Guild Wars 2

As an sPvP roamer it’s amazing! When you learn the pathing and where you can’t place it, or where you get stuck, it’s perfect for holding two points at the same time ;D

Scholar runes, Force, Night/Fire and bloodlust sigils.

Excalibur.9748:

what do you use scorpion wire for?

For having people right where I want them to be – in my face. It works wonders why a ranger is trying to rain down some AoE on gate while I’m defending it – completely catches them off guard and have them freak out. It’s also an extra interrupt. As I said – I don’t use stealth. But my build isn’t finished, so I may change it since I have enough gap closers and ranged and melee interrupts in the build already.

Travlane.5948:

Geiir.7603:

By strongest, do you mean the one with most damage? If that’s the case, then this is the build that I’ve built for pure damage. I would never use this build though, unless you want to die if a warrior as much as sneezes near you. It doesn’t have any survivability, and all the utility skills are put into that one backstab…

Here’s the build

You have 60% extra damage from traits(Exposed Weakness, Dagger Training, First Strikes, Flanking Strikes), runes(Scholar), sigils(Force) and Signet of Power. You also have 20 stacks of might and Sigil of Bloodlust.

This all adds up to some crazy damage. Tested it in sPvP, and almost all are dead after the combo. What you do is you pop skills in this order:

• Basilisk Venom
• Signet of Malice
• Signet of Power
• Signet of Agility
• Signet of Shadows
• Cloak and Dagger
• Steal
• Backstab
• Heartseeker

That’s it. You use all utility skills, heal and elite for this, so if your target isn’t dead, you’ll probably die ;p

drop hidden killer for executioner.
drop sundering strikes for venomous strength
changing side strike is optional.
sigil of night if applicable.

(need 25 stacks of bloodlust)

and also use curry food and quality stones for more power.

correct order of skills : BV SOM SOA SOS AS CND STEAL BS HS

and thats max dmg.

The reason I didn’t choose executioner is because you only have 62% critical chance. Hidden killer ensures that the most important attack crits – every time, which is way more important IMO. Most people would be dead after the first hearseeker with normal critical damage, therefore I didn’t find the need for executioner. This build is all about landing that backstab and making sure it crits.

Completely forgot about venomous strength (really dumb of me), but completely agree on using it.

I would keep side strike and maybe do the shadow trap and swap sigil of agility with it. Would give me 25 stacks of might and fury. If you do that then you could go with executioner instead since your critical chance will be 82%. The good thing about this is that you can use steal after CnD to gain initiative again ^^ but then again, the initial burst would be lower..

Dagraan.2854:

so you’re bragging about killing a bad player who had even less armor value than you and didnt realize he could of just auto attacked you to death.

tbh if you lost that fight you should be ashamed, he should be ashamed he lost to a under level, but bragging because you killed a bad player is just stupid.

i can get on my thief and kill some trolly staff mesmer build or a bunker ele build does that mean im a good thief? no it just means im better than that guy i killed.

And as I’ve said before, this is not a bragging thread. It’s merely a thread to say that stealth thieves is not even close to OP. As long as you know how to fight one, it’s way too easy. I even said that in the original post, if I could stop the thief from stealthing on my lvl 14 guard, then anyone should be able to do it on their lvl 80s…

stof.9341:

Yes it’s true. And then again we got :

FS : steals 2 boons
PW : doesn’t steal 2 boon

FS is a clear winner as for the better skill by far.

Or we could just say that it’s all about how you like to play. I’ve seen really good S/D thieves and really good S/P thieves.

But I would say S/P is a really good set to use in a bunker build. Blinds, interrupts and all the tools to lock an enemy down while still damaging. Couple this with P/P, Smoke Screen, Signet of Agility (condition removal!), Scorpion Wire, Signet of Malice and Thieves Guild and you have a really solid troll build. I’m currently running that setup as a bunker and it’s hilarious!

I have had so much fun running S/P and a no-stealth build that I’m having a hard time seeing myself go back to anything else ;p Most players doesn’t expect pistol whip and the fact that I can’t stealth.

Had a nice fight the other day against two players that just had one of my friends downed. I kept interrupting their attempts to stomp and just blinded them the rest of the time. It’s really fun and something people don’t see coming.

I always use pistol whip to stop bursts, channeled abilities and to do some good AoE damage while evading all other attacks

By strongest, do you mean the one with most damage? If that’s the case, then this is the build that I’ve built for pure damage. I would never use this build though, unless you want to die if a warrior as much as sneezes near you. It doesn’t have any survivability, and all the utility skills are put into that one backstab…

Here’s the build

You have 60% extra damage from traits(Exposed Weakness, Dagger Training, First Strikes, Flanking Strikes), runes(Scholar), sigils(Force) and Signet of Power. You also have 20 stacks of might and Sigil of Bloodlust.

This all adds up to some crazy damage. Tested it in sPvP, and almost all are dead after the combo. What you do is you pop skills in this order:

• Basilisk Venom
• Signet of Malice
• Signet of Power
• Signet of Agility
• Signet of Shadows
• Cloak and Dagger
• Steal
• Backstab
• Heartseeker

That’s it. You use all utility skills, heal and elite for this, so if your target isn’t dead, you’ll probably die ;p

Bull Zooker.1672:

Geiir.7603:

Then you simply out played him – good for you! /clap

I would say necros are by far the king of condition builds! Two necros figured I had really bad condition removal (S/P no stealth thief), so they had me run against a wall with fear and they simply feared me to death…

haha that sounds infuriating but funny! as a necro I always enjoy hearing how thieves suffer from our dirty tricks ;-)

team fights – necro condi builds > thief condi builds

solo roaming – thief condi builds > necro condi builds (thieves escape better)

I bet they were laughing so hard that they were crying, that’s at least what I would have done ;p

Yeah, thieves are sneaky ;D

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I have skype, but I don’t have a TS server. So generally I just join public channels whenever I’m helping someone abroad.

Good suggestion though.

I have a teamspeak server with room for over 500 clients, so if that’s needed then I’ll make a channel on it for that

Archon.6481:

Geiir.7603:

Archon.6481:

You killed a bad thief? I can auto attack to death a lvl 14 guardian. Id crit you for what? 3k per hit? Not to mention backstab which will most likely hit for 7-10k…

And stop with everyone saying class x is easy to kill with class y. All classes are hard to fight as any class if said players are good.

Did I say it was easy because I was a guardian? No I didn’t. I said I could pull it off because I have over 800 hours on my thief – I’ve pretty much only played thief since beta. This wasn’t any attempt to brag, it was an attempt to show that it is possible to completely destroy thieves if you anticipate their moves. This thief wasn’t particularly bad, I just stopped his attempts to stealth – and a thief with no stealth and no initiative is a sad thief.

If he had landed a backstab I would probably die from that alone. I was just using blocks, aegis, protection and retaliation at the right moment and therefore I killed him. This was more a post to tell everyone that cry about getting killed by thieves to shut up

Again. Bad thief.

Even if you did somehow manage to interrupt his blackpowder+Heartseeker combo, he easily could’ve shadow refugee then back stabbed you for 8k, which is probably most of your health. You simply fought a bad player who didn’t know what he was doing. I have never come even close to losing to an uplevel especially since I usually 3 shot them.

If he was bad enough not to dodge your CC then I’m calling him bad. Banish and binding blade are easily dodgeable. Line of warding can work to some degree, but the thief can still turn around and heartseeker through the smoke field.

Maybe youre good. But that doesn’t change the fact that this thief was terrible, and could’ve auto attacked you to death. Uplevels can never put up respectable damage so this fight must’ve taken a bit of time. Plenty of time for the thief to stealth using say shadow refuge.

Btw: the x class beats y class was directed at other posters, not you.

Ah, thought you ment me, sorry about that ^^

He wasn’t downright terrible, but he did make some mistakes. My guess is that he got over confident (I usually get pretty sure I will squish an up leveled player with ease) which had him fail. The fight went on for quite some time, so why he saved his shadow refugee until he wanted to flee is beyond me.

They are easily dodgeable, but not when you’re in mid air with a heartseeker. I have been knocked out of heartseeker several times. How I won is still something I wouldn’t believe unless I witnessed it, but I guess I used my shouts and blocks at the right moment ;S

Archon.6481:

You killed a bad thief? I can auto attack to death a lvl 14 guardian. Id crit you for what? 3k per hit? Not to mention backstab which will most likely hit for 7-10k…

And stop with everyone saying class x is easy to kill with class y. All classes are hard to fight as any class if said players are good.

Did I say it was easy because I was a guardian? No I didn’t. I said I could pull it off because I have over 800 hours on my thief – I’ve pretty much only played thief since beta. This wasn’t any attempt to brag, it was an attempt to show that it is possible to completely destroy thieves if you anticipate their moves. This thief wasn’t particularly bad, I just stopped his attempts to stealth – and a thief with no stealth and no initiative is a sad thief.

If he had landed a backstab I would probably die from that alone. I was just using blocks, aegis, protection and retaliation at the right moment and therefore I killed him. This was more a post to tell everyone that cry about getting killed by thieves to shut up

Then you simply out played him – good for you! /clap

I would say necros are by far the king of condition builds! Two necros figured I had really bad condition removal (S/P no stealth thief), so they had me run against a wall with fear and they simply feared me to death…

P/D as a power build is possible, but not something I would recommend. The damage is really low, if you compare it to other weapon sets (D/P for example), and the skills on the weapon set isn’t that useful. I would really like to see that change though! Having a P/D power build could be interesting, but for now it’s a condition set.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Arganthium.5638:

Mighty: I just realized that since there are people like Geiir applying, and, of course, I still have interest in the guild myself (never got an invi though :c), and that, furthermore, Team Akatsuki is an all-thief team that both Geiir and I are on, I figured that we could basically make Akatsuki members teachers for this guild. That way, we’re pairing students with an established team that knows practically everything thief, and, furthermore, we have a clearer post-“academic” route for applicants to go through, if they wish.

Due to the nonsensical quantity of teachers applying vs students, I think I’ll make the testing phase very difficult, to see whom the best of the dozens of teachers that applied.

As for the poster above, server doesn’t matter. If you’re in EU, best to let me know, you can still join, but it’s a bit harder to manage.

I’m currently on a EU server. Planning to change where my team is going, but it won’t be any problem guesting or just transferring to teach people that needs it. Another idea could be to use teamspeak or Skype to help players abroad

The rally mechanic and the AoE limit is just a plus for zergs – and zergs is what have destroyed this game. There’s almost never any tactics in a zerg, unless following the commander and pressing 1 is a tactic… It should be able for a small well coordinated group to defeat a Zerg unless they spread out. Now they can just clunk together and press 1 and the enemy AoE will only hit five of them – the other people just press one and revive those that get downed. A really good display of skill, right. The only one that need to have half a brain is the commander (which actually must think with some skill).

Anet should find a way for small groups to have any chance against a zerg. In WvW you either have to stealth all the time or have insane amounts of armor if you’re going to do anything but zerging, because sooner or later the zerg will drop by and completely wipe you and your friends…

This is an excellent idea!

In game name: Melder
What class(es) do you play as your secondary/tertiary: Mesmer, Guardian
Are you applying as a teacher, or a student: Teacher
How many hours on your class do you have: About 800 hours
How many builds have you theory crafted: Have no idea how many, but it’s quite a few. I don’t theory craft as in putting numbers together, I know what I’m after and then I build around that. I try out all my builds and find something that I’m comfortable with. So far it have worked out pretty good for me.
Would you consider yourself a good contributor to your community: Yes. I alway try to have a good discussion and try to contribute where I can. I’m often in the forums helping players with builds and tips, sometimes even in other profession forums to teach them how to fight a thief.
Are you friendly/helpful: I always try to be at my best.
Would you be willing to prove your skill/knowledge ingame: Any time.

The problem with this game is that it’s way too easy. Anet even stated that they want the game to be friendly for newcomers. They think that everyone should be able to go to any part of the game and achieve something. What they fail to understand is that that is why we got PvE. PvE is suppose to be the place you learn your profession and how the mechanics of the game work. A player completely new to MMORPG’s should not be able to go to WvW and just steamroll everything. A newcomer should not be able to join sPvP and manage to kill someone the first time.

And the fun part? Anet want this game to be an esport… If they mean that they’ll have to heighten the skill level drastically and make all professions viable at their role, balance out weapon sets so that each profession can choose any weapon set and find it fun and actually achieve something with it. If you really want a game to be an esport you can’t say that you want it to be noob friendly, that’s not how it works.

The way WvW works now is who got the bigger force. Tactics are something that’s obsolete unless its two smaller groups. I’m sick of being run down by a zergball with 50-100 players pressing 111111111 – skill, yeah. The only one that need to think is the commander, all else is just following his icon and pressing 1. I would love for Anet to make it so that smaller skirmish teams that play really organized should be able to take down a zerg. But what can 10 good players do against 100 guys spamming all their skills at random? Run or die pretty much.

Oh, it should also be possible for a small group to capture and hold a resource camp. That’s just impossible right now. Choke pointing doesn’t work in this game because the stupid 5 limit on AoE. That need to change, and it would heighten the skill level since Zergs actually would die if they all were just hugging their commander.

Burnfall.9573:

Geiir

My Intentions were not for you to not have no rights to discuss your prof-thief.

You mentioned how Arena net completely ignores the thief community, well it is indeed sad.

But

I can tell you the reason why, and also why i agree with you why thief is forced upon the zerler backstab build.

I’m sure you hear this many times before and it’t the truth.. it is because of Favoritism.

In other word, Arena net find thief class “Perfect” in their mind and soul (as this thread title- Theives- The One Man Army—https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Thieves-The-One-man-army)

They (Arena net- the Parent Class) see and find no fault with thief class; no wrong doings, no- nothing worng about them in every way.

The Irony and the Consequence when a company who playing Favoritism of classes is abusive and painful to the remaining classses and most especially to the Favorite class.

How so?

The Impact

Self-Ego (not bringing any support to the other classes)-

Grandiosity/Pride (Boasting and Humuliating “less apar/advantage” classes..

No-Accountability- (it’s Always other classes/players fault for not understanding them and not able to learn how to defeat them)

Control/Superiority- (Perma-Stealth and able to Reset fights at will)

Justification- (whatever they do wrong/abuse, they are quickly given defense and reasons for thier actions)

Reward/Power- (Only class to receive Nerf-Rewards… seriously ask yourself, :since all the “nerfs” thieves have recieved, have it resulted them in getting lesss Powerful?
Did last current patch impacted their core power?

So many; too many had left Gw2 because of this.. and many more will.

Favoritsm is Unjustified, and only Promotes Resents, Hatred, Unhealthy Treatment, Retaliation and Disertment and Unhealthy commiunity.

That is sad.

Again,

The remaining community doesn’t Hate Theives (the player) but Hate the fact how they are Intentionally granted Favor in the name of Self-Ego, Grandiousity and Pride.

Glad to see you understand. I doesnt exactly feel that they favorite us, because we have been hit really hard by the nerf bat countless times. Most of those was changes no one asked for, which leaves the thief community baffled. I don’t understand why they doesnt have one dev for each profession that main it and is active in the forums explaining what they’re doing and why. As it is now I have yet to see a dev play thief and comment in the thief forum, other than useless answers to threads we didn’t need them in…

I do by no means defend stealth, but it won’t change. They have out too many hours into it, and removing it will require too much work. As much as I hate to say this, stealth is really a L2P issue. It’s all about knowing what the thief will do when he stealth, attack or disengage. It’s our strength, but it can also be deadly for us to stealth. I can’t count how many times I’ve died while in stealth, this because my opponent anticipated my move and therefore laid waste to me – he was the better player.

But what really baffles me is that people complain about their group focused build getting destroyed by a duelist. Of course will the duelist have an advantage against a group build. This game is really 90% the player and 10% build/profession. I’ve seen warriors with a really weak build (according to the forums) completely destroy small groups of five people. This simply because he was the better player. In an action based game like GW2 it’s all about soaking damage or better, not be there when the hammer falls. In a game like wow where it’s most about executing the best rotation it’s completely different.

Monoman.2068:

Waffler.1257:

How do you lose to a thief on a necro? Necros melt thieves in 3 seconds, I don’t even play my necro anymore because of how easy it is.

My necro personally has little trouble with thieves and to beat the more problematic thieves, I just use my stun breaker.

Though on my guardian, the d/p ones will make me flip a table.

Thieves can be dealt with, but it would be nice to see what Anet was/is thinking about thieves.

A D/P thief is a guardians nightmare? My lvl 14 guardian ripped a full glass cannon D/P thieves to pieces the other night. They have stealth on demand with black powder + heartseeker, but this is laughably easy to stop. If you interrupt the thief as he does his HS you will leave him with 9 less initiative and no stealth, and that is a really bad situation for a glass thief. If he manages to stealth and you expect him to chain stealth, just move into his blind field and his second HS will reveal him and again, less initiative with no stealth = bad situation.

S/D on the other hand can make a guardian flip tables with their boon stealing. Only problem is this build is broken. It worked fine until they added that larcenous strike >_<

Renxian.6982:

Burnfall.9573:

As Always and be Always..

Stealth theif; which i call it by name, is thier class of choice, Intentially.

There’s Enough of Evidence Everywhere.

They Will Never Answer Your Question Op because as many Stealth Thieves Players; they hide in denial mode- much like Stealth Mode.

Whats New?

Lol

I hope that answers your question OP

I hold out hope that one day you will post something that:

1. Makes sense
2. Provides any form of actual proof to backup any claims
3. Is factually accurate.
4. Provides meaningful room for discussion

I’m not counting on that ever happening though.

Completely agree with you Renxian.

Burnfall:
What you say is that because I’m a thief I have no right to discuss my profession? There are many good thieves in these forums that is actively giving advice to other players on how to counter us, how to read stealth and how to completely destroy these so called OP builds. But this community does for some reason completely ignore any of our attempts to help or explain, all you can say is “thief is so OP, OMFG NERFZZZZ”.

We usually try to have a real conversation and discuss what’s wrong and what could be done to fix it or alter it in any way. There are ofcourse players that will say that the thief is fine and will neglect that it’s OP, but there are many of us that wish to help and do our best to give advice and have a discussion.

The fact that Anet completely ignores the thief community is just sad. There are so many good ideas from high level thieves as what to do with the profession. Anet seem to destroy what works for us and make the zerker backstab build the best choice for us. This is not what we want, we want diversity and the ability to chose other builds and weapon sets.

Hi!

I’m currently established on Seafarers Rest and have done quite a few hours in WvW, allthough rarely with the Zerg. I’m more of a roamer / small group runner. I love to tear zergs apart with a small well coordinated group. Lately I’ve been quite bored by the current server and my guild went dead, so I’m looking for either a new guild and/or a new server! I’m not striving for the higher tiers or the winning server, I just want to have fun and do whatever I can to help my server.

I have played thief since beta and that’s my main. I’m currently leveling a Guardian that I’m going to level solely in WvW. I also have a Mesmer.

If anyone feel they could see me running with them and their guild tag I’d be happy to join! I recently joined an all-thief team for tPvP, so I will be playing there some times, but my main focus is WvW and sometimes a dungeon or two

Renxian.6982:

Zikory.6871:

Renxian.6982:

Zikory.6871:

More Thief QQ? Can you keep this in the thief section please. We complain about Badges of honor and JP griefers here!

Copied from the other thief QQ thread.

PS: Not USELESS in a zerg at all. Just cluster bomb alone makes them one of the strongest utility classes. Don’t pigeon hole your self into a cookie cutter build. Thieves are quite useful out side of doing just damage.

Yay, just what every thief wants to be a mobile blast finisher.

Could be said about Mesmer and Eles too. Walkig portal/vials and walking static fields and “DRAGON TOOTH THAT AC NOWWWWZZZZZ!”

Null Field, Feedback, Into the Void, Portal, Dragon Tooth, Meteor Shower, Water Fields, Lava Fount or whatever it’s called, Ice fields, Static fields, that earth skill that spikes up and causes bleeding or whatever. And that is just the skills I know have use with my 0 knowledge of those two classes. Seems a lot more varied than:

4,2,4,2,4,2,4,2,4,2 LOOK GUYZ IM HELPIN!

You forgot to mention the occasional dagger storm x] Yeah, I’d go for roaming and trolling people instead.

And in a game mode where 1v1 doesn’t matter were still OP because we excel at 1v1. Good logic, right?

You are one of those few that understand our situation. We want more viable builds, but were not getting any :/

If the toon in any way could feel the backstab the thief should get revealed. This does not apply to blind since he simply missed the attack. So I do agree that block should trigger revealed.

Renxian.6982:

Geiir.7603:

Congratulations! You manage to do the one thing thieves excel at – 1v1. Tell me again how easy it is to Zerg, do dungeons, and how good thief are in sPvP. It’s in the cards that a toon built for roaming and 1v1 is going to win over a team-focused toon…

Obviously you don’t get it. Every thief QQer is a dueling god and anyone who beats them is obviously hacking and their class is obviously OP. It couldn’t possibly be that they made a bad decision that resulted in them being isolated, alone, against a strong duelist class with a competent player running it. It couldn’t be that they got outplayed. Nope. Thief OP! CAN’T SEE WUT DO?

You gave me a good laugh man! I’m still surprised over the huge amount of people that’s just standing there after I stealth. They could at lest try to stop me :p

If I’m in the right mood I’ll be in the JP trolling people ;D It’s called PvP, remember?

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Video or it never happened.

Going to record tonight(first time thought so it can be interesting), hopefully I’ll find a thief (or let he find me since up leveled are called free kills in a thiefs head). So hopefully I’ll have something up by tomorrow ^^

Enocka.7421:

A thief even in the hands of a bad player can 1v1 most classes and if he cant he runs away getting range on a thief is hard as they spam heartseeker to close or run in the opposite direction. There deffo is a big diff between a good thief and a bad one, But a bad one can still kill pretty easy. I have a thief and iam not that good on him but i can still kill most classes easier than any other class i play.

Congratulations! You manage to do the one thing thieves excel at – 1v1. Tell me again how easy it is to Zerg, do dungeons, and how good thief are in sPvP. It’s in the cards that a toon built for roaming and 1v1 is going to win over a team-focused toon…

wedo.3049:

you all make fun of this guy, but truth is if a decent/ to good player is behind a permastealth thief they CANT be killed . So yes stealth does need to be reworked, gw2 is the only game that helps stealthers restealth and stealth and stealth again over and over.

Just negate his stealth by simply not allow him to stealth? Two people can completely lock down a thief and kill him with ease… This is even easier with 5 or more people, so there’s really no reason as to why they couldn’t kill these thieves.

Dawdler.8521:

Geiir.7603:

Seriously, just learn the Thief and how stealth works and you’ll be laughing each time a thief stealths

Blinding powder, 2, 2, 2, blinding powder, 2, 2, 2, blinding powder, 2, 2, 2, blinding powder, 2, 2, 2. Alternativly when in a larger pack its blinding powder, sb 2, sb 2, blinding powder, sb 2, sb 2, blinding powder, sb 2, sb 2.

My God you are right! I never realized until now but I do laugh everytime my thief perma-stealths!!!

And if you take a look in the thief community we have ideas of how to fix that – make it so that stealth doesn’t stack.

But how hard is it to counter that? Knock them back in mid air or throw them out of their blind field. That’s 9 initiative wasted (out of 12, 15 max) which often means dead thief. No possibility to escape, stealth, deal damage or anything. Seriously. How hard can it be? When I’m on my thief and face good players, then they have learnt to interrupt my HS and then I’m left vulnerable. It’s very (!) predictable, because if a D/P thief is dropping his BP then he is for SURE going to do a HS. Just stop him from doing that. One other way if he manages to stealth is to move into his blind field, when he lands his second HS or cluster bomb he’s getting revealed, and again, vulnerable.

So, two thieves decide to troll a small zerg and they win? Last time two thieves tried to troll my thief I laughed and ripped them to pieces. If they were playing S/P there is no way they could achieve perma stealth since that weapon set doesn’t have access to stealth…. I guess they were running D/P. just make it impossible for stealth to stack so they can only get 3(4) seconds of stealth – there you got the fix to perma stealth. Only problem is Anet refuse to see this and they just keep destroying all other parts of the thief, except for those builds people are complaining about. W2G Anet…

Trust me, we want to play other builds than the zerker backstab thief. Anet just makes it kitten hard for us to do anything else than that build… In every single patch they have slowly ripped our other builds to pieces, but not really done any changes to the one build people complain about. I would live to run a P/P and S/P thief, but it’s really hard and there are far superior builds I could chose instead.

I would love for them to revert their changes to S/D and make it more viable again (it was fine, why did they touch it?!). I would love to get some damage back to pistol whip (auto attack is better and it doesn’t root you). P/P just need more mobility built into the weapon set.

Renxian.6982:

I wish the JP didn’t give out BoH. Make all the PVE players earn the Gift of Battle through….ya know..battle.

Agreed. Badges should only come from player kills in WvW and WvW achievements ^^

Audiogasm.7643:

Man, i don’t really care that you re killing little thieves, as most ppl playing thief nowadays are just bad cause they thinks it s OP and didn’t pay attention to learn how to play but how can you kill someone with a lvl 14 Oo
I remember when i was still a lvl 14 thief, i was dealing 200 dmg with aa on a full zerk war (with lvl 80 it’s like 2000 dmg) pls tell me your secret :o

I agree that most thieves running around are people that think thief is OP (guess I just gave them a lesson then? ;p) but the fact that I killed many thieves and struggled with other professions say a lot. I know the thief, I’ve played it since the first time I launched GW2, therefore it’s no problem for me to kill an average thief. But I’ve rarely played other professions, therefore I find them tougher to fight on my low lvl guardian.

Secret? Sustained low damage. The fight was long and the thiefs every attempt to stealth or run away was stopped by me. I didn’t exactly deal much damage with each swing, but I saved my small bursts and timed them right after his attempt to stealth was ruined and caught him off-guard with it. Since he couldn’t heal with stealth and had no initiative he was left with only auto attacks, which made the fight quite one-sided. Can’t wait to do this when my guard reaches lvl 80

Mogar.9216:

Geiir.7603:

I just completely destroyed a lvl 80 Thief on my lvl 14(!!!!!!!) Guardian. I mean, come on. If I can do it on a lvl 14 then anyone can do it… The key? Know how stealth works. I stopped his attempts to stealth or chain stealth by simply playing smart. He tried to drop shadow refuge, and I just bursted the crap out of SR, result? Downed thief ready to die.

Seriously, just learn the Thief and how stealth works and you’ll be laughing each time a thief stealths

Once I killed 5 players on my ele so everyone should be able to kill 5 players at one time roaming then…? Your logic is very flawed.

You miss my point here. Any player that learns how stealth works find it easy to counter and that makes thief a joy to meet in the field. There are ofcourse good thieves running around, and they are just simply better players and therefore they deserve to win.

This exact thing happened several times, with the same result. One of the thieves was caught so much off guard by having a low level slay him that he just gave up and stood there. Stealth is seriously a L2P issue…

Any class in any build can take on a five man group if they are the better player. Sometimes I do that with my thief, and sometimes I run away because they were just too coordinated – or they play too well and just slay me as soon as I show up. This game is 90% skill level and 10% profession/build.

This is one of those days I wish I was recording my WvW experiences…

Last day I figured I’d start a guardian as an alt, and I want to level him solely in WvW, so I jumped there after getting all my weapon skills unlocked and started to run with small groups and just have fun. After reaching lvl 14 I got killed in a ZvZ crash and had run from the nearest WP.

Then this happened:
I ran into a thief, full lvl 80 with exotic gear. He was a glass cannon (I noticed because I was dealing heavy damage to him). He also ran D/P and SB. What happened you say? I completely destroyed this thief! Not once did he get my health beneath 50% and not once did he land a backstab.

So how did this happen? I played smart. I made sure to screw up all of his attempts to stealth by interrupting HS (9 initiative wasted). After this I had no trouble catching up with him and shredding him to pieces. His attempt to SR was just sad, I had all my burst available by then (sort of anticipated that this would happen) and I just AoE bursted the kitten out of the field. Result – downed thief ready to die.

This exact thing happened several times with different thieves. Please, tell me again that stealth is OP and how OP thieves are… -_-

(Going to record tonight and see if I find a lonely thief that want to meet up with his friends in hell, so I’ll hopefully have some video up here by tomorrow)

The skill looks like it has the same pathing as shadow step. It stop in thin air…

But those times it do work, I really love it! It’s so fun to use in sPvP to keep people off nodes and where you want them – right in your face

I just completely destroyed a lvl 80 Thief on my lvl 14(!!!!!!!) Guardian. I mean, come on. If I can do it on a lvl 14 then anyone can do it… The key? Know how stealth works. I stopped his attempts to stealth or chain stealth by simply playing smart. He tried to drop shadow refuge, and I just bursted the crap out of SR, result? Downed thief ready to die.

Seriously, just learn the Thief and how stealth works and you’ll be laughing each time a thief stealths

Thanks for the response! I forgot to say that I plan on roaming with small groups, so an altruistic healing build looks interesting. The thing that tipped me over was the guardians ability to deal nice damage as well as having very high survivability (really annoying as a thief). The healway build looks tempting too, and it’s definitely hard to counter with a thief and it usually ends up in a draw ;p

I’ll try out all three and see if some of those fits me! So far I’m having a blast with my guardian!

What I find most rewarding in WvW is cutting off supply lines, destroying small uncoordinated groups, flipping supply camps and teasing the Zerg. I’m not too fond of the zergball stuff, so I usually leave it alone. However, if I choose to go with the zerg I really never run with them. I run either behind it, in front of it or wait in the outskirts for the right moment to strike. I find myself waiting on my prey in the same way big cats do it: they wait for the weakest link to show up and take it down. This means that I’m waiting in the outskirts, dropping some cluster bombs on the combo fields to activate them and just wait. As soon as I see my prey I’ll stealth and move in for the kill. Nothing is more fun than appearing out of the shadows snapping the neck of my for before I return to the shadows again. This weakest link is often the ranged caster in the back of the zerg or an enemy thief (thieves are my number one priority).

If you do want to stick with the zerg then short bow is your friend. Cluster bomb to utilize all combo fields and damage the enemy, dagger storm for tagging, damaging and healing. Just learn all the combo fields and abuse them: you have access to every single combo finisher in the game – that’s a pretty strong advantage in a ZvZ crash, and way too few thieves have realized this. Due to our combo finishers we can permanently weaken our enemy while we heal, spread buffs and cleanse conditions on our allies – that’s pretty strong and underestimated.

Your build is pretty strong, but as a thief you can get away with full berserker armor – because we tend to never be there when the hammer falls. I have never played with soldier gear on my thief, I just never have had any reason since my survivability is high enough already. If you plan on running with a group I would recommend you to take a look at what 20 points (or 30) in trickery can do for you. If you’re a zerg guy you can skip this because there are other professions that will give you those boons anyway.

Glad to see an old thief return. Now go have some fun with it and gank some noobs ;D

Hi!
I’ve mained a Thief since beta and now I have decided that I want to level a Guardian. I’ve read the two guides by Brutaly and Eveningstar, and now I’m more exited than ever for leveling a Guardian! Since I’m used to the Thief I have a quite good understanding of dodging and blinding, this is also the main reason I chose the Guardian as an alt – I just love the mobile gameplay.

My plan is to level my Guardian in WvW, mostly roaming and occasionally joining the Zerg. Does anyone here have some good advice on how to build my guardian? What stats should I get first and what traits would be the most rewarding while leveling? I’m looking at having the hammer as main weapon and just change around my off-hand as I need.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Cyhann.2609:

Wastrelz.8235:

Yeah, some non-targeted AOE might help a little, since a P/P Thief will get totally pwned by any stealth-build thief.

What? No!
Just use 5 and stand in the circle, and then shoot at where he might be~
Really those are not the Problem if you play p/p.

You can still reach the thief if he’s standing in the middle of his blind field with a backstab. Done it several times, so you gotta move forward in the blind field and try to keep your back out of range ^^ On the other hand, you probably have way more evades than the backstab thief

To OP: I tried a similar build but with S/P as the second weapon set. So funny to interrupt a thief about to do his backstab and the slashing him with the sword. The minute he pops out of stealth he gets an unload

I use mouse for turning and keys for moving forward, backward and strafing. I also have a razer naga gaming mouse, so I have all my skills and utilities bound to my mouse – which really helps too

So, yet again another post from someone that got one shotted by a thief. Well guess what? We want to play other builds and weapon sets, but Anet keep nerfing ALL OTHER BUILDS AND WEAPON SETS, thereby forcing us into using the only strong build we have left: the zerker backstab thief. Remove that and we would have absolutely no role in this game – at all. PvE and PvP we are just a big joke. WvW? A big mother kittening joke, except for killing players running around alone, or up leveled people. I would trade some team utility (other than SB) and versatility any time for those huge backstab hits! And I’m still curious about these mysterious numbers. My thief have never ever been hit by a back stab higher than 7k – ever. And I’m running glass on a squishy class…

But please, keep kittening about this build. You just feed us with your tears and make us smile – because we actually feel that we can do something

WvW. The thief in general get much hate for the ability to escape from any fight and still deal a lot of damage. But I like to think of my thief like this: I’m usually jumping around in the shadows cutting off supply lines and taking camps. If I ever see an enemy player running for supplies I’ll jump him when he least expect it and end his misery before I slip back to the shadows never to be seen again. We really excel at doing exactly that. Many thieves will often be in a Zerg with their shortbow utilizing every single combo field. But I’m more like the hidden killer slaying the ranged casters in the back. Running around the Zerg and jump a staff ele is just hilarious

SPvP. While in stealth you’re pretty much useless for your team since you can’t cap the node in stealth. We lack some strength here, but there are a few good thieves that have it right. What we can do is also be the roamer here. Running between nodes, killing mobs and getting buffs. Our mobility is unmatched and this will make any good thief welcome in every team.

And that one second revealed wasn’t taken away from sPvP (where people never complained about stealth).

I agree with most of what you said, but I do think the skill cap for any other build than D/D or D/P is pretty high. Try picking up S/P and P/P and head to WvW – you really need to think your traits, sigils and movements on the field way more than usual.

What I really hate is that Anet haven’t fixed the two things people have complained about: perma stealth (D/P) and zerker backstab builds (D/D). They can’t really do much to the backstab zerker but they can make our other builds and weapon sets more viable and tempting to use (give P/P some mobility!!). What they did to S/D is just unreliable. I was an old user of that weapon set until they added larcenous strike, I mean, WTF?! We never asked for anything like that. Flanking strike was just as strong as it should be. The only thing we wanted to change was the incredibly bugged animation that often sent us in the wrong direction, even against stationary targets… But they kittened it up by adding LS and now they made it useless by nerfing it. They could have just reverted LS and kept the new animation – fixed!

My ideas for fixing stealth would be this:

• Make it impossible to stack (fix D/P QQ)
• Have revealed applied wether we attack from stealth or not

This would fix nearly every single thing people have complained about when fighting thieves. But in turn they would need to buff our mobility.

The reason thieves are so hated in dungeons is because of all these bad thieves you talk about (players that are trying out the thief because the want to face roll everything). They think zerker backstab will work great in dungeons and get one shotted in the first encounter…. What I’ve always said and still say is that a good thief is welcome in ANY party. This game is more about the players skill and ability to read the enemy player than the strength of the profession. We are still superior utilizers of combo fields, and this is our key in dungeons and WvW – often in sPvP too.

I’m still playing around with a bunker (oh yes I did) for use in tPvP, and so far it’s pretty fun and challenging. The new buff to S/P made it even better. It’s actually a bunker that deals a lot of damage, so I’m not something that can’t kill anything. Nothing makes my day more than having a ranger wasting his burst on my smoke screen right before I’m right in his face pistol whipping him to infinity before I return to the node and then scorpion wire him and do a second pistol whip. I almost feel his tears x]

Anyways. Thief is not the strongest profession, not even close. But we excel at roaming WvW, stopping supply lines and taking camps. 1v1 doesn’t matter? So when a player is running supplies to get that trebuchet up it’s not good to have a thief slipping out of the shadows snapping his neck and then disappear? I think it is and so do my commander.

Thief is what I call a profession you really need to learn how to play and to play against. Our use of stealth forces our enemy to think out of the box to find us. We have a strong burst and survivability that other professions could do nothing but hope for. We utilize combo fields and slip behind enemy lines to kill the commander or any ranged zerkers in the back. It’s our role and it’s the way we work. What I only hope will happen is that Anet will buff our other builds and traits to have us choose them too, and not keep forcing us to play the back stab thief…

Those are pretty strong choices. I used the same combination of sigils in WvW for a long time, and they work great! If your critical chance is high and due to the high attack speed they will proc every fifth second.

He did use pistol for a short time.

For each time you heartseek through the smoke field you stack stealth. But be carefull, if you land that heartseeker on an enemy you will be revealed.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves had to be completely useless for them not to be whined about. Just run with a Shadow Trap and vanish in thin air, I am sure that will rise more QQ eventually.

And the one thing people were complaining about is still our strongest build for WvW (berserker D/x).

Yeah, shadow trap is great! 10k units is so much that the enemy won’t have a clue