Guild Wars 2

1) We will nitpick “immunity”. Immunity is a strong word with an absolute meaning. Also people have been throwing around similar words in regard to stealth, this exaggeration has only been adding to the conflict concerning thieves.
2) I don’t agree with this idea. It’ll even more gravely harm non-BS thieves as opposed to Glass Cannon BS thieves. Glass Cannon BS theives generally only strike when all thier skills are ready, avoiding combat until that point. So I agrue that it wouldn’t effect them very much, in fact if you get their conventional stealth can still got D/P and combo HS with BP to achieve stealth. As that stealth is the result of a combo field.
Which leaves this would effect everyone else. Sword builds would likely suffer the worst lacking a leap. S/P may still be used for PW and because of BP but BP has a pretty high cost. S/D’s survivability would suffer greatly, and it already has lackluster damage. D/D would probably carry Smoke Wall so they’d be able to BS still. The ranged sets would suffer a bit, not as much as swords.
To sum it all up, getting rid of mid combat stealth would actually encourage more Glass Cannon Backstab builds, other melee options would prove very inefficient.
(Imo this nerf would turn Thieves into squishy pseudo-warriors that only excel at bursting single targets and completely useless in a team environment aside from being suicide bursters.

Chill Cris. Sometimes it’s fun to goofing off.

If you can enough crafting materials and crafts smartly it really helps a lot. I was able to go up like 5 levels today on crafting in one sitting.

I got the collector’s edition and I have to say yes.

Deadfall.4601:

My question is – pve I know dagger/dagger works but say in a dungeon instance you wanted a go the range/support route. Would daggers still work or could you switch it up and use staff? I think even this build staff could be great with attunement swapping and the PTV approach. Maybe try to stay around the 35% mark with crit, sense this build/style is a more balance build stat wise.

I looked at scepter as well and focus… I donno though Staff just seems more group friendly

I don’t find this build to be very good in dungeons and find staff far more useful. It’s really best for WvW/PvP.

I heard one Ele saying he did well using D/D in dungeons, by maintaining Protection and sharing his Auras. (Wooden Potatoes on youtube)

If they switched Vapor Form and Grasping Earth’s slots so Vapor Form started fully charged, would that be enough to fix Ele’s downed state?

You can subvert the HB with shadow return if you’re aware enough to initialize the combat with Infiltrator’s Strike. I love the feel of S/D, very evasive and mobile, and a more balanced emphasis on your skill bar as a whole. As opposed some other sets where users will getting the most of one particular skill.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

@Knyx:

What you said is a joke. No skilled competitive intelligent Thief player would play D/P if he is going for a burst spec, why would he? What combo field? Bring smoke utility or waste initiative on Black Powder so he can heartseeker through it while his target is 100% hp so he can get a stealth? Don’t make me laugh. D/P is the biggest fail set on the Thief in PvP, D/D does the role better. Also, how are you going to CnD with D/P?

i can see it being useful, if you’re not aiming for a backstab dagger (yes, that does exist). you have a free interrupt and a smoke field for survivability, a shadowstep for mobility, and heartseeker for burst. use a stealth steal for initial backstab, use high initiative regen, work from there.

The Shadowstep also has a blind, and it costs less then blindpowder so you can utilize if you want a lower cost option on a single mob.

Skills
-Bomb Trap – When triggered a bomb explodes with high knockback
-Go for the Joints – For 2 seconds, all of the user’s attacks ignore toughness

Elite Skill
-Steal Arms – Steal whatever weapons your target has out for 15 seconds. (stolen gear is replaced with things like sticks)(that way the opponent isn’t totally left high and dry)

Traits
-Explosive Exchange – Steal now plants timed explosives on the target. (2 minute cooldown)

@Proeliator: What if they made is so backstab would disengage stealth, hit or miss? With the revealed Debuff. Or added an initiative cost to it. Something like 6 init.

The ignorance in this thread is headache inducing.
1) What skill are they spamming? If it’s heartseeker or pistol whip, you fail. They’ve both been nerfed and they both are escapeable and counterable. Have a problem with them? Look up a counter, or study the mechanics and make up your own. What’s left? C/D? Here’s an idea, their probably going in for a backstab. Move, turn, aoe, dodge roll. Backstab is short range and it only does massive damage if it hits you in the back. Stealth wears off quickly, so just outlast it. Unload? It’s a straight forward attack, reflect murders it. Death Blossom? You can use it twice in succession before running out of initiative. Dancing dagger? Decent cc, nothing too special. Black Powder? More defense then anything, just treat it like C/D if they’re running D/P. Head Shot? A single target CC interrupt. Infiltrator’s Strike, Shadow Shot, Shadow Strike, and Infiltrator’s Arrow, all mobility skills. Body Shot? Applies vulerablility to a single target. Cluster Bomb and choking gas aren’t exactly spammy skills, due to cost and activation speed. And Disabling Shot is more a CC then anything. Flanking Strike is similar to Disabling shot, only it’s an evade and it has poor accuracy.
Summing that all up, that’s 3 spammable skills that focus on damage. Two of which have been nerfed, and one that’s incredibly simple.
2) Onto the big scary mysterious stealth. The mystical state that pulls you to a parallel existance and where you can warp reality into your favour and smite foes out of existance. Oh wait, no it doesn’t. A stealthed enemy is still there, and hittable, and avoidable. Now lets look at stealthed skills. Tactical Strike, no one cares about, Surprise Shot, no one cares about, Sneak Attack, no one cares about, Backstab, OMFG HEAD FOR THE HILLS! No really, let’s break it down for a second. Base attack: 403, Range: 130, special effect: Double Damage from behind. Key word here is “Behind”. Your hitbox has 4 sides. That means if the thief wants to hit you, you make your back hard to hit. Kind of like that game in gym class where you try to steal the other person’s tail. Avoid the backstab, see the thief unstealth, resume combat. If they use it to bail or setup a normal skill, act accordingly.
3) Let’s see, what else do you complain about? Daggerstorm? Don’t shoot it, find cover or move away.

/end guide-rant

psyt.9415:

Zachariel.5463:

psyt.9415:

Swilo.6475:

Yes backstab hits too hard but one of the huge issues with thiefs is that they can get away with building glass cannons because of their downstate.

If you look at the 2 classes that are the best at glass cannons Mesmer and Theif. You can not stab stomp either class in a high level game because they will blink away. The thief will also be able to stealth.

So that leaves top level players with 2 options. Ignore the thief while he insta gibs someone with backstab and spams cluster bomb off point. Or go for the thief as he stealths and if you do get him down he will get rezzed because he can blink and stealth.

This is true. The amount of time you have to spend to find the final resting spot of a thief or mesmer in downed state usually ends up with them killing someone and getting back up or just plain getting away. I honestly think for thief the one tele is enough, they don’t need the smoke too or they need to nerf the dmg on there auto attack because they can put out some serious dmg from downed still. Mesmer same deal with the clone and tele. It needs to be one interrupt and something else that won’t disrupt stomp.

Its funny how they get two ways to flat out interrupt your stomp as well as cause confusion in where the hell they actually are. Then you got suckers like rng and nec with only one interrupt who are basically guaranteed to eat dirt once they drop.

You are forget that the necro has two heal skills…forget what ranger has…warrior has teh ability to get back up if you don’t down him fast enough. And that little glow ball the mesmers do…does crap damage. You do more from the confusion but it evens out. Not to mention it brings you out of stealth if you attack when you clone.

For those that are unaware…the 1 skill in downed state does damage and heals the necro…those red balls aren’t just for show.

reread i’m talking about interrupting stomp here. If you are stomping me I hit fear then I go to life steal but that lifesteal don’t stop you from walking back up and stomping me again so I will die on that second attempt.

Mes and thief have their smoke / clone and the teles which both will stop a stomp attempt so they get to interrupt two stomp attempts plus the added confusion of not knowing where they moved to which adds travel time to run to them. do you see the issue ? A heal skill is not the same as a total loss of stomp ability.

This is all in the heat of battle, it makes it very hard to down them compared to everyone else unless you just start swinging at them but this takes longer and there could be other team mates of theirs beating on you at the same time. Then thief can hit 3 targets with his auto in downed so he has a pretty high chance to rally just from that even.

Just throwing this out, Smoke Bomb doesn’t interrupt stomps. I’ve been stomped plenty of times while steathed. If thief stealthed out if your stomp, he/she must have saved his/her shadow step. When a thief is downed, he/she has 4 skills. The attack skill and shadowstep are immediately available and the smoke bomb’s on cooldown. The shadow step is a ground target teleport, (similar to thier shortbow 5 skill) and the smoke bomb is the stealth. And that stealth is just like every other stealth. The thief is still hitable and it doesn’t interrupt channels. The only way smoke bomb possibly avoid a stomp is if the thief is traited to blind on stealth, and that’s just a hypothesis. I don’t know if blindness effects stomps.

Mmmmm nah. Sure Thieves can stealth stomp you, but other classes can stomp while outright invincible. ie. Ele’s Mist Form.

Impressive, but I noticed he generally had to pull and single out his targets (which makes sense considering he’s a thief). The vids of Eles I saw generally had generally stayed closer to the main group, taking them all at once with AoEs while dodging around them, and periodically gaining some distance with RtL before diving back in.

I come on here and see post after post of how weak Ele is, then I see videos of eles soloing entire zergs and coming out on top. Now some of you will probably say “that’s in WvW and players are underlevered there”, to that I say true, but not everyone is underleveled and undergeared. Also I ask you, can absolutely every class pull off this feat?

I’ll have to try the first option. The group I ran into was way too large and spread out to get behind, and the general area didn’t provide many things to hide behind.

Okay so you’re a thief in WvW heading to whatever point of interest to meet up with your comrades. Along the way a massive enemy zerg (Keep sieging big) comes over the hill and spots you and decides to pursue you. Anyone have any advice on how to survive this?

I run a PvE build and style similar to Markrath and I find late in the fight when you’re down to one remaining target you can rely on your 3 to maintain blindness while you finish it off. You can use your 4 to keep launcher worms from attacking, but I forget if they have any CQ attacks.

@dapheonix: That vid made my day. You have my applause.

@Semprenaviguare: Attunement Swapping counts as Weapon Swapping for elementalists. (just as kit swapping counts for Engie’s)

Looking at it that way, Ele’s probably get the most use of sigils with Swap Effects.

Does anyone use this in tPvP or sPvP? I’d imagine someone with a backstab build could use it to guard the points or bait some would be duelist.

If you think this is bad for qqing, get a load at the ele board.
Of the boards I’ve been on, Thieves’ is one of the less whiny.

Ashanor.5319:

hackks.3687:

wait, so this is a serious thread? lmao

if you want to bunker a point then how about standing out in the open and taking it in the face like every other bunker build has to?

seriously, how is this thread not locked by now?

Spoken like someone who knows absolutely nothing about the Thief. A thief only has one form of survivability, and it is stealth.

Correction. Thief has at least four forms of defense. (Five if you count cripple) Stealth, Blindness, Interupts (usually dazinging) and evasion.

Galandil.9641:

Dagins.5163:

tl;dr
Your entire complains are countered by the fact, that PW has built-in evasion and an interrupt. It’s a semi defensive skill, and its defensive part is untouched.

If you don’t bother to read, then don’t bother to answer with non-sense answers like this.

We should use PW as a semi-defensive skill, with 0.75s of doing nothing except getting the damage that we’re already taking, then a stun of 0.5s, then an evade that roots us in place.

[ ] Smart way to defend ourselves.

Don’t use it to block the normal attacks. That’s a waste, save it for skills with activation times or channels.

Or you could look and notice has 2 interupts, a blind and a stunbreak. PW may not be the damage dealer it used to, but it’s still a viable counter to skills with tells.

Khenzy.9348:

Kita.7819:

They will keep spamming this skill, and since the channeling is so huge, their initiative recovery almost makes up for the usage. Almost.

Apart from this, they steal an egg from sharks. The egg gives them a full inititive bar. That’s why you see them spamming Shadow Assault so much.

Although this is, yet, another balance problem related to the spammy nature of the initiative system; if you give thives spammable strong skills such as finisher hard hitting skills, stun skills, chain blind skills, stealth+daze combos that are potentially able to be casted several times in a row… achieving an expected and tolerable balance will be extremely hard to do.
Instead of tweaking something inherently problematic, deal with the problems from the roots of it, I say.
(hint: I’m talking about the Initiative mechanic)

The thing is, most of Thieves’ weapon sets have 1 damage dealing skill and 3 utilities/CCs, and of course the autoattack. But Spear changes things up a bit boasting 2 attack skills (other then Auto-attack, and both of which have Evade as a side effect) a rather punishing block counter and 1 utility skill.

Galandil.9641:

Well, I think that no one with a sound mind will tell you that the problem was in PW, but that it was, er… it IS in Haste in conjuction with PW. And so they nerfed PW. Way logical. :>

It’s more logical for a temporary fix to a stand out skill. Quickness effects 6/8 class in this game so it has more tied to it, making it harder to change.

Also, just because they nerfed PW doesn’t mean they will never re-buff it. In any case, if you’re really disabled by PW’s nerf, imo you need to reassess the flexibility and adaptability of your build and/or playstyle.

What aspect do you value more about Heart Seeker? The damage it deals or the fact it’s a Leap Finisher?

For myself, I love the Leap Finisher aspect. Especially with Dagger/Pistol’s Black Powder.

I fail to see how this makes Sword/Pistol “Unviable”. You’ve still got a wide swing auto attack, 2 daze/interupts, a blind and a stun breaking escape. (and steal which can be traited to be insanely strong, 3 utility skills and an elite.) It’s not like your without survivability.

Grumwulf.9602:

Personally I wish no.3 was a block. It would fit the fencing style much better. It could be short duration unlike the blocks of warriors and guardians so that timing would be much more tricky but of course with initiative you could block a few hits in row. Even better would be to have it something like the underwater ability. Cally it Parrying Strike. Flanking strike is a clownish ability in my opinion.

I prefer the Evade, it makes S/D feel floaty and evasive as opposed to S/P which feels down right clunky in comparison. They just need to fix Flanking Strike’s pathing.

Never really had problems hitting with FS in PvE as most mobs are stationary. PvP’s where it’s generally considered broken, since most PvPers move, so I’d test it there.

What exactly are you looking for in S/D? In PvE it let’s drop in and out of combat and recover from stuns with ease. It has a stealth that will let blind or daze your foe for long enough to get 3 free hits, it has a ricocheting cripple that deals decent damage (especially in 2v1 situations) a wide attack range, and Flanking Strike is way less apt to fail in PvE making it a viable dodge with some practice reading enemy tells, and a quick way to strip pesky boons. I think its only real issue is the pathing on Flanking Strike. It needs some way to adapt to moving targets.

I’m looking into getting some cultural gear but they cost boat loads of Karma. Anyone have efficent methods to gain karma at around level 50?
Thanks.

Never really had trouble surviving as a Thief in PvE. I used S/D and SB mostly and use a lot of stealth skills. Playing this way is great if you want to lose unwanted aggro. I personally use stealth for scoring Dazes followed by 3 free back hits. SB is generally good for surviving and handling groups of enemies, good for keeping distance between you and them and being able hit lots of them at once.
In my experience, most Thief weapons reward you for being able to read enemy tells for the most part, employing a variety of evades, escapes and interrupts.

What if they added a 1 second immobilization or cripple to it at the start? Or at least replace the second thrust with a wide slash? That and give full evade duration.

I’m much prefer Evading over Blocking for S/D. I don’t want it feeling clunky and rooted like S/P.

I hear Arcane Shield is a decent counter to spamming Thieves. Of course you need be ready to do something after they trigger the explosion.

I loved both. Dunno what you’re saying about Thief being a cookie cutter of rogue classes because he has a single damage move per set, to my knowledge rogues usually ran off a skill rotation. I like how resourceful Thief is. Most of his skills put more emphasis on utility then damage. As for Sin, my second main was an A/Mo with a focus on Shadow Arts and Protection Prayers. It was fun keeping myself protected from damage while snuffing out the enemy’s support.

Same issue. I guess it’s effecting everyone or a least a significant group of players. It’ll probably be back soon.

So basically, HS and PW spam strategies can deal great damage to unprepared/inexperienced players, but they lack the versatility to stand up in anything but low level play.

If you want to be evasive as a Thief, I suggest using a different weapon set. Sword/Pistol is probably Thief’s least evasive set. That said, you still have 2 dazes that act as interupts (pistol whip and head shot) and Black Powder (blindness + blindness field), and a stun break (Shadow Return), so if you decide to keep at it, you’re hardly left high and dry. That all said you also have a good deal of your utilities and traits are evasive as well (eg. Roll for Initiative, Blind Powder, Last Refuge and a good deal of the Acrobatic Traits) . I’d suggest switching out Signet of Malice for one of the other heals.

Daendur.2357:

it’s not a kill based off of 1 boon, it’s a kill based off of 1 entire build: weapons, traits, and utility skills.

Not to mention it leaves you weak afterward unless you take measures to deal with it.

@Fateless: A good player would see the Thief has Sword and Pistol and save a Stun-Break for the occasion, or take other measures to deal with it.

Anyone seen any of his videos on Ele? He seems to be doing just fine with his. He’s actually found out how to access all the aura on his D/D ele and gets a lot of use out of them with things like Protection Boons. (I heard a lot of other impressive things with his build video.

He also does extensive videos on GW lore, news and guides for dungeons and jumping puzzles.

Know what you mean, the skill only works when you have someone to dump the aggro onto or “sometimes” when facing a ranged mob at long range.

Why compare Blinding Powder to Shadow Refuge? Blinding Powder can be activated at the drop of a hat making it more viable in close quarters then Shadow Refuge which makes to have to target a location and limit’s it’s stealth to that location.

Also I’m not sure how you use Throw Gunk and Ice Stab but I find Gunk Throw great in a close quarters fights and Ice Stab great for preventing enemies from escaping.

Also you call Steal a “gimmick” a lot. Care to explain what exactly makes it a gimmick. No cop-out explanations please.

Mrbig.8019:

kevin.3584:

Mrbig.8019:

steal doesn’t have a steep learning curve ( if you really believe this, this game is probably not for you).

I hate when people say that this game is not for you. Just because he thinks it has a steep learning curve doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be playing this game. I see this comment way too often, and strangely enough it’s only on this game.
I think it’s up to the players to decide for themselves if this game is ‘not for them’.

the point is that there’s so misinformation about this class that it’s getting ridicolous.

People saying the thief is hard, people saying Steal has a steep learning curve and bullkitten like this have totally no clue not only about the thief, but about the whole game.

People keep on saying about how “awsum Steal is a gap clos n das dmg n givz sthealt n poizon enemys” etc etc etc without actually understand that this happens ONLY if you trait for it .

Without traits, Steal is nothing more than another U-skill on a far too long CD.

It has been crap for almost 2 years till now, when they made it at least useful in Pvp by making Mug dealing tons of damage and making almost every skill you can steal an utterly Op crap, like the “spin to win”.

This is absolutely not right, nor for the thief to be called “thief” and not “assassin”, neither for our enemies when they get feared for 3 secs ( lol, not even the necro with full fear traits and necro runes has so much fear in his arsenal) or daze-locked for 4 secs ( by simply clicking a button against a guardian).

Stop being kids and try to understand the game a little better, because Steal is nothing else than a gimmick.

So okay, skipping the PvP veteran uber pro insults at the intelligence at everyone in the thread you go, Steal isn’t strong without traits and is overhyped, then you go it was never strong but now is strong with trait. Then you say that stolen abilities are OP’d and shouldn’t be over the course of a paragraph, accusing a thief of not being a thief, without explaining what a thief should be. And end off with another uber pro insult calling Steal a cheap trick. Try to be more organized and respectful in the future, we don’t need GW2’s community devolving into another club of irritable elitists.

I’m gonna have to say no. Upon using S/P after maining S/D since BWE2, I’ve gotta say S/P is feels clunky as all heck. I don’t want S/D to be another S/P. I don’t mind that S/D’s main source of damage is its basic attack, its trade off is it’s more survivable when used properly, much better mobility and the utility of ridding foes of boons. Moving Flanking Strike to the 1 combo is a bad idea because it gets rid of main point of Flanking Strike. It’s meant to be used to evade attacks, you can’t use it in this way with it locked away at the end of your attack combo. People should stop trying to turn S/D into D/D and S/P. S/D has a different focus and purpose then those two.

Honestly, I foresee two problems with it. One being it seems a tad OP’d and contrary to the concept of a randomized skill. The other being it’d make it so you’d have put more effort into your targeting as the skill as you could end up stepping to your friend instead of whatever enemy you have targeted, unless you expressly designate that enemy as your target. Basically it’d make the skill a little harder to use quickly.

Actually that caught my eye too. I hope Anet starts adding some more cosmetic features soon. A design contest would be awesome too.