enough gold to buy everything that I want, sadly enough) I focus on Power and Precision. For me, the result has been a very hardy build that does a great amount of damage, has plenty of stealth, and a lot of dodges. It’s probably a bit nooby in that I use HS+Stealth so much, but it works, and that’s why I like it. Plus, it seems fairly original to me, which is something that I definitely like.

Vekthor.8914:

Tehke sounds Asura when you say it out loud, but the writting style doesn’t fit the pattern for Asura male names. Myjja is mor in the criteria, but usually double consonants are for males. Anyway, they both sound very Asura and aesthethics isn’t that important. 9/10

My new male Guardian is named Vekk Mechabones.

First name definitely asuran, though last name is… Eh. Probably not. Still, given the warrior profession, I like the name “Vekk” (sounds very… I don’t know, soldier-y) and Mechabones would fit the guardian stereotype of being very tough and difficult to break. 8.5/10

I’m an Asuran Thief by the name of Arctu Spackle Yarba. Probably not very asuran-sounding; it’s a personal joke between a friend of mine and I. Anyways, hope it sounds decent enough.

Edit: oh, being a thief, he’s a bit more of the quiet type, but leads when he has to. Generally prefers to work solo, however. Would probably be considered more of a mercenary-type.

Basically, yes. Just land a few poisons and Cluster Bombs when they have the well up, not much else you can do about it. Personally, I’ve been running a P/P build recently, which gives me the advantage of not having to worry about this kind of stuff, due to my general focus on ranged combat. However, I wouldn’t suggest the build to you just so that you don’t have to worry about marks and whatnot when in stealth.

ZenonSeth.5739:

If anyone is interested, the totals so far:
948 chests reported open
17 skins reported found
~= 1.79% drop rate estimate

A quick calculation for the 95% Confidence Interval (which I think is accurate- I have a headache right now, and, honestly, I’m too lazy to go get my calculator) for this being .0179 +/- 0.008428 = (.9262%, 2.6328%), which seems to totally fit in line with the 1/50 (2%) chance given by the devs.

However, looking at the data, there might be slight bias due to sampling methods… I’m not going to go check right now. Either way, I’m guessing this is probably around where the percentages are, and that the devs are correct.

andyMak.6985:

cool, one of my mates is buiding his necro with wells. wanna make sure i can still kill him

yeah, definitely want to be careful with this one. He can’t keep you from popping into stealth, but he can lay down a blind that keeps you from doing much in stealth anyways. He can also lay down marks where he is and basically just use them as traps for if you get too close.

I just remembered- to the extent of my knowledge, no statistical work has been done on the amount of gold you can get per every Unidentified Dye that you identify. Just wanted to put this up as a “hey, look at this” kind of thing on the forums. Unfortunately, I have neither the money (my character is pretty dirt-poor, although I did manage to get some farming in today. Pulled an armored scale for approx. 25 silver, powerful blood for a little over thirty silver, a UD for about 15 silver, and tons of other great stuff) nor the time required to get this data. If anybody would be willing to volunteer to do this, that would be fantastic. The nice thing is that, unlike Geo’s data collection on ectos drop rates, this would be a relatively less expensive/time-consuming study. However, keep in mind that whoever does decide to collect the data could be in for either a huge disappointment… Or a huge reward.

The only concern I would have with this study is the huge variation in the prices on dyes. With the cheapest dyes costing less than 50c, and the most expensive ones costing around 20g or whatever the price is nowadays, we’re going to have some major outliers in the data set. We’ll have to account for those in data collection.

Anyways, posting this to raise awareness about the topic.

Grimwolf.7163:

It’ll stop CnD from stealthing you, since it won’t hit.

^ Basically what grim said.

However, it’s important to note that you can still be blinded while in stealth. One of my tricks is to lay down Black Powder when another thief stealths, so that if they try to backstab me they’ll just be blinded and unable to do so.

^ or not, given that it’s pretty much 100% the same as Drakkonis’ Ranged thief build. :P

Bumper sticker. Bored.

Think I’ll add my latest version of my P/P builds.

Hylox.9746:

i put up an item for 7 gold 75 silvers and had to pay a tax of 38 silvers 75 coppers to post it, fine… i got back 6 gold 97 silvers and 50 coppers what happened to the remaining 77.5 silvers? seems a little unfair that i gotta pay a tax on whatever i post, and not get the full amount of what i posted, especially when im trying to get money to buy black lion keys so i can get a fused weapon ticket that i spent over 100 gold to get and i keep getting useless items like tonics from the stupid black lion chests. is there another way to get the fused weapon tickets other than a small fraction of a chance from a black lion chest?

Hi!

As others have said, there’s a 10% tax, which turns out to be a very good thing. We call taxes like these “gold sinks”, meaning that they destroy the gold once they absorb it entirely. Again, to repeat others, this is a very good thing. Basically speaking, without gold sinks like the TP taxes (actually, especially the TP taxes), what we would find is insane inflation, simply because of the amount of gold monsters drop, and the amount of gold players gain from vendoring items. What would happen is, as the average wealth of players increases because there’s more money, sellers would raise their prices, because players now buy their products more frequently because of their higher gold levels. In a stable economy in the real world, slow inflation is generally expected to happen. However, within the gaming world, prices and wealth levels can fluctuate a lot more. The mentioned Diablo 3 example is an area where taxes were not placed, and customers have suffered for it. Basically, think of it this way: without the tax, that approx. 7g you gained would be worth nothing within a week. That’s why we need these taxes.

Also, you have a gambling problem. Js.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Ursan.7846:

DarkSpirit.7046:

And we are saying that 200 may not be enough of a sample size to account for the “luck” factor. I won’t be surprised if someone repeats this little experiment and come up with the opposite conclusion after just 200 salvages.

Hahahahahahaha

Wait what? Is 201 be large enough to account for the “luck” factor? 202? 300? 400? What arbitrary number do you think is enough of a sample size to account for the “luck” factor, I’m curious?

Though I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, the way you worded it makes it seem like you fail to grasp the concept of statistics.

Ok, since you brought it up first, then justify, with statistical calculations, why you think the number 200 is enough to prove that BLSK would give more ectos. All I see from you so far is a lot of taunts about how well you know statistics compared to me but no math to prove it.

There may be other factors that can affect the rate. For example, are the salvages done, with different kits, at exactly the same time and place?

Btw, thought I’d bring this up now.

I’m lazy, so I’ll just use Geotherma’s first tests for BLSK and MSK instead. I’ll give you the statistical evidence you want.

High and equal n’s, lack of outliers (I’m assuming, unless geo got, say, 10 ectos in one salvage…), and the general robustness of two-sample t-intervals make this a quite robust test.

First, here’s a hypothesis test, where Mu1=Average number of ectos given by BLSKs and Mu2=Average number of ectos given by MSKs. We’re testing hypotheses
H0: Mu1=Mu2
Ha: Mu1>Mu2

Alpha level = 5% level

BLSK kits
n1=200
x-bar1=1.285
S1=1.0193

MSK kits
n2=200
x-bar2=0.93
S2=0.81141

So

df=378.95
P=.00006836
or
P=.0068%
t=3.854

So, not only does the test succeed at the 5% level, but at multiple levels above that. Thus, we reject the null hypothesis.

Interpretation
Basically: if BLSK kits and MSK kits had the same rates of ectos drops, the probability of getting results like Geotherma got are virtually 0- a mere 0.0068%, approximately. Thus, we can reject any foolish ideas that BLSKs produce the same amount or even less ectos than MSKs.

Here’s additional information:

Difference between average numbers of ectos produced by MLKs and BLSKs.
Confidence Level: 95%
Interval:(.17386, .53614)

Okay, we’ve got two widely different n’s here, but we should be ok using the procedures as your data have no particular outliers, and (to the extent of my somewhat limited statistical knowledge) two-sample t-procedures tend to be fairly robust. I suppose something is better than nothing, at the very least.

So, comparing against Geotherma’s first Master kit salvage test:
n1=200
x-bar1=.93
S1=0.81141

Now, your data (removing the lvl 69 point, by the way; makes the data more consistent with the typical level 76-80 range for salvaging for ectos. Also, for this test, I’ll remove the CoF stuff, as it’s below 76. I’ll add them in for the next test that I’ll be posting):

n=10
x-bar2= .5
(For standard deviation, I’ll assume that, since you said that the 2 ectos came from one of the berserker pauldrons, that that means that you got 1 ectos from three tries and 0 ectos on another try w/ the Shaman Amulets)
S2=.527

Thus

df=11.253
Confidence Level = 95%
Not pooled
Interval=(.04313, .81687)

Thus we can say with 95% Confidence that Master Salvage Kits spew between .04313 and .81687 more ectos than Crudes. Unfortunately, the data set is very limited, which makes it very difficult to calculate this out accurately.

Also using this data, Crude Salvage kits give between .12301 and .87699 ectos per salvage, although this data is probably a bit suspect due to the fact that n is so low. However, the data set has no outliers, which makes it a bit better to use.

Now, using all fourteen items (again excluding the level 69)

n=14
xbar-2=.571
S2=.646

Thus the 2-samp t-interval gives us

df=16.017
Confidence=95%
Interval: (-.0267, .74465)

Again, however, the data are a bit sketchy, so it’s a bit difficult to calculate a decent or even a useful interval for this. :/ Thanks though, I appreciate it very much, particularly given that you did have to sacrifice some level of your income in order to pull this off. In the future, I believe that we can compile a list of such salvages in order to determine which kit is most cost-efficient, although my guess is going to be either Journeyman’s or Master’s.

Mystic.5934:

I didn’t record exact returns, but I remember only getting 2 ectos from one salvage once, and I believe it was from those. All the other ecto drops were 1 at a time.

Assuming that that’s true, I have enough data for what I want to do, thanks.

Be right back.

Selver.1307:

Bumping for general usefulness and in hopes of stickifying the product. Need more community involvement + contribootin members!

Thanks c: indeed, hoping to draw contributions from all over the community. So far, we’ve had a small but very awesome group of thieves come together to help with this although it seems like Authority and I are the main people keeping this thread alive. But thank you for this; I would really like to see more people drop their build by, or something like that. c:

Authority.6145:

Copy Paste to see it.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQBgiY7xO1JR9PQWtC0s/wVB

Runes of Strength
Sigil of Rage Main hand.

Arga try this build and let me know what you think of it.

Lol, I noticed you didn’t add any utilities or weapons to this build. c; However, if I had to guess, it would be a D/D burst thief with SB secondary, runs HiS, and has the utilities Shadowstep, Last Refuge, and Blinding Powder (? I just use this as a placeholder for whatever actually belongs there. It’s just a safe option, IMHO). Elite = Basilisk Venom.

To me, looks like your idea is to have a bursty D/D thief that has more evades than the regular setup. Like the idea, although I’m not sure how the setup will work given to D/D’s reliance on stealth. :/ either way, don’t have the time right now; I’ll use it tomorrow, and tell you how I like it.

Thank you.

EDIT: oh, here’s the version with the weapons and utilities added, by the way.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYFlUmiO3ei/kiY7xO1JR9PQWtC0s/wVB

Xsorus.2507:

In TPvP you can contest points quite easily on a thief, But the ability to avoid dying (thus having to Res and come back) is incredibly powerful.

As for Argan, you play a D/P thief (one of the easiest specs in the game), and you’ve played one since September, I’ve played a Ranger, and I played a thief afterward..

So I know the advantage of stealth quite easily.

and I stand by what I said, the ability to reset a fight is incredibly powerful, to do it over and over again is Overpowered.

Are you serious? The build I developed was completely original to me- I might have drawn inspiration from a few other places, but I made the build in and of itself all by myself. What do you play? The recycled 10/30/30/0/0 Backstab build that thousands of other thieves play?

My build is based on a great deal of development, development, development. I have spent months trying out build after build, adapting slowly but steadily. I have tested out hundreds of builds, and the build the D/P build that I have relies on heavy mitigation, evasion, and tactics. Have you even tried out the build? Frankly, coming from somebody who is going to throw around words like “OP easymode lol” to describe builds that I’m guessing he/she has no clue about in the first place, I’m disturbed. Either way, I have little desire to discuss the state of the thief with somebody who is going to suddenly swap topics to something that is irrelevant to the discussion, and is aimed as more of a trolling attempt than an attempt at rational conversation.

I hope that somebody from the thief community cares about this, apart from me.

Xsorus.2507:

As someone with a Thief, let me say..Thieves are overpowered..

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The ability to reset a fight consistently over and over again will always be the most powerful thing in a PvP game.

You’re wrong. That in itself doesn’t make something overpowered, for one thing. If you can gain an advantage over a thief by forcing them to retreat, you’ve already won the fight, and, most likely, the point. Power in a PvP game is about more than just DPS, it’s about being able to control the field, and, in that regard, retreating all the time is absolutely disadvantageous, to any profession. Given the squishiness of the thief, there really are only two options for a more power- and crits- based thief: make a build that sacrifices a lot of utility and flexibility for the ability to escape easily, or to dump that ability, making yourself do more damage but have much less survivability. There are D/P builds like my own that focus on survivability and stealth/shadowstep, giving me a long lifespan, but I have nowhere near the amount of damage as a stereotypical thief would have.

I’ve played the thief since September, when I got the game, and I have not swapped, mostly due to my playstyle. However, as a thief myself, I can say that I do die more than often enough to be able to call the thief very well balanced. “Stealth” isn’t a get-out-of-trouble-free card; the way people move in stealth is often extremely predictable. I wrote a whole series of ways earlier to counter stealth, and people who use it offensively. Defensively, it’s much harder, but not impossible. You can still AoE their area of exit for the first couple of seconds. You can keep an eye out for them, or block off potential escapes with traps, pets, or whatever. You can use a pushback like Mesmer GS 5, which is often used quite successfully. You can stack conditions, or- whatever. The ability to retreat, however, is not an “overpowered” advantage; it only gives your enemy the point, although at a slightly lower cost to you than before.

Bacon Please.8407:

When 9/10 of the community cry about thief it is because they all suck, not because thief is overpowered. Thief being over powered couldn’t possibly be the problem at all. No sir.

Oh, that’s interesting. Where did you get that statistic from?

And what’s so OP about thieves?

jkctmc.8754:

@WhiteAndMilky & @Arganthium

Both of you are pretty spot on, and I think the differences we feel, or experience are probably playstyle, or the variables that exist in game.

While the Thief is powerful in good hands, it is no longer as powerful as many believe. In my opinion the Mesmer surpasses the Thief, though I’m a beast on my Mesmer because people obviously do not put up the big red “target” over a Mesmers head like they should.

When I’m playing my Ranger, and occasionaly get burst out by a one trick pony Thief, I shrug it off and smile, because later when I’m destroying a d/d Elementalist, knowing most classes can’t.

Right now my concern are my Warrior, and my Guardian. For some reason they’re feeling like my weakest classes, and I’m not sure why. Are you two experiencing the same thing?

That is most likely the case.

Though I don’t like mes as much as I did when I first started playing it, it is a very strong class.

As for the warrior and guardian stuff… I’m not sure. One thing I might suspect, for the warrior, is the relative simplicity as compared to the other professions you play. Thieves, mesmers, rangers, and necros are all much more complex than warriors. Not to say that warrs are bad or anything, but for me they’ve been the kind of profession that I learn within a day.

As for guardians, one of the things might be the… Different kind of group support that you get out of a guardian. The fact that you’re adding boons to your allies rather than taking out enemies is probably a bit different from what you might be used to. Another thing is that, kind of like warrs, guardians are extremely symmetrical throughout the entire class; basically, about medium damage with high survivability, and that’s about it, whereas the thief, for example, has all kinds of differences with its weaponsets. For example,
- S/P: Condition removal and burst
- S/D: Condition removal and flank attacks
- D/P: Blinds, good damage, invisibility
- D/D: lots of bleeds, high damage, GC, C&D+Backstab combo
- P/D: lots of bleeding and staying far from your opponent
- P/P: hybrid between condition damage and direct damage
- SB: a general utility weapon

Whereas I feel like a comparing, say, GS and Sword on the Guardian is basically able to be summarized with “one is more defensive and does a little more AoE”.

Outside of this, I find both Guardians and Warriors very boring, whereas my main is a thief and I play mes and ranger as my other toons, which also seem to be the three main toons that you play (from what I’ve heard, anyhow). So, it’s possibly that aspect; when you’re bored, you don’t play as well as when your blood is rushing.

Mystic.5934:

so I salvaged some level 68+ rares with Crude Salvage Kits
Total Salvaged = 15 rares
Return = 8 ecto
= 0.533 ecto/rare
also got 20 mithril

These were not all the same rare. Breakdown:
Berserker’s Reinforced Scale Pauldrons (CoF tokens) level 70 × 4 = 3 ecto, 5 mithril
Shaman’s Ring level 77 × 1 = 0 ecto, 2 mithril
Shaman’s Ring level 80 × 1 = 1 ecto, 1 mithril
Shaman’s Amulet level 77 × 1 = 0 ecto, 1 mithril
Shaman’s Amulet level 80 × 4 = 3 ecto, 6 mithril
Rampager’s Amulet level 69 × 1 = 0 ecto, 1 mithril
Rampager’s Amulet level 76 × 1 = 1 ecto, 1 mithril
Carrion Amulet level 80 × 2 = 0 ecto, 3 mithril

Based on the low sample size, the standard deviation is probably pretty high, but it still gives us initial insight and basic conclusions:
-Crude Salvage Kit can give you ecto
-ecto return is most likely significantly lower than MSK and BLSK, so much so that MSK is the most cost efficient, especially considering the socketed things that would be returned with MSK:
MSK profit = 26s/ecto x 0.9ecto/rare – 0.614s/salvage = 22.786s/rare
CSK profit = 26s/ecto x 0.533ecto/rare – 0.021s/salvage = 13.837s/rare

Could you give me the specific numbers on the four zerker pauldrons so that I can calculate the standard deviation for a two-sample t-interval?

By the way, to address the topic itself, no, there isn’t. Actually, I’d imagine a few builds (like many P/D ones) were taken off by upset players after the March patch. Outside of that- I stay fairly up-to-date with builds, and I can’t think of any new builds that have been developed recently. At least, mainstream ones. I run “rogue” builds typically, meaning that I run things that are, well… Different. At least, they try to be. So, excluding those, there are no such new builds.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Arganthium.5638:

One other thing- thieves only have one good stealth condition remover, SA IV. Not all builds are going to run it. For instance, most of my stealth-based builds don’t run it; instead, they run SA I and V. I’m a bit of a deviant from the norm, though. Don’t let that give you a reason not to use conditions against stealth-y thieves, though, especially if the conditions are easy to lay down. Things like cripple and chill still hurt when thieves aren’t stealthed, and, when they are and they have to wait a few seconds to remove these conditions, at least you can feel content that they’ve wasted a few precious seconds of their stealth waiting to remove the conditions before closing in.

Do you run a sword shadowstep build? I have yet to encounter a thief who ran no stealth cleansing that didn’t fold like a wet paper towel, unless it was a sword thief. Although I could see a rune of melandru and condition reduction food thief be successful, as it’s just about as good as the stealth cleansing.

Actually, I don’t. Here’s my build. It’s D/P. It’s… Well, an oddity.

(btw, before I continue, I agree that sword thieves have the godly advantage of Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return. Unfortunately, I don’t much like any of its other skills.)

I can’t say I’m sure why conditions tend to be something that I can manage with this build. Perhaps it’s because of blinds, or because I can shake off lots of condition builds because of my high(er) health granted by 300 vitality. Maybe it’s because I have a tendency to be very jumpy, meaning that I will evade as often as physically possible. Maybe it’s because I can stealth before I get hit by conditions, or I take special precautions when fighting against condition builds (as there are various ways to fight them that are different from regular DPS builds).

Honestly, I’d think that it was a combination between having good vitality, being able to remove a decent number of conditions via HiS and Shadowstep, and my strategies against condition builds. But, in all fairness, even I don’t really know. :P

EDIT: oh yeah, and I don’t run any of those runes/food, either (I’m a very poor asura :c ). So yeah, I really have no clue.

I’m also going to have to agree with most of what jk says. Some thieves will use HS three times in a row (depending on the build), but most thief builds won’t.

The one thing I might say that deviates from what jk says is about initiative regeneration. While thieves have a lot of init regenerators available to them, a rather sad amount of them don’t bother to even take a look at them- it’s all about the crits and the backstabs for them. So what’ll happen is- you’ll see them close in on you to C&D, which for backstab builds typically consumes about half of their initiative right there (I’m going to give the example of a 10/30/30/0/0 backstab build for this one). Unfortunately, given their need for stealth, if they miss the C&D, they’ll have to start worrying a bit about initiative for a while. Basically, in my experience, the hyped “OP thieves”, which are typically backstab/GC types, will hit you for insane damage early on, but later experience very laggy damage output, simply because they can’t gain any good initiative.

One other thing- thieves only have one good stealth condition remover, SA IV. Not all builds are going to run it. For instance, most of my stealth-based builds don’t run it; instead, they run SA I and V. I’m a bit of a deviant from the norm, though. Don’t let that give you a reason not to use conditions against stealth-y thieves, though, especially if the conditions are easy to lay down. Things like cripple and chill still hurt when thieves aren’t stealthed, and, when they are and they have to wait a few seconds to remove these conditions, at least you can feel content that they’ve wasted a few precious seconds of their stealth waiting to remove the conditions before closing in.

Chopps.5047:

Yep, Hicci is right. A good berserker thief is probably one of the best 1v1 builds in the game. It’s a nut I’d love to crack. I have a theory that because they

A) need to hit you for initiative
B) using all of their initiative on heartseeker (3 jumps) is roughly equivalent to one ranger Swoop in distance
C) berserker theif has low condition removal besides their autoattack

If you can dodge their attacks and prevent them from landing anything while chasing you through traps, I have a theory that they can be beaten. But this is unorthodox 1v1 and I personally have never defeated a good one. Your best bet is to outrun them when you see them.

For the record, durzilla’s sun spirit build lets me get them ito shadow refuge…that’s about as close to beating a good thief that I’ve ever come to in a 1v1 type situation.

Fear makes them unstealth and they can still be hit with conditions, AoEs, or cleaves when stealthed.

Bunker engineers, with all their nets and conditions, also cause me many problems 1v1 as a ranger.

It’s possibke that theives have another nerf coming but don’t count on that. PvP is a team game and you will do better playing together as a team. Hotjoin is like, you know, random team configurations etc, and that will always lose to a well coordinated team regardless of builds.

Thief here.

First, I’d be extremely careful about the advice regarding initiative. I, for one, run heavy initiative regeneration, so if you aren’t careful, you might avoid the first wave of attacks only to find yourself caught in the second one with no endurance remaining.

Now, here’s what I’ve found to be effective:

- When they’ve been stealthed for 2+ seconds, start spamming your auto attack, especially if you have a melee weapon like a sword or, better yet, a GS on you. Then proceed to spin in circles while doing this. It makes it a real pain for Backstab-based thieves, who rely on stealth for most of their damage via Backstab, to hit you.
-For the first two or so seconds of stealth, AoE the area where they just stealthed in, or, failing that, use simpler attacks. Thieves aren’t totally unpredictable in stealth; they can’t avoid you fast enough as soon as they have stealthed. Use that time to AoE and lay the damage down on them.
-Running traps? Lay down your traps when the thief stealths. Seriously, while learning my thief, I found that one of the worst things for trying to land a backstab combo is walking into a couple of traps/marks. It’s a real pain.
-Use conditions. Most of them are extremely helpful for you. For instance, bleeds; lots of thieves have really bad condition removal, so, if you manage to land, say, 5 or so bleeds on a thief before they stealth, that’s great. Cripple is also nice for when thieves stealth. Poison is good, especially if the thief runs 30 in SA so that they get “regeneration” while in stealth, which will likely be their main/only source of getting back health.
-Slow down thieves. A lot. Crippling and chilling are two extremely, extremely deadly conditions to use against a thief. In fact, I would say that, out of all of the different ways of countering thieves, this one might be the best. Crippling and chilling thieves makes it impossible for them to do much of anything against you. Sure, you can also immobilize them; the issue I just have with that, though, is that immobilizes are generally harder to get and last a shorter period of time against enemies. That’s why I’d suggest cripple and chill instead.
-Don’t waste attacks while the thief is stealthed. Too many players wait until the thief has been stealthed for 5 seconds, and then- if they’re a warrior, for example- they’ll use 100blades and, once they get backstabbed for 7K damage, they cry “OP! OP!”. It’s horrible, really. What, do they expect thieves to stand right in front of them and shout “hey, use 100b now!”?
-Last piece of advice: if you suspect a thief is a bursty zerker thief, do whatever you can to avoid just the first few attacks. After that, given that these builds don’t run much initiative regeneration most often, the lagging damage output will give you a major damage increase. They’ll try to pull a trick here and there, but, outside of that, avoid those first few hits and it’ll be smooth sailing.

Those are the tips I’d give.

… Please sticky this thread on the thief forum. I know that I and many others have expressed interest in having this thread stay up for reference, and it’s being expanded. Unfortunately, I feel like this thread is easily forgotten- it just floats back down the stream of posts, which is why I believe it should be stickied. Also, I know that the mesmer forum has a post like this stickied for them (which is a bit more complete, although it is also older than ours and has benefitted from the sticky); in fact, the inspiration for starting the Guide post came directly from the mesmer forum.

Anyhow, I and many others would very much appreciate to see the thread stickied. Thank you.

~Arctu Spackle Yarba, Asuran Thief~

This thread… Shall be risen!

Of course, I’ll keep this thread updated. It’ll help if ANet could sticky this, though. Might go and ask them directly right now, actually.

Anyhow, thank you.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Arganthium.5638:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

One problem: What about your other weapon set?

Main: S/P or S/D or D/P

They don’t seem to benefit from this build at all. :/

Oh, sorry, I think you might have misunderstood Sword- and Dagger- based builds are usually my specialty, that’s what I was referring to. The build here runs P/P and SB.

Got it. I thought you’re replacing your SB with P/P.

Interesting build, I might try it out. Although, there’s too much survivability IMO so the DPS seems to suffer a lot.

No, P/P is the main set, SB is the backup/utility.

It depends on how you spec. As I mentioned in some of my posts, I run a 0/0/20/30/20 build usually, but I end up dealing tons of damage simply because I run zerker gear.