Guild Wars 2

I still think it will be very strong when in combination with other trait lines like DA and Trickery. Going 66006 will allow you to take pretty much every damage buff and kill securing trait the thief has making you the cool assassin type player if that’s what you like to be. Couple that with mug heals and utility from a full trickery line and you got one heck of a fun build. Every BS critting means that you’ll constantly be dishing out 5-8k backstabs (depending on opponents armor level) AND you’ll be dealing more damage as their hp gets lower plus when the damage buff kicks in they are also immobbed which pretty much allows you to finish off the kill there just because of the sheer amount of damage you’ll be able to do If you learn when things will kick in and combo accordingly.

By itself, I agree it is very underwhelming but I think it will be able to synergize very well with other lines making it a still highly valued line. Especially in pvp where stealth isn’t helpful for long periods (i.e. no SA thief)

That’s why I deleted the post realized I messed up.

Especially due to the fact thief tends to do very well in a matchup against Mesmer so a compliment is something to be happy about. Most of the time I just get raged at when I beat something over and over again lol.

Especially for a 66006 build the burst potential will be absolutely ridiculous. We will be able to use panic strike, executioner, and hidden killer all in one build (all the best ways for thief to increase damage or guarantee kills). Plus we can also have mug and full trickery to have a good sustain and strong utility. I don’t see any reason to not run it unless you really enjoy playing no skill p/d condi or really need SA to glue your build together (some d/d builds need SA due to the sets lack of built in defense) when you can instead be the assassin you have always wanted to be.

Honestly, I’m glad the stab changes are doing things to zergs, now they just need to nerf more stuff so the nonsense zergs will stop and we can get back to actually having some fun small scale fights. Maybe we can even roam without everyone running away unless they 4v1 you and have a tower, zerg, or siege placement for backup in case they get hit by something.

Who knows, maybe anet is trying new things for the game to entice other types of players to try different game modes. Maybe the zerg nerfs will encourage people to come back in small groups and wvw again because they don’t get blobbed by a bunch of people who don’t even know how to 1v1 a rabbit.

Thanks xantos! I’ll let them know!

Do age restrictions (18 or older) still apply to this tournament? I know people who want to compete with a team but they are unsure whether or not they can register due to their being less than 18 years of age.

There’s no definite way to be “not useless” I know someone mentioned previously that your role changes with the team if you are pugging but there’s quite a bit you can do that you may not even know.

You can, as a thief, attract all the aggression of the enemy team and if you get realy good at cd management on a dp panic strike thief you can kite around 2-4 of the enemy pug team at one time while your team full caps the map (doesn’t happen a ton but when it does its pretty awesome)

Normally your job is to +1 and burst out people which shouldn’t be too much of a problem for you depending on the build you are running (it’s mainly for this reason I don’t find condi thief all that helpful)

When you get really good and your team is doing well you can push for those 1v1s with other people to keep their team distracted trying to take a point from you and trying to kill you while you sit there and win duels over and over (of course you should only do this if your team is winning fights everywhere else). Dueling is a good thing to learn on thief even if you don’t act as the far pusher.

Because the thief is the roamer of the team you need to take advantage of your mobility and use the minimap to find the best location to go ambush people on. Keep an eye out for their glassier characters and burst them out of the fight as quickly as you can.

If you still need help learning fights or if you need help on thief you can always pm me if you’re on NA and we can practice sometime. Hope I’ve helped you in some way shape or form, and gl with thief!

From what I understand with it, the message can happen anywhere. I’ve tried interrupting a person’s heal from about 750 range and have gotten the “target too close” message which also set steal on a 4s cd. Had it happen point blank when I had to interrupt a medi guard’s hammer 2 because I had no dodge room due to ring but the message popped and I died.

Point is, it can happen anywhere. Has nothing to do with using steal “incorrectly” just happens randomly due to the pathing fix they did. (Similar thing happened in foefire in which you could no longer port in a straight path under the bridge due to it not being valid despite being right in front of you) It may get fixed and it may not. Until then we just gotta deal with it and hope it doesn’t happen when we really need steal.

While you were smart with saying no revealed would be added I’m not sure I agree it’s the best idea. Looking at it in purely an spvp perspective (I don’t wvw that much anymore so I can’t give you an accurate opinion there) it would be a massive nerf to certain specs on thief which are already borderline unviable due to the current meta builds being used (i.e. Crit strikes thief which has been made very weak due to the amount of celestial builds which counter the thief with high sustain, condi application, and lots of direct damage available). Now of course blocks aren’t all that common outside of guardian and engi so the implementation would really only apply to them. Unfortunately those classes already counter the thief pretty hard and would then make it near impossible for a thief to kill them if they just count stealth time and use their blocks accordingly.

So really, I don’t support this idea from an spvp standpoint because of the repercussions it would have on the class itself. Now granted you could just restealth but the only spec in pvp that uses stealth is already extremely initiative heavy and this would make the issue even worse for them as with all the guards and engis around they would end up using initiative very quickly with no benefits due to the sheer amount of blocks coming from those 2 classes. It’s a cool idea but it probably wouldn’t work out too well in the long run for the highly fragile thief class.

Again wvw is a different story and this may very well work out there but in pvp I’d say no to it.

Due to the CS build having little to no condi clear (depends on the heal you take) I only take it when against a highly power based group and then if there’s a strong likelihood of condi on the other team I use PS build.

Hope that helps and if you have any more questions I’ll try to answer as best I can.

@zaced, what’s really fun is if you can say something before they block you just say “play better” and watch the fireworks if you’re into that sort of thing.

Tbh, I don’t have much of an issue dealing with it as I find plenty of clever lines to use against said rude people but it shouldn’t be a problem in the first place. I mean I totally understand when someone is sour cause you beat them and their fragile ego is wounded but the thing I’m trying to get at is the fact that I’m getting pm’ed (so are others) by randoms who do not know me and who I have never seen or heard of before and getting raged at and verbally abused. Yes I could just block and move on but people should not be put into this situation for playing something they love (for me it’s cele rifle or sd zerk rifle when I want to screw around)

Could it be that this is an effect of anet not bringing out a balance patch to deal with the complaints? Or is it something as simple as people are tired of 1 build so they are punishing everyone who plays the class due to their frustration? And if any of these are the issue then obviously something needs to be done about it as I’m sure nobody enjoys having randoms rage whisper them for liking a class.

Again, I don’t personally have an issue dealing with this but in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening to others, what can we as a community, or anet as designers, do for the game to prevent this from hitting other players? Is there a feature we need to add like when someone blocks you, you automatically block them or does anet need to bring a slight nerf to turrets to help lessen the hate we are receiving?

Try this out and see if you like it. Let me know if it worked for you.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQFAUlUUpmqlcx2KseNSeBN6rkkiA6Asgq+p6B-ThBFABC8AAQa/R5Xa6AA4CAUo6PXpEMAwBw5nHAO/8zP/8z78zP/8zPvUARMGA-e
Rocket turret can be replaced with mines. This should give you a huge amount of dps in groups for pve dungeons. Hope this helps and gl.

Thanks for being the first one to join in the movement to raise awareness of class racism Cmon, all you engis out there speak up. Now is the time to end this destructive behavior. Bring this to the attention of our superiors and let’s make a change to this wonderful game (with a little less than wonderful community at times).

From my experiences on thief, I’ve found the best way to deal with a guardian is to use sb and keep them at a distance while putting up pressure with the sb aa to force them to pop their heals and defensive cd’s, once those are done swap over to dp and burst them down. If you can’t kill them the first time you go into dp swap back to sb and just repeat the process until they are down. I’ve said this many times before and it has always proven to be helpful with people I’ve talked to and that is “shortbow is the thief’s counter to medi guard” It has amazing kiting ability and still has strong enough damage to force the guard to use all his defensive cd’s to not die to the damage you put out. It takes a little getting used to but it’s definitely worth learning because it will take you a long way as a thief. Good luck in your conquest to beat guards my friend.

Recent experiences I, and many others I have talked to, have revealed there is lots of discrimination happening in game towards other players due to the class they play. Not joking though, I was playing my engineer today and just because I’m an engineer I started getting flooded with hate whispers just for PLAYING the class. These aren’t people that I’ve ever played with or fought before, just random people in Hotm that have started whispering me to verbally abuse me for playing the engineer class.

Probably just some jerks who got wrecked by turrets or some junk like that who wanted to let off steam but seriously, this kind of behavior is unacceptable. If balance over 1 build has gotten to the point that I (and other engineer buddies I play and practice with) am being whispered by random people to just be verbally abused for liking the playstyle of an engineer (None of us run turrets or support people who do) then obviously either some action needs to be taken by anet to assist in community abuse control or there needs to be some “balance patch” to make people do this stuff less.

It doesn’t have to even be a nerf to turrets, just disguise it as a turret nerf or something so this crap will stop. I know people who have quit playing classes they love or quit the game because of verbal abuse just for playing an engineer. This is disgusting and I’m really quite done with it. Yes I know I can block people but why should all engineers have to fill a block list just because other people don’t like the class we play?

Please, let us know if this has happened to you and bring some extra awareness to the arising issue of class discrimination in gw2.

Except for the fact that when you hit a thief you instantly go to 50% hp? besides, builds don’t even get all of those “perks” they have a select few in each build and have to play perfectly with them in order to not get absolutely destroyed by specs that deal just as much or more damage to them than they do to whomever they are fighting (so no, not easier to play zerker thief but definitely more reliable if you can play it really well because thief does have a higher outplay potential due to their abilities being active rather than passive). But for relaxing warrior can be decent fun at times and remains very strong in pvp due to the easiness of picking them up but still the potential for high success you have when you play it better then the 12345 spamming noobs who try this class to get a feel for pvp. (not a bad thing it’s just they don’t play it as well as a very experienced warrior could)

In my experience, condi hasn’t proved to be very useful. Tough it may just be because of bad players trying to use the spec or maybe it’s just that bad but here’s what I think:

Power will always be superior imo just because of the outplay ability it has. (others have mentioned the kiting 3 opponents on their point while your team easily wins strategy which I can see condi working for)
Now I do believe condi can be viable if played well (though I have yet to see it played well I do believe someone can make it work)
But in top tier play I think the reason it isn’t there is because the roles it could fill are better done by other classes/builds:
Roamer? thief or power shatter does a better gank job as they secure quicker kills
Point holder? Mesmer class is naturally too glassy to be able to hold a point against the meta cele specs due to lack of consistent condi removal and their lack of burst pressure to counter the sustain healing
Decapper? Not enough cc to decap a point
Teamfighting? doesn’t have party support or any sort of strong consistent burst to put out in order to shift a teamfight
Far pusher? I could see it sort of being successful at that but I also feel that role is better suited by an ele or engi.

Anyways that’s just my thought on it but I haven’t done a ton of playing with that as I don’t enjoy condi anything really (except terrormancer because how could you not like that?) but if it works for you I’d say keep at it and if not maybe your desire for condi can be done with a different class/build?

D/P- When stealthed use shadowshot and right as the blind hits use #1 to get a ranged backstab with blind.
S/D- When you have a target jump and use #2 at the same time to port forward and cancel the backport so you can chase like crazy.
Withdraw- You can activate the heal and swap weapons to still get the heal, evades, and whatever else you have on it without having to roll the full way (especially helpful when in a shadow refuge or in a place with a good amount of cliffs).
Shortbow- We have some really awesome port spots, learning some of the newer ones especially in legacy can make you unkillable as nobody will be able to catch you to burst as long as you’re paying attention. Also makes for some really nice ganking options as you can come out of nowhere to burst down a foe and then retreat to the same spot.
Skills- Port chains can be some of the strongest openings on the thief especially if running panic strike dp or acro sd (also allows for some really cool boss steals and counter bursts.
Counter bursting- Thief is one of the few classes that can effectively counter burst as a way of defending itself due to the traited steal from trickery and mug in DA traitline. (i.e. someone opens on you and you steal and aa then blind and go for a backstab on dp effectively putting you enemy on the defensive instead of you) Thief has the overall skillset that allows it to accomplish an effective counter burst that can easily turn any battle in your favor if you can time it right (same principle as a normal burst but instead it’s used as a defensive measure to relieve yourself of the pressure you are under and give you some breathing room instead of just going full defensive. Though keep in mind it needs to be timed perfectly or else you pretty much screw yourself over)

Not gonna lie, you’d have to be pretty stupid to not think it’s a good traitline. From a support perpective it’s bad but it’s good at fulfilling its role therefore making it a good traitline.

Besides, we are not talking about pvp, he asked for a SOLO roaming build not a pvp teamfighting build. SA differs in usefulness depending on the setting in which it will be used. And you also proved my point with your post, SA is the thieves sustain line as water is for eles and defense if for warriors. I don’t care about their role as I know those things already. The point I was making and continue to make is thatSA is a sustain line that benefit thieves as solo roamers in wvw especially due to the large amount of ganks that occur in that type of setting. normally you won’t have help so you need to be able to be self reliant in an outnumbered fight because you won’t have a team to back you up and you won’t be responsible for supporting others. Therefore, I continue to be correct in this argument and my point is made.

Besides, no thief just sits in stealth as that is completely counterproductive as you are letting an opponent reset by not applying pressure to said enemy. Get out of the narrow minded view that you are getting from pvp and let people play their way in wvw. If I’m gonna have to fight 1v3 or 1v4 I’m taking all the advantages I can get for that fight. It’s not having training wheels to try to get the upper hand I na fight. Ut’s better for him to be able to cover his mistakes in a fight and keep going rather than just die all the time. Once he gets more comfortable with what he’s playing THEN he can drop SA as I have done and go for a full trickery setup. But it’s no good for someone to just die over and over again. The mistakes that SA covers up will allow him to actually win sometimes and not end up quitting over pure frustration.

There’s pros and cons to it but in wvw SA is a perfectly reasonable choice for a solo roamer who is newer to the thief class. Disagree all you want but we are not talking about professionals we are talking about someone who is just picking up the class. They need a bit of forgiveness every now and again.

ronpierce,
I think I didn’t make the point clear. The point isn’t to engage in verbal combat. The only reason you’re saying the 1 thing and then blocking isn’t to be a kitten to others. It’s to eventually have them realize what they are doing is unnecessary. Believe me it works at times (other times yes it fails and then you look mean but it’s a gamble). They’ll be upset for a bit but after that they will realize they are in the wrong and abuse will stop and hopefully they will look for a more constructive way to go about with their frustration.

Though if you don’t believe it will work, you can always offer to duel someone and instead of growing rage between the two of you give compliments like wolfey said (hope I got the name right 0.0) and build a more positive ground between the two of you. 1 player at a time, it’ll make the game more enjoyable for people.

I don’t really have much info on a leveling build as I just used the leveling phase to experiment with whatever I got at the time I was playing but I do have a guide for builds after you’ve hit 80 on your thief or when you are jumping into pvp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJkXL5DLNPY

Audios not the best and I did miss 1 variation of d/p but maybe that’ll help with the pvp aspect. Sorry about not being much help with leveling though.

The only reason I don’t use infil signet over shadow step is because 1) shadowstep is a dual stun break and clears conditions so in my mind it’s superior to the signet. 2) generally when I stunbreak I prefer to go away from the person hitting me so I can reposition but that’s just how I play, but most of the time I recommend it to people over the sig just because I find it to have more utility but that’s, again, just my personal experience.

Sirbeaumerdier,
That is a very good addition, thank you for the input (thought I had covered that later in my post but I guess not whoops)I would agree that fits the definition, though there are a ton of meanings for cheese in this game as people just use it way too often now.

vespers, your entire post just reinforced the point that you obviously don’t play thief. There are no more instakill builds on the thief class unless you are full glass running a build that only works in wvw and can be killed even easier than it can kill someone else. And also considering nobody builds for stealth in pvp (except maybe a few hotjoin people but that kinda nonsense isn’t even really worth noting) so that’s not going to happen, if you’re getting ganked all the time then you need to improve your map awareness and reaction time.

As for range, there are these things called vantage points that let you see most of the map and let you take advantage of your range. You might want to explore that sometime instead of complaining about how hard a glass cannon is when you run in and try to facetank damage like you would in pve. There are profession roles out there, learning them would be quite beneficial before making ridiculous claims about another class that you obviously have no experience playing.

Well Helly, the reason it’s all good for him to take SA is because 1) he said he’s newer so it’s better for him to get comfortable with his class and weapons before he tries something different and 2) He can still perform active defenses. All shadow arts is going to be doing for him is giving him some extra sustain throughout a fight. (which considering the amount of ganks that happen in wvw wouldn’t be a bad thing to have) Building to the strength of a build (in this case stealth) is much more productive than hindering it to prove a point to other people. If thieves are gonna be hate on for using SA why don’t we hate on eles for using water attunement or arcana? Why don’t we hate on warriors for using the defensive line and stances, Those aren’t active defenses. There’s no difference between those and thief shadow arts. All of them are defensive sustain lines for their respective classes and are not as braindead as you people seem to think.

In the situation you are being verbally attacked there’s one thing you should do. When they are raging at you for killing them or your team beats their’s and they get upset just say “play better”, sit back, and watch the fireworks and then block them when you decide you’ve had your fun and go on with life because ragers are not worth your time.

Vespers, take into account if the ranger is played well that matchup could go either way. Rangers have some good ways to deal with thieves so saying that thieves completely counter rangers is a false statement. In some ways, the ranger can be considered braindead when you take into account the fact that most of your damage can be dealt from a very long range giving you a positional advantage over a thief considering 1) You don’t really have to set up a burst you just kinda press 2 and watch the numbers 2)You can generally see when someone is coming towards you so you should have time to prepare for the encounter.

I’m also going to assume because you are calling thief a braindead class you have never actually played competitive pvp with a thief and are just going off of the experiences of you being wrecked by them on a daily basis because that’s what thief is supposed to do when played right. Either that or you are just being a mega troll because almost every statement you made in your post was wrong or just plain ridiculous.

Hey Rav, welcome to thief forums!
If you’re going to be running S/d in pvp I’d recommend going with this setup as some of the things you asked about are best combined.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp0pdPxwJ8PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdfko0XA-TpBFwACeAANOEAl2fYxRAoaZAAnAAA

Lots of utility, good damage, fair amount of condi clear and really fun to play.

But if people don’t rush beasts how am I gonna do this to them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1QrfUrIEY

Tyyphoon, allow me to politely disagree with you over starting class. I find it’s much nicer for someone to start out on thief or Mesmer (given they have enough patience to learn the class) because then they start by getting good as they learn the game and then when they go and try new classes like warrior it’ll be much easier for them to pick up as they’ll already have much more skill because of their experience with thief. (also when they have to fight all the thieves in the wvw and pvp settings, they won’t have nearly as hard a time dealing with it as many people who start on warrior or guardian) Now the rest of your post I agree with 100% just slight disagreement over the best class to start with and really that could be debated forever because it’s different for each person.

I tend to prefer Pack as I find it’s a universally strong rune for the thief class. Outside of spvp on 20066 sd thief I don’t find strength to be all that helpful on thief. I know other will tell me I’m wrong but I feel strength falls short in usefulness for the thief class in general.

Panic strike doesn’t really fall under the category of immob spamming. A 3 second immob on a 20 second cooldown that only works on one person per cd doesn’t really seem like spamming to me. It’s not really cheese either it’s just a good build that dominates when played well and, like the thief itself, sucks when not played to an extreme level.

To define what is cheese:
From my observations, cheese is any build (or mechanic) that people dislike because it stops them from (if they are a typical complainer about cheese) spamming to win or it has a spam to win playstyle (p/d condi thief, condi ranger, etc.). Also used as a way to troll people who got wrecked in a certain scenario but as a description it’s just anything people dislike that is commonly used.

Why do we have it?:
Because people want to win. Cheese builds are normally very strong and give a much higher reward for the risk and effort put into playing it rather than something else (i.e. p/d condi thief over trickery d/p thief. or pu condi mes over full zerk shatter mes).

Now for the ele build you are describing. That is the s/f fresh air ele and the reason it’s not really considered cheese is that it is a very strong build but it’s so glassy that blowing on it would kill it. It’s got a few defenses of course but it is a very high risk/ high reward build and does not qualify for cheese status.

And for the final note:
Don’t drop thief please! Especially not for ranger, there are way too many of those as it is. Thief is a challenge but if you go duel in a duel server for a while on d/p panic strike you’ll find that you start wrecking most people 1v1 when you get really comfortable with it and you’ll pick p some nice counterbursts to use against other thieves who try to burst you or that you end up having to fight in a match. Also ignore the people calling you cheese, it’s not your fault that d/p panic strike is a good build. If they don’t like it they don’t have to play the game. You bought the game, you decide how you want to play it.

1.S/d P/d is good in some situations but maybe d/p could suit the build better than p/d? It comes down to preference but both are nice compliments to the set.

2.With SA and evade spam you won’t need soldier pieces at all and will ruin your damage if you take them (I’d go with the standard valk armor with zerk everything else because then you’re speccing for damage while your traits give you survivability.

3. 33% is a bit low. By simply switching out gear and blinding powder (replace with agility signet for more prec, dodges, and condi cleanse) and taking food with precision buffs you can easily reach 46% and then have 62% when pack rune’s fury bonus kicks in. (the standard setup that I talked about lets you achieve this kind of stat)

4. I love playing with 2/0/6/3/3 for the extreme survivability which is nice to have in wvw due to all the ganking that goes on there. With the right equipment and trait choices you can still pump out a ton of damage to give you the ability to completely murder your foes.

I thought some of your trait choices were a bit unnecessary so I made a few changes but tried to stick to the principle of the build. Maybe this what you’re looking for?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZEQRAsY6YlsMp0pdPxwJ0PRBNhwdtSz8LsWB6LKA-TVCEABLq+DBnAgtUCykyPDeAA5s/Qb6HA4gA8wRAIAACwNbz2sNDG6QH6QH6Q7mD9mD9mDtMA5jB-w

To explain the infusion of shadow change:
This I thought would serve the build better due to the set being fairly initiative heavy and I figured getting initiative back when you stealth could help you maintain a good level over the course of a long fight where you will be needing to have a high initiative pool constantly.

Let me know if I’ve helped or if you have any questions and good luck gaming!

Well I’ve played around with this kind of build before, it’s fun and does pretty well in pvp though you do have to play well to not get wrecked:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAR3ejMdUFaZHOewJagfgC7t3CmDgBo61lGA-TJBFwACeCA12foaZAAXEAA

Lots of power and 2 high hitting burst skills to use and keep condis off with. Give it a try and see what you think of it.

In pvp there are two builds I’d recommend you play with. They are highly useful in team play as well as solo play once you get good with them.

First build (Sword/ Dagger with Shortbow offhand):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp0pdPxwJ8PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdfko0XA-TpBFwACeAANOEAl2fYxRAoaZAAnAAA

Second build (Dagger/ Pistol with Shortbow offhand):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVlsMp0pdPxyJ8PNBMBxVP8ONnpNangdHAA-TpBFwACeAANOEA12fYxRAoaZAAnAAA

Note: the heal in dagger pistol can be switched with withdraw depending on the matchup (Hide in shadows vs condi heavy teams and withdraw vs more power focused teams)

Guide to the specs’ basic function (note the d/p spec used in the video is not the one I posted here because I forgot to cover it in that video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJkXL5DLNPY

Edit: if you have any questions feel free to message me in game and we can always talk about thief or we can go into a duel server and train for a while if that’s what you’re interested in)

I first wanted to answer your question of why people don’t use stuff like that in pvp generally. In my experience it’s due to the reliance on stealth for defense. Stealth prevents you from putting any pressure on points and d/d doesn’t have any huge defenses outside of stealth. (ex. d/p blinds or s/d evades but that’s why those are meta and you said you don’t want those specs so I’ll try to refrain from those). It also has to do with the fact that the revealed in pvp is 4 seconds which again makes d/d a bit more difficult as the extra second kinda messes with the fluidity of the spec.

In regards to your build:
It seems overall pretty well put together although I would change some things like having hidden killer if you want your backstab to be a huge part of your burst and then taking critical haste for an occasional extreme attack speed buff, which often will be a ton of unexpected burst onto an opponent, over the fury against targets. I would take shadowstep for the condi clear and dual stunbreak and then you can choose between infil signet (more stunbreaks and ports), agility sig (condi clear and dodges), or blinding powder (on demand stealth and blind to break agro of enemies). Movement speed signet looks nice but it’s not really necessary to the thief in pvp as you have ports via shortbow to cover ground quickly and free up an invaluable utility slot. Then you can drop the accuracy sigil and take fire for more burst. For shortbow though I’d take energy and leeching sigils just to have a more defensive setup for that weapon.

It’d look something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVl0Mp0pdPxwJ8PRBNBt9wbQI4qGeGmvoVAA-TpBFwACOBANOCA12fYxhAoaZAAPAAA

I hope I’ve helped you. If you have any other questions let me know. Good luck with thief!

And because they are weak to all types of damage (super glassy with low condi removal) you can capitalize on that by stacking as much condi as possible during the times they are cc’ed or by pumping out damage via blunderbuss, jump shot, and crowbar (each can hit for 4k+ on them)

Elitist, the thing is there are some d/d builds that could be used in pvp if they had less reveal time so they could get some better flow in the weapon set. Sure some hotjoin heros and some noobs may try to go SA in pvp but they’ll learn eventually and it won’t be a thing. But d/d could be really fun in pvp if it didn’t have to deal with 4s of reveal.

I would change it further, you are getting 0 might stacks so your damage won’t be sufficient to kill a foe quickly. I’d recommend a setup along these lines:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQFAUlUUpErlcx+KseNCbBNyx0GRuxq85IEgkC-TJBHwAAuAAGeAAl2fAZZAA

P.S. Some people will say battle sucks, but they are wrong. It’s still amazing and the resulting damage capability you have is wonderful. Try it out and see how you like it.

Edit:
For fighting mesmers try to land your cc and really put a ton of pressure on with grenades as their condi removal is rather weak.

Rangers you need to dodge entangle and block rf, between that just utilize all types of damage you have to melt them as fast as possible.

@Nephrite
You could stay and continue fighting in which case sb is most definitely the best option for weapons but if you are locked on d/p (due to weapon swap) you can stealth away and wait for ds to expire then come back and kill them in the 10 seconds they don’t have it. Imo, better to just leave and not take ds hits then to chance it by playing on sb.

In all seriousness, no it is definitely not needed. Unfortunately it’s not likely to change as there would be many complaints from the non thief community (so basically people who think thief is op no matter what happens) that’s it’s really not worth anet changing. I’d love to see it changed back so d/d could possibly emerge once again but apparently condi p/d in wvw makes revealed need to be longer in a completely different game mode.

Well you can cain cc and burst them but you do need to wait until their ds is over. Using dp you can always stealth away and reopen once they exit ds and burst them down in the 10 seconds that they don’t have ds available.

@morbid
In regards to what you said, I may not have elaborated enough. My point was to show that thief (and Mesmer) are the two classes with the best outplay ability due to their class design. The versatility they are given ends up getting them nerfed (because good players can utilize it to extremes which is a stupid thing to balance around) and I may have misworded but I didn’t mean to say anywhere that the game should be balanced around a player’s skill, the goal with that statement was to show that thief is a part of the meta because despite the really high skill floor in pvp due to nerfs, thief will always continue to be a part of the meta because of the versatility and potential of the class which will (when played well) give a team an EXTREME advantage in certain aspects of the game.

So I agree we shouldn’t balance around a few peoples’ skill but that’s already been done (hence the thief nerfs) and there’s really nothing we can do about it so while it’s stupid and mathematically won’t work to actually balance the game it’s something we will have to deal with. Yet that doesn’t mean it won’t be part of the meta which was what I meant to say in my earlier post.

Now I’d actually like to say something in response to your post:
Thieves can 1v1 ANY of the meta builds BUT they have to massively outplay the person using the other build which is definitely possible but can be very difficult to pull off.

Now let’s be honest the “average player” in gw2 either comes from pve and is taken by surprise at the amount of skill needed in pvp (due to the fact that the pvp player base is not very big as there isn’t much encouragement for people to come and play it unless they are really seeking a challenge) or they come from wvw where SA thieves dominate the roaming scene with either a mix of damage and defense via SA or a pure condi bunker that easily melts everything it goes up against. The reason this is an issue is because those kinds of builds don’t exist inside pvp outside of hotjoin but people refuse to look at that and thief gets nerfed across the board to compensate for their excessive strength in one game mode which then causes thief to be where it is in pvp now.

Also, it isn’t that thief can’t 1v1 people for a point it’s just that because of the design of conquest they aren’t contributing to their team by fighting a bunker on a point the other team owns so in a tactical manner it’s best for them to leave and go win a fight quicker somewhere else to give their team the upper hand.

And if you don’t have a way to disengage easily try to stall by using headshot during all their channels to prevent as much damage as possible while you wait for a defensive cd to pop.

1st things) I’ve played against you before and you seem to do pretty well. But when I did play against you you were really bursty but seemed to be somewhat lacking in some areas of defensive gameplay (of course that may have just been the situation I happened to catch you in but that may be your issue with thief in meta) There are tons if ways to survive on thief and with a little dueling practice it can become rather easy to 1v1 most classes as thief imo has the best outplaying ability of any class in the game.

But I do also have to say I agree it is becoming harder to play a thief. That said I disagree that it is becoming less worthwhile. If anything it is becoming more worthwhile to play thief competitively. The reason for my saying so is if thief is harder to play, fewer people will be able to pull it off so the ones that do will bring in a huge advantage for their team in the areas of quick ganking and map presence. The possible advantage will encourage people to communicate as a thief becomes stronger in the pvp settings when it’s bursts and weaknesses are communicated with team members. (i.e if a thief is getting focused then the team’s dd ele could go to where they are in stealth and heal them with some water attunement to get them back into the fight rather than the thief having to pull out completely like you would see in a soloq game)

And regarding ports, some of them just have been moved to different positions, some are new, and some are gone but overall they are still really strong. Though the weird steal “target too close” thing is a mystery to me.

Anyways that’s my thought process there. I hope I made myself clear

Or as someone else said only have it knock down someone if they are moving. Then there’s some counterplay for people who are paying attention to what the engi is doing.

Try this, I attempted to explain the specs as best I could. Hope it helps