Guild Wars 2

Traps are garbage. Immobilize with devourer venom does not stack duration. Spamming infiltrators striks means dealing no damage and burning down initiative pretty fast. Basilisk venom (elite skill) can be countered by a regular stun breaker, so not that powerful. Daze with sword from stealth, but really low damage, so not all that powerful too, only in group fights with another damage dealer.

And yeah, they say thief is op because we can stealth.

SubjectZero.6497:

Leticron.7945:

Anyway… the stealth change made PvE terribly awkward… really terrible playstyle wise.
And I’m not even talking about our hampered damage (that if anything was too low already for the supposed kings and queens of single target dps) but about the clumsyness that came for free with revealed “interrupting” auto attack chains.
Simply put – awfull playstyle change!

This is really the main problem I have with the reveal change. There was absolutely no effect on stealth abuse it just made the D/D, P/D, and S/D sets very awkward to play (especially in PvE). What was wrong with making 3s reveal on any stealth exit? It would’ve actually served a legitimate purpose.

Getting a three second de-buff each time we stealth would really force thieves to think more before stealthing. As it is know it looks like this:

I’m stealthing, positioning for backstab, target dodges out of the way. But hey! I just stealth again and go for another backstab.

If they would have applied the de-buff when I missed and exited stealth my opponent would have been “rewarded” for actually out playing me by dodging right before my backstab landed. My opponent would then have me out in the open for three seconds (which is a lot for the profession with the smallest health pool and toughness). This would force me to be a better player and actually land every backstab. Now it’s just rinse and repeat or get the kitten out.

Please just fix this. Give us three seconds of stealth each time I leave stealth and make it three seconds instead of four. Those four seconds just made all rotations seem awkward. Most of our auto-attack chains take three seconds, so now it just doesn’t feel right.

Ensign.2189:

Geiir.7603:

• hands down best 1v1 class in the game

Mesmer is hands down the best 1v1 class in the game.

Thief dueling specs can draw with most other dueling specs in the game, if that’s your kind of thing – most dueling specs don’t actually have any ability to actually, you know, win the duel, just not lose and hope the other stops not losing first on top of staying in too long.

Thief is, bar none, the best 2v1 class in the game, which is its main role. It also excels at cleaning up the trash, so to speak – killing the various bad builds piloted by bad players that you’ll find wandering aimlessly around WvW.

Otherwise I agree with most everything you said.

So far hasn’t I had any trouble 1v1 someone, but running the typical zerker thief you are definitely right. They usually find and kill the weakest link in an encounter, but my build allows me to stand right in the middle applying pressure to the enemies and forcing them to start playing defensive, then I burst the kitten out of them :p

But you’re right. Most of the time a person can see the thief and prepare they will win (or it will end in a tie). But if the thief surprise the enemy, they’re usually dead meat.

Just as a side note: most mesmers doesn’t understand the idea of having clones – stand still and auto attack. This will make me pick a random target and hope that I chose the right one. But most mesmers start running while their clones are stationary, which makes it god kitten easy to find the real Mesmer and kill it

Welcome to the ranks of the most deceptive and sneaky profession in the game! I can start by telling you that this is a profession that will have no problem killing a lone rider in WvW. We are experts at hunting them down and slaying them. But make no mistake, mastering the thief and knowing when to stay in the fight and when it’s time to get out or not even engage a fight is one of the most important things we do. Easy single target killer, but a very hard profession to truly master.

Weaknesses:

• lowest health pool in the game (about 10k at lvl 80 with no traits or gear)
• low toughness, which means that you will take a lot of damage from all attacks
• not the best straight on damage
• very easy to get killed if cc’d and you’re out of stun breakers
• little condition removal
• conditions can be deadly because of little health
• not much you can do in a siege except from running supplies
• lacking a 1200 ranged weapon

Strengths:

• stealth
• very good tools for survivability
• some nice team support if specced for it
• can perma blind with pistol off hand
• very good roaming abilities
• very easy to enter and leave fights at your own will
• high attack speed
• very high mobility
• very fun to play!
• hands down best 1v1 class in the game

You can’t really say that all thieves are having trouble with one profession. We have problems with builds, and which builds we have a hard time dealing with depends on what build we are using. I’m playing a survival thief d/p and I’m finding my self in some deep kitten if I get too many stacks of bleed or confusion. Good condition necros are dangerous in general and soldier guardians are a pain in the kitten for me. I’m not specced for killing things fast, I’m there to apply pressure and force you to play defensively or freak out ^^

You just have to check the forums and different builds available. Do you want to kill players in two seconds or do you want to be in the middle of the battle swinging your sword? Do you want to play a team support role or do you like the idea of bleeding your enemies dry? Check out Lowell’s thief guide, although it is a bit out of date, it’s still very good to get the feel of what the thief is about and get a taste of some builds.

I’m using my phone to write this, so I didn’t bother to put in some links (take way too much time :p ). Let me know if you need more help, and best of luck with your new awesome profession!

Yes, yes it is. For builds that relied on stealth to do their damage (not glassy zerkers) this is a 20% damage reduction. And an infinitely long time to get killed or cc’d.

They said that they want us to be the most slippery class with our stealth and tricks. In the SotG they mentioned that they wanted to add a 3 second de-buff even if we didn’t attack. This would have been much better!

Imagine the following scenario: I stealth in the middle of the fight, my enemy starts dropping some AoE where I am, and dodges away just as I’m about to land my backstab. Here my enemy outsmarted me and deserves recognition for it. But hey! I can just go straight back to stealth and try again. This time knowing what he will do I counter it and land the backstab, revealed de-buff applied I just heartseek and steal him to his death.

If I would have gotten the de-buff when I missed the backstab (as the devs said they would) my foe would have really got some sort of recognition for being a good player and outsmart the thief. High risk, high reward. Every time I stealth I would know that I need to land this backstab or he will have the better hand.

As it is know, I either have to go full backstab or go for a build that doesn’t use stealth at all. So please, fix this and do what you intended to do in the first place! That would have fixed the problem of perma stealth and forced us to think more before stealthing.

They just nerfed us into warriors, but with half the hp, toughness and damage. We have the lowest health pool of the melee classes, and now we have to stay in the opponents face for one extra second. For a thief with 10-17k hp that is a lot of time.

I completely agree with what you are saying OP and Haitch. My SD / DP build is next to useless…

Straegen.2938:

Yep you should delete your entire account and go play another MMO. Clearly these nerfs that have rendered the entire class unplayable even though it will still dominate WvW.

Dominate WvW? Yes. The glass cannon full zerker thieves will take you down in seconds. Why you ask? They only rely on stealth once to get their burst (CnD -> Steal -> Backstab -> Heartseek until death). These new changes are pretty much forcing thieves to play those builds, because our survivability just dropped with 33%, and it sucked to begin with.

Every time I’ve played sPvP I notice something.

Fighting noobs; They cry about stealth being op. They never try to dodge my backstab. They never AoE the crap out of the area I can be in. They never auto attack the area I’m in. They just stand there. Waiting for my backstab. Or they start to run and I’ll just chase them down and backstab them.

Fighting some who have learnt to counter thieves: they chain CC me the moment I come out of stealth and burst the crap out of me. If my stun breaker is down I’m dead. While I’m invisible they AoE the crap out of the are I could possibly be in. They dodge after they’ve counted to three seconds. They auto attack the area I went invisible in.

And who do we see in these forums? The 12 year old noobs who think that something they can’t see is something they cant kill. I have been killed countless times by pro players that have learnt to read stealth. Learnt to predict my position and actions. I’ve asked several pro players in sPvP and most of them say the same thing: In the start it was pretty annoying to meet a thief. But now I have no problem dragging the fight out, and for a thief that equals being killed.

See? They learnt how to play and they didn’t complain. They learnt that thieves in stealth isn’t immune to damage, they can still get downed and cc’d.

We were just nerfed to being warriors with half its damage, hp and toughness. w2g anet.

People cried about thieves being able to chain stealth to heal up to full hp again. That is still(!!) possible to do, and instead they just broke the very mechanic our profession is built upon. Destroying builds that relied on stealth to have some survivability. Now the entire shadow arts tree is a laugh. I’ve scrapped it completely going for a more burst build…

Try adding +25% cooldown on 100blades and attunement switching and see how well those classes would react. Or lower the limit of clones a mesmer can spam. Try telling them that it’s needed.

They just nerf us, never a single fix is given (except useless ones like Healing Seed). They nerfed pistol whip because of haste making it OP. Now they nerfed haste without giving us the pw damage back.

Thief just went from being a sneaky kitten to become a warrior with half the hp, toughness and damage. w2g anet.

You can still perma stealth, so no. They didn’t fix anything, they destroyed builds but still let us perma stealth to heal up to 100% health again.

Just give eles +25% cooldown on attunement switching and +25% on 100blades and tell me that it’s ok to do so.

chronometria.3708:

Zerging solved by raising the stupid 5 target cap on AOE.

Agreed. Remove that cap and you’ll see smaller groups instead of huge zergs. I mean, meteor raining from the skies on a 100 man group! Only five of them was getting hit -_-

That one extra second in the champions face equals a dead thief, at least with our current health pool and toughness. We lost a ton of our damage in PvE, and in PvP it looks like they all want us to go super squishy backstabbers. That’s about the only vial build right now. It requires you to stealth one time and then burst the kitten out of the enemy. (CnD → Steal → Assassins Signet → Backstab → Heartseek to death). They pretty much killed our rotations, especially the P/D thieves rotation. Now they lost 33% of their bleed damage output, which is a lot since they didn’t deal that much damage before.

We can still perma stealth to get away or heal ourself up to full hp in stealth. they should have given us 3 seconds of revealed after leaving stealth, even if not attacking, than destroying several builds.

Arganthium.5638:

Geiir.7603:

I’m used to adapt. I too usually swap traits, skills and stuff in between instances, fights or dungeons, and that wasn’t even the point here. I’ve adapted to tons of changes and nerfs that they’ve hit us with and just thought “we just have to adapt to these changes and everything will work out just fine”. But this stealth nerf is the worst so far imo. They could first have tried to see if anything would change after fixing the culling, not making builds completely broken…

My build is still shining as I don’t use stealth that much, but for the P/D thieves this was a hard hit. Caltrops and traps was justified yes, but not the stealth stuff.

They just changed one of the basics that the entire profession was built upon. Totally uncalled for and nothing anyone have asked for.

The only complaint you seem to have is about the Revealed debuff.

Which is now one second longer than before.

And still only applies after you’ve attacked from stealth.

… I’m not sure what your complaint is. I’m guessing it’s that you can’t use Sneak Attack so often any more. Well, looks like you can’t apply 5 stacks of bleeding quite so fast any more. It’s not that big a deal.

D/D condition thieves are way more viable now than the P/D condition thief because of this stealth. P/D is not my main (I run a build quite similar to yours actually).

The debuff is what really struck me. I would much more have wanted the de-buff after stealth even if I didn’t attack than getting 4 seconds of if instead…

I tested the P/D build for a few hours now in sPvP, and the damage nerf is pretty big. It’s hard to be called a viable build any more really..

I’m used to adapt. I too usually swap traits, skills and stuff in between instances, fights or dungeons, and that wasn’t even the point here. I’ve adapted to tons of changes and nerfs that they’ve hit us with and just thought “we just have to adapt to these changes and everything will work out just fine”. But this stealth nerf is the worst so far imo. They could first have tried to see if anything would change after fixing the culling, not making builds completely broken…

My build is still shining as I don’t use stealth that much, but for the P/D thieves this was a hard hit. Caltrops and traps was justified yes, but not the stealth stuff.

They just changed one of the basics that the entire profession was built upon. Totally uncalled for and nothing anyone have asked for.

Get PW back and fix stealth.

Einlanzer.1627:

Geiir.7603:

This was a really hard hit for thieves in general… I would have had the stealth debuff for 3 appear after leaving stealth each time instead of those stupid 4 seconds. It destroys most of the thief builds in PvE. And don’t even get me started on the P/D thieves…. They had to stealth to stack their bleeds, now they’ll deal 33% less damage and kill the mob slower than ever, as if they didn’t use long enough time already to down something -_-

Maybe this will just serve to make it even more apparent (as if it wasn’t already) how totally kitten MH Pistol is and how badly it needs fixes.

Thief PVE in general underperforms in large part because Stealth is not adequate to compensate for their defensive weakness, and they aren’t particularly offensively strong relative to other professions. Why things like their horrendously bad downed state have never been touched is beyond me.

I completely agree with you! P/P and P/D need a huge fix. P/D condition thieves have only two (three if their target is fleeing) skills that are viable for their build. P/P is just bad all over. Unload is the only really big thing with that set.

Downed state need a huge fix. We can move and stealth. How is that helping us? Every single person who have downed a thief once know what he’s going to do, so predicting his actions is way to easy.

Your videos are out dated man. They couldn’t see you even after you broke stealth because of the culling problem. You were probably only visible for them for like a second or so. But now you’ll see us 4 seconds, which is a lot for the profession with the lowest health pool in the game.

It’s not broken, but dude, you just have to l2p… I have lots of fun downing thieves with my warrior, guardian, necro, ele, and ranger. It’s not OP because you can’t see me. I’m still there. Those you were fighting in those videos had really no idea how to counter a thief. They could have aoe CC’d you and use their aoe damage abilities to down you pretty fast.

stof.9341:

We’ll just have to admit we lost one Elite skill today then.

Also our only under water elite skill…

They changed the very foundation of our profession. I’ve tried it for a few hours now, and honestly – it’s awful. Have been playing around with P/D, D/D and S/D in the Mists now, and the P/D thieves were the ones that got the worst hit. They completely rely on stealth to get their stacks of bleed and actually deal damage, and now that damage output has been nerfed with almost 30%. Which is a lot! They were not even considered OP, so why?!

I couldn’t find any exact topic for this, so I just created one here…

ANet keep nerfing thieves, patch after patch. We thieves have adopted to these new nerfs, patch after patch. They some times tell us about something great that is going to happen (mobility, team support, to say a few), but somehow they always let us down.

What’s up with this?! You’re changing the very foundation of the thief class because of forum feedback? Well guess what most people say in the thief forum about nerfing us, it all boils down to the same thing: The Thief can be invisible, HE IS OP!! @ RageFlippingkitten…

People are intimidated by the very nature of this class – they can’t see us 50% of the match. But guess what, we are squishy as hell and we’re a melee class! This means that we have to stay in a warriors face the entire fight to deal any damage – and guess what? He can damage us too. We’re still there, you just can’t see us, and therefore we are over powered.

Every single time a new patch arrives we’re getting hit hard one way or another, but this is by far the worst. You have destroyed the very foundation you built the class on – Stealth. Almost every single build rely on stealth to shine, wether it’ll be backstabbing, dazing, stacking bleeds or stunning you, and now many of these builds rotations are broken. We have to re-learn the entire class and find new rotations. Nothing is logical any more. Most of our #1 skill chains take exactly 3 seconds to do, which fitted perfectly with the stealth de-buff, but now? Broken.

Please remember what you said in the SotG interview; (not exact words, but this is what it was like) you feel like the elementalist have more mobility than the thief and that it’s a more slippery profession, and you want to push that more on to the thief, since thats what they’re suppose to be doing. You said that we are supposed to be the most sneaky and slippery class with our STEALTH and utilities. Why the hell did you completely destroy our stealth then?! You even said that you wanted all the weapon sets to be more mobile so that we wouldn’t need the short bow to be mobile any longer. You also said that you want to give the thief more team support abilities. But hey! We hate thieves, the forum hate thieves, so let us just kitten this and destroy them even more.

I’ve been used to adapt to new changes (nerfs), but not this. This is not adapting. This is changing the entire build, because many thieves have now gotten their builds broken. And as if it wasn’t enough to nerf our stealth, you had to nerf our only under-water elite skill. You “fixed” a steal ability? Seriously? We have so many other things that needs polishing, and you “fix” our most useless abilities and traits…

Please fix this. I’d rather have the de-buff after leaving stealth without attacking than actually have to re-work my entire build. I know I’m not alone in this, because a quick peek in this forum will tell you that what I’m saying is true. Most of us feel let down. We trusted you to actually fix something, but yet again we got a kick right in the nuts.

tl:dr We were sick of adapting to new changes. And now you completely destroy the very foundation of this profession: stealth. So now we need to change our builds and make drastic changes to get viable builds. It’s not adapting any more – it’s learning the profession all over again.

+1 I can confirm this too.

Lokheit.7943:

As a P/D Thief, I have to say this sucks.

I will have to test how many more 1s I have to use before the CnD, but this 1 second will lower P/D dps through bleeding a lot. Maybe the third skill will become useful to get rid of some melees while waiting for Revealed to go.

If at least the animation for 1 was fixed so it isn’t so slow it would compensate the reduction in our Sneak Attack rate.

Right now I’m glad I went away from P/D, because they utterly destroyed it… In three rotations (CnD → Sneak Attack → Auto Attack → Repeat) you’ll actually loose an entire rotation (5 stacks of bleed). Which in the long run will make lots of damage loss. P/D thieves already have to draw out a fight to actually down a player, now they’ll have to draw it out even further, which hurts a lot for a squishy thief.

Rotation destroyed, you’ll have to do some extra dodging or waste initiative on getting distance from the target, but then again, you need to be up close to stealth….

wookie.8934:

bhagwad.4281:

As a mesmer, I’m happier with the longer duration of revealed. More time for me to target and damage.

Also happy. Considering what they originally had plan, thieves should consider themselves lucky at this point.

It would have been much better to get the debuff for 3 seconds after leaving stealth every single time. This destroyed so many builds, especially in PvE. Imagine P/D condition thieves now, they got their only way to apply bleeds nerfed to uselessness. The basilisk venom nerf hit the backstabber thieves hard. They nerfed caltrops close to useless. They nerfed quickness and fixed Haste so that we got one more second at least, but they completely forgot about Critical Haste, so they just made that trait useless.

Thank you ANet for completely kittening up a good class. You just made PvE even more horrible and destroyed one of our elite skills (which was the only one usable under water…).

This is our only usable underwater elite, and they ruined it. You’re turned to stone, you shouldn’t be able to do anything kitten

They were saying that the thief was supposed to be the most sneaky and slippery class with its stealth, traits and utilities. They wanted to make all the weapon sets more mobile so that we didn’t need the SB for mobility any more. They also said that they wanted to enhance the thiefs group support abilities.

All I can say is kitten you ANet. This is one of the hardest hits to the thief profession – ever.

Well, they just proved (once again) that they hate the thief. Nerfed to nearly useless now. Thanks ANet.

Thieves had enough problems in PvE, and this just destroyed the PvE part of the thief…..

This was a really hard hit for thieves in general… I would have had the stealth debuff for 3 appear after leaving stealth each time instead of those stupid 4 seconds. It destroys most of the thief builds in PvE. And don’t even get me started on the P/D thieves…. They had to stealth to stack their bleeds, now they’ll deal 33% less damage and kill the mob slower than ever, as if they didn’t use long enough time already to down something -_-

Strayhand.8216:

As I see, the main reasons why thief “is a joke” in PvE are the following:

- PvE is easy
- warrior is better

Ok, nice logic…

By the way, following your “DPS is everything” logic, if we would be better at dps than warriors, wouldn’t that be rendering warriors useless? Then would you go to warrior forums and whine about your warrior being a joke? I’m just trying to understand the logic here.

If I understood you right I agree with what you’re saying. Thief is suppose to be the sneaky profession. We are the ones going behind enemy lines and hitting them where it hit hardest. So we should not be able to out-DPS a warrior in sustained damage, but our burst is high as it’s supposed to be. One thing that the groups I’ve been playing with have done is that I’m the one taking the adds while the rest of the group focus on killing the boss (if the boss have adds). Other than that I’m utilizing every single combo field with my short bow for healing and might stacking on the team.

Karolis.4261:

Geiir.7603:

I don’t think this will hit us as much as we expect. And if they give us the boosts they were talking about I’m really eager to start on the patch! They were talking about giving other weapon sets more mobility so that we won’t need the SB for it any longer. They also talked about giving us more mobility in general and more team support stuff, so this patch sounds more like a plus for us thieves than a drawback. I’m sick of feeling the need to have a SB with me for mobility and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

Trust me, we aint getting those promised boosts. At least not for a LONG time.

That’s what I’m afraid for too… They have promised things before and just skip it in the end. I just hope that this time they’ll actually do it.

I don’t think this will hit us as much as we expect. And if they give us the boosts they were talking about I’m really eager to start on the patch! They were talking about giving other weapon sets more mobility so that we won’t need the SB for it any longer. They also talked about giving us more mobility in general and more team support stuff, so this patch sounds more like a plus for us thieves than a drawback. I’m sick of feeling the need to have a SB with me for mobility and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

They said they will give us more mobility on the other weapon sets and more supportive skills. This is not a huge nerf, and if they give us what they’ve promised, then it’s worth it!

Fortus.6175:

Dasorine.1964:

Fortus.6175:

(1v1 and small skirmishes, we all know thieves need some help in WvW-long-range-AoE)

(thats sort of the point we can be very good at the few situations we excel at but in others we are far outclassed, just like every kitten class in the game, yet we get stuck with nerf after nerf because people refuse to accept things aren’t quite as powerful as it actually seems)

(there is a fine line between too strong and strong, right now we are too strong) Tone down the damage a bit, increase utility, add some counterplay other than running away or wasting CDs trying to guess where the thief is without any actual reward if you do manage to hit him. I love the class and I love killing enemies but I also know that when Im going on a kill streak of 9 without any death or down then something is wrong, VERY wrong.

We are supposed to be the most sneaky class. We are supposed to excel in 1v1 combat. That’s the whole point of the class. Zerker thieves are one hit one kill, but they also get one shotted by almost any other class. It’s simple to predict where a thief is (and I know this because I’ve played lots of tourneys with many other classes, and I win most of the time because I predict where the zerker thief is while he is invisible) and if he’s a glass, he will die to some AoE knock back and damage. Remember that most zerker thieves are running with no stun breakers (not very clever) because they use all their utilities for extra damage to their one hit..

Keep in mind while fighting a thief that if you got any AoE, drop it right on top of you. Or you can move around a lot or count to three and dodge. That will make it much harder for the thief to get his backstab combo done and you will squish him after he misses his only good attack

Thief is bad in PvE? Seriously?! I’ve played thief since beta and I still feel like I’m the one with most utility for my team. I’m usually the last man standing in any group or boss fight (we actually did a run of path 3 CoF where people started to bet of wether or not I was going to die any time in the dungeon. My entire group wiped except for me, several times).

I can spam combo finishers and fields, I can give my team regeneration, stealth, fury, might, swiftness and vigor. I can blind, poison, weaken, bleed, cripple, stun and daze my enemies without taking any damage.

I’ve done several speed runs with only thieves in dungeons and done them way faster than with warriors and eles groups. We can stealth skip what we want, we have insane combos, dps and survivability. So tell me again that thieves suck in pve….

But yes, there’s a common problem that people see a thief and just leave…. This is because off all the bad thieves running full zerker builds and offer no support what so ever. Spec for sustained damage and survivability with some team utilities and people will start pm you day after day because they need help or just want you with them

I have played with this weapon set a lot in the past two months, and I have one thing to say: Oh. My. God. These weapon sets are amazing! Seriously, this set has so many utilities:

• Blind
• AoE Blind
• Daze
• Stun
• Interrupt
• Stealth
• Backstab
• Gap Closer with blind
• Rip boons
• Evade Attacks while dealing decent damage
• High burst
• Cripple
• Weaken
• Stun Breaker
• Poison
• Smoke Combo Field
• Combo Finishers

I really love this set and I use it both in PvP and PvE (I sometimes take a SB in dungeons). I’ve never had trouble standing in the middle of a group fight as I’m survival specced, and the sword main attack is attacking three targets, so it’s sort of an AoE weapon.

I agree that there are too few thieves running these sets, but it’s also nice to be one of a small group

Sounds like you got the right mind set! Every step forward is a step in the right direction. I came across the Wild Bill videos after a few weeks playing P/D and it really enhanced how I played that weapon set.

I believe that with some practice you’ll master it! Just play and have fun and you’ll get the hang of it sooner or later And you’re right, it’s not a set that you can just be pro at immideately ^^

I went from full zerker backstab to pistol dagger condition thief early in the game, and I’ve never had any trouble. I have 20/0/30/20/0 traits for survival and good damage. This build is pretty easy, you just have to dodge the big hits and stack bleeds and poison on the enemy. They’ll bleed to death pretty fast, even bunkers will die at ease since their armor won’t help :p

I use full carrion gear for health and condition damage, and I can easily stand against a small five man group. Look up SlicGW for more help on p/d. He have nailed it if you ask me

I enjoy both sPvP and WvW with my thief, currently running a troll/survival d/p build. For a roaming role the thief is superior, but for capping points it’s a problem because of the stealth not capping thing (which I think is right).

In sPvP a thief burst is nice to instantly kill someone running to aid their teammates, which I think is a nice role, but gets boring in the long run. What I like to do is do what they don’t expect. A single thief behind their lines slaying their lord, killing svanir, chieftain or capping points they don’t protect. So for a trolling and roaming role it’s superior to any other class, as far as I know.

But then again, you could do these things in WvW too… Solo supply camps, take down supply runners, dolyaks, run supply for your own team or pick off people in the back of the Zerg. As WvW is today I prefer sPvP, I’m so sick of commanders yelling “every one on me, NOW!”…. For some reason WvW have turned into a who-got-the-bigger-zerg wins, no skill required what so ever. What’s fun though is to be a small five man group working together on killing larger groups or smaller Zergs. That is hilarious!

I can’t wait for this patch! The culling was a real problem and I really can’t wait for it to be gone. Else I’m looking forward to the debuff coming as it will make thieves think more before entering stealth.

I’ve played a thief since beta and it have been my main since then.

I used to play a venom/bleed thief, and I had no problem eating zerker bursts from other thieves or 100 blade warriors. Your bleeds also hit like hell (over 100 per tick). I went for a survival d/p later because I wanted to try something new, but the condition thief is far more powerful if played right.

Anyways, these were my traits: 20/0/30/20/0. All Carrion gear. Superior sigil of agony and runes of the mad king (just for the fun of the elite skill) / runes of the krait, centaur and afflicted if I remember right. Go for a P/D set up with SB as second weapon set. Devourer venom, spider venom,Signet of Shadows and Thieves Guild. Main rotation will be Cloak n’ Dagger and then 1 skill (Sneak Attack). You heal when you apply venoms, you heal in stealth, you gain initiative and/or blind upon doing so too. You can chose to go 25 in deadly arts, but you really don’t need that extra damage, because your bleeds is your main source of damage, not the shot itself.

I found SlicGW after playing some time with my condition thief, and he really know what he’s doing, so I suggest you look him up on YouTube for some guidance on how to play this build.

Hope this helped

Finally no more Zerg surprises and no more thiefs abusing the culling mechanism!

To all those complaining about thieves in WvW: I have never had any problems dueling them. No culling unless there was a Zerg nearby. The real problem in WvW is the Zergs that’s using mesmers and thieves AoE stealth to abuse the culling. So glad it’s over now

It really depends on your skill level and play style. I have learnt to dodge all the attacks that will one shot me, therefore I run berserker for insane damage. Works great for me in dungeons and WvW, but then you’ll need to dodge a lot. I have a spare set of Valkyrie trinkets with me if I need extra hp on some encounters

Guild Challenges is a great idea for bringing more content to the PvE player base, but I have one concern…

When WoW introduced guild perks, small guilds started to die because people wanted to get those perks and therefore left their small guild in favor for a larger guild. I’m afraid that this is exactly what will happen in GW2 too. I’ve already seen some people leaving or not representing the guild I’m an officer in, and when asked why I got answers like “guild challenges” or “not enough influence”… I’ve seen countless people asking in LA for a guild to do challenges with.

I’m not sure it will happen as it may just be a hype in the start now, but I’m concerned for the smaller guilds. An easy fix would be to have some challenges available at lower levels of research.

Because of the design of the profession and its utilities. I can enter and exit fights at my own will. I can travel over 3000 units, vanish into the shadows and stun lock any target.

I don’t get what people say about thieves being useless in WvW, because I’ve seen thieves and been that thief that jumps into the middle of the zerg and takes them down one by one. We have so many awesome utilities and play styles, so I never get bored of my Thief

Yes, we’re the most nerfed and hated class, but isn’t that the point if being a thief? People never see us coming, yet we kill them within a few seconds or bleed them dry. If you don’t like the class, then play something else I enjoy all the professions , but my thief is the definite favorite!

I found leveling my Guardian to be redicolously easy. I just looked at the possible trait lines and figured where to begin to bring some utility for my self and teammates. Getting blind and weakness on virtue of justice is great for attacking stronger mobs

While leveling I run with a Hammer and Mace/Focus. Remember to use your combo fields!! Check the wiki for a quick explanation. I find my self having all weapons available in my bag, because some encounters require different approaches

For mace and focus I use the symbol with focus #5 skill for retaliation and blocking the next four attacks. VoJ to blind the next attack. Mace skill #3 for blocking and damaging. Focus skill #4 for blinding the next attack. The combination is priceless! You heal all the time and are making the mobs miss the next attack while you are damaging them.

Hammer is great for AoE. Run the #1 chain and use skill #2 for AoE retaliation and hard hitting damage. You can also knock the enemies away if it gets hot or capture them or stun them.

Else I would say that you must update your gear and try to get some health or armor and power or precision, dodge what you can’t block or blind and just play around with your traits and gear.

I like your ideas! sPvP is getting boring pretty fast. A few matches a day and I’m done, which is quite sad, cause it got so much potential!

Here’s my lvl 80 Thief, named Melder. Playing on Seafarer’s Rest.

The short bow is a great weapon, both for it’s combo fields, combo finishers, damage and utility. But you don’t need to use it. I rarely use it as it’s not even close to the dps and bleed stacks my pistol can give me.

But if there is one thing that I’ve learnt over the months of doing dungeons with all kinds of builds and groups, that would be that glass cannon thieves running close range (D/D) are close to useless in dungeons. Many of the instances have hard hitting bosses or other stuff dealing massive damage. So if you’re playing close combat with almost no survivability, then the short bow is required. In WvW the short bow is a must-have for me. It’s utilities and mobility is priceless there.

You should just try to experiment a bit doing dungeons without the short bow. The point is you having fun with others. So do your best and find what suits you

I usually run all 3 paths of CoF to farm tokens and lodestones. Most of the time we’re two or three that knows the path and two pugs that have no clue of what to do. I always let them all know before we start that we need good coordination, and if they think they’re up for it we run it. I recently created a TS server with a public room, so the two last runs we did it with TS, and it all became much easier

I think people just don’t like to do it because it’s harder than the other, and it takes some time to do. You know, people want the table set, they don’t want to do it them self…