Guild Wars 2

Coming from an ex-GoM fighter, they have wonderful command and guilds there designed for WvW; I highly recommend that you stay. Right now… Things just aren’t the same in T8.

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.

I usually try to improvise in order to create my own light sources. For example, in the dark room in the EB jp, I often don’t bring a torch- I use Cluster Bomb on my Shortbow, instead, which brings a good bit of light for a few seconds. Allows me to be seen less by trolls, or people who’ve been trolling that I’ve spent the last 10 minutes hunting down.

Kibbles.9813:

You could adjust by swapping more Trait points into Critical Strikes and Deadly Arts, turning it into a viable ranged glass cannon for group support, but even then you’re left with a weapon set that just doesn’t hold up to the rest as well as it should. P/P works wonderfully in PvE, but as soon as you get reactive players involved it completely falls apart in comparison to the other set options available.

Uhhh…

The set is also incredibly Power- and Precision-reliant to deal damage even anywhere close to the other alternatives, which leaves you with little stat room for major amounts of Toughness or Vitality to ensure surviving WvW engagements without Initiative-based Stealth.

close to the other alternatives, which leaves you with little stat room for major amounts of Toughness or Vitality to ensure surviving WvW engagements

which leaves you with little stat room for major amounts of Toughness or Vitality

No, your last part is just flat-out wrong. You assume that when battling, the instant you unload on somebody, they’re going to come right at you. That’s a very strictly melee-type way of thinking. If you get right up in somebody’s face, yes, they’re going to try to punish you for it. However, amid the chaos of PvP or WvW, a single Unload is surprisingly subtle. If a person’s battling with a melee character while you’re stacking DPS in the background, the person is most likely to focus on dealing with the melee character first. It’s not a matter of reaction, it’s a matter of convenience. Then, even without the assistance of allies, P/ kitten till an extremely viable set. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve thrown down Black Powder on melee enemies and completely chopped them up while they were unable to do anything because of my blinds. I cannot begin to describe how much damage the combined Unloads and bleeds do for you. I cannot stress enough that your ranged interrupt gives you extremely nice options. I think you completely underestimate this weapon set, which, given the melee-oriented “crits+stealth+backstab” mindset of the thief community, I can understand. I draw inspiration from other builds created by other people, but all of the builds that I ultimately use, while they might not be original to me, I created them individually without simply taking a current build and adjusting it by changing precision by, say, 1% in exchange for toughness. So, what I’m asking you is- try the set out, then critique it.

Kibbles.9813:

P/P has exactly one high-damage skill, which is Unload, which also happens to be one of the less reliable skills in the Thief weapon arsenal. If it doesn’t get Obstructed by a bump in the terrain or something walking in front of your target, the enemy can avoid the entire channel duration in a single dodge or via you turning slightly while firing, leaving you out of 5 Initiative and no damage done. You get no non-Utility stealth to break from a surprise engagement, or any reliable way to utilize Sneak Attack for Bleed stacks. You’d be sacrificing huge melee damage potential for 900 range that will get you killed instantly the second more than one opponent shows up.

The set is also incredibly Power- and Precision-reliant to deal damage even anywhere close to the other alternatives, which leaves you with little stat room for major amounts of Toughness or Vitality to ensure surviving WvW engagements without Initiative-based Stealth. P/P works great in PvE, but as soon as you get reactive players involved it completely falls apart in comparison to the other set options available.

Ok, first of all, Heartseeker and the like falls under the exact same problem. At least with P/P, you have additional range. If you want to get within range<= 300 of your enemy, go right ahead. Then both HS and P/P will have the exact same problem with obstructions. At least P/P gives you a bit of range. It also allows you to be more well-defended, by staying away from melee enemies.

The last I checked, dodges don’t last 1 3/4 seconds, which is, apparently, the amount of time that Unload’s channeled duration lasts. On top of that, even if dodges were 1 3/4 seconds, your enemy would need perfect timing; they could still find themselves being hit four times for decent DPS, and, because they spent time evading, they can’t do anything to counterattack. They just have to deal with it. Also; HS/C&D/Steal/(insert other popular attack/button push here) have the exact same problem, except that they only have one attack rather than 8? That’s what I thought.

There’s a reason I run high initiative regeneration, but it almost always isn’t because I feel that I’m going to be missing my targets a lot. Now, a far more pitiful waste of initiative is LDB, which is easily evadable in its entirety, and has a poor range.

With the current listed build, I get out of surprise attacks by (assuming no walls behind me) using RFI and then Withdraw in the direction I’m trying to go. Swap to SB, IA the kitten out of there. However, I am trying to fit stealth into the build (mostly by swapping out utility skills). The two builds I listed at the bottom of my post state this, please check them out.

Getting killed instantly? Uh… I don’t think so. How easy is it for you to line enemies up when you’re running D/P or S/D / S/P? Or any melee set? How easy is it for you to deal DPS until your opponent arrives, then Shadowstep away and continue DPS’ing, making your opponent run after you? This is one of the major premises of the P/D build. By itself, it doesn’t do much damage (certainly less than this build), but, paired with the ability to Shadowstep away like nobody’s business, it becomes an extremely effective set.

This set is not “incredibly power and precision reliant”, please read my comments about condition damage, the amount of damage a single unload does, and then check out the two builds I listed at the bottom of my post that utilize both Acro and SA. Also, given that it seems like the overwhelming majority of the thief population runs at least 20 Crits/DA (which I never, ever run, unless I’m trying to figure out a way to make a Signet build work- hint, it doesn’t), I wouldn’t say that this build is exactly “power and precision reliant”. I seriously suggest that you try out this build before you talk about it. Now, granted; given the range, mobility, and evades, I do choose to run good power and crits to balance things out. However, that’s because I already have good survivability with this build (and, I suspect, better survivability with my SA builds). So I fail to see your reasoning here. If I told you that for my current main build I run a D/P melee thief with pretty much full zerker gear, your response might be different than if I told you that I run full zerker gear to balance out the fact that I also have the traits 0/0/20/30/20. The same applies here.

Daecollo.9578:

How do you kill anyone?

/sigh

Lol, ok, to be fair, I had very little time to write this, so I might not have explained everything. Like how, for example, a single Unload deals 4.5K (or 3.6-ish K if they manage to evade some of the shots), which, personally, I think is pretty neat given an already great auto attack, the free ranged interrupt, and a blind field if anyone decides to get too close to you (which also happens to work great for combo finishers with the pistol).

So, the idea is to use a combination between both condition damage and regular DPS in order to down your opponent. The ways that you manage to pull this off vary based on which build you use. If you used the build that I wrote about, you’ll be dodging a heck of a lot. You’ll use Withdraw/RFI when your enemy gets close to you, and then hit an unload as a counterattack. Here’s the other thing; when you are at range, there are very few things you need to worry about as compared to when you’re in close combat. For example:

- Actually fighting the enemy: Seriously, why bother to break into an intense battle and risk getting yourself killed by going close-combat when you can just stand on the sidelines and laugh your kitten off while bleeding and Unloading enemies to death?
- Able to evade fighting multiple enemies: with range, you have much more versatility as to what you can do, and you’ll be hit less often (because you can’t get hit with both melee and ranged attacks if you’re at a range from your opponent/s). Thus, you’re able to invest more trait points/in gear that will give you an offensive advantage.

And there’s a lot more really great stuff about the build. For example, if I played a pure condition thief, I don’t think that I’d get within 100 feet of an elixir engineer. Their condition removal (assuming they run the X trait in Alchemy) gives them virtually unlimited condition removal. I’d do virtually no damage to them. Plus, if I did manage to get, say, four conditions on them, they could just drop Elixir C and completely screw me over at that point. The same goes for condition necros, (some) guardians, and so forth.

On the other hand, pure DPS- which has been the camp I’ve been a part of from the very beginning- is, across the board, a very aggressive and very successful style of play. However, it comes at the cost of generally involving melee attacks, which means less range, less versatility, and less defense.

So that’s where P/P comes in. It gives you the best of both worlds. With an autoattack that automatically starts stacking bleeds on your enemy (and a Stealth attack that stacks 5 bleeds on your opponent before they know it), as well as plenty of caltrops, you’re getting a sweet amount of Condition Damage via bleeds, although not as much as if you had run a pure CD build. On the other hand, Unload deals a kittenload of DPS on your opponent very rapidly; it’s hard to evade completely (due to the number of shots) and, honestly, is just a sick-looking attack to add to your arsenal if you really want to look like a gunslinger. that being said, it doesn’t deal quite as much damage as a melee build might.

So, it doesn’t deal the highest condition damage, nor the highest pure DPS. But combined together, both condition damage and DPS make a formidable combination. On top of all of that, you’re going to be the purest ranged thief build that there is (IMO), so you’re going to have more defensive capacity as well as flexibility with your maneuvers.

So far, with the build I slammed together and wrote about, I wasn’t OP, but I wasn’t weak either. I got my fair share of kills. I think that, once I find a good way to combine both stealth and acrobatics, as well as the proper gear, then I’m going to start racking up the kills very quickly.

And that, Daecollo, is how you kill people with this build. c:

Ok, I usually run a setup like:

Main: S/P or S/D or D/P
Secondary: SB

And I work out quite fine. One thing that bothers me about these setups though- and the thief in general- is a lack of range. Seriously, unless I run Scorpion Wire, I always have exactly one skill and one skill only that I can use to hit people at 1200 range- SB’s Cluster Bomb (one of the many reasons I use SB).

That brings me to my next point. While Cluster Bomb, and the SB in general, are both nice, they lack power. CB, for example, has a somewhat lengthy animation that results in a big blob flying towards enemy groups. Fortunately, CB actually does some rather nice damage, which makes up for its other faults. The other problem with CB is that it’s nowhere near as easy to use again and again, unlike other thief skills (due to the initiative system).

Now, I’ve wanted to make a build like this for a long time… And while I only just started playing it today (to satisfying results)… It seems like a heck lot of fun, and it does a lot of damage. Here it is.

Let’s just name it “Gunslinger (No invisibility)”, for its fairly unique P/P set, as well as its lack of invisibility (I’ll get more to that later).

0/10/0/30/30

10 in CS: Basically, to get Pistol Mastery (deal 10% extra damage with pistols). A nice, cheap trait that will allow your unloads to be crushing.

30 in Acro:
- PoI: general damage improvement, which boosts both your condition damage and your power. Technically, you could replace it with vigor for tons of dodges, but I feel like this is a bit more offensive in nature, which I overall prefer. I also think it has more utility and is able to be accessed more easily than the vigor trait.
-Quick Recovery: This one might not be necessary… But, like the title says: “in the works”, and, after all, I had about half an hour today to slap this build together today. I borrowed a lot from my standard build, which also runs 30 Acro.
Anyhow, I really like initiative regeneration. However I can get, whenever I can get it. Quick Recovery, to me, is a way of saying “hey, tons of free initiative over time, and you don’t have to worry about me- I’ll just sit behind the scenes and do all of the work for you!”. With an active profession like the thief, you want to be thinking about as few things as possible.
Outside of that, most of my builds are basically initiative-dependent; initiative is their lifeblood and, without it, they die. Thus, Quick Recovery.
-Assassin’s Reward: just a very neat healing skill. In the past, it’s gotten me out of trouble numerous times. It usually really shines when you’re retreating from battle with very low health (< 3K) left. This is another benefit of using SB; I can use Infiltrator’s Arrow as an emergency button, and, with AR, I get a small but significant heal every time I use it, meaning that I can be very hard to catch, even with low health, due to health regeneration and shadowsteps.

30 Tricks
-Uncatchable: pretty self-explanatory; also nice since this build is a bit of a hybrid between crits and conditions.
-Trickster: good for RFI, which is a free dodge, stunbreaker, and init gainer all at once. Also good for Haste.
-Hastened Replenishment: more initiative regeneration! You get the idea.

Try out the build yourselves, tell me how you like it, and tell me how I can change it for the better too. c: thanks all.

One last thing: didn’t try these out, but here are two possible stealthing versions of the build.

More stealthing:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmiP3eS6E+JFxWBgy9ooGtp+H+a/hrC

More dodging:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmiP3eS6E+JFxWBgypooG1/wX7ZcVtC
—————————————————-
UPDATE 4/3
Here’s another build I made, it’s a bit more defensive. If you’re planning on running full zerker, this might be the thing for you.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmaPHfS6E+5EBPjiaU/Dft7xVtqWB;TEAg0A

I’ve never been impressed with these kinds of builds. :/

Which is why I run a 0/0/20/30/20 “bunker” build. The name’s a bit deceiving, though; I run just insane initiative regeneration with lots of dodges, stealths, shadowsteps and whatnot. I make up for my lack of power/crits with zerker gear. The end result? A build that won’t hit as hard as a GC build, but will manage to survive far longer than a GC build while still laying on the damage.

I played an hour today, soloing the Box. I picked up two bauble bubbles while playing, but maybe I’m just lucky.

Also, Shadow Return is an absolutely wonderful stun breaker. It’s really quite lovely; you should be using IS and SR quite often anyways, which means that you get a get-out-of-trouble-free card which removes a condition and breaks stun, which is always a good thing.

Outside of that, I like the changes you made to your build. The Trickery traits and CS 25 are both far superior to what you’ll get in DA. I think this looks pretty good. You could also try things like removing 5 from CS so you get the Trick Master trait, of which there are definitely a few good ones.

The only thing I have to ask is why you chose Acro III over Assassin’s Reward. I get that vigor is really helpful (note: another way to get vigor is with Trickery VII, while also ripping off a few boons from an enemy. It doesn’t give you as much vigor, I believe, as you will have from the 12-sec CD on SoM, but it does grant the vigor to your allies as well, and gives all of you some really sick boon rips. It also gives you the option to take Assassin’s Reward), but I’m not sure it’s quite as helpful as being able to heal yourself with the initiative that you’re going to be using a lot of in this build anyways. If there’s any reason I would oppose CS 25 (outside of being able to put the 5 in trickery instead), it would be that you always have to have 6 init or more in your bar. While that’s nice and all, it becomes a pain to have to manage dodges and attacks while still being able to keep up 6 init at all times. Like Acro XII, I just find it really limiting. With my thief, I want to be flexible, and be able to focus on as few things as possible. That way, I can bring out the maximum efficiency that I can handle.

So, tl;dr: Assassin’s Reward has a lot of benefits over Acro III.
If you want to get vigor, you can always put 5 from CS into Trick to get BT. That way, you’re able to maintain maximum efficiency by not having to look at your init bar all the time, making sure you have 6+ init.

Apart from that, having run signet builds in the past myself, this looks really good. Great work, hope you can update us with how the build works out on the field.

Ursan.7846:

Arganthium.5638:

That’s definitely a very good possibility, although I’m surprised that so many bots would have existed right under ANet’s noses to cause the price to rise this much after their removal.

Around Wintersday the same thing happened to t6 mats, I believe. Prices of all t6 mats decreased gradually, and suddenly jumped back up due to a massive bot ban.

Anet tends to ban bot in waves, so I can totally see this as a rason.

Didn’t know this, thanks for the information. Given how recent the last patch was, then, this seems pretty realistic.

Geotherma.2395:

These are super easy to farm, I would say if the price rose (and this is entirely speculation) that it could have been bots being removed who caused it to drop and it is now raising to normal. Or a variety of other causes, I’m not an economist or dev ^^

That’s definitely a very good possibility, although I’m surprised that so many bots would have existed right under ANet’s noses to cause the price to rise this much after their removal.

Odd. Checked the patch notes too, couldn’t see anything that would directly affect this.

I’ll try to think of other possible causes.

Didn’t even think about this being an issue, thank you for writing it.

/signed

fizzypop.6458:

CureForLiving.5360:

I think you’re confusing good (as in the ethical construct) with good (as in effective, efficient, profitable etc.). Also last time I check wasn’t gambling actually a very lucrative business?

No you see that’s what’s wrong with people you think ethics don’t belong in business, but no they do. If you’ve ever gotten an MBA you’d know this because one of the first classes you take is ethics in business. Human trafficking is also a lucrative business, but I doubt many people would be okay with that. Why? Because of ethical bounds. Same reason we have labor laws as well. I don’t play a game to gamble if I want to do that I go to a casino. Which btw is heavily regulated unlike gambling via gaming. It should be at this point. If you want to become a casino instead of a game then you need to follow the same laws. I remember when games were actually meant to be a fun past time not traps. Making money shouldn’t be at the cost of your customers and if it is then you are selling a bad product. GW1 ran fine without the gambling.

I think you misunderstood CFL’s comment.

Anyways, here’s my two cents. As long as
1) Customers know what they’re buying
2) They aren’t being forced to buy what they’re buying, they’re making a conscious, willing decision to do so

and

3) Customers get what they bought

Then it’s completely ethical. By engaging in the action, customers give their consent that they willingly make the decision to buy such-and-such item (in this case, randomized BLTC chests) and that they are responsible for the consequences of their purchase of the item.

Now, the issue I have with posts like these is that we get have items that follow all three of these conditions, and yet the consumer still wants to blame the supplier for their bad luck. Well, given that BLTC chests are known by consumers to be random, that consumers aren’t being forced to buy these chests- they’re making a willing, conscious decision to buy the chests- and that consumers get the randomness that they payed for, the only person to blame here if a consumer gets bad luck is the consumer him or herself. The instant the consumer made the willing decision to buy a BLTC chest, they naturally accepted the fact that the chests were randomized. They realized that they were swapping money for randomness, and, on top of that, randomness which they really knew nothing about, but chose to engage in anyways.

So, please, please don’t write posts like these blaming ANet. Blame the consumers who made the willing and conscious decision to risk their wealth on a bet.

Lol, thank you for writing this.

Elissa.3620:

Sinergy.6374:

The mobs will still get skipped. There will just be a requirment for a thief or mesmer in every group now for the mass invis to drop agro.

Unfortunately no. Stealth does not drop aggro anymore – was changed in patch before this last one.

Actually, I know that a lot of thieves (myself included) were happy to see the loss of aggro drop in stealth. It was a real pain in the kitten to be mauling an enemy, get low on health, stealth to gain a little thinking time and get a bit of health back, only to see our enemies walk off with fully recharged health.

In a sudden change of events, with the help of our new FoE allies, it looks like Eredon owns Stonemist Castle.

phor.7952:

Arganthium.5638:

I get that it is something of a damage nerf to builds like that, but to go from there to saying “Thief pve is now unplayable” is a huge leap.

It’s definitely a large exaggeration, but so is saying “thieves didn’t even get a single damage nerf”.
: /

Ah, I see what you mean.

Sorry, what I meant by “not a single damage nerf” was a direct damage nerf. There are lots of builds out there that don’t rely on stealth for damage, so it’s not entirely accurate to call it a direct damage nerf.

Khal Drogo.9631:

randomfightfan.4091:

i carry with my thief daily. sadly your assumption was wrong in my case

I personally think thieves can save parties completely downed (happened to me a few times) but this is counterbalanced they get downed v easily themselves unless the player is skilled. People generally have a bad opinion of thieves being glass cannons and the many players playing thief really badly in PVE. I would have said the same thing about eles a month ago, but it seems that people playing elementalists have upped their game, at least in my experience.

This is true, thank you. I would also add that thieves can be very survivable, but- like you said- their build has to reflect that, as well as their skill level.

This is wonderful, thank you.

John Smith.4610:

GW2 TP is awesome. Not only is it good for our game, it’s good for the industry.

Information brought to you by a completely unbiased source. :P

Seriously though, I love the way ANet is handling the TP. That they’ve brought economists onto their team to handle the economy in itself speaks volumes about them. I really don’t have any complaints about it, and I’m looking forward to continuing using it in the future.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Glad there are other options but I fell in love with the class for the stealth mechanic and ANet just keeps messing with it.

BobbyT.7192:

Imo anyone that goes full zerk is a complete noob, I rather not have to dead weights in my party, I have yet to meet a zerker that was any good.

That’s too bad BobbyT, I hope you get to run with a few good GC’rs some day.

Blood~

Me too (as well as the ability for thief to teleport), but I didn’t fall in love with the class for Backstab. :P

Obviously, within GW2 we are given the option to form guilds that can cooperate together to take WvWvW objectives, which a lot of guilds actually do. Furthermore, there are some servers (like my very own Eredon Terrace) that are smaller, or are less developed and thus have less cooperation between guilds. So (and excuse me if somebody has already proposed this idea), I think that we should form Facebook groups to share ideas and formulate strategies.

I know that a lot of guilds have a Facebook group (my former guild included). I figure that our newly formed FB groups could work as a sort of “alliance” between guilds on a particular server, as well as include people who don’t necessarily represent a particular guild.

Thoughts?

(Again, my apologies if this idea has already been proposed by somebody else)

Cactus.2710:

Samhayn.2385:

Cactus.2710:

blurps.2340:

Colly.4073:

Why the hell they added the rest is beyond me :/

Obviously you didn’t read these forums much. Players cried their eyes out about there being no progression and rewards in WvW so hard, you’d think the world was about to end.

That’s the problem. Players who didn’t understand WvW, or didn’t really care much for a play style based upon strategy and objectives, but who still wanted large scale battles kept hammering ANet for “more progression”. Several of us here tried to point out the pitfalls of instituting individual achievements that disincline players to pursue team objectives, but ANet didn’t understand their own game enough to realize how badly this would undermine it. They could have put in place individual achievements that reinforced team goals, but instead they made credit based upon individual kills. That’s just stupid and it’s no wonder that now we just have mobs of players mindlessly fighting in the road for no purpose other than rank and titles. That can be fun at first, but it quickly gets boring and it for sure isn’t WvW.

We must play different games, all I see now is giant balls of people avoiding fights and running to take Objectives, 70 people to kill a road guard and flip a supply camp? Yeah every night. If anything killing someone is the slowest way to rank up. Being a roamer myself I can tell you that once someone is killed once the points they are worth afterwards is garbage.

That is indeed different than what I’ve seen lately. The other night DR and DH fought a totally pointless mass battle on the road between lowlands and SM. It lasted at least an hour and was still going strong when I got bored and left, but nobody seemed interested in doing much of anything else. Lots of action but no result other than rank points. Maybe things will change, but your experience doesn’t sound a whole lot better than mine even though it’s different.

This actually happened a lot before the patch. I still don’t know why. I guess people just think “LOL WE CAN TAKE SM FROM OUR KEEP SO LET’S KEEP PUSHING” and it ends up just becoming a game of push and shove.

Meh.

The only thing that bothers me is the symmetry in everything. I really wish that we could see other land features like deserts and mountains, while still being able to keep everything in balance. With the current WvW, EB seems practically the same everywhere, and while the other maps do have some nice terrain variety, virtually nobody battles there anyways, which gets insanely dull.

Like somebody else said, we should ditch the four different maps and just merge them into one extremely massive map with tons of different terrain and whatnot. That would be pretty epic.

Bloodgruve.6038:

Arganthium.5638:

Then, looking at the patch notes, thieves didn’t even get a single damage nerf. We just had Revealed increased by 1 second. I mean, seriously? Where are you getting these ideas of decreased DPS?

Hmm, kinda scratching my head at this.. If you play a stealth build thief in PvE you should know that Backstab is a major point of our dps. You should also know that to maintain decent dps you need to Backstab as often as possible. Then you should be able to deduce that by adding a second to revealed your dps is reduced. Not to mention everything that triggers off of stealth. 5k every 3 seconds vs 5k every 4 seconds.. 1,667 dps vs 1250 dps.. Seriously we did take a hit to damage.

On another note, I am less and less impressed with this class. Thief was my first love, but after playing other classes and testing dps I’m really kind of disappointed here. With even 1 phantasm active my Mesmer tops my thief. I even have a Guardian build that matches the best numbers I can get with Thief, and it’s not GC. Before the flames come in this is in regards to PvE sustained damage output and I am comfortable with my own data and ability to optimize damage output for these classes.

Thief isn’t unplayable but our game play did go south. Lower damage and it feels just plain wonky now.

ANet, thief needs to bring more to the table, this nerf was uncalled for in PvE.

I think that your build is entirely different from mine. I use Backstab, but it is in no way a major part of my DPS. At all.

Leohart.4610:

For the guy above, Arganthium, yes we didn’t get a damage nerf to our skills, but that extra second of revealed screws up CnD dependent builds like p/d or back stabs which led to the decreased amount of damage you could possibly do before your opponent pops their heal. We can now do one less back stab and one less sneak attack. Yeah it may seem like not that big of a deal but for thief builds that relies on attacking from stealth and staying in fights longer will have a harder time playing aggressively and dealing damage.

BTW: I don’t mean back stab as in the whole mug-back-stab-hope-to-kill-opponent-in-one-combo build, I’m talking about the more defensively built back stab.

I get that it is something of a damage nerf to builds like that, but to go from there to saying “Thief pve is now unplayable” is a huge leap.

ANet please sticky this for the benefit of the entire thief community.
[big puppy dog eyes ]

Applying, thanks.

Silver.4798:

Thanks Arganthium, that was a very well thought out reply!

Regarding my choice in DA, you’re right the minor traits doesn’t help me at all since I have no means of poison in this build besides stealing, which is absolutely inefficient. The main reason why I went into DA is because of the power boost, and since the build I had in mind was a sustained damage build, a bit of a power spike will help I imagine.

You make a good case for quick recovery, I’ll give it a shot! What I was thinking with quick pockets was that the animation for PW and unload are rather long, so I was trying to turn that to my advantage. I wanted to slot my weapons with sigil of energy (returns 50% of my endurance upon switch) and sigil of battle (get 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds on switch) because I figure I’ll be rolling around quite a bit for defense (but will get a stack of might out of it each time!), so endurance will run out fairly quick. Sounded good in my head lol I’ll see if it works out in practice.

Regarding trickery, the preparedness minor treat is EXTREMELY attractive, kleptomaniac is pretty good too, but outside of slightly decreased steal recharge this build cannot use condition damage, so the caltrops I will drop from uncatchable and thrill of the crime major traits doesn’t synergize as well in this build as does mug and Improvisation major traits. If I had the trickery minor traits and the DA major traits it would be ideal!

What I was alternatively considering though was to not go into DA and go into SA instead for increased survivability and the stealth buffs, but then I don’t have a reliable way to stealth in this build. Although this ties into…

@ Sir Vincent III

I was thinking of S/D*** rather than S/P because of CnD, which would make going into SA viable rather than DA. But the reason why I went with pistol offhand is the AoE of PW and Blinding powder. P/P can’t really deal with mobs very well esp if they get close to me so I’m trying to think of ways to compensate.

• I don’t have a lot of experience with S/D, if you know of a way to deal with mobs with S/D, please let me know!

Yeah, can’t say I support DA that much. Also- somebody else mentioned this- not sure that Improv necessarily recharges signets if that’s all you’re running.

Ah, I see now. Alright, yeah. Try both out. I like that you try to synergize your sigils with the weapon swapping, definitely an interesting idea. I still prefer IX’s flexibility, but hey, give it a shot.

Yes, unfortunately the major traits for Tricks don’t synergize quite as well with your build. Thus, if you were going to go for the Trick minors, I would put in 15 and put 5 more into CS. Another idea- something you mentioned- would be to take out the 20 from DA, put 10 in CS for Executioner, and put the last 10 wherever you like. That way, you’ll be able to sustain your damage by getting increasingly stronger throughout the fight, making up for lower init and cool downs on utilities.

Also, don’t think of Crits as “spiky” damage. Think of it instead as a booster to your total mean damage over time. If you have a 50% critical chance with 160% Crit Damage then think of it as being a .6*.5 = 30% increased damage output over time.

Finally, like you said, I wouldn’t go for 20 in SA, however, if you put 10 into CS, then you could put 10 into SA, which would work out quite fine.

Hey all, I’m an Eredon’s Terrace player who recently moved from GoM. I quit my old guild, mostly because- as fun as they were- they never actually did anything. :P so here’s what I’m looking for:

- a mainly WvW-based guild, but one that will also be willing to do dungeon runs and the like
- a guild with 100+ members
- a guild that is still very active
- a guild that seeks to liberate us from our spot in T8 WvW c;
- preferably a guild with a FB group

If anyone here could refer me to such a guild, I would be delighted, thank you.

/sigh, another one of these posts.

The reason for the cost is precisely because of people like you who are “gambling” on these precursors. With a very, very impressive and wide supply of exactly 1 in stock right now, and a ton of people (like you, apparently…) who want this item, the person selling this rifle can set the price extremely high.

Also, given that this person has to spend so much just to put this item on the market (already put okitteng minimum), for him/her to take it back off now and reprice would cost quite a bit of gold, so there isn’t much choice to make the item a lower price.

Lol, nice title.

However, “too high” is a relative term. Somebody with 1000g might not find a precursor as expensive as… Well, me. :P

Secondly, the price of precursors is determined by two things: how many of a single Prec there are, and how we value Precs. Personally, I see absolutely no reason to get a Legendary: they’re insanely expensive (even without the precs), take forever to get, and aren’t even all that cool for all of that effort anyways. Plus, with the money that I spent getting the Legendary, there are almost infinitely more things I could get instead, including the Commander book, which I’ve wanted for a very long time.

Your argument is invalid, as it is based on personal opinion and the fact that players like you who want precs are part of the reason why precs are so expensive.

Mackapacka.9462:

The dmg is low and stealth debuff need to get reverted to 3 sec again. The 4 sec debuff screws our rotation. Thief got no support thats good/better then other professions. And our dmg is now lower then most professions by a large margien, on top of that we are one of the harder pve professions to play and can easily get 1 shotted in some exp mode dungs. Why bring a theif instead of a warr?

Sadly if u wanna be able to play this game in non noob grps its time to reroll warr or mesm…..

If you mean “non noob grps” as in non-Backstab builds, then you’re wrong. There are many, many builds that have not been hurt (or, if they have, only very, very little) by the new debuff.

Another thing- most people use the phrase “group support” to mean “giving your group lotsa lotsa boons”. Unfortunately, they fail to realize that slashing individual enemies to pieces faster than any other profession while the rest of the group deals with the tougher part of the fight, being able to rez allies easily because of stealth and SR, and being able to become a major one-person army that can fight groups of enemies and distract them while the rest of the group goes onwards can also be considered “group support”.

Our damage is not, by any measure, lower than most other professions. In fact, apart from (some) warriors, thieves are the hardest-hitting class in the game.

One of the harder PvE professions to play? With stealth, we can do many more things than a lot of other professions can. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been soloing PvE and, instead of fighting a huge group of enemies just so I can get a skill point, I simply stealthed and communed with a place of power to get my SP.

If you’re getting 1-shotted in dungeons, you’re playing the wrong build, or you’re talking about champ enemies that 1-shot everybody, regardless of profession.

You would take a thief over a warr for Stealth, mobility, versatility, distraction, rez’ing allies, distracting enemies, pulling enemies, mitigation via blinds, and conditions.

Assuming this isn’t a troll… No, it really isn’t. Not sure what your problem with it is.

Assuming it is, I give you a 0/10, mostly because your spelling and grammar gave me more of a headache than the “complaint” itself.

Silver.4798:

Humor me here, I know this is going against the grain quite a bit. A Thief who doesn’t stealth is a dead thief, right? RIGHT?

No, no it isn’t.

Here’s my critique of your build:

20 DA- I do… Kinda like the traits here, but you’ll really have to be using up all of your signets before you Steal.

20 CS- given the signet focus, I agree with this.

30 Acro- I would be okay with this, but… PLEASE, DO NOT CHOOSE QUICK POCKETS. I think that it’s a very bad choice when compared to Quick Recovery. The reason for this is that you have to switch weapons to get the init regeneration. This is extremely limiting; you have to wait a full 10 seconds until you can go back to the weaponset you were using beforehand. If you’re in a melee/midrange battle, you don’t want to get stuck with P/P for 10 seconds when you could be using S/P. This alone, I think, completely justifies IX over XII; you need to be flexible, and swapping weapons every 10 seconds to keep up initiative in order to do this is pretty ridiculous. Also, given that you will already have massive initiative regeneration because of your signets, you won’t need to worry as much about maintaining initiative anyways, so you can sacrifice that single extra point of init.

Now, you’ll probably hate this, but let me suggest that you move 20 from DA to Trickery. The problem that I have with DA is that, first of all, both of your minor traits are practically useless for this build. On top of that, all of your traits in DA (given that the only way you can poison somebody with your build is the 5 DA minor trait) rely on steal, which you have a 45-second cool down on. That’s pretty risky. It means that you’ll only be able to bust out all of your signets once in a regular battle and then steal to get them back instantly and do damage with Mug. On the other hand, with 20 in Trickery, here’s what you get:
- Kleptomaniac: for a trait that only requires 5 points to get, and gives you nice initiative for a skill that you’ll be using often anyways, this is a pretty nice minor.
-Uncatchable/Thrill of the Crime: either of these work. Uncatchable gives you lots of free caltrops with your dodges that you’ll be using a lot because of your 30 Acrobatics. TotC simply gives you and all nearby allies a short but sweet influx of boons when you steal, which is amplified by your increased boon duration with 30 in Acro.
-Preparedness: I use this in all of my builds. It is, IMO, the best Thief minor trait for its price. 3 initiative might not seem like a lot, but remember that, for example, if you have 5 initiative and use all of your signets at once, without it you’ll have 12 initiative, but with it you’ll have 13. It’s also very helpful for when you go into battle. I also find that, with my playstyle, I throw a wave of attacks at my opponent, letting my initiative drop, and then (because I run SB with most of my builds) I’ll switch to SB and allow my initiative to regenerate naturally, with stealths (I have V in SA, which gives me 2 init on a stealth), and Quick Recovery. With 12 initiative, I have to start attacking with my main set as soon as I reach the 12 initiative if I want to make the most out of all of my initiative regeneration. With 15, I get to wait a little longer, which can be extremely useful if I forget, if I start running away- or whatever.
-Whatever other Major trait you want: basically, TotC or Uncatchable (if you don’t have one yet), Flanking Strikes, BT, IS- anything works fine. If you don’t like any of the major traits available to you, you can always just have 15 in Trickery and then invest the last 5 in CS, which will give you a nice minor trait that will also work very well with Preparedness.
-Also, I should mention- if you have 20 in Trickery, you get 9 fewer seconds between steals. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Stealing is going to give you a very powerful new weapon, 3 initiative, a shadowstep, and, depending on how you spec, a variety of boons for you or conditions for your enemy as well.

Otherwise, build looks interesting, probably try it out tomorrow.

KINGRPG.3492:

Thief can’t join the PvE world right now!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah m8 trust me when I say that that is in no way the case, thieves are completely PvE-viable.

Adaneshade.2409:

Arganthium.5638:

Adaneshade.2409:

Would like to add my newly created “Venom share tank” build. Crazy high survivability and great group utility (possibly the strongest sPvP build I’ve ever run).

PVE/WvW:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.4|c.1c.h1e.8.1c.h8|5.1c.h1e|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c|1c.64.1c.64.1c.64.1c.64.1c.64.1c.64|u48c.0.u49c.0.a5|54.7|59.5q.5r.5t.5u|e

PvP:
Same traits with 5x soldier and 1x guardian rune, stacking crit sigil on all weapons, and Soldier’s amulet socketed with knight’s jewel.

Adding now.

Technically it’s a direct damage build, no condition damage. The venom sharing is primarily for CC purposes.

Oh, alright, I’ll go change that.

Sovngarde.7502:

I come here looking for useful information for my low-level alt and… the entire place is almost nothing but QQ. It’s either people saying thieves are op (hint: it’s not the class but the player behind it that makes something OP)… or it’s people crying over nerfs.

There’s no useful threads about playing thieves in the first five pages, and only about four or five threads of non-QQ – all of which have devolved into either circlejerk QQ or flamewars. Usually both at once. 99% of posters just QQ without even offering alternatives.

Thank you for summarizing my thoughts in a clear, concise fashion that does not involve ranting. I believe that thieves are, inarguably, the most controversial class of them all, due to:
-initiative
-stealth
-shadowsteps
-Backstab
-mobility

I also recognize your need for a thief guide for the earlier levels; I apologize that I do not have the time to write one up at current moment, and, to be honest, I don’t think my guide would be all that good anyways. However, you can check this out. It’s the guide that I’m compiling for thief builds and guides, and one of the mentioned guides, I believe, is geared towards starting players. It would be the one labeled “GW2 Guru’s Guide for the Beginning Thief”. Outside of that, I’m afraid I can’t be of much help; the thief, for me, is a profession that not everybody can play, because it takes a specific mindset that extends beyond just “LOL BACKSTAB” that it would seem like a lot of other thieves have. I can’t say that I know that you have that mindset yourself; you’ll just have to play around with the profession and learn it thusly. Experience makes the best teacher.

However, the one thing that I would mention is that, at level 11, you don’t have the gear nor the traits required to take on mobs very easily. If you’re going to try taking on mobs, I would suggest a Sword / Shortbow build, as those focus more on control than single-target murder. Outside of that, I think you’ll just have to get stronger before you can take on mobs like a pro. If you’re like me, you’ll end up investing 30 points into Acrobatics, and find yourself dodging through mobs and blasting the heck out of enemy NPCs like nobody’s business.

Bumpity bump bump bump.

Adaneshade.2409:

Would like to add my newly created “Venom share tank” build. Crazy high survivability and great group utility (possibly the strongest sPvP build I’ve ever run).

PVE/WvW:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.4|c.1c.h1e.8.1c.h8|5.1c.h1e|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c|1c.64.1c.64.1c.64.1c.64.1c.64.1c.64|u48c.0.u49c.0.a5|54.7|59.5q.5r.5t.5u|e

PvP:
Same traits with 5x soldier and 1x guardian rune, stacking crit sigil on all weapons, and Soldier’s amulet socketed with knight’s jewel.

Adding now.

Mujen.5287:

Thank you for taking the time out to make this.

No problem!

Geiir.7603:

I’m used to adapt. I too usually swap traits, skills and stuff in between instances, fights or dungeons, and that wasn’t even the point here. I’ve adapted to tons of changes and nerfs that they’ve hit us with and just thought “we just have to adapt to these changes and everything will work out just fine”. But this stealth nerf is the worst so far imo. They could first have tried to see if anything would change after fixing the culling, not making builds completely broken…

My build is still shining as I don’t use stealth that much, but for the P/D thieves this was a hard hit. Caltrops and traps was justified yes, but not the stealth stuff.

They just changed one of the basics that the entire profession was built upon. Totally uncalled for and nothing anyone have asked for.

The only complaint you seem to have is about the Revealed debuff.

Which is now one second longer than before.

And still only applies after you’ve attacked from stealth.

… I’m not sure what your complaint is. I’m guessing it’s that you can’t use Sneak Attack so often any more. Well, looks like you can’t apply 5 stacks of bleeding quite so fast any more. It’s not that big a deal.

Gasoline.2570:

Trolls, trolls everywhere.

No, people who understand economics and people who aren’t alarmist conspiracists everywhere.

Ursan.7846:

I think it’s amusing to wonder if threads like these (omg precursor prices are going up so fast) influences people to speculate on precursors and drive their prices up.

Lol.

Probably this is exactly what happens, then more people come and complain after seeing this effect that it’s all ANet’s fault, that precursors are going to continue rising in price, and thereby continuing this endless cycle of whining.

Dasorine.1964:

Arganthium.5638:

Shucks, you can’t spam Backstab to deal 12K damage any more?

Brb, rerolling.

you ever could?

Not sure about 12K, but I’ve seen more than one vid where a player would down a player after 2 Backstabs almost instantaneously after going into battle.

randomfightfan.4091:

Arganthium.5638:

randomfightfan.4091:

that’s because they used to be subpar. Now they’re great. Just watch as more pve warriors who know what they’re doing start using banners.

I’m sure they’ll be better now, but they will still suffer from some of the same problems that turret engis have. They can use banners to create a semi-movable fortress, but banners will restrict their mobility and even when they are carried, they’ll have a bit of a slowing-down type effect on armies; they can’t just leave banners lying around any more, or the utility is wasted. The only real difference between engi and war, then, is that engis can’t move their turrets around as much as wars do, but their turrets have shorter cool downs and have more utility when playing solo than banners do. On the other hand, wars can move around banners, but they still need somebody to pick up their banners after them, and they need to stay within the vicinity of their banner in order to collect benefits from it. Plus, they’re pretty good with groups, but alone, they’re terrible. All a thief would have to do is draw a warrior out from its banners, and then proceed to chop the warr to pieces.

warriors can effect zones of banners to make the aoe insanely huge

Eh.

Either way, the lack of mobility and long cool down doesn’t automatically justify using banners.