Guild Wars 2

Bye bye Burnfall! You’ll be missed

Another post like this. Sigh….

The only things that should happen is the following:

• Stealth can’t stack
• Revealed will be applied after leaving stealth, wether the Thief attack or not
• Any form of blocking a stealth attack should reveal the Thief

Stealth can’t stack.
This would fix the incredible amount of rage against the Dagger / Pistol build. It would make it weaker, so they should buff it in other ways.

Revealed will be applied after leaving stealth, wether the Thief attack or not.
This would force thieves to think more strategically before entering stealth and not just blindly do it.

I think that the last point should have been there, but if they ever apply it they have to buff the Thief in some other way. A nerf like that would make it nearly impossible to kill Guardians since they can apply Aegis redicolously often and have quite a few blocks on their weapon skills.

All these changes would be an incredible hard hit to the Shadow Arts trait line, so it would need a massive buff to compensate for this nerf. Some ideas are:

• Increase the health regeneration from Shadows Rejuvenation
• Increase the amount of stacks of might applied from Hidden Assassin

I would just like to say that I’ve played both stealth dependent and stealth-less Thief since first beta event. It’s not overpowered, but people are struggling to learn how to counter it because forces them to think out of the box. It forces them to elevate their skill level, and some people just doesn’t want to put in the time to learn new skills.

These threads are usually packed with bad ideas and bad excuses, and this one is just the same. Crying about the fact that most roamers are thieves is just beyond stupid. The Thief is supposed to have superior mobility and the ability to select its own fights. A Thief need to strike at the right moment to be successful.

All of you that complain about stealth:
If the alter the current state of stealth too much then all the stealth dependent builds will change to one shot builds. I know that I’d rather have a long fight against a stealth abusing Thief than against someone that can hit me for 15-20k if they get lucky and land that backstab. As it is now we have both of those running around, imagine having only one shot zerker builds out there….

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Weapons

We have access to the following weapons:

Main Hand

• Sword
• Dagger
• Pistol

Off- Hand

• Pistol
• Dagger

Two Handed

• Shortbow

Underwater

• Spear
• Harpoon Gun

Always, and I’ll repeat myself here, always have every single weapon combination available in your inventory! You need to switch them out in between encounters, and you don’t want to find yourself in need of a shortbow and not having it available in your inventory.

I will now give you a brief explanation of every weapon combination available to us.

_Dagger / Dagger

1. Double Strike / Wild Strike / Lotus Strike: Really fast auto attack chain that deals a nice amount of damage, gives you 10 endurance back and applies poison to your target.
   Backstab: Press 1 from stealth. The damage from this attack is insane if you hit from the back! A stab in the front of your enemy will deal 50% of the backstab damage. Requires you to be in stealth to use. This is the bread and butter of all stealth based builds wielding dagger in main hand.
2. Heartseeker: Leap finisher and crazy ammounts of damage when your enemy is below 25% hp. Use this most as a finisher to finish enemies off or to activate a combo field. If needed it can be used to travel a bit faster, so it can also be used defensively.
3. Death Blossom: You evade for a short amount of time while doing a flip over your target. You apply bleeds but deal little direct damage. This is most used in condition builds, but can be very viable as a defense mechanism.
4. Dancing Dagger: You throw a dagger that cripples your foe and can hit up to 4 targets. The damage isn’t the best, but you use this mainly for crowd control.
5. Cloak and Dagger: The damage from this skill can be pretty decent. On top of that you’re giving your enemy 3 stacks of vulnerability and entering stealth for 3 seconds. This is also a part of the main rotation in any stealth based build with dagger off-hand.

[More coming soon]

Things to know about the Thief: Conditions/Boons, Stealth, Shadowsteps and Initiative

Conditions/Boons:

We have access to the following boons:

• Might
• Fury
• Swiftness
• Vigor
• Stability
• Regeneration

And the following conditions:

• Cripple
• Weakness
• Vulnerability
• Blind
• Bleed
• Poison
• Torment
• Immobilize
• Chilled

We use our boons to temporarily boost ourself for the next few seconds of deadly rain over our enemy. The most used boons are Might, Fury, Swiftness and Vigor. Conditions isn’t exactly the Thief’s strongest sided, but some of them are really important to use at the right moment! We use offensive conditions that weaken our enemy or give us the edge in a fight. These types of conditions are blinds, immobilizes, cripple, weakness and vulnerability.

Stealth:

This is the main reason I chose the Thief in my first beta event. We can be invisible for a few seconds at the time (possible to stack it, but more on that later). This means that we use it both for offense and defense. We have tons of ways to access stealth, but we’ll get more details on that later.

Shadowstep:

Shadowstepping are essential in some Thief builds. A shadowstep is a “teleport” with a return. We usually cleanse conditions when we shadowstep, but we use it mainly for traveling longer distances instantly. This is used just as much offensively as defensively.

Initiative:

Initiative is the Thief’s resource for weapon skills. We have no cool downs on our weapon skills – we have initiative. This allows us to spam attacks when needed, but we must be careful about never running out of it. Initiative is a shared resource between weapon sets. This means that if I run out of initiative with my daggers, I can’t change to shortbow and have new initiative. Respect this resource and learn how to manage it and you’re far ahed of many other thieves.

Combos:
A Thief has access to every single combo finisher in the game, and we can spam them, abuse them! Our best finisher are built in with a high damage attack that’s ranged and in one of our best weapons: the shortbow. Learn all the combo fields and finishers in the game, and you will be an even greater Thief! Seriously, this is a must!

So, you’re new to the Thief and want to learn the basics of the profession? Then this guide could be the thing for you. This is my first attempt to create a comprehensive guide, but I’ll do my best to not dishonor my fellow thieves.

This guide will attempt to do the following:

• Introduce new players to the basics of their new class
• Let you decide if the Thief is something for you or not
• Talk about the different weapon sets and their uses
• Take a look at the different skills at our disposal
• A brief overview of the traits
• Crush some of the mysteries, myths and rumors regarding the Thief

Good reasons to play a Thief:

• You like to play with other peoples feelings (tears will be shed when you hit someone for 20k)
• You enjoy the challenge of being squishy and therefore have to actively avoid damage
• You want to wait in the shadows for the right time to attack
• You enjoy solo roaming
• You prefer tiny weapons
• You like having a good overview of every situation
• You like the idea of combining several conditions (traits, sigils, etc) to increase your damage at the right moment

Bad reasons to play a Thief:

• You want to crush skulls from the front lines
• You want to lead an army of men head-first into combat
• You hate evading
• You think the Thief is OP and want to one shot people in WvW
• You think stealth means invincibility

So what is a Thief? What do we do and what’s our role? Well. The Thief is a deceptive class designed to assassinate others. We rely on stealth, shadowsteps, blinds, evades and burst damage to survive and kill our enemies. We excel in 1v1 situations and are one of the few professions able to run full berserker in all the different game modes. Our survivability doesn’t come from armor or health, those are very limited resources for a Thief – we rely on actively avoiding damage to survive. In the right hands we’re one of the deadliest professions in this game. Good thieves never die – which is true. If you know how to engage and disengage you’ll be nearly impossible to kill. I’ll talk more about our place in the different game modes later in this guide.

• Melee to Medium Range: Against few opponents we excel with melee weapons. Our damage output can be insane if timed right. We have limited ranged alternatives as our longest ranged attack is 900.

• Mitigating Damage: We need to actively avoid damage. Our low health pool and low armor won’t help against that Kill Shot – you’ll have to evade it or have him miss his target.

• Versatility: We excel with power/crit builds, but we can certainly run condition builds too. We change a lot between ranged and melee, invisible and visible, here and there – everywhere. A Thief select his fights. If we doesn’t want to attack, we can simply disengage and wait for the right moment.

I will hold a few posts for me to update and work on this guide! Since I’m working full-time it will take some time to get it done, but I’ll hopefully have it completed during the week.

After reading and replying to a ton of posts in these forums about the Thief’s place in the different parts of the game and its mechanics, I figured there should be a guide for new thieves to read and learn the basics of the Thief profession.

I got the inspiration for creating such a guide from the Guardian forums and the guide created by Eveningstar. That guide helped me a lot when I started with my Guardian, and it saved the Guardian forum for a ton of questions from my side regarding builds, weapons, traits and skills.

This guide will probably remind you of Eveningstar’s guide since that’s where I got my inspiration for writing this guide from. You’ll find some similarities in how the guide is built and formatted, so I think he deserve some credit

This made my day

Some people think ranks and numbers are all that matters, and that it proves that they’re good. Some people have farmed their way to high glory ranks and zerged their way to WvW ranks. The only way to know if they’re good is to duel them.

That thief looked familiar, and he plays on Desolation. Reminds me of one i stomped the other day…

Gab Superstar.4059:

Move to a higher tier server and advertise for Fight Clubs in the match up threads. You are bound to get some interest. Also maintain good relationships with the people you fight. Chances are many in their guild are of the same mentality.

You just broke the first rule…

But on topic: Yes. These things happen a lot, usually near the windmill. I often run across these fights and I’ll just watch it and then duel the person afterwards. Really fun and still pretty scary. You never know if they’ll be attacking you just for fun and then leave :p

I do somewhat agree with you OP. It would be awesome to hide behind a tree and actually not getting busted by my name plate

Here’s my take on the little used Sword / Pistol weapon set! Have been using this build for a few months now, with great success if I dare say so!

In the right hands it will be deadly, but this is not a build for new players. You will have no access to stealth (except for Black Powder and Cluster Bomb combo), so you’ll have to learn how to survive without it.

This build was made for tournaments. Works great in team fights as well as solo fights. My use: Far point assaulter.

Burnfall; I’ve said it several times before, if you don’t like this game, then leave it. Not a single person will miss you

If the Thief is so powerful as you claim it to be, why aren’t the Thief on top of both PvE, PvP and WvW? Because it simply isn’t god-mode. It’s challenging to learn, and ridiculously easy to kill a Thief. We’re forced to play zerker burst builds because of the current meta with bunkers and AoE conditions. Without our high burst we would be useless in this game.

Last Refuge is a trait that could have been removed… Although it has saved me those rare times when I’m out of initiative and skills on cool down, it’s pretty much useless. Last Refuge should work regardless of current stealth state, and it should cancel any action the thief is trying to do. The worst thing is casting CnD and then see LF proc, and I’m dead :/

Turamarth.3248:

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

In all fairness though there are a few points to be seen there; maybe just not elaborated enough.

Personally I hate the fact that I can be finished while someone is in stealth because 1) I can’t see them and 2) I can’t defend myself :/
I also don’t like the fact that I can be in WvW on a Warrior (no stealth), be just there for mapping purposes, and then just get steam rolled by an entire zerg hidden in stealth.
Stealth is maybe a bit OP because it can be maintained. If there was a short 3 second cool down before you could re-enter stealth regardless of being revealed or not; the problem would be solved.
There are many things that can be improved. Whether or not anyone cares to do anything about it is another thing.

You can get steamrolled by a zerg regardless of wheter he is hidden or not and every skill that allows multiple players to stealth has a high cd.

Except for Black Powder and Cluster Bomb. But yes, any profession, visible or not can be steamrolled by a zerg.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Geiir.7603:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Geiir.7603:

I love to interfere with GvG games. Makes them go crazy and have to start over again ;]

Is it sad that people like you are going to be the driving force to getting GvG its own arena?

I would love to see GvG get it’s on arena, not because I’m against it (I sometimes participate) but because I think it should have an arena of its own.

The reason I jump in is because I’m sometimes in a troll mood and just feel for it. Many of the GvG guilds think they have the right to do that, and they get kitten ed off when people interfere. What they fail to realize is that WvW is a PvP environment where three different servers are fighting each other, therefore they have no right to be angry at people interfering, since they’re doing what they should do – PvP. It’s the same as when PvE players come to WvW to farm dailies and get kitten ed because they got killed by another player, same with the jumping puzzle. In PvP environment you should expect other people to jump in and do their thing.

I agree and disagree. If you are going to troll, troll the spectators, not the guilds actively participating. Spectators are free game for all I care, but trolling/griefing a structured, set-up fight that people spend time preparing for, is kind of a kitten move. Yeah trolls are annoying but they aren’t going to deter people from fighting, you’ll simply be killed and they’ll keep fighting anyway.

I’ll say it again, yes it’s allowed but it’s also an underwritten rule. Do I interfere a random 1v1 I come across? Na I’ll let them duke it out. Will I kill the winner? Of course.

Put yourself in their shoes and try to get a sense for how you would feel if people were screwing with one of your fights. WvW and GvG can coexist perfectly fine.

I agree and disagree too :p It’s annoying to get interrupted, but it’s something you should expect to happen. Those times I do it I’m just kitten ing around doing nothing and just jump in for the fun.. Some of the times it’s because the commander ask for help with sieges but can’t get any, because GvG players are holding the queue… Those times it’s really hurting WvW.

I agree that it’s “wrong” of me to interfere, morally at least, but not mechanically if you understand. It’s not cool or good sportsmanship to do so, but it’s something all GvG players should expect. I’m usually leaving you guys alone, but sometimes I’m just in the mood, and being a thief makes it even more fun Being able to jump in, tease them and then just stand on the sideline and see them go crazy looking for me – hilarious ;p

You haven’t done anything except for complaining about how bad this game is for months, Burnfall. If you’re not pleased, then leave. No one will miss you.

I agree that some changes could be made to the stealth mechanic, but I don’t think they can do too much with it without destroying an entire profession…

LilMcGinley.3890:

Geiir.7603:

I love to interfere with GvG games. Makes them go crazy and have to start over again ;]

Is it sad that people like you are going to be the driving force to getting GvG its own arena?

I would love to see GvG get it’s on arena, not because I’m against it (I sometimes participate) but because I think it should have an arena of its own.

The reason I jump in is because I’m sometimes in a troll mood and just feel for it. Many of the GvG guilds think they have the right to do that, and they get kitten ed off when people interfere. What they fail to realize is that WvW is a PvP environment where three different servers are fighting each other, therefore they have no right to be angry at people interfering, since they’re doing what they should do – PvP. It’s the same as when PvE players come to WvW to farm dailies and get kitten ed because they got killed by another player, same with the jumping puzzle. In PvP environment you should expect other people to jump in and do their thing.

I love to interfere with GvG games. Makes them go crazy and have to start over again ;]

The new colors really hurt my eyes… They’re way too bright. The old ones were perfect, why did you change them?

I would say that thief is in a pretty good place in PvE now. It’s not easy, but it’s strong if played right. I pretty much agree with Loki, and I run a similar build. It’s very versatile and viable with all our power weapon sets (condition is not the way to go, we got necromancers for that now).

Thief is probably the most hated PvE profession because we are easily killed in dungeons unless we know what we are doing. Learn the dungeon (when to evade, stealth, blind, interrupt etc) and you’ll be a very good addition to your team!

Here’s something I wrote in another thread a while ago:

• AoE stealth from Shadow Refugee, Black Powder/Smoke Screen with Cluster Bomb combo and Blinding Powder.
• With Shadow Trap we can do things in the Dredge Fractal that other professions can only wish for.
• We can completely lock down ranged opponents for 7 seconds with Smoke Screen while blinding all that stand in it (very useful in Asura fractal!).
• We can AoE blind trash mobs for easy mode.
• We can give our entire team Swiftness, Fury, Might and Vigor every 21 seconds (traited Steal) on top off combo finishers.
• We have access to every single combo finisher in the game!
• Very good damage (not as good as other professions, but definitely worth having)
• If we get downed we can usually get ourself up. Our downed state attack is AoE, so there’s a huge chance of rallying, and we have stealth and teleport from downed state.
• We can strip Defiance from bosses like no one else can. A well timed Pistol Whip / Head Shot / Steal (traited) can interrupt a major attack from the boss.
• With all our AoE stealth we are the best profession for getting our teammates back up again (or we can just Shadow Step across the room and burst the mob they’re trying to defeat for a rally).
• Signet of Agility remove conditions AoE.
• We can share venoms, but it’s better to just have a Necromancer fixing the part of stacking conditions.
• If allies stand in Shadow Refugee and do a whirl or projectile combo finisher they’ll steal life.

I would say any good Thief, that know how to play and know that bringing different weapon sets and utilities for different dungeons and encounters, is a welcome addition to any team.

If you want some in-game advice you can always contact me there. I’d be happy to guest to your server and help you out

I’ve heard people call thieves noob when they lost to D/D eles and I’ve heard them say backstab is a cheesy attack when I used sword main hand. Really funny how little people really know about the thief, which is the reason we get easy kills in WvW.

Reducing the cast time would make it nearly impossible to counter. CnD is a high risk / reward skill, as it should be. It set up backstab, which is an extremely powerful attack, therefore it should have a decent cast time so that people that have learnt the animation can be rewarded by evading the attack.

It creates some level of skill from both sides. The thief that need to learn how to land it and the enemy that need to learn the animation in order to evade it.

Noss.4105:

Geiir.7603:

Noss.4105:

I got hit by an unusually painful heartseeker today. As I’ve been on a break from GW for couple months, I thought something was changed about thieves. I however took a screenie of the combat log, as it was pretty hilarious how fast I dropped.

Note that the first C&D hit me for 6.2k, which still kept my 17,6k healthpool above 50%. 7,5k HS seems pretty high to 50%+ hp target.

Oh, I think I got around 2,6-2,7k armor.

You had 3 stacks of weakness from Cloak and Dagger, and burning from judges intervention. Both are conditions which means that he could deal 10% more damage from one trait. He also had over 6 initiative which gives him more damage.

If you had been below 25% hp he would have hit for far more than 7,5k. Creds to you for dodging his backstab, because that would probably have been devastating for you

You act like that’s normal. Before my small break I would’ve never been hit for that much with heartseeker, so something must be off. 7k+ for minimum damage on HS is too high, way too high.

I tried to explain how it can happen. But from my calculations you should have been below 50% hp for that damage to happen. Any other explanation can be that you had max stack of vulnerability, but I don’t think that’s the case. Are you sure you were above 50%?

Noss.4105:

I got hit by an unusually painful heartseeker today. As I’ve been on a break from GW for couple months, I thought something was changed about thieves. I however took a screenie of the combat log, as it was pretty hilarious how fast I dropped.

Note that the first C&D hit me for 6.2k, which still kept my 17,6k healthpool above 50%. 7,5k HS seems pretty high to 50%+ hp target.

Oh, I think I got around 2,6-2,7k armor.

You had 3 stacks of weakness from Cloak and Dagger, and burning from judges intervention. Both are conditions which means that he could deal 10% more damage from one trait. He also had over 6 initiative which gives him more damage.

If you had been below 25% hp he would have hit for far more than 7,5k. Creds to you for dodging his backstab, because that would probably have been devastating for you

Burnfall.9573:

OP

Near 1 year into Wars 2 Anniversary,

Heartseeker, Backstab… have all been outputting Outrageous Damage.

I will say again and again and Forevermore again,

Everything you see and Witness by Theif class wasn’t made in error, everything from their designs, skills, traits,utitilites, abilities, are Intentional

With this another proven OP caught yet again in Tryannizing and being Responsible for Demolishing Class Balance- outputting Extreme Highest Single attack than every other class combine.. even matching up to in game- Mega-Bosses damage output, is Totally Outrageous.

Why in the world would a mmo game company, design a class to match the damage output of a ingame Mega-boss and to Support and Justify it?

As a Ranger,

Of course as been told countless of tiems, “buff up your toughness so it won’t make thieves easy to kill you”,

Well

How does a warrior "3684 toughness and 32605 HP all together: sound like?

Yet

Heartseeker theif able to output 7k damage in a single hit plus 4k on top of that and more.

How does that sound than?

Oh Yeah

Mind as well tell the Op that “he need to buff-up more so that a theif won’t kill him easy”

This whole class balancing especially theif class is becoming more of a comedy and theitric everyday.

And I Refuse to be Entertain by Tyranny and Oppresion

And if you don’t enjoy the game, then don’t play it. We won’t miss you.

Again you throw out mindless bullkitten and make it all sound like something political, which it isn’t. It’s a game! Get over it already!

You complain about thief being able to dish out 8k backstabs on this warrior and be able to do 7k heartseekers (note that he have to be below 25% hp for heartseeker to be effective…). Well guess what, his bunker build got busted by a bunker buster build. Everyone else will just make him scratch his nose and get on with his life, while the thief give him some challenge.

Try to look at it from out perspective; it isn’t easy to kill a warrior with that much hp. I would probably hit him for 2k with my build, so I would just run away and pray that he can’t land a kill shot….

Burnfall.9573:

(Due to Respect; if anyone is nearly blindedsided, i advise you to not waste your time in viewing the video)

(Due to Respect of the Thief Player in the video; Well played)

Hard-Core Proof of Thief is Cheese .. Spamming only 1 button+ Stealth = Game Over

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8LBsY-RXsA

First of all; why are you still playing this game? You speak of it as if it’s some kind of conspiracy and other bullkitten. If Anet intended for the thief to be walking gods then they failed miserably. The only place in this game where we really excel (not saying we’re bad elsewhere, just that we really shine here) is WvW. We create duelist builds created for one purpose: deceive our enemies and kill them. Most thieves build for solo roaming and dueling, which gives them a really good reason to kill team focused builds…

I can post you the numbers and calculations when I get off work. The numbers you are seeing are normal for a full zerker thief with the 30/30/0/0/10 traits. When you see the numbers you’ll understand a bit more

Off-hand pistol is a strong enough weapon choice already. We don’t need it buffed in any way.

No. Just run Signet of Malice and you’ll be pretty much immune to any damage..

Doomdesire.9365:

Thief needs serious improvement in large scale fights. Right now, in the MEGA BLOB meta, thieves are good for one thing, blasting. Even then with the sheer amount of people in these fights, you don’t really need a thief to blast. I rerolled as a guardian a long time ago because thief wasn’t worth it anymore.

The mega blob meta is just stupid, and I completely disagree with you. We’re a melee duelist profession – why should we be on par with other professions in WvW large scale combat. We are the best roamers, and we shouldn’t be the best at everything.

Things we can do:

• Cut off supply lines
• Run supply
• Flip camps and sentries
• Cut off reinforcements
• Deal with the ranged damage dealers in the back
• Assassinate the commander
• Troll blobs to distract them
• Troll people in general
• Kill other roamers
• Be mobile finishers (we have access to all of them)
• Revive fallen or downed allies
• Block off projectiles to shelter our allies

These are some of the things we can do. I think that professions should be balance different. Guardians should be, well, guardians that protect their allies while smashing skulls in the front lines. Warriors should be the main damage dealers and front line fighters, rallying their troops to victory. Thieves should be the ones assassinating key professions or players. Elementalists should be the ranged damage dealers. And so on, you get my point. We’re excellent roamers and assassins, why should we be better in blobs than we already are?

Very good thread!

WvW
We’re still the best roamers. A good thief will rarely die and can troll zergs or small roaming groups.

PvP
The fact that stealth doesn’t cap is a huge draw back for the thief. But luckily we have burst damage to compensate for that. We are really good far point assaulters, and the new rise of S/P is great! Did anyone say perma stun? Thief can do that.

PvE
There’s a misconception that thieves are useless or inferior to other classes for all PvE content. Not true. As the OP already said; S/P and shortbow makes us walking gods for general PvE content. In dungeons we are out dps’ed by warriors (who isn’t), but that doesn’t make us inferior… A lot of thieves that’s still new to the class will run full berserker and doesn’t know what to look for – these are the thieves that’s usually used as floor rags by the dungeon mobs and bosses. But take a look at more experienced thieves. A thief that really know his profession and his utilities, skills, traits and weapons. A thief with knowledge over these things can be a huge addition to any team!

Smoke screen can completely lock down ranged enemies and defend against melee enemies. It can also be used to stack stealth to skip certain parts of the dungeon, the same applies to shadow refuge. Did anyone need those boons gone from the boss or defiance stripped? No problem!

Wut? Are you telling me that hearseeker doesn’t work on dungeon bosses? ;o

A thief spam HS 4 times (5 if 15 in Trickery). It’s just impossible to die to heartseeker if you’re getting attacked from 100% hp. You can evade two of them and then it’s game over for the initiative free thief..

Did all of them with S/P, except for Subject 7 (wanted the achievement, so I went with D/P). Haven’t defeated Liadri yet though… Probably going for a condition build on her tonight.