Guild Wars 2

Easy mode is 0/0/6/4/4 with full dire gear. I’m currently testing a more bursty and glassy build, 6/0/2/0/6 carrion gear. The condition burst is just insane, but my survivability is more limited…

And people complain about backstab? Backstab has a higher damage coefficient, but even with all might stacks, bloodlust, bonuses from traits and so on: I have never seen a backstab that hard in sPvP – ever. Not even on cloth users…

Not complaining about mesmers though, I find them fun to fight against. Just find it funny that people still complain about thief damage ;p

TheDevice.2751:

The never-surprising response from X thieves who can’t wrap their brains around what Leeto is saying and instead take the defensive saying nothing is wrong with their class, L2P, get rekt, thieve not op u just bad, qq thread again…

He’s not even saying they’re overpowered. I would. lol. I’d easily say thieves are broken beyond any shadow of doubt. When a thief has access to all and MORE of any broken mechanic in the game (siphoning, teleporting, stealth) It’s pretty obvious the devs just don’t care how unbalanced they are.

The biggest defense thieves like to relay is their low hp…. Which completely doesnt matter when they can out heal a necro (even siphoning) and rival evan a guardian. They can easily spec for more active and passive defense and remove immobilize / conditions and heal. They can heal just from spamming their skills. That’s toddler level gameplay. When you can heal off of a skill that has no cooldowns (and the heal varies between like 350-500 without even specing in healing power) there is an issue.

Anyways IDC. I’ve been playing on a thief more lately and It’s completely ridiculous. Just ridiculous the ez mode spam they can produce. There is this pretend idea they like to impress that there is this grand amount of skill involved…. not true. Spamming shadowstep in different directions, spam more skills, active evades cond cleanse, repeat. They are utter childs play.

Now you can divert all your defensive attitudes towards me and then understand what leeto is saying. He’s saying that whether or not they’re op (he doesnt find them to be so) they break the game by causing players to completely change their strategies all for the sake of their broken unique mechanics. They work completely different than any other class. No cooldowns means there is less brain activity involved and just reacting to the thiefs plays. No other class in the game forces you to play on their terms like thieves do and in a way that is set completely outside the realm of class fundamentals.

So yes, thieves are the exception to all the rules. This means you have to play ThiefWars whenever a thief is playing. A whole new game.

He’s not saying they’re overpowered. He say that he has no problem dealing with thieves, but he also think they’re killing sPvP because having a thief on the enemy team forces him to use his brain…

But what you are saying is something I can’t agree with, I’m sorry. You’re saying that thief requires no skill? And this is coming from a Necromancer? I’ve played around with Necromancer, Guardian and Warrior lately, and I felt like an immortal god of destruction… My warrior and guard can pretty much be in the middle of the fight without taking much damage (yet they’re dealing a lot of it or supporting their team). My necro is either a nuclear reactor of conditions or a petting zoo, neither require much skill to do.

My thief on the other hand can’t survive in the midst of battle for longer than a second or two. After that I usually have some strong conditions on me from all the AoE spam that I need to clear. If not, I’ll be dead within seconds.

What you say about no cooldowns is partially true. We have initiative, but it has to regen. If we are out played and burn all our initiative, we can’t switch weapon set, because it share the same resource. If we spec to regenerate initiative we lose damage, same goes for pretty much all survivability traits. Remember that all our healing, utility and elite skills have cool downs, it’s only weapon skills that have a shared resource. Healing by spending initiative is close to nothing – it’s a worthless trait that almost no thieves use, because there’s way better alternatives. That health regen you’re talking about is wrong. That’s from a trait line that’s completely useless in sPvP because it’s stealth oriented. A stealthed thief is no use for his team, therefore no thief go that deep in shadow arts. That heal only applies when we are in stealth too.

In my time (since beta) in guild wars 2 I have never played as actively as I do on my thief. With most other professions position isn’t all that important (not compared to thief at least), but on my thief position is everything. One error and I’m dead, unless you’re a kittenty player. Most pro players have no problem dealing with a thief, and many enjoy fighting us because we have a unique way to fight.

What you describe in this post is the 6/6/6/6/6 build. We can’t have everything, and we don’t. I can’t spec for survivability AND deal a ton of damage. If I go damage I go full glass to stand a chance. If I go for survival I’m no use for my team, since thief survival is pretty egoistic traits and skills…

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you look at DA, you’ll find that the two innate bonuses are Power and Condition Duration. That being said, it mainly benefit condition builds. If you’re going to rely on damage from auto-attacks, then yes, you’re better off with CS trait line. However, for someone who uses stealth and conditions, mostly using P/D, will appreciate the bonus that Revealed Training offers. Couple this with 6 Trickery – Bewildering Ambush, you have yourself a very power set of condition applicator.

Just played around with 6/0/2/0/6 P/D full dire build. Was pretty awesome how much damage is able to get. The condition burst is insane if coupled with might from venoms and use of two or more venoms. I am considering going for carrion instead of dire (more burst), but not sure if it’s worth losing all that toughness.. Awesome indeed

Just gave this a try. Pretty awesome indeed!

Clever me thought I could use Hidden Killer with this to get a guaranteed crit from backstab. Took me a few minutes to realize I’m an idiot…

Just gave a 6/6/0/0/2 build a try (d/p sb) and my god I do a lot of damage! Landing a heartseeker when revealed and target below 25% hp is a guaranteed kill. Having an almost constant uptime on poison is a huge benefit for my team as well as thrill of the crime.

As a roamer this is amazing. I can jump in, land a hard hit and move on to close/far because I usually down someone in an instant. Love it in sPvP so far.

Play safe? That boils down to how the team with the thief plays. If they do their job right, then there’s no way for you to play safe. Having a bunker on home won’t stop me since I’ll burst him down and decap/cap before I rotate to help my team or troll far. I bring superior mobility and a good burst, which for me is more of a challenge since there is no way for me to survive in a teamfight without those teleports / mobility. My job in team fights are to ress allies or burst down key targets. I fail to see how the thief is making PvP boring..

As a thief I have to change how I play against every single player. Profession, play style and build is taken into account before I do something. How is this a bad thing? It forces me to think and actually play with my brain.

I think it’s good that it changes how people play. It forces them to think and learn new ways to play. When I see that the enemy team has a thief, I always expect that the thief is around if the opposing team need help or if I’m at low health. I mean, come on. How can it be a bad thing to force people to think in a different way?

Oh, and about initiative: that’s a l2p issue. Wait for the thief to burn his initiative and you have him pinned down.

I’m seeing a possible use for this in my dire p/d build. I’m usually in stealth for a very short duration, so this would mean that every time I’m revealed my conditions do even more damage. Haven’t put the numbers together yet to see how much damage I’ll get, but I’m definitely going to try this one out! Maybe going away from 6 in SA if 6 in DA and Trickery can give me enough of a condition burst to kill people fast enough.

RashanDale.3609:

Geiir.7603:

RashanDale.3609:

this looks hilarious but doesnt it get boring after while?

a shame it doesnt have swiftness. wouldve been great for dolly escorts

Just change the trait in Trickery to Thrill of the Crime and you have access to AoE swiftness.

but thats nowhere near permaswiftness. but with some different runes like centraur maybe

True. I would bring bring a Guardian / Mesmer if you want perma swiftness. But the centaur runes are a viable option.

I think that the 0/6/6/2/0 build is still viable. I also go for hidden killer, blind on stealth, condition removal on stealth and healing on stealth. I use traveler runes, berserker weapons and trinkets and valkyrie armor. Utility skills, elite and healing skills are completely up to you. I usually run with shadowstep, hide in shadow and blinding powder. With those three skills you should be able to rarely die when combining those with the stealth stacking from black powder and heartseeker.

I run this setup with dagger/dagger (land those cloak and daggers). More burst and more challenging. It’s very viable if you learn to land CnD.

TheDevice.2751:

I think its funny the amount of healing a theif can do just from their initiative skills.

Then they can siphon health better than a necro with venom

Then they have like non stop shadowsteps

this is just bleh

Thief can heal a very small amount for each initiative spent and can use signet of malice to heal a small amount for every hit. But those traits / skills are rarely used since there are way better alternatives.

With our low base health we focus more on bursting than sustaining.

RashanDale.3609:

this looks hilarious but doesnt it get boring after while?

a shame it doesnt have swiftness. wouldve been great for dolly escorts

Just change the trait in Trickery to Thrill of the Crime and you have access to AoE swiftness.

Ninja Nurse is an awesome build! I found that just tweaking my P/D build was sufficient and didn’t halt my damage much but mase me to a support ninja

Dakota.4591:

Wait, they actually fix seaweed salad?

Was thinking the same thing! I stacked up on those a few months back (got like 2k for about 2g or something) hoping they would fix it. If that’s true then I’m definitely going to use them from now on! Time to jump in and check

Straegen.2938:

LordByron.8369:

Tell me please…the counter to this in WWW:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep
P.S: thief IS NOT GLASSY…..thief is AS GLASSY as you build it….its still a medium armor profession

Shadow Step is on a 50s cooldown. Tripwire is on a 30s cooldown. Drop the trap, wait for it to disappear, pop CnD at the trap location. If the thief is fast on the trigger they just burned their SS. Lay down the trap again as soon as it is up. Next time it disappears, CnD, BS, dead. If they are slow on the trigger, you can kill them right there by following through with a BS.

There are dozens of counters to thieves that press a fight. The problem isn’t the ones that stay, the problem is the ones that have zero interest in a fight and just want to blow up wounded or up leveled players.

As for being glassy, most thieves run sub 3k armor and usually around 15k HP. That makes them 3 shot targets by other thieves. The thief that stacks toughness is a 4 shot and Dire armor makes them 6 shot. Glassy by most measure.

One example right there!

Thief is probably one of the easiest professions to predict. Is the thief low on health? Are you low on health? If the latter and the thief stealths you can be almost 100% sure that he will move in for a backstab. Predict and counter his moves. That’s a least how my “insert profession here” beat thieves regularly.

Remember that many of the WvW thieves (not all) are FotM guys that is just trying it out. These guys usually found their build on these forums and don’t know how to be unpredictable as a thief. These guys are very, very easy to predict and are almost always a free kill for me. You can test them by seeing if they follow any “recipe” when they move in, or I’d they actually try to out-play you.

Thief is really strong in dungeons – if played right. It’s one of the more unforgiving professions to play because we do good in melee, but if we mess up once we are dead because of the hard hitting attacks in PvE.

I can’t remember how many times I have been asked if I don’t have a warrior or a guardian instead. I have, but I tell them that if we fail I will get them. I have yet to get them. Most people are used to seeing thieves down on the floor asking for revives, but the good thieves are the ones reviving and often soloing content / bosses because the group wiped ;p

sminkiottone.6972:

Geiir.7603:

Since my thief is built for dueling and sustained fights I rarely run away from anyone. But the one I’ll always charge is Ranger. Their pet is so easy to hit with Cloak and Dagger that it’s almost a free kill… Fighting a good ranger can be a pain, but I find good rangers almost as rare as good thieves. Might be because the profession need some love, but I usually walk away victorious after fighting one ;p

I take it that you created this thread to find a main to use in WvW? If so then you should think about wether you want to zerg, do small skirmishes with organized groups or roam solo. Those factors are important as some professions are better for certain roles.

He stated 1vsx man, I guess he wants to roam

Good class to roam are :

Ranger/ele/guardian.

thief/mesmer/warrior/necro/engi( engi with perplexity runes) are too easy for good players, leave them to avarage people

Try playing shatter Mesmer and say that again. You really have to time the burst, but if you land it you pretty much win the fight.

Thief easy mode? Yes I have access to stealth, but if I mess up once I’m dead due to my low health and armor. And yeah, don’t run d/p, I find it inferior to d/d ;p

Since my thief is built for dueling and sustained fights I rarely run away from anyone. But the one I’ll always charge is Ranger. Their pet is so easy to hit with Cloak and Dagger that it’s almost a free kill… Fighting a good ranger can be a pain, but I find good rangers almost as rare as good thieves. Might be because the profession need some love, but I usually walk away victorious after fighting one ;p

I take it that you created this thread to find a main to use in WvW? If so then you should think about wether you want to zerg, do small skirmishes with organized groups or roam solo. Those factors are important as some professions are better for certain roles.

Very nice sir! I think I’ll give this a try. Oh wait, I’m already using it according to the community :p

Improvisation and Heartseeker buff/nerf is great.

HS nerf/buff will make it better for those who use it tactically other than those who just spam it mindlessly.

I think this is a huge loss for the PvP community…

I don’t mind being able to carry over skins, but they should add really awesome skins that can only be gained through pvp. This way you could see by the skin the player is using that he’s a PvP veteran or a PvE guy. As it looks now this will only benefit the PvE community…

Interceptor.2653:

Geiir.7603:

You can’t get condition duration from crystals, only condition damage, precision or power. Condition duration comes from food.

Can’t get it cheaply, you mean. Toxic Focusing Crystals do add 10% condition duration.

Nowhere close to Potent Master Tuning Crystal and Bowl of Garlic Kale Sautee. Those two in combination with Dire gear is just amazing imo.

frans.8092:

Geiir.7603:

• Condition duration isn’t that long, but you can reapply bleeds and torment with ease, so I chose to get runes focused on defensive stats (they actually have your conditions tick for more per tick, but shorter duration).

Don’t exist, only conditon damage, sigil of bursting and corruption will increase the damage per tick.

The Rune of the Undead adds more toughness and make 5% of your toughness into condition damage, so yes they actually add damage. The reason I chose Sigil of Agony was to get even numbers on my bleeds. Bleeds tick per second, so it doesn’t matter if you have 5 3/4 seconds of bleed, you will only get 5 seconds. I noticed that my overall damage increased by using Sigil of Agony instead of Corruption.

• You can stack 25 stacks of bleeding and a few seconds of poison on 5 people with ease.

You can not, especially not without increasing condition duration – sneak attack applies 5 stacks for 4 seconds and without increasing duration the wear of before applying the next 5 stacks.

This is done by using Caltrops; either trait, utility or both. I do it all the time on my thief, and it’s hilarious to do against small groups / mini blobs. Try Caltrops, Shadowstep and Choking Gas in combination and you’ll see.

You can’t do it with Sneak Attack alone since they apply bleeds for 6 seconds, therefore it’s very hard to get above 5 stacks using Sneak Attack alone.

• Sigil of Hydromancy can help you stack bleeds; drop caltrops (utility, not evade) and swap to short bow while you’re in the middle of the group. Then drop Choking Gas and Shadowstep out. Watch it stack for those three seconds and /laugh.

Caltrops works only against NPC’s – and works very good against them I might add. But sigil of hydromance takes the place of sigil of doom which is a good source of poison (you don’t have many sources of poison)

I find that Caltrops (if used correctly) works wonders against human targets. A thief drop Shadow Refuge? Bad idea when I’m around.

I was thinking about using Sigil of Doom, but I find Hydromancy to be way more powerful, especially against players. If timed right it can change the tide of battle in your favor.

I usually run Spider Venom, so poison isn’t that much of a problem.

_Edit: There’s a myth that you deal more damage with Carrion than with Dire gear – that’s not true.

No myth, sneak attack scales with power. More power == more damage and best of all, you don’t need buffs up all the time to have that boost. The crystal buff also (a)does not compensate the loss of that power damage and (b) crystals buffing durations help more. A completely condition focussed build will also be utterly powerless against some opponents.

You do loose toughness though, which is the most important passive defensive attribute for an attrition build.

The added survivability you get from using Dire instead of Carrion weighs up for the power loss. Fights as a condition Thief is all about attrition, therefore it’s more important to stay alive than adding physical damage.

Yes, some builds will be nearly impossible to beat, but then I just run away or fight long enough for both to just /bow and go fight someone else.

You can’t get condition duration from crystals, only condition damage, precision or power. Condition duration comes from food.

I’m at least having tons of fun and rarely die. Even if I’m surprised by a blob I’ll get away (most of the times). This build is really hard to kill and very annoying to fight against.

Yeah, Osicat and Vash are the two I’ve been watching to get the movements / tactics right ^^

I’m used to be mobile (thief ya know) so that’s not my biggest problem. Right now I’m testing different setups with gear, traits and skills to learn them and find my thing. So far it’s definitely shatter! PU felt like a spam stealth and get illusions that do the job for me while I hide, didn’t like the feel or the play style.

Shatter is by far my favourite, but it’s a pretty high skill floor (and I love it!), so I guess it will take some time for me to master it… Still working on trying to conceal important skills or fake a burst to lure out important cooldowns ;p

I have one more question for you guys;
I’m not sure wether I should go greatsword(high burst) or staff(survivability)… I’m close to a full glass cannon with a mix of zerker and valkyrie. What do you guys recommend?

This is what I’m running when I’m specced for conditions.

• You don’t need Infusion of Shadow because of the recent buff to initiative regeneration (land those Cloak and Daggers!).
• Poison is for debuffing the enemy and make their healing less effective, and it’s a nice burst.
• You don’t need Shadow Refuge. Just time CnD so that every time you leave stealth you get new stealth to heal up. You’ll also stack might so when you engage again you’ll deal even more damage.
• Swap Hide in Shadows with Withdraw if you feel you have enough stealth. The short cooldown works really well with the Acrobatics trait line.
• Use caltrops/evades offensively and defensively.
• Condition duration isn’t that long, but you can reapply bleeds and torment with ease, so I chose to get runes focused on defensive stats (they actually have your conditions tick for more per tick, but shorter duration).
• You can stack 25 stacks of bleeding and a few seconds of poison on 5 people with ease.
• Sigil of Hydromancy can help you stack bleeds; drop caltrops (utility, not evade) and swap to short bow while you’re in the middle of the group. Then drop Choking Gas and Shadowstep out. Watch it stack for those three seconds and /laugh.

Have fun!

Edit: There’s a myth that you deal more damage with Carrion than with Dire gear – that’s not true. Dire actually have your conditions deal more damage per tick than Carrion, this because of the food/crystal. Your CnD will deal more physical damage, but that’s not needed. Condition builds is all about attrition. Just bleed them dry and play it defensively in the beginning. You have a ton of blinds, health and toughness – which means that you will be very, very hard to kill.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Arrow.4619:

If I remember correctly my calcs I lost about 12-15 initiative per minutes to the nerfs (opportunist, the signet and the acrobatics line nerf) and gained 15 initiative to the baseline initiative regen buff. I know I’m somewhat the exception but . . . not a “MASSIVE” buff for some.

It’s not “massive,” I agree, but it’s a great buff since it free-up some skill points that I now enjoy placing in the Trickery trait line.

The buff to initiative regen helped me get rid of Infusion of Shadow and replace it with Shadow’s Embrace. For me that’s a pretty sweet buff

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist

The commander suggestion you have (see people, allow people in the squad to set waypoints and assign different task and stuff) should really be implemented in the current WvW system.

But seriously, I love your look at how WvW should have been. It would be so awesome, but I guess we’re never going to see something like this from Anet :/

quercus.9261:

Shatter is second rate right now. My zerker GS Warrior auto attack for the same as a fully specced Mesmer zerker shatter. He can 100b for 20k with self-buffs and it is way easier to set up in laggy WvW aoe splash. 100b is a noob killer but then again so is shatter.

What I think is that a well timed burst with shatters with several clones and sword 3+2 skills can make anyone panic :p have to test it though. I’ll also make sure to stack vulnerability at the same time so that my burst does as much damage as possible ;p

Just wanted to add why thief hate interrupts. There’s three builds that will be completely destroyed if you interrupt them at the right moment. You have Cloak and Dagger (dagger off-hand). This skill cost 6 initiative (of 12) and give the thief stealth. Most WvW thieves remove conditions, heal and blind when they stealth. Interrupting this ability will leave the thief very vulnerable. The other one is Black Powder + Heartseeker. This is the combo 90% of the WvW population hate. But if you interrupt their heartseeker you deny them stealth and they just wasted 9 initiative! That is a really bad situation for a thief to be in.

Oh, and there’s one more thing. Backstab. Hitting a clone when we thought we had you instead is the worst feeling in the world. The thief get 3 seconds where he can’t stealth and he didn’t damage you. This is a very bad situation and the thief is probably very open to get bursted now.

Other than that I gotta say that this is a great guide! Enjoyed reading it and guess my Mesmer learnt from it too

Thanks for the responses guys! Looks like I’ll give shatter a go since I don’t fancy condition builds and I like a good challenge. As for the word “abuse”, there’s a reason I out it in apostrophes. I don’t really think you can abuse something that’s intended to work that way. I’m also glad that it really is a worthy and powerful grandmaster trait. I just chose the word since that what’s been thrown around lately (and I’m used to hearing it being a thief).

I’m not really afraid of getting bombed in large scale battles because I try to stay away from those. I like small scale roaming and challenging myself with outnumbered fights (preferably solo or with one or two friends). My idea is to kite larger groups and use my clones as meat shields until I see an opportunity for a good burst. I can manage to get 7-8 clones shattered within seconds (practiced rotations for that in the Mists) which I think will leave most people really hurt or downed.

I spec for high critical damage, some toughness and vitality and rely on boons and vulnerability to burst my enemies. I use sword/focus (sometimes sword) and staff.

People have a tendency to blame everything but themself if they die… I can’t say that I find mesmer that hard to fight, so I won’t call them OP.

From a thief point of view I think Mesmer is in a fairly good spot now (correct me if I’m wrong).

Just my two cents ^^

Hey guys! I leveled a Mesmer about a year ago after getting completely destroyed by Osicat. I haven’t met many mesmers lately that I haven’t been able to kill (wether it be on my thief, guardian or ele).

I tried PU, but honestly I don’t like the idea of “abusing” stealth on my Mesmer (got a thief for that). I know that PU is an incredibly strong trait that’s been used a lot lately. I find shatter builds to be more fun to play, but I haven’t met many of those the last few months…

So I guess what I’m really saying is:
Are shatter Mesmer viable for WvW? I mainly roam solo or do some small group skirmishes. Would be awesome to get some feedback from the community about this before I gear myself up again

I can’t get over the fact of how stupid this entire thread is. Valentine say that stealth is OP, yet he claims to kill every thief he meet – with a build he claim to be under powered. Don’t you see the flaw with this statement?!

I have no trouble killing thieves. If I die to one I know why I died and I accept what I did wrong and I try to learn from that mistake. Stealth is a mechanic that’s powerful and confusing to new players, while veteran players find them easy to deal with.

The reason thieves go berserker is because it doesn’t really matter if we stack toughness/vitality, we die to a sneeze anyways. To me it looks like people want us to be warriors, but without immunity skills, insane armor, high health pool, crazy team utilities/buffs, and the ability to face tank pretty much everything. They built many of our weapon sets, skills and traits around stealth – just accept it, l2p and get over it.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Geiir.7603:

Thief is the counter to zerkers, so bring more toughness and vitality and watch that 7k backstab transform to a 3-4k…

What counters a zerker thief abusing D/P?

My dagger/dagger thief (mix of Valkyrie and berserker) counter them just fine. I see where they land and CnD off that spot. If that fail I count 1,2 and turn around and use another CnD. One of those two hit 99% of the time I try that tactic. Also, my Guardian, Necro, Mesmer and Ele seems to do just fine against them.

As soon as you learn the pattern it’s easy to fight bad and medicore thieves. Stealth makes the thief hard to counter unless you know it’s tricks. Once you do you’ll only fear the good thieves.

OP: what kittenes me off is the fact that you say that you have no trouble at all killing thieves, yet you want to make us a free loot bag for you?! If we’re so easy to kill since you know the profession, doesn’t that mean that it’s a l2p issue for the others?

Edit: just wanted to add that when I’m on my thief (in stealth) and take a lot of pressure from my enemy who anticipated my move, I usually walk away. Just pressure a thief enough and he’ll walk away, or be stupid enough to engage and find himself dead within seconds.

Jathra.9327:

So people would rather have 3-10+ thieves sitting in stealth (truly constant stealth like traditional MMO stealth) camping somewhere in WvW and all backstabbing at the same time out of nowhere than have the thief be able to stealth while in combat but be able to see the thief coming and prepare for them?

With traditional MMO stealth this is exactly what would happen. I remember in DAoC 20-50 stealthers all camping one choke point waiting for some sucker/group to come along and be their next gank target. At least here you can see the thief coming from a distance and prep for a fight.

Personally that would kitten me off a lot more than the current system.

PS: As a thief I would fee a lot safer in WvW with traditional MMO stealth, just sayin.

This!

But on topic:
If I can use Cloak and Dagger on a stealthed thief, then other should be able to hit them too… Seriously. Thief is the easiest profession to fight, because they’re very easy to read. You can guess where 90% of the thieves are. Some thieves have learnt to play smart and do the opposite, but these deserve to win – because they out played you.

Thief is the counter to zerkers, so bring more toughness and vitality and watch that 7k backstab transform to a 3-4k…

sierras.6297:

A thief is a master at the game, but doesn’t realize it. (Try playing thief for a year and a half, then playing guardian. It is not as fun, and it is very easy in wvw.

I have done my best to enjoy all the other professions in this game, but none came close to thief. The tactical thinking and careful planning of everything is what made me fell in love with the thief. I get bored really fast when playing other professions, and I find them easier to play for some reason..

Well written by OP! I completely agree!

Andrew Clear.1750:

it is horrible for roaming, because players have already figured out that it should just be one giant pug filled karma train. And we know what trains do to roamers.

Just wait for the blob to thin out and attack the refill. People will die and get picked on by guild groups, then they have to run a long way to get back to their blob – just pick them off on their way.

Here’s my take on a p/p build. A bit more defensive than yours. Richochet is wonderful against groups, so I simply couldn’t leave it out. Shadow refuge is for either stealth and run or the life steal it offers. This build is made for kiting, which is why I have caltrops on evade and a lot of evades available ^^

I’m not sure if I should discard the 10 last points in Critical Strikes and put them in Acrobatics for Quick Pockets instead and take dual pistols on both sets instead of short bow. Initiative won’t be over 6 for much of the fight, so the 25 point in CS is a waste. I think I’ll get more out of 10% permanent while endurance is not full.

I like to think of this as a challenge. I love roaming and I’m having way more fun in this map! If I see a blob attacking my keep I run behind it and kill the people who are running to their blob. They’re pretty much forced into small areas so it’s easy for us roamers to predict their paths. The new NPC’s is something I really like! Finally some challenge in attacking those NPC’s. The ones in the borderlands are laughable easy to kill IMO.

I had an idea to fix the near perma stealth that d/p thieves can achieve. I made a post about it here

And I really hope they bring the damage from EotM NPC’s to the Mist War NPC’s. Finally they made some hard content and have NPC’s that actually fight instead of just being free loot bags..

Valentin.2073:

well, so you just want these thieves to continue abusing stealth? this issue needs to be addressed. spvp gets regular balance update. anet just needs to at least take a look at how class balance is going on in wvw once in a while. a thief’s easy-mode mechanic in wvw is getting a bit too old.

You just showed us how little you know this game…

But back on topic:
Thief is one of the weaker professions in the game right now. The only place where we really feel like we can do something are in WvW, as roamers. We are non-existent in zergs. In dungesons we get kicked, just because we are a thief – even before the dungeon have started. In spvp we regularly get the question to switch to another profession.

In sPvP we can’t cap points while using our class mechanic, but in WvW we can kill the competition then cap. A thief without the shadow arts trait line in WvW (non-sword builds) are usually the first one to drop in a fight. For a thief to be viable in roaming we need to kill our enemy fast, which means full berserker and 10.850hp and about 900 toughness.

The problem in WvW isn’t thief spamming stealth to survive, it’s immortal warrior builds, PU mesmers that let AI do their job, condition necros who feel more like a nuclear powerplant and guardians with constant aegis, blocks, retaliation and protection. But you don’t see me whine about them, I learn how to at least try and kill them, or I leave them alone.

garethh.3518:

zone.1073:

The problem with GW2 is not balance. In fact, GW2 pvp is more balanced now than it ever was before. The problem is popularity.

All in all, any lack of popularity atm in PvP is caused by people playing the game and realizing it is not worth the time.
Getting more people to play the game won’t fix the problem.

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The longer version

The game had all the hype in the world around launch…
It had millions of copies sold before it even was released.
That combined with it being B2P means millions of people wanted, had and still have complete access to this game with no MMO-PvP competition (still).

The game was god kitten popular.
As popular as an MMO has ever been (around launch).
I mean, every and any future MMO can only dream of having the launch GW2 did.

That means anyone and everyone interested in MMO PvP knows about GW2 if they haven’t played it.
Knowledge isn’t the issue.
Exposure isn’t the issue.

The reason this game is so abandoned is entirely due to gameplay and infrastructure.
Sure the balance isn’t terrible, but next to everything else is…
Game modes, match-setup (S/TPvP), matchmaking, leaderboards, custom arenas, conditions, particle effects, specing, meta, teamwork, skill-floor/cap, slow patches, off-point patches…

There is just too that needs to be fixed for the game to have a shot at anything any time soon.

This. Anet just fail to realize how important PvP is, and if they ever figure it out they are too late. This game had so much potential, but Anet failed to deliver. Now many of the really hard core PvP players and e-sport teams have left, and they won’t return…

Great guide man! Have played thief since beta and I can say that this is how I would level a new thief if I was to do it again. If you want to stack conditions on boss mobs (solo target dps) I’d go with P/D since that set is way more focused on single target condition damage. If you get Richochet from 20 in Trickery trait line you’ll even be able to dish out a fair amount of AoE damage too.

Versus decent opponents I tend to let them live. Other than that I’ll use what’s available to me to win, even if it require some dirty tricks. We’re thieves after all.

Condition thief has no place in the current PvP meta. Roll necro or engie if you want to drop conditions. You’ll lose so much damage by going conditions that you’ll do a negative impact on the team :/

I would love to see condition thieves get viable in sPvP, but I don’t think that’s going to happen this year…

My opinion is that the average thief you meet in WvW are below average. CnD is hard to land and require a lot of practice to really master. If two stealth thieves meet up it usually rely a lot on luck and who has more stealth. To me it sounds like you’re doing most things right. It’s about reading the other player and evade at the right moment. What I often find very usefull and quite safe is to count to 2 and then quickly turn around and hit CnD then evade. That usually let me hit the thief and gain stealth myself. Then it’s all about my positioning to get in a backstab and kill him.

I love how people get kittened every time someone mentions d/p as a cheesy weapon set. The fact is that I agree with Scienna. If you don’t win a 1v1 or 1v2 with d/p then you’re a really, really bad player. I remember playing d/p for a long time, and not even once was I interrupted on purpose while doing my combo. The only time it failed was because of some random CC flying around, but those were pure luck and happened in the midst of the chaos. Those times I popped one of my utilities and I was gone. The few times I died it was because I got too greedy.

I still play this some times, and I feel like cheating when roaming… It’s way too easy to get stealth with very, very little skill. Even my friend who is completely new to the game are doing great with d/p. He rarely die and he always land his combo to get stealth. The fact that he can do that as a new player is just wrong…

D/P doesn’t require much skill to play with the 0/30/30/10/0 build. Put on full Valkyrie and hidden killer and you simply can’t lose, and your backstab hit hard as kitten. It requires way more skill to land CnD than BP+HS.