Guild Wars 2

I too would love to see some SB builds. However, I feel like SB is more of a tool and is meant for group play.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

So basically what everyone is saying:

Shadow Return: Return to your original location. Cure 1 condition.
Range: 1.200
Duration: 8s
Cast time: 0s
Initiative cost: 2

That sounds pretty awesome yes

What I hate is that ANet never change one thing with a build or the thief, they change a lot of things at the same time. They should first have removed the stun break and see how that affected the gameplay and take it from there. They’re just showing us that they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing to us….

They buffed / nerfed S/P builds. They buffed Pistol Whip, but completely destroyed Infiltrator’s Strike… Other than that they ruined S/D, D/D is usually a one-trick pony (you kill or you die) and what we have left is P/P (not that good of a weapon set) and P/D condition builds… Some still run D/P, but they’re not that usual any more.

Arganthium, Travlane and Jumper are some of the best thieves / theorycrafters we have! ANet should really start to listen to you guys, since you clearly know what you’re talking about – which ANet on the other hand does not…

i would love for ANet to actually listen to their community, or I fear that the thief will lose all of it’s good players and completely vanish from the meta..

Travlane.5948:

roamzero.9486:

It’s a terrible skill. All the pull skills should function like the Engie one (the only one close to being reliable), but with different graphical effects to fit the skill descriptions.

its an AWESOME SKILL….when used in 1v1. roaming too. otherwise iw ouldnt use it in hilly areas or corners etc.

IN ORDER TO FIX SCORPION WIRE….

1) Fix it so the terrain rarely ever messes with an obstruction
2) Make the wire fire 2x faster
3) Make it cause cripple for 4 seconds
4) Fix it so that every hit pulls them to you no matter of a lip of an edge or whatever. 1 hit = 1 pull 100% of the time.

yup thats all it takes.

This.

I would rather have them nerf the time it’s available and leave the rest as it was pre-patch. Now it’s in the skill queue, so it’s not only .25s cast time…

Still loving my S/P build for sPvP. Have been running it for 6 months now, still the funniest thing I’ve ever done

Are we still having this discussion? Really? D/P thieves (the only one who can effectively perma – stealth) is just annoying to fight. They’re either really bad and die, get too greedy and die or just run off. No big deal. For those of you complaining about Shadow Refugee – really? For a Necromancer that’s a free kill, same goes for my caltrops condition thief – see SR; drop caltrops and Death Blossom all over the field = downed thief.

Anet just gave thieves a big slap in the face… So I don’t think they’ll be that normal to meet on the field again.

What Anet always fails to do is to listen to their community. They want everyone to be able to do PvP from day 1 in this game – they don’t want a high skill ceiling and yet they want this game to be an e-sport… If that’s ever going to happen they have to start listening to their community. They have to actively play all professions and all game types. As it looks now they don’t have any thief players and they’re definitely not playing the same game as we do….

Sanduskel.1850:

Geiir.7603:

Yeah, burnfall again….

They’re working on nerfing the perma stealth. ANet said that they think it’s wrong use of abilities, so they’re going to nerf certain traits and change the initiative regeneration so that it will be impossible to do it using only weapons. They find it ok to perma stealth for longer periods of time if this requires you to sacrifice traits and utility skills to do so. And I agree with them. D/P needed a nerf, and now they get it.

They’re also ruining sword. The only reason for most people to play it was the fact that they could teleport a lot. From 10th of december you’ll see thieves using Infiltrator’s Strike – getting stun-locked and unable to use Shadow Return. In other words, they’ll appear and be insta-killed. W2G ANet.

I disagree that they are ruining sword. They are opening other options now. Thieves who get insta killed are glass cannon specced and may need to put some effort into survivability, just as other classes must do.

A thief in full soldier will still have trouble against other professions… Thief is one of the only hard counters to bunker builds (bunkers and retaliation are the reason we build berserker in the first f´place), and now we’re going to struggle – a lot. The fact that we can’t use Shadow Return while immobilized and that it has a cast time will make it very, very hard for a sword thief to do much. After december 10th people will see a thief use infiltrator’s strike and immediately stun him and burst him to death (which should take about 2-3 seconds).

Our survivability is designed to be evades, teleports and stealth – not toughness and vitality.

Yeah, burnfall again….

They’re working on nerfing the perma stealth. ANet said that they think it’s wrong use of abilities, so they’re going to nerf certain traits and change the initiative regeneration so that it will be impossible to do it using only weapons. They find it ok to perma stealth for longer periods of time if this requires you to sacrifice traits and utility skills to do so. And I agree with them. D/P needed a nerf, and now they get it.

They’re also ruining sword. The only reason for most people to play it was the fact that they could teleport a lot. From 10th of december you’ll see thieves using Infiltrator’s Strike – getting stun-locked and unable to use Shadow Return. In other words, they’ll appear and be insta-killed. W2G ANet.

I like to pick casters and up-levels in the back. They all feel like they’re safe there, so why not give them a lesson? If I want a ton of loot bags I’ll just use shortbow and dagger storm. Sometimes I try to assassinate the commander – a zerg with no commander is usually a bunch of headless chickens :p

What the others have said so far is true. The clones and phantasms won’t have any boons (unless they’re given those after they’ve been spawned). The thing with the phantasms is that they will attack you the very second you end stealth, so if anyone is close to you – evade them.

What I do as soon as I meet up with a mesmer is to abuse stealth. I never attack from stealth unless I’m 100% sure that I’m hitting the real mesmer – you don’t want to waste your burst and end up with 3 seconds of revealed. To do this I’ll just CnD off the clones since they wont evade its a no-brainer and way too easy to do. Just take your time and evade the mesmer burst (seeing all the clones running towards you? evade because he’s shattering them!) and make sure that you land yours.

messiah.1908:

Geiir.7603:

I was thinking about revisiting my old P/D build.

I can’t remember exactly how it looked, but I think it was something like the one I linked above. I remember using it with full Carrion and going for maximum condition duration, especially the bleeds. I was usually the last one standing in dungeons and I did quite decent dps. For WvW I was usually winning outnumbered fights with ease.

I’ve tried so many different builds, and lately I’ve been running full berserker. Sometimes D/D and sometimes S/P. I feel like the OP do, that P/D is sort of my “home”.

Guess my question is; do you guys think that this build is still viable for WvW?

you have base 66% duration and you stacked it with 110% bleed duration so 10% more as you cant stack above 100%
caltrops for pve is ok but not for pvp/wvw
i would take shadow embrace instead of cloak in shadow
also sigil of corruption to another 250 condi dmg

Thanks for the response man!

Allright, I’ve played with it the last 24 hours in WvW and some dungeons, and so far it’s pretty great. I did some minor changes to traits, sigils, runes and moved down from ascended to exotic gear(I won’t bother to farm those ascended pieces just yet).

So this is what it looks like now. I’ve capped the bleeding duration (with condition duration) at 100%. I’m still not sure wether I should choose Venomous Strength or Mug? The extra heal and small burst could be just what I need sometimes…

The reason I picked Cloaked in Shadows over Shadow’s Embrace is because I have yet to really need that condition removal. What I do need on the other hand, is to make sure the big hits and stuns are missing me. I’m usually fighting small groups and running around in between them. Sometimes re-stealthing right after I lose stealth just to blind / heal some more.

Thanks, again

Can’t remember exactly, but I think it was something like 12k against a Mesmer.

I like the idea. But they should also find a way to keep people from abusing it (running immortal through the JP and stuff). What they should do is that they should add a duel option and then make people invulnerable as long as they keep within a certain range from where the duel was started.

I really hope they’ll do something like this soon, have been missing duels since launch :/

Why would you use Ricochet for this build? It looks kind of interesting, but I’m not a human thief, so I’ll just have to do with my stun lock build ;p

I was thinking about revisiting my old P/D build.

I can’t remember exactly how it looked, but I think it was something like the one I linked above. I remember using it with full Carrion and going for maximum condition duration, especially the bleeds. I was usually the last one standing in dungeons and I did quite decent dps. For WvW I was usually winning outnumbered fights with ease.

I’ve tried so many different builds, and lately I’ve been running full berserker. Sometimes D/D and sometimes S/P. I feel like the OP do, that P/D is sort of my “home”.

Guess my question is; do you guys think that this build is still viable for WvW?

Gotta agree with Deathspike here. S/P is the way to go for leveling ^^

What I’ve experienced is that this build : S/P and SB with full berserker are practically making us PvE gods. AoE blind on demand and spammable dps with built-in evade and interrupt/stun with high sustained damage and nice utility.

I’ve had no trouble using this for dungeons, open world PvE and WvW.

I like to just run full signet build. You have a ton of choices regarding available traits, which makes it easy to move between daggers (sometimes it’s just better to 2-shot mobs with backstab), stack might, run full pistol build and so on.

You just have to learn how to not die since you’ll be squishy with only 10k health :p

As a thief since beta I would say thief. I’m still having tons of fun with mine! We have a ton of in- and out of combat mobility, great burst damage and amazing survivability (if played right). The idea with thief is to choose your own fights and not charge in head first. Take your time and wait for the right moment.

When grouping up with friends I live to be the one that’s not there. I’ll stray away from my friends and strike when they’re in the middle of a fight. The element of surprise is awesome and it usually catches my foes off-guard.

So if you’re in for some sneaky business which will sometimes have you fight cowardly, leaving battle and sometimes even leave your friends to die, then the thief is for you.

In 1vs1 I would say that it’s all about the player. This game is more about your own skill level and your understanding of your own profession and your opponents. That’s at least my opinion

I would love to jump into WvW and find no commanders. No commander = no zerg. I’m so sick of the skill free zerg bullkitten that I actually left WvW months ago. I’d rather have interesting 5v5 3v5 fights, which Anet doesn’t support at all…

So, I was thinking about returning to Gw2 and my thief, but the forums are telling me otherwise….

All we are going to be after this patch is noob killing machines – and that’s it. At least that’s what I’m getting from the forums these days :/

Can’t wait for this! THIS YEAR I’M GOING TO COMPLETE IT!!!! Gwaaah >_<

It should be. Those servers are made to exploit the system to gain ranks faster than you’re suppose to do – which is what I call exploiting.

They should just remove glory from hot joins and delete all glory earnt in hot joins since release. That would fix it.

Because the current meta and the mechanics of sPvP are working against the thief mechanics. Our main survival ability is working against the system in PvP, which forces us to build glassy to be able to take down any opponent before they’re able to cap the node. Burst is very low in PvP, therefore we’re having a hard time against bunkers, which is often the guy protecting the node.

This has forced thieves to play the gimmicky S/D build and some (me included) started to experiment with the stealth-free S/P build. The latter have great survivability, damage and CC without decapping the node.

It’s also because many people roll a thief after being roflstomped by one in WvW, and want to test him out. Thief is really hard to master in PvP because of the mechanics, but once mastered it’s a really dangerous profession to have on the opposing team.

naphack.9346:

Take another look at the other classes signets, you listed for comparison. Most of them are on a hellish long cooldown and/or require you to face your opponent.

Thief signets are mostly instant cast, on short cooldown and don’t require any positioning. You can just pop them whenever you need them.

SoM:
Signet of Malice is stronger than Healing Signet in its own way. Healing Signet gives more heal on the passive, yes. But Signet of malice is the heal with the shortest cooldown in the game, excluding Mantra of Recovery, which got its own quirks. Short cooldown equals lots of tricks, you can pull with traits and runes, while it also means, you can pop the heal during a short break(stealthed, hiding behind an obstacle, whatever) and re-engage again with SoM’s passive almost ready again. Or just pop the heal and slaughter them with the might stacks and extra initiative, for that matter.
Basically, it’s on a short cooldown and got an okay-ish passive, which doesn’t outshine the active, as is the case with the warriors signet, where the passive is far more potent than the active.
Plus it got way better synergy with traits than Healing Signet:
+5 stack might(10 sec)
+2 initiative, 20% shorter cd
vigor on cast(8 sec)
+4 initiative(lol who uses this trait?)

SoS:
It’s a speed boost, alright. Compared to other speed boost signet’s active, it’s on the good side. Signet of Air is strictly worse, Signet of the Hunt is a huge boost to a single hit on a class with hardly any heavy hitters and Signet of the Locust is on a hellish long cd, while serving as a worse “oh-crap”-button than SoS.

IS:
It’s a friggin stun break on a short cooldown, which can also be used as a substitute steal. The passive is amazing. One initiative can mean a LOT. It can be the difference between life and death. And that all, while your stun breaker lies in wait.
Interestingly, when traited into signets, you lose some 0.4 initiative regeneration overall whenever you pop it. +2 initiative, 24 sec of no +0.1/sec initiative. Basically, traited, you will have initiative regeneration from that slot either way, while having a stun breaker on 24 sec cd. How can this be bad?

AS:
Personally, I don’t use it. It’s some sort of bursty thingie, but I typically don’t trait signets. which makes it not worth it. Traited, however, it’s HUGE.
Now you say, it’s worthless, if it’s only good when traited into? It’s not. It’s a bursty skill. If you want a bursty build, you need to specialize either way. Simple as that. It’s the same for every class: Specialized skills require specialized builds and specialized builds require specialized skills. This doesn’t make the skills bad.

SoA:
Endurance for the whole party at instant speed?
On such a ridiculously short cooldown?
Removes a condition as a bonus?
Gives ~ +10% crit chance when not used?
On a class, which typically has lots of crit damage and neat on-crit effects?
I’d hit it.

This.

I run two signets with my S/P build in PvP and WvW (Signet of Agility and Infiltrator’s Signet) and I just love them! The extra evades, condition removal, shadowstep, stun break, initiative, might, heal and critical chance is just amazing.

All the signets have their uses and all are instant cast (except for SoM) with low cool downs that boost and/or help the player in some way.

They work perfectly fine, so please leave them alone

Achilles.2197:

sorry, but i have to agree with the guy above me. i’m still playing this game, but my time in-game has been diminishing more and more. I started playing slightly over 3 months ago, btw.

Been playing it since first beta. This game had so much potential to become the greatest MMO of all time. The intuitive combat system, the beautiful and original world and lore with the amazing graphics could have made this game insane. If they would tone it down a bit to make it more appealing to watch (no one wants to see a battle where 100 skills are used withing two seconds) and more competitive to play, it could have been really great.

I just wish Anet could listen to their player base and understand that they may not get the big revenue from PvP at first, but if they would have listened and let it grow, it could have been huge :/

SoLeciTO.3490:

Well maybe is not the most polite way to write your feelings but you are right.

Honestly iam really tired of the “We are working on it, is more harder than you think”.

Come one Anet do you really think that we believe that programmatically, SAB is a lot faster than fixing a !@#$% meta in this several months?

I know that PVE players expend a lot of money purchasing random chest and skins . . . but for the love of god PVP player are the ones that make games to be recognized in the world (Esports).

If you are able to see my history you will find that i have bought a lot of things to support your company because i love your game, but this love is really on the limit because at this point this SPVP is pathetic.

Please don’t be the next Diablo 3 and disappoint your fans.

Maybe you don’t care a much (since you have a lot more players in PVE) but i will also quit the game if the next patch doesn’t fix all the kitten we already ate for soooooo long.

They’re already far beyond Diablo 3 in disappointing their customers.

• PvE got living story, which is great! It’s pretty much the only thing that’s keeping me from not abandoning this game.
• WvW get new skills, which the community doesn’t even want. It’s a game about who got the bigger blob, and now they’re destroying it even more… Lag, skill lag, unbalance, broken meta and no point playing it. Only reason for me to do WvW is to gank noobs and troll blobs or small skirmish groups.
• PvP. The hard core PvPers have left this game, and they won’t return. They gave Anet their time and money and expected something in return. They got two new maps of a game mode we are getting really tired of. The current meta is so broken that when you enter a team fight you’ll end up having control of your character for about 5-10 seconds of a 120 second fight – unless you have an infinite amount of stun breakers… The PvP is broken and the community is completely ignored. Last time I checked they were saying that they won’t implement other game modes than conquest.

So now I ask myself; Why am I still playing this game? I don’t. I haven’t been online for a month now. I’m just here in the forums hoping to see some change. What I see are developers ignoring their community and never, never answer questions. Answering a thread by saying; we are working on it, just watch the next SotG, or completely just ignore the question and comment about the posters English skills…. – Thats not answers, thats completely ignoring the community. Way to go Anet -_-

If they would make it so its an altered state of stealth or cancel all current skills so that you won’t get revealed the second it procs.

Signet of Malice got a slight buff recently, and I gotta say that it works perfectly fine. The power of SoM lies in its passive heal when you attack, the active heal is most used for offense (with signet traits) or as a small burst heal when needed.

It’s perfectly balanced IMO, so no, I don’t think it need any change. There’s plenty of other skills / traits that need balance instead..

1. Which build should i use?

• I would suggest that you look at the Pistol / Dagger condition build. It’s easy to get the hang of and doesn’t require too much skill to be average with. However, what I really would encourage you to do is to search these forums and YouTube for different builds and find one that you think fit your style. You should also try to get the grip of traits and skills. You’ll find yourself changing them between matches or encounters – a lot! The key to be successful is learning your profession and find synergies between skills, runes, traits and sigils – this is important, but not something you must do, only if you want to be competitive on a higher level. I’d like to note that the current meta is very condition heavy, so be sure to bring condition removal.

2. How to fight against mesmers, warriors, rangers and necromancers?

• Check YouTube for most of these fights. You can’t say “this is how you fight x class”, because it all depends on their build. Other than that I agree with what Rayya said. One thing I’d like to mention is that against builds with lot of AI (phantasm Mesmers, minion master necros or spirit rangers) you should abuse Dagger Storm, Signet of Malice and Black Powder / Smoke Screen / Shadow Refuge (Learn combo fields and finishers and you’ll see why).

3. Could you give me some nice and interesting tricks?

• Stomps. If you’re using Pistol off-hand then drop Black Powder to blind the enemy and then stomp.
• You won’t contest a capture point while stealthed.
• Ecplore the different maps and learn where shadow steps work and doesn’t. You can shadow step with short bow #5, sword #2, Shadowstep skill, D/P and P/D #3. You can and should use this to teleport up and down from different places to get the advantage.
• When stomping a thief, just start the stomp immediately and hit steal or shadowstep to teleport after the thief when he teleports away.
• google shadowstep stomp and learn it.

Good luck!

dDuff.3860:

Yeah, its like “well dudes, nerf stealth, lol”
^_^

Haha, yeah ;p

The only time I use stealth are when I steal it from another thief. The feeling of disappearing, applying basilisk venom, popping signets and spike that thief is just so good.

Guess I play S/P because I really enjoy the set. I never found it particularly weak, but the recent buffs to steal and PW was a welcome buff

Pistol Whipping Thief here too! Great to finally see some footage of other S/P thieves out there. Have been playing with it for a few months, and I’ve enjoyed it a lot! It is as you say; Players doesn’t expect PW and don’t know how to react against it. Most players don’t know you actually evade while whipping that sword, which I abuse.

I’ve been playing a similar build for a few months, but with berserker gear. I doesn’t really have any trouble unless I’m greatly outnumbered. Looked pretty awesome to have that much survivability packed into one build though ^^

dejay.2598:

CAN WE PLEASE JUST HAVE A 2V2 EVEN IF ITS CASUAL?

seriously I log on and there’s is nothing I can do, I play maybe a few times a month now because I have no reason to

Log on :

- check friends list.. ask a few people if they want to premade, nope not enough on
- don’t wan to solo que until matchmaking is fixed, even still it’s frustrating relying on 4 randoms AND you can’t try random classes / bad specs
- check friends list again.. oh someones in a hotjoin.. join for 5 minutes until I get bored
- join a duel game.. everyone’s just standing around akitteng

-log off

- check back in 5 hours
- repeat process
- don’t bother for a few days

This pretty much describe how I’ve played for the last few months… I tried to do some WvW and living story content, but I got bored after 10 minutes if zerg balling live content and WvW, so I went back to do some sPvP. Got matched with rank 1 players when I finally got into solo queue against rank 40 teams. Played some hot-join, but that got boring after 10 minutes.

There’s just not enough players in PvP. That’s the main problem. The sad thing is that Anet think they’re actually doing something with PvP, while in reality they’re losing their last players due to lack of content, game modes and balance. We need more game modes and they need to separate PvE, WvW and sPvP balancing…

I think the devs mentioned some place that they won’t be adding other game modes…

I would really like to see team deathmatch, 1v1, GvG and something like huttball from SW:TOR. Seriously, that game mode was awesome!

Conquest is starting to become a bit boring as it focuses on having bunkers defending, AoE on the node and lots of CC to keep people off it. Every match is pretty much the same, which makes it a bit boring..

Evilek.5690:

Marduh.4603:

enzone.5924:

Does the retaliation damage go through?

Yes. You get at least 2k damage.

2.5k vs one target,5k vs two etc. and yeas. This is the reason why not to use S/P on PvP.

Steal can steal two boons and give them to your party. I’m running S/P in sPvP and I’m not having any trouble with retaliation. Just auto attack (which is also extremely powerful) and drop black powder whenever retaliation is up. And steal it whenever you have the chance.

I’d say thief. I have no trouble dueling most builds and professions

I would say Thief. I have mained a Thief since beta and it’s a joy to roam with! The Thief is squishy, but when you learn how to stay alive it’s really not a problem any more. Thief is very strong in 1v1 and can easily solo camps and sentries.

The key is to know when to engage. Since we’re squishy we have to select our fights with caution. We also have the ability to escape zergs, surf zergs and we can slip out of combat if needed.

I’m don’t like zergs either, so I tend to avid them. But if I find myself running with one I’ll be the one who assassinate the enemy commander or kill the ranged damage dealers. We are excellent scouts due to our insane mobility and our ability to stay alive and unseen. For sieges we can’t do that much except for slipping through choke points and taking out siege weapons. We don’t have any longer range than 900, so defending a keep can be a bit boring..

Thief is one of the strongest professions against condition builds (depends on the build you’re running though).

• Remove one condition every 3 seconds while in stealth.
• A heal that remove the 3 most dangerous conditions.
• Shadow step that removes conditions.
• infiltrator Strike removes one condition and is spammable.
• Signet of Agility remove one condition.

But thief is suppose to be weak against conditions. Just look at our hp. Our goal is to kill our enemy before he can put enough devastating conditions on us.

Depends on the Mesmers build. If it’s against a phantasm build then they will have the advantage due to the constant evades. But against a confusion Mesmer they’ll have more trouble. Their play style is pretty much about spamming attacks and they rarely stealth to remove conditions, so they will have a hard time against them..

First of all you have to learn how to stay alive, and that means learn when to evade. PvE is nothing like WvW. In WvW you have human players that make mistakes and have to think before reacting. In PvE there are scripted scenarios where bosses and mobs follow certain rotations and will attack you the second you leave stealth. In WvW you won’t get one-shotted, but you will be in PvE. Most of the attacks that one-shot you have very visible animations that makes it easy for you to dodge at the right moment.

I would recommend the 25/30/0/0/15 build for Fractals. I would also run S/P instead of D/P as main set. The damage is excellent against trash mobs and the blind field is simply amazing. You’ll be a walking god against all trash mobs, except for Dredge… Pistol Whip has an evade in the animation, which can be a life saver. D/P or D/D is both very strong weapon sets against bosses. The dps is crazy and your survivability is amazing if you know when to dodge.

I wouldn’t recommend any other stats than berserker. This is simply because thief is the best profession in zerker. We have our survivability built in to our weapon sets and traits – abuse them. The other reason for choosing zerker is because those hits that will one-shot you will do it regardless of what armor you’re using. We’re so squishy from base that there’s just no point in doing it.

We have utilities that are amazing for our offense as well as team-wide defense.

• Smoke Screen. Block projectiles for 7 seconds. Completely lock down any ranged opponent and blind melee mobs. Asura fractal. Also works as a combo field. Shoot through it to blind or blast it to get AoE stealth.
• Shadow Refuge. A very often used tool by most thieves. Need to skip certain parts of the dungeon? Need to revive a fallen ally? Need to heal up?(Combo field that steals life with projectile or whirl finisher, see a combo with Signet of Malice, SR and Dagger Storm here?) No problem!
• Signet of agility. Remove one condition on each team member and fill your endurance bar. Can be pretty useful in some encounters where you have to evade a lot.
• Shadow Trap. Open gates in dredge fractal alone. Just put shadow trap down-stairs, stealth and run to the button. Have your team go through the gate and then return by activating the trap.

These are just a few of our useful abilities, but these are the ones I rarely see used properly.

Just keep all weapon combinations with you and learn the traits and skills by heart. You have to change them all pretty often to do above average in fractals. Best of luck!

Warrior: Really powerful AoE attack that also reflects projectiles. Awesome.

Thief: Free stealth with AoE blind. kittening awesome!

Mesmer: All the boons in the game for 10 seconds? Yes please!

Engineer: Etheral combo field = aoe Chaos Armor with cluster bomb. Okay, but not the strongest. In a condition build this is really strong! Otherwise you can time it with infiltrator’s strike for nice damage.

Guardian: A long daze for free. Pop this the second his stability drops for awesomeness.

Elementalist: Chilling your foe to have their skills and movement reduced by 66%. The damage is also pretty good. High reward if you land it.

Necromancer: AoE fear? Redicolously strong!

Ranger: This is probably the strongest one of them all. It pulses for five seconds, remove conditions with each pulse and give regeneration – AoE! On top of that it’s a water combo field, so just spam cluster bomb for AoE healing. Awesome!

I don’t think Ice Shard Stab should get any fixes. Having it ranged would make it way too powerful. It’s strong and therefore it should have some good counter play.

Thank you Osicat. We need more people like you!

Cyhann.2609:

Zepidel.5349:

So tell my why this isn’t always on your bar in SPvP?

It’s buggy.
It doesn’t cleanse conditions.
I can’t break stun twice with it.
I can’t use it as a shadowstep to be faster.

This depends completely on your build. If you’re 30 deep in Shadow Arts then this will break stun, teleport you to the player, give you stealth, fury and 10 stacks of might for 5 seconds. For a D/P thief this can be a life saver, a chance to burst or a chance to break stun, run away and reset. The fact that you instantly disappear is reason enough to use it.

It’s a bit buggy, but if you learn where it’s not bugging (took me 30 minutes with a guildie in sPvP) then it’s an amazing tool! Far point assaulting is redicolously easy with this trap. You can help your team in a team fight and leave immideately when you have the chance to cap that point again or kill the player capping it.

In WvW you can use the trap in choke points to get an heads up of an incoming attack or as gtfo card.

But it do need some help from Anet, but that applies to shadow stepping in general.

Sounds interesting. But I don’t think it should apply to AoE. It should only happen when you’re hit with a melee weapon. Sort of an indicator that you hit something.

Not sure how it would work, but sounds interesting at least. The most creative idea I’ve seen so far, I’ll give you that!

I think it’s ok to have to spend some points into initiative regeneration. Initiative is such a powerful mechanic (when it’s managed right) that I think it’s fair. We’re able to spam abilities that’s really strong, and for those of us that want to do that we need more initiative and then have to spend some points in it.

Other professions have traits that affect cool downs on certain weapons. We’re lucky enough to have traits that affect all our weapon sets instead of one weapon type

Have tried to create some builds for shortbow, but haven’t made it yet… It’s damage output just isn’t the same as constant backstabs or pistol whips. It would be really fun to do one though! Lots of crowd control and AoE damage.

Would be really awesome if someone had one though. Really want to try it!

It’s very bugged, but works if you’ve found all the safe spots where it won’t stop in thin air. Remember that’s it’s not a teleport, but a shadowstep, so you’ll need to make sure it can find a path.

Shadow Trap is an amazing utility and should be on every far point assaulters thief. You have the ability to help your team in mid and leave for the far point immideately after the fight is done to cap it again or kill those who are there. I use it a lot, also on WvW. The cool down is good enough for it to be used offensively in fights too. No need for BP + HS combo now. You’ll just pop this and you’re returning way stronger. Can also be used as an oh kitten card. Put it in a safe spot before you engage and pop it if you lose..