Guild Wars 2

The talk of removing and/or improving conditions on the staff (or any weapon) is a design matter that breeches far beyond the staff. As the game goes right now, your builds is either a condition builds, and you gear/eat straight condition damage/duration, equip what you call a condition weapon and suck at everything else, or you avoid condition damage and cry to ArenaNet to remove conditions from your weapon of choice. You’re one or the other, and ne’er the two shall meet. This is less true for Mesmers, who get more conditions from spec than weapons and have managed to live their day-jobs with hybrids, but it’s still a problem, and not one that band-aiding the staff is going to address.

roamzero.9486:

I wonder if celestial would be a good option for that weapon set..

I’ve pondered down the same line, though my gut tells me no. The major draw to Celestial seems to be the availability of both precision and crit-damage on the same piece. Second is the even spread for toughness and vitality, but most thieves really want straight vitality.

Crits don’t really seem the optimal route for P/D. But, without crunching the numbers, I can’t call that a pure rule. For all I know, Celestial could hit some kind of sweet spot with the right trait build.

Good luck with that. Thieves have been begging since launch for a shadowstep (y’know, only that mechanic tied directly to their F1 key) that doesn’t get stuck on pebbles. Magic 8 Ball says: “Outlook not so good”.

There’s a finesse to the staff that has always drawn me in. However, it really, really needs any cooldown reduction you can give it to know its full potential. Winds of Chaos is an absolutely amazing clone ability, but of little value coming out of me. Anything I can do to minimize my time spent just auto-attacking is a must.

I didn’t like the greatsword in beta and launch. It felt overused and lacking in anything beyond raw ranged damage. The change of Mind Stab to a targeted effect, despite lacking anything I’d call “area” in its area effect, sealed the deal and I walked away. I’ve since been trying to force myself to use it as my alternate. I’m leaning towards a 20/0/20/0/30 hybrid build right now, and it would pair nicely with my staff if I could learn to like it.

Condition removal is a slight challenge for a lot of mesmers, but as has been said, you can avoid a lot by neutering a P/D’s Cloak and Dagger. It’s a pretty predictable attack, since it’s our only melee ability. Pistol’s Sneak Attack is the primary bleed applicator, but it attacks five times. As such, it’s susceptible to retaliation (and technically confusion, but most P/Ds are going to be Shadow Arts specced and easily capable of removing or waiting out the stack). I believe Cry of Frustration gets you a healthy sized retaliation stack, but don’t blow it early. If I see it on you, I’m going to steal it and give it to all of my friends.

I’m not partial to stacking condition damage, even though that’s P/D’s main damage source. I like my bleeds to hurt enough to be worth cleansing, but have power be my heavy-weight. It adds some spike to my Mug and keeps my secondary weapon set from being completely anemic.

For that reason, I like Carrion on at least my pistol and dagger. For a set with no healing (which I have a habit of stacking), I’d armor Carrion with Undead runes and Soldier accessories. I’m actually going Shaman/Undead armor and acessorizing with half cleric/half soldier. I wouldn’t really recommend it, though. I like the added heal on Mug, Assassin’s Reward and Signet of Healing when lazily slumming the overworld, but with the game as it is, it quickly loses value on harder content and pvp compared to the added damage I could be doing.

maddoctor.2738:

There is a very simple way to “fix” Dungeons: mobs/bosses need MORE hit points (at least double of what they have now) and a lot more damage. They should be able to one-shot players with every hit and take lots of minutes to kill, otherwise it’s not challenging enough. /sarcasm

There, Dungeons “fixed” and nobody will play them, ever, again

Oh, phew. For a second there, I thought you were serious. All of my Internet Rage nerves were tingling. Well played, sir and/or madam.

It was the decided fix back around beta or launch to solve the matter of players using it to stack up long swiftness buffs (though I could be misremembering that with guardian’s staff). I personally wish it would at least refresh/replace the existing swiftness, the way some other pulsing buffs handle it. It’s rather annoying when you screw up and use it with a couple second swiftness still up.

Well, it looks like you’ve got the raw numbers to do damage. It’s true the precision is somewhat wasted on the lack of crit damage. Not a complete waste, since you’re still multiplying a healthy stack of power.

If you’re having damage issues, I’d say it could be from a lack of focus in the build. It seems like you’re trying to do a little bit of everything. Strong phantasms, strong shatters, strong confusion damage. Diversity is good, but it will come at a cost when your traits aren’t synergizing towards common goals.

Edit: Sorry, that was a very brief response. My bus came and I had to dash. Continuing, here’s some idle thoughts…

I feel like the phantasm boosting traits aren’t really doing you a whole lot. Your torch phantasm doesn’t really benefit from them very much, leaving mostly your staff. The staff phantasm can hit like a truck, but I’m not sure he’s worth a two trait investment by himself.

With 30 in Illusions, you’ve got the backing for some solid shattering. A lot of your traits support that as well, so that’s something to look at. The boiler-plate response to that is to go 20 in Dueling and get the ability to churn out clones with dodges. You’re not Flavor of the Month and I like that, so I’m not going to encourage that.

One trait I would consider looking at though is Imbued Diversion at Illusion 30. You already pop vulnerability on interrupt, daze and shatter, and have a +30% condition duration before gear and food. Turning Diversion into an AoE could really turn that up a notch. Halting Strike in Domination does respectable damage and could add some random burst damage to that combo as well.

If precision is something you’d consider forgoing, since you’re not really stacking crit damage, 10 in Inspiration might be an alternative. Vigorous Revelations and Mender’s Purity are both great traits. But that’s just one of many options.

Yup. Thieves are extremely squishy. They make up for it with unparalleled avoidance… eventually. Much like mesmers, their true strength takes some levels and practice to tease out. Life changed for me at 40, when I could sink into the master tier of Shadow Arts or Acrobatics (doing both was amusing, but unnecessary). Prior to that, I spent a lot of time pistol/pistol kiting.

Take heart, you’re not alone. Whenever I’m wandering with my friends in the level 30ish areas, we always seem to attract stray thieves looking for any means to not have to solo. It’s become a running joke that we’re running a thief adoption agency. It’s a tough time in their lives and a second HP sack by their side makes all the difference in the world. If all else fails, find a group and follow them like a lost puppy.

The terminology did throw off one of my friends. She got talked into doing a AC p3 as her very first GW2 dungeon experience. The term “Explorable Mode” conjured such enticing images that my warnings of difficulty fell on deaf ears. I think you can imaging the frustration and disappointment that quickly followed.

I hate seeing an advice request sink down the stack, so I’ll toss something in. And if I’m wrong, well, that’ll just get more responses. Nothing draws attention like being wrong on the Internet.

A build link would better help people guess what you’re aiming for. I’m thinking of a few different builds someone could shape out of 0/20/30/20/0, so I won’t comment on specifics.

As a general note, the sort of stealthy roamer builds common to WvW are best served in that environment. That’s not to say they don’t work at all in spvp, but the function isn’t entirely the same. There’s going to be overlap in both, given that smart thieves tend to avoid the zerg and stick to small skirmishes. Of concern in spvp more than wvw is dealing with bunker builds that camp points. Also, your ability to escape a losing fight isn’t quite as meaningful in spvp, when the respawn point is closer than bail bonds office to a courthouse.

One of the thief’s major WvW advantages is the unmatched ability to GTFO. Exercising that power is hardly a loss.

The only walk of shame is the long hike back from the spawn point.

Wolfar.6508:

What do you guys think about Pistol/Pistol in WvWvW/This game isn’t all about dealing as much damage as possible (luckily it isn’t).

There are dungeon runners who would disagree with you on that. Luckily, you are not a Guardian, Warrior or Mesmer, and so those groups will leave us thieves alone anyways.

I’m going to second Dahkeus’s sentiments on this one, even though I’m kind of anti-P/P. That bleed-focused #1 skill in an otherwise bleedless set is admittedly a turnoff. Still, melee is a dangerous place to be in a dungeon you’ve never seen before and shortbow just isn’t there in terms of raw, single-target damage. That doesn’t leave you much choice. I may be anti-P/P, but I’m pro-not-dying.

Condition ranting aside, I should note some amount of praise for LDB that hasn’t been mentioned yet. It is arguably the most accessible whirl combo finisher in the game. Okay, so blast is way better than whirl, but y’know… Just take the complement, LDB. I’m trying to be nice here.

The terrain issue on general shadowstepping is likely going to be an extremely complicated issue to resolve. It took several iterations just to fix general projectile and leap pathing. Close to a year later, and those still aren’t perfect. I expect that issue will likely be some coder’s back-burner project for quite a long time. If we see a major issue resolved for thief sooner than later, it’ll probably be the culling-stealth issue, since that gets far more crying. For our reputation, I hope that’s the next target fix anyways. The nerfs won’t stop coming until we stop eating faces like they’re on buffet in WvW.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

@Clockwork Bard: You can just hybridize equipment.

That doesn’t really address the issue at hand. Taking away potential condition damage to feed into a 0.5 power scale hurts that attack. Crits do nothing for conditions, shy of the little you can squeeze out of a Sigil of Earth. And your direct damage attacks are still hurting from the power/crit they lost feeding condition damage to the condition attacks. Hybridizing your damage stats just marginalizes everything all around, though it does cut some of your losses when conditions can’t pull their weight, either from hitting the stack cap or being cleansed.

Meanwhile, a full power/crit build that avoids bleed-stacking attacks gets all of their point investments on all of their attacks, with none of the drawbacks with which a condition stacker has to contend.

Condition builds can be fun, viable and deadly. I run a P/D build, and have fun with it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a glaring problem.

PvE with a thief is definitely a challenge if no one else is around to take the fire for you. With the right investment, they are the single best class at pure avoidance. They are also probably the single worst class at taking a hit. They’ve got a serious glass jaw.

Your invisibility is as close as you’ll get to sneaking. Most of them only last a few seconds, but short bursts is typically all you need, given the frantic pace of playing a thief. Emphasizing stealth in a build can be extremely amusing, once you get past the preconception that you should be able to just walk around stealthed.

Double pistols is… eh… it works, I guess. It suffers from pretty schizophrenic skill design. Its primary damage attack, Unload, is very much power/crit based, while its auto-attack and stealth attack do most of their damage through bleeds, making gearing a dual-pistol a brain hemorrhaging nightmare. It’s got pretty good utility, (a short but massive vulnerability stack, a pbaoe blind and possibly the game’s only spammable daze) but the temptation to squeeze every last point of initiative into Unload means you’ll often find you don’t have enough to take advantage of it. And since the daze and blind are both on the off-hand pistol, it’s far more common to take advantage of them paired with a sword or dagger main-hand. Main-hand pistol arguably pairs better with off-hand dagger, which offers a gap-maker, multi-target cripple and easy source of repeated stealth.

If you are still interested in Pistol/Pistol, I’d be cautious in PvP. People recognize it instantly as an Unload spam set. They’ll frequently counter with things like retaliation, which given Unload’s rapid attacks, will turn you to paste in seconds.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I feel like LDB is the symptom, not the cause. The nature of gearing for something as narrow as conditions, at the expense of all other benefits, is a core design problem. Hybrid skills and weapon sets are more victim than culprit. Condition builds require a fairly heavy investment that benefits a tiny subset of skills. Such a narrow focus creates gimmicky, predictable and easily countered builds. Not focusing on them makes damaging-condition skills suboptimal, as they need to be weaker to account for the potential damage a condition/power or might-stacked glass cannon investment could tease out of them.

Even though Condition Damage is a narrow-focus secondary attribute, it gets gear priority on par with the universal primary attributes, and skills like this suffer for it.

My personal feelings: I feel like secondary attributes should never come at the expense of primary attributes in gear design. 1700 condition damage should never have been a thing. In gear selection, you should be able to give up crit-damage for condition damage, but not power for condition damage. Likewise, the specialized (and often poorly scaling) attribute healing power shouldn’t come at the expense of general survivability stats like vitality and toughness.

By making conditions supplementary, rather than a core source of damage, and secondary attributes a separate tier designed to refine a character’s focus, skills could be better scaled to compensate.

Master of Timespace.2548:

It seems it can still be fairly useful though.

Don’t worry, there will be a patch for that too.

I jest.

Hopefully we’ll see a fix for the shadowstep problems. I get that patching numbers is easier than patching mechanics, and so I’m not giving up total hope. I know there are concerns with shadowstep, like turning any thief with a shortbow into the jump puzzle king. Still, the nature of Shadow Trap demands a somewhat looser implementation. With a 2 minute duration, maybe they can do that now, without worrying about it being a permanent “escape to castle” button.

wish.1027:

animalmom.1062:

the most recently applied condition or conditions will be removed first.

This is wrong

Heres how I know:
I went to sPVP on my guardian with a friend and did the following. I set the trait “shouts convert 1 condition to a boon” thus making all my shouts remove 1 condition. I then had my thief friend do the following > shoot me once with a pistol (bleed) then CnD me (vulnerabilityx3) then swap to a short bow and drop a poison field on me (poison), then I moved out of the poison field and hit a shout. Bleed was removed, even though 2 other conditions with much longer durations/higher stacks were applied after it.

That seems pretty conclusive to me. I’ve had similar, albeit less stringently tested, results with my warrior’s warhorn and Quick Breathing. However, that too is a condition-to-boon cleanse. It’s possible, however unlikely, that those use a different priority system. But I’m not going to hold my breath on that.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Clockwork Bard.3105:

Thieves, by their nature, aren’t built to play the waiting game.

I hope you are kittening kidding me. Of all classes, thief has BY FAR the best skills and abilities to play time when they need to.

The vast majority of the thief’s staying power is avoidance. No profession can completely avoid damage as well as a thief, but while they’re avoiding hits, they’re often not dealing damage either. Things like stealth, dodging and kiting can put a lot of downtime on the thief. That sort of mitigation just favors burst damage. I’m by no means implying the condition thief can’t do his job. Like I said, I run one. The stars just don’t align as well as they do for a bursty thief.

SoS works in combat. But, I have found myself in similar circumstances. While I don’t melee much with my thief, I’ve found I get similar problems with my warrior and Warrior’s Sprint, their source of 25% speed. Or, sometimes I’ll be under my warhorn’s swiftness, and get successfully kited just out of reach by someone with a +25% speed signet. On my thief, I’ve run along side a 25% speed runner, spamming dodge to maintain Expeditious Dodger, only to find us moving the exact same speed.

While I haven’t tested anything extensively enough to come to any conclusions or rule out additional factors, it has cropped up enough to make me question the integrity of the speed system.

Youkay.5294:

Steal and Dodge heavy P/D condition build
[…]

That’s very close to what I’m running right now. The only major difference is that I’m not a fan of venoms, so I run Improvisation at DA20. It’s a bit more unpredictable, but with my 60 second utilities getting a shot at coming back every 20 seconds, it’s not horrible.

Def needs work, yarr.

I’ve started to find I can minorly abuse the pathing lately. With Mug and other traits, I heal a decent amount whenever I Steal. However, if I really need healing, I don’t want to shadowstep back into melee range. So, if there’s anything like shin-high terrain or the like really close by, I can sometimes use it to block the shadowstep, but still gain all the benefits of Steal.

But, it’s a very minor gain that I’d gladly trade for it to actually shadowstep to my target instead.

While I personally run a P/D condition thief , I feel that a direct damage thief is ultimately far more versatile and rewarding to play.

I favor P/D, because I’m at my most comfortable hovering just a bit outside of melee range. It’s a set that is almost exclusively ranged, but because Cloak and Dagger is melee, you can’t wander too far from your target, else you lose a massive chunk of your damage. Being able to cripple at-will ensures I’m in charge of the size of that gap. Because of all of that, it suits my comfort zone.

I’m currently debating the viability of abandoning condition damage on the set. The main problem with condition damage is that it’s a war of attrition. You dot up the enemy and wait for them to bleed out. Thieves, by their nature, aren’t built to play the waiting game. They’re squirrelly, bursty and, when their bag of tricks is exhausted, flimsy. If you’re comfortable with a “get close, burst down, get out” play style, you’ll probably get the most from that.

Clarification: Smoke Bomb, the Thief downed #3 skill.

For some reason, the first page of Smoke Bomb rants are always people defending Blinding Powder. Thought I’d head that off before it started.

And yes, yes it does suck in pve. About all it’s good for is setting up Venomous Knife. However, since that’s pretty much all condition damage and you’re probably almost dead by time you can even get off a Smoke Bomb, it’s also basically worthless.

But as long as it continues to break the brains of pvp players who haven’t figured out that you’re still stationary when you vanish, then it’ll probably stay this way.

I’m on the fence. It’s a minor trait, so I can’t really get that worked up about it, when other minor traits on my characters do absolutely nothing ([cough]Vengeful Images[cough]). I agree with the comparison to Protection, except that if any minor trait stacked permanent protection, it would probably get the nerf mallet too.

As it was, Lotus Poison was overboard for shortbow users in pve. I could stack perma-weakness with no effort. One cloud plus a cluster-bomb burst meant a whole area of enemies were probably going to be weakened for as long as it was going to take to kill them. Weakening champions was even just a matter of keeping a cloud under them.

Now, the same combo still gives about 10 seconds of weakness, which is respectable uptime. However, that’s because Lotus Poison, Choking Gas and Cluster Bomb just have that perfect synergy. It’s the optimal situation, and other sources of poison are not going to see near that kind benefit at all. In some cases, you’ll find it working at odds with the effect. For example, my thief both dazes and poisons when I Steal. Some enemy aren’t even going to get a swing off before the weakness is up, but the 20 second cooldown is still going to happen. And with me taking full advantage of my 21.5 second Steal cooldown, that’s probably going to be what procs it every time.

I would really, really like to see more thief support options. But on the whole, I don’t think this is the fight I want to pick. It’s a low-hanging minor trait, comfortably nested in one of our ’zerker lines. If it gets too much global usefulness, it could just draw more wide-spread nerf arrows our way.

TL;DR: I’m really not a fan of the 20 second cooldown, but I see why they went there. It’s a minor trait, so whatevs.

I cringe anytime I have to take my thief underwater. I lose my Caltrops, my Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Ambush trap, half of my traits… Basically everything I use to not die repeatedly and painfully. I turn into a bar of untraited signets and venoms.

I assumed this was the burden everyone suffered underwater. Then I leveled an engineer and warrior. My god! The warrior just doesn’t die ever, but that’s par for leveling a warrior. The engineer… The engineer caught me completely by surprise! 1v1, even the Divines cannot save aquatic denizens from their explosive doom. But that’s just half the fun. Grenades! I pull krait in groups for giggles, then just roll my face over the grenade buttons until the bubbles clear and the giblets float away.

Meanwhile, my thief is developing aquaphobia. It’s just as well she die, though. A life without caltrops is no life worth living.

This is a familiar scene…

In GW1, Thief’s ancestor, the assassin, had a horrible stigma for years. Because of its immense damage potential, some people would build them as the ultimate glass cannons. When the fighting broke out, they’d shadowstep first into combat, deal insane damage, pull threat on everything within a mile radius, then promptly and unceremoniously die. It wasn’t long before groups got sick of this and turned away all assassins at face value.

Given the current glass cannon meta and the thief’s cardboard-like durability, I’m not surprised to see history repeat itself.

I generally agree with Wolfe on that one, though I want to toss a side of blame onto the nature of condition damage, as a stat. This wouldn’t be such a dilemma, if conditions weren’t so needy in terms of investment.

You give up universally useful stats (Pow, Pre, Vit and Tou) for a stat with a fairly niche benefit. Investing in conditions ends up meaning that your non-condition, non-utility attacks suffer, and so you simply do not use them. You end up building completely around the stat, so as not to feel like you’re wasting your gearing resources.

Add on things like condition stacking limits, and it’s no surprise that many players are turning to power/crit, even on what were thought of as condition weapons (warrior sword and mesmer staff come to mind as examples).

I may be the newb on this one, but I’m completely missing the logic of this thread. The defining characteristic of the thief is what is wrong with the thief? The “many options, one defining resource” shared by… hell, games going back as far as time, and the very foundation of a modern economy, is the single major flaw of the thief’s character design?

Yeah, you do lose damage when you use utilities. You lose damage when you take a non-damage utility power on any class. You lose damage when you gear or spec for survivability. You lose damage when you go for ranged over melee. This kind of balancing act exists clear across the game. What makes initiative different other than other classes not having this particular axis? I’m not seeing it. This just sounds like a witch hunt at face value.

I’ve been pondering down the same road lately myself. Most of my searches have come back with fairly negative comments, but always from the point of view of glass cannon thieves.

Most of the negative reaction seems to stem from the fact that some weapon sets favor blowing your initiative fairly early, before you get hurt. It would definitely show its strengths in the hands of a more sustained set, like maybe Sword/Dagger. How truly effective it can be in such a build, I’m still finding out.

Thief was my main back at launch, but she’s taken a back seat to some healthy alting over the past few months. I got feeling she was neglected and came back, only to realize that either the profession shifted rather heavily under my feet or I’d forgotten entirely what I wanted from her (the latter being more likely). So, I wiped the slate clean and set to rebuilding her.

This is where I’m at right now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYUQNAqYVlcmKPnby9E/5Ei3jvasMLNF0UD2p4q0KA-jgzAoLIcWApAAEIQqAUesIas13ioxqcwUoRWjmU1KgHJpOFMvigsUAQsGA-e

Traits (the short version):

• DA 20: III (Mug), VII (Improvisation)
• CS 0
• SA 0
• Ac 20: II (Power of Inertia), X (Assassin’s Reward)
• Tr 30: III (Uncatchable), VII (Bountiful Thief), XII (Sleight of Hand)

I remember I settled on P/D because: a) at the time, sword felt busted, b) heartseeker leapfrogged me over too many cliffs (I tend to mash the buttons until they do something, often queuing up tons of them) to ever go back and c) P/P got dull fast. My comfort zone tends to hover me around 500 from the enemy, so P/D was a good fit. But on the matter of weapon, I am open to alternate suggestions. I hear S/D is sexy these days, but haven’t given it a serious go yet, since I’m currently decked in condition gear.

I also don’t play glass cannons ([watches most of the room clear out]). I don’t need a bunker, but I can’t stand feeling squishy. The ability to recover from mistakes and bad situations is important to me. This build goes about that with some incidental healing (possibly too much?) and lots of dodging via Acrobatics traits and a significant uptime vigor buff (unlike other professions, the Thief’s endurance gain trait plays with, not against, vigor and I want to exploit that).

Thoughts? Am I chasing Thief up the wrong tree here? Of considerable concern is my emphasis on healing. My hope is that, in the game of attrition that is condition stacking, I’m getting staying power without cowing my whole build to that of a self-support-monkey.

Agreed. I just did this event with a group of about 6 of us. There ghosts were spawning in packs of about 8, and were already dropping spells on the tent before their feet touched the ground. Every time they spawn, the tents are going to take some punishment. Sometimes they’re already attacking before I can see them. It’s entirely unavoidable. It’s not the same as events where enemies charge their objective. The ghosts spawn right next to them.

We had two guardians keeping the melee ghosts at bay with lines of warding and similar area knockbacks, but anytime a ghost healer managed to survive, that fiery rain attack quickly chewed the tents to nothing because of their size.

Spectral Attunement does not seem to increase any boon durations. Tested with Spectral Wall’s protection and Spectral Walk’s swiftness. Forgot to test Spectral Armor.

Also, Spectral Wall got really wonky in my tests. It normally puts on the incorrect 3 vulnerability, but with Spectral Attunement, it put 13 stacks for me instead.

I love Signet of Shadows, but I feel it’s a wasted utility slot if used just for speed. The speed boost isn’t as noticeable in a lot of combat situations, so I recommend that if people choose to take it, they should definitely make use of the active portion of it as well. Many ignore it and just leave it on passive. A ranged, AoE blind on a 30 second CD is pretty useful.