Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAoYlcmSOXcS4E/5Ex2je6Ti6fAs6MoZLB-jEyAYrASQApCAJvioxWcLiGruGT5SEVbvLiWtUARMGA-w

Since you were wearing nearly full knight you should have about 2600 armor.
25 bloodlust, blow all signets for 20 might. This might do close to the numbers you received.

What is a build like this good for in pvp?
- 1v1-damage on afk players… the end

It takes just a small thing as dodging CnD and steal and this build is countered and
the thief gets kitten on.

Burnfall.9573:

Well at least

All other Mmo’s Stealth are countered,

Yet

Only

In Guild Wars 2

You will Find Stealh Uncounterable

And Not Forgetting

Only in Guild Wars 2 mmo

You will Find Perma-Stealth

Yet that also is

Uncounterable

And Hated with Malice

Oh yeah, let’s take a look at World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich king.

Rogue: stealth
Player: aoe attack to try unstealth the thief (miss)
Player: aoe attack on cd
Rogue: sap for 9 seconds
Rogue: Premed > Shadowstep > 10k ambush > kidneyshot (stun for 5 seconds)
Player: stunbreak
Rogue: Blind (disorient/disable for 7 seconds)
Rogue: leaves combat > restealth > sap chain to remove dimishing returns on stun
Rogue: Cheap shot (stun for 3 seconds) > hemo/backstab > Kidney shot (stun for 3 seconds) > Vanish > Ambush 7k > Eviscerate 5k

Can’t remember durations and damage numbers fully. But yeah, compared
to GW2 thieves, WoW rogues have so many stuns and disorients that in 1v1
they are hardly counterable, you need a lot of luck and armor/resilience.

And stealth is permanent, you go in stealth, attacks channeling on you stops,
and only way to unstealth you is offensive aoes which have cooldowns, and
sap has good range so is really easy to avoid AoE’s. No one can dodge your attacks, and your stealth attack can’t fail. WoW rogues can escape 25 ppl if they’d like.

In GW2 we don’t have any disables besides 1½ seconds basilisk and immobilize,
we can stealth a lot, but people can also swing at us, channel attacks at us, and
and knock us down while in stealth. What makes us a bit stronger is that we have
access to heals which all other classes have as well.

Ah and yeah, undergeared ppl on WoW are one shotted by ambush,
glass cannons are 2 shotted.

You might wanna try P/D, that’s at least my pocket strategy if I only could play with one hand. There are many different setups, but carrion is pretty easy to setup just requires that you fill every slot with carrion.

And build, something like this might do the trick, I’ve seen many ppl going without any extra ini regen traits.
5/0/30/15/20
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqYYlUmKP3cy7E9JFB3Dnm0m6p4rjVXQ/BuC-j0yA4MBRKAAtAi+AmCLiGbBLa1sgU+CreBTjSEV7RKiWtUAQsGA-w

It’s simple to play, doesn’t requires any extra positioning it’s all about timing and it’s very tanky. Drop caltrops > CnD > Sneak attack and kite ppl over the caltrops.
Pick your favourite traits, utilities and weapon off set.

These venom builds works pretty well too.
20/0/30/20/0 – might on venom and venom cd reduction
20/0/30/0/20 – as above with buffs to steal.

Other options besides P/D
S/P or S/D might work too, but is much more difficult to play and take camps with. D/D is too squishy normally, unless you play a death blossom spam build which works good vs. camps and people without condition removal.
SB is too slow and initiative heavy on everything besides clusterbomb, but works pretty okay if you are good at timing, kiting, picking off mobs and aiming clusterbombs.

Hope you found my post helpfull. And good luck in the process of recovering your hand.

Crit chance doesn’t improve your backstab dmg if you use the trait hidden killer.

having 25 in shadow arts is good for stacking might, or 25 in acro for 10% more dmg, or 25 in trickery for 15% more dmg, or 25 in deadly arts. 25/30/x/x/x is the way to go if you
want max dmg.

I however put together an example build with hard hitting backstab and valkyrie armor etc. 17k hp and ~1300 toughness.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAoalYm6OXcS5E/5Ex2je6Tiy9woOtpdFwKA-jUyA4rASQAoCgZvAm+W0afoIasqFMVJRUt7oIa1SBExYA-w

Stack 4 stealth in blackpowder with heartseeker, wait for 8+ might to stack,
pop both signets and backstab. This should buff your backstabs a lot making fights short unless against highly defensive players.

You can improve dmg further by getting runes of the scholar, though many don’t recommend it since it’s hard to stay above 90% health all the time.

Gutts.8791:

No, you’d use CnD to go invisible and then launch us stained DPS attacks from stealth, maybe a mixture of flat dps and conditions, and then use the thieves almost perma evades from 15 points into acrobatics to duck in and out of the fight, go stealth again when in trouble, actually have to use skill.

So you suggest that we should go in stealth only to start autoattacking? Unless pistol mainhand which has a decently balanced stealth attack. And fyi, backstabs heavy damage serve us for defense as much at it does for offense, it forces whoever you hit successfully to play defensive instead of going full offense and pumping out as much dmg as possible as soon as we are out of stealth.

Gutts.8791:

Activate bas venom, press dagger 5, press steal before the animation ends to be automatically teleported to the target, hit them with CnD AND turn them into stone, go behind them and backstab for massive damage. Something goes wrong, oh just roll out of the way and Hide In Shadoes. That requires a toddler’s skill level which is obviously the level a fanboy like yourself is at.

Sure, works on players with 0 reaction, 0 defense and 0 skill, just like Bulls charge > Frenzy > Hundred Blades > Whirlwind Attack. It takes a bit more of these 3 attributes to counter a thief which makes the combo a bit easy and I agree, but it also has a greater reward countering it,
a skilled player puts down GC thieves a lot more quickly than they put down for instance a GC guardian or warrior which also has cheap combos.

Gutts.8791:

You even admit that the invuln stomps are at a greater expense. Seriously, a warrior for example has his skill on a 60 second cooldown as oppose to the thief’s 4 second CD on stealth, that doesn’t allow for killing multiple people in succession, it allows for killing 2 people.

I admit yeah, but as I said greater expense = greater result. No one can hurt you while you stand invulnerable stomping someone. And even with stability you still stand there with base 18k+ hp and 2100+ armor, compared to a base 10.8k and 1980+.

Gutts.8791:

So in in a small scale 5 v 5 fight, if one person is downed, then the rest of the 4 people on that team should just stand above auto-attacking their downed friend in the hope that the theif MIGHT be there.

In a team fight you don’t let your teammates die, you do all you can to protect them, if a thief or mesmer is nearby you place out an AoE dmg and CC, stealth the downed player, or ress the downed players with utlities or normally etc. All classes have a way to protect downies except ranger (afaik)

Gutts.8791:

That or you just haven’t actually played as a thief yourself.

1300+ hours on thief, sup?

Gutts.8791:

If you can’t stealth stomp someone and avoid their knockdown then you don’t deserve to post on any forum about a thief becuase you clearly lack the knowledge and understand of the class to have progressed anywhere further than the starter quests

Didn’t say I can’t, just meantioned a few possible counters, by starting to channel the thrown knockdown before the thief stealths buys you some time. He is forced to break the stomp and dodge or get knocked down, buying 2-3 seconds of time can be life saving if your group is wise enough to ress you. If the thief drops blackpowder on top
of you, you can’t do anything to prevent him from stomping and thief isn’t the only
class with AoE blind.

Gutts.8791:

Ghostwolf, you are completely incompetent aren’t you and you have no idea what balance is in a game. Shut up. You are seriously braindead aren’t you.

You should order one of these
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/anger-management-for-everyone-raymond-chip-tafrate/1114891863?ean=9781886230835

And read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death
My brain works just fine.

I don’t find thief balanced, I agree. It’s impossible to fully balance a stealth class
without breaking it. But I find thief fine as it is, there are classes and builds I can’t kill, there those who can kill me, and there are those which neither of us are able to kill each other. As a thief myself I always find thieves I encounter in WvW as the easiest kills, because there is nothing additional to counter on them just; damage, venoms and stealth.

And what thieves seem OP at makes up for what they are UP at, the game
isn’t balanced around 1v1, and that’s where thief is supreme.
Nerfing thief damage more just because of 25/30/x/x/x, would nerf
all direct dmg builds.

I personally play 0/20/30/20/0 D/P + D/D with 85% crit damage, and hitting 1.2k-1.7k backstabs and 3k-7k on 45% chance doesn’t feel that op, since I mostly
don’t get off any other attacks because I’m usually forced to hit, run, dodge and stealth if I wanna survive killing the other player.

• D/D Deathblossom, condition dmg as main stat.
• P/D Cloak and Dagger walk away and sneak attack, dodge and kite, repeat. Condition dmg as main stat. as P/D when you can get your first line to 30, go for Shadow Arts for health regen on stealth.
• S/P Blackpowder Autoattack, power as main stat.
• D/P Blackpowder autoattack>heartseeker>backstab from behind. Power and Precision.

SB is a good side weapon.

10 Shadow arts for 2 initiative on stealth in stealth builds.
Acrobatics to 20 for 2 initiative per 10 seconds useful for both stealth and S/P, and 15 acro you will have access to 3 dodges almost in a row.
Critical Strikes main line for improving your dmg, at 30 CS you can put 100% crit chance from stealth and Dagger main hand gets more worthwhile.

Deadly arts and trickery are good lines for condition builds.

Gutts.8791:

My suggestions for balancing the class would be to competely remove backstab, remove stealth stomps and to put a cooldown on heartseeker and that’s just for starters, this would put thief’s heartseeker “finishing move” on a cooldown like any other class has with their high damage finisher. I don’t get unlimited spam of eviscarate with my warrior do I? Plus it’s slower and covers less distance (I believe).

In case you are not aware from not having read my previous posts, I have a thief and I love him. It’s really fun being able to toy with people and do a litle damage then go invisible etc, but being able to backstab someone from invisible for huge damage for no initiative cost, petrify them and heartseeker them to death for an insta kill is just totally cheap and I’d gladly accept the nerf.

No backstab and a cooldown on heartseeker?

What would you have us do? Cloak And Dagger people to death ?

There is a cost of these backstabs, utilities or initiative, and it requires careful positioning or it simply deals half damage.

I’m sure you love your thief, and you have had fun toying with some lvl 2 mobs.
But you seem to have no idea how the class works nor how to counter it.

Other classes have invulnerability and stability stomps, ofc they are at a greater expense but are fully uncounterable by your teammates unlike stealth stomps,
4 ppl swinging over a player getting stealth stomped by a thief will usually down
the thief long before the stomp lands. Guardians, mesmers, warriors, engineers, necromancers, elementalists also have access to aoe knockdowns/cc/stuns
to prevent the thief.

you can also channel that silly throw hammer knockdown skill and it will hit the thief
while he is stealthed.

Fortus.6175:

How in the world is…………

12.5k health Staff Elementalist. Free kill for any thief..

Unless you grow some skill, get more toughness/vitality, pick better utilities and probably better build as well.

You also have a trade-off you know, when you pump out 3k hits with AoE,
you should also expect taking x3 more dmg from single target based classes.

And fyi, backstab isn’t the hardest hitting ability in the game.

And stealth isn’t uncounterable, the thief still takes damage while in stealth,
he can be knocked down, channeled attacks chase him, he can be prevented from restealthing, backstab does half dmg if you turn your front in the right moment and thieves aren’t really hard to predict since they always go for your back. And so on.. There are way too many counters, easily ignored by brainless play.

Condition or Direct dmg build?
What traits do you use?
What weapons?
Do you have ascended jewelry?

The usual goal for roamers with balanced builds is 15k health, 1400 toughness, 40%+ crit chance, 80%+ crit dmg, and power as a main stat on every piece.

Except for glasscannon zerk thieves and thieves who take advantage of 100% crit chance from stealth and going with 17k+ health from plenty of valkyrie pieces.

Condtion thieves often go with full carrion, some may mix in some rabid or celestial too.

Personalize your build after what you want and where you want
to put it’s strengths and weaknesses. If you just wanna fight NPCs
and avoid players, pretty much any build would do. If you wanna just run around engaging quick 1v1 going with high damage to glass cannon might be nice,
if you wanna be prepared to fight 1v2 or 1v3, XvX or all the npcs with ease I recommend balanced builds or condition builds with carrion / rabid.

2 examples of balanced D/P gear setups
0/30/30/10/0
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAo6kYmaOxfOBs9AAAAg7BAAAQXBAA-jEzAYrASQApCAJPl1sXATfQthA2HW0qeBTVKkqLjs3oIa1A-w
0/20/30/20/0
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAo6kYmaOxfOBspAAA4eAAAA0pAAAA-j0yAYrASQApCAJvFtm9CYboIas6FMVpQquMyejlV7OCEA-w

Hitman.5829:

This gives me 3684 toughness and 32605 HP all together.

And you complain about 4.7k+ heartseekers hitting you while you are below 50% health.

It’s people like you who force thieves into playing high damage builds with
with 10.8k hp and 1980 armor, if the thief picked up anymore defense than that
he wont have enough damage to kill you, while your steady damage will take him
down sooner or later unless he resets the fight.

And you know what, I don’t complain about guardians and warriors ridiculous defense,
I just leave and ignore them in WvW after I see my main damaging ability backstab
doesn’t take away more than 10% of their health.

Riko.9214:

@Ghostwolf
while I agree with the most sad, where did u get numbers for roll for ini and withdraw? I remember without swiftness they both have the same range 600 pt (compared with sword 2 which has a stated range 600 pt) which gives with swiftness + 33% -> 900 pt for both.
HS has range 450 -> with swiftness 600, if u do it without swiftness up it’s just ini waste

These numbers are not exact, I based them on impressions and personal experience,
RfI is a bit longer than withdraw, and I can nearly fully close the gap after a withdraw using a heartseeker. And any high range gap closer will suffice after using both in a row.

If I was at home atm, I would test them out to get the right numbers.
I might be wrong since I just based on impressions.

And thief has poor access to swiftness without using centaur runes or steal,
so you can’t really rely on that your HS will be 600 range.

The warrior can pick up this non-relevant elite skill when he sees a situation where
it is going to be needed. Or if he manages to leave combat while running from the thief and quickly switch the elite.

And to the elite skill as thief.
I just think about how nice it would be to have additional mobility and be
able to get away from zergs running, leaping and teleporting 5000 units away within a couple of seconds while in stealth.

Riko.9214:

Well thief has: 1200 shadow step + 1500 steal + 900 withdraw (if u turn fast) + 900 Infiltrator’s Signet + 3000-3600 HS spam (takes 3-4s) = 7500-8100 range is u use all…

Shadowstep = -1 utility slot, and must be saved for chasing the warrior instead of breaking a stun, evading a burst or removing conditions or escaping.
steal 1500 = -1 trait, and there are better options..
900 withdraw = lol wut? It’s about ~500
Roll for initiative = about ~700, -1 utility slot, stunbreaker etc.
infiltrators signet = -1 utility slot, must also be saved for chasing the warrior.
HS spam = has delays which makes the usefulness when chasing a moving target about ~360 each, you also run out of initiative.

All together.
1200 shadowstep> 5x hs 1800 (15 initiative) > withdraw 500 > Roll for Initiative 700 > 4x hs 1440 > Infiltrator’s Signet 900 > Steal 1500:
~8100 range, 0 utility left and 5-6 initiative when you reach the warrior.

Warrior, if he’s norn S/Sh + GS.
Bulls Charge 600 > Sh bash 300 > Savage leap 600 > Rush 1200 > whirl 450 > snow leopard dash 1600 > snow leopard leap 600 > leap 600 > whirl 450 and so on..
At a much lesser tradeoff (still a tradeoff):
6400, high damaging abilities still left, 2 utilities

So under these conditions the thief wins with 1700, but by the cost of it all
it’s much cheaper for the warrior since he still has damaging and defensive abilities left.

Ofc the thief could be norn too , adding 2200 range, but that’s rare compared to norn warrior.

I’m actually thinking about rerolling thief as norn only for the SL dash.

Dual thief is brilliant when roaming and thief is an excellent choice for roaming overall.
What I meant with what I wrote is that you wont get far with 25/30/0/15/0 and full berserker, since it’s limited to 1v1 and instagibbing.

So putting 20-30 in a defensive line and picking up some PvT in the right slots or going with some valkyrie will take your defense a bit further than 2-3 dodges and some positioning and wont force you to stay away from players who drop AoE when you are in most of need to hit them.

Guardian and Mesmer are also great options for roaming, necro has no way of
escaping zergs so is the class with most risk when roaming.

But play whatever class you like the most. :p

Times have changed a lot for thieves these recent months.
The defense a “master thief” can get through pure skill wont suffice anywhere
but in 1v1 against new players or players with builds that are hardcountered which is pretty much rare to find other than in zergs, uplevels are also free kills.

Since you are a fan of D/D and skill, yishis might have what you are looking for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKzHTFfi3mk
(Build included in description)

Maybe this is what you are looking for? D/P + S/D
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoa8YlYm6OXcS5E/5Ex2je6Tiy9woOtpdFwKA-jkzAYrBRTQAJCwUBACBUyTZN7Fw0HUxtIas6FMVpQquMyejk6OG0sUARMGA-w

This one provides high defense and high backstabs, at the cost of a bit harder
initiative management and lower crit chance outside stealth, S/D for boon ripping which can also be switched for SB. Condition removal only limited to stealth, but you’ll have RFI and Withdrawal against conditions with movement imparing effects, which also serve as 2 extra dodges when it’s needed.

I find this build highly versatile for solo play and it grants many options and lets you improvise a lot on what you’ll use your skills for, you are not tied to use a utility for something specific since all can be used in many ways..

My favourite assassination combo:
4 Heartseeekers through blackpowder and wait for 8 might > Basilisk Venom > Infiltrators Signet > Steal > Assassins Signet > Backstab > x2 heartseekers

Grants you a 1800 feet gap closer and a powerful backstab, if a target is glassy to
medium in defense and doesn’t instantly pop a stunbreaker and get away, he’s as much as dead. Against tankier targets you can save Infiltrator’s Signet for another stunbreaker and also initiative regen as passive at the same time.

Shadow Shot>Backstab let’s you utilize shadowshot as a gap closer for backstab.

There are also glassier and tankier alternatives depending on what you search for.
And it would be good if you also say which weapon sets you’d like to use and
if you have any ascended items and which ascended items.

So this suddenly hit me, currently the only issue with venoms is that there is not really much to them, if you make a build for using venoms you will throw away a lot of other nice utilities. So my idea is simply if a new trait was to be added to Deadly Arts.

Venomous Veins. Not sure what to call it.

After reading and seen a lot of medical research about by using spider, snake and other venoms daily, people could obtain a lesser immunity to these toxins and were able to treat diseases using larger quantities of the toxins than what’s used in modern medicines.

So from this said trait, the thief would take a small sip of each venom when he applies them to cure 1 condition per venom and possibly 3 seconds of stability from basilisk venom (instead of turning the thief to stone, it makes him stable on his feet) or
just protection since he’s hardened.

This would add something more defensive to pick from Deadly Arts line, just like
all other classes have a couple of defensive traits in their offensive lines. And with
venom share, aoe condition removal, AoE stability might be overkill though.

Discuss !

snaplemouton.1294:

I’ve got a lot of years of experience on my belt as a flare hunter in WoW.
On my elementalist I usually manage to AE CC, root or slow them but on my necro, aside from some damaging abilities, it’s near impossible to do anything harmful to a thief with AoE.

I usually don’t have much trouble against glass thieves, since I can get em in a short amount of time and most of the people make tons of mistakes when playing a thief, but when the thief is good, it seems near impossible to get anything on him/her.

Says itself pretty much.

To defeat good players on any class you need tons of experience and knowledge about
what you are fighting. And against good players there is little room for mistakes,
dodge has to be used wisely against what you need it for and you need know
the several patterns and combos good players use to predict his next move and counter it, just like on WoW.

swinsk.6410:

lol this has got to be a troll or a post by someone who is brand new to the game…

My guess is that he played a bit after the release and went back to WoW and just started playing again.(based on post history)

After the release thieves were really strong and there was culling in WvW which made thieves and stealth particularly hard to fight.

Culling is however fixed and thieves have had a lot of nerfs.

snaplemouton.1294:

I prefer posting on thief forum because I’d rather know what give thieves trouble when fighting necros then how necros beat thieves.

I’ll try that thank you.

Edit: In response to the edit. I mostly wanted to know if perma stealth was still possible to know if rogues could still troll an entire zerg just by CND a player every time they come out of stealth.

I know you get a short debuff that doesn’t allow you to stealth after hitting someone in stealth but I don’t know if they made it also apply if you don’t hit anything and let the stealth finish.

I approve that you ask for advice here. A lot better than just complaining or trolling.
And it’s a thread about thieves mechanisms as much as how to setup a necromancer,
works well in both forums.

And nope, if stealth ends “naturally” it doesn’t apply reveal and he can cast CnD again.
Pets, minions will still start channeling attacks however. And if you are quick to cast before restealth, channeled attacks will chase the thief through stealth (life drain from dagger main hand for instance and other targeted casttime spells).
Melee, Runes, other groundtargeting and aoe’s will ofc always hit the thief as well if you can predict his position while in stealth.

This all together if the players are good and take advantage of it, makes trolling hard.
So is a skill issue of 20+ ppl if a thief can be in the middle of 20 ppl trolling with CnD.

snaplemouton.1294:

Ghostwolf.9863:

Not necessarily.

Staff with runes and wells, direct counter to melee thieves.
The blinding well in particular is really annoying for dagger offhand thieves.

In condition builds chain fear and burst.
Minion builds are also pretty tough to fight as thief.

I’m condition heavy, but aside from having to use my utily wall, I need life force to go in death shroud for my fear.
And fear barely last long enough for me to land a hit.
I guess I’ll give a shot to the staff even tho I hate it with a passion, I guess the radius buff might make it more enjoyable.
I thought about the blind well, but on a 50 seconds CD he counters it with any stealth that isn’t CND.
And actually, the only time I nearly killed him was under my plague spamming bleed and blind, but then again he stealthed with one of his numerous stealth (He also had the ground AE stealth utility) and blinked with his bow… somewhere.
Also, I hate minion master.

Do you know if thieves can still perma stealth?

Staff is the best pocket weapon against thieves and any melee,
and works really well with scepter/dagger

Place runes, which will grant you some steady damage while keeping additional cc with
Sc/d, and starting up some burst. Try to always dodge his CnD. Switch to staff again if it’s off cooldown when he restealths, and put out runes. You should have enough LF to Death Shroud and prevent any burst.

Don’t bother too much with long CD’s, if you have the right utilities to beat a thief
you only need to use them once anyways.

And yes, “perma stealth” is possible with D/P, and it’s pretty much same tactics just
that you need to focus a lot more on control skills like fear and the knockdown from elite minion.
Permas-stealth is however hard to startup and maintain while fighting. And you
always see the smokefield when the thief puts it out and heartseekers 1-4 times.
If one of the heartseeker hits after the first one does dmg, it breaks the stealth and causes reveal.

With the right build you are a direct counter to thieves as necromancer.

Edit: modified my post a bit.

LeGi.3921:

obvious troll is obvious.

Not necessarily.

Staff with runes and wells, direct counter to melee thieves.
The blinding well in particular is really annoying for dagger offhand thieves.

In condition builds chain fear and burst.
Minion builds are also pretty tough to fight as thief.

Not been playing S/P much, but this is how you should prioritze your gear if you’ll go with PvT.

1: Helmet, Legs, Exotic Rings, Exotic Back = 16 stats per 1% crit dmg
2: Chest (+2H weapons)
3: Exotic Earring
4: 1H weapons
5: Exotic Amulet
6: Shoulders/Boots/Gloves = 12 stats per 1% crit dmg
____________________
7: Ascended Items
8: Orbs
9: Exquisite Jewels

All above the line contains expensive crit dmg, while all below have profitable crit dmg.
Then fill the slots with items after your own desire.
Since you are S/P I’d suggest soldier helmet, chest and back from karma and legs from badges/dungeons, and after that aim for high vitality to give you some protection against conditions but also keep in aim to have a minimum of 40% crit chance.

Yep, times are changing.

Here’s however a vid from Yishis that shows off how to play good
with D/D these days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKzHTFfi3mk
And his build (from description)
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h14.8.1g.h2|5.1g.h4|1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j|3s.d17.2s.d14.2t.d14.2s.d14.1g.67.2s.d14|0.u36c.u56b.a1.0|40.2|57.5a.5b.5c.0|e

If you consider trying something else, you might wanna try his D/P setup which is a much more tankier alternative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcTKt47ixk

If you want easy mode, try out P/D, not even bothering putting links since
there are plenty “good” thieves with P/D if you search on youtube :p

Kyrion.2749:

DanH.5879:

i think the +2 ini on stealth trait should be removed from the game!

Just put it on a 3 seconds internal cooldown. This way you don’t screw those who use it legit.

And that would mess with blinding powder, HiS and Shadow Refuge.
It’s not something someone notice, but it’s passive and helps out a lot.

My solution would be to increase the initiative cost of heartseeker by 1
and a slight increase on its range. This would make perma stealth a lot
heavier and cost more traits and utilities to maintain.
And it would also be a fix for these mindless GC heartseeker spammers in tPvP.
And the higher range would be a good way to make up for the higher initiative cost.

This sounds really odd. Do you do anything special when the skill goes off?
If it indeed is on auto-attack try reapply autoattack on #1 when using these weapon sets.

Otherwise. - Try switching its utility slot.
- Try playing without it, and then put it back.
- Reset your keybindings.
- If you have recently gotten the keyboard wet it can cause keyconflict.

Incurafy.6329:

What’s the point of recording this to “show the devs”? They’ve been aware of this since it was discovered months ago and haven’t done anything about it because it’s not even close to being a problem.

Discovered months ago? You think the thief designer just put blackpowder
on 5 and thinking they’ll just pull 1 heartseeker through it? With that
high access to spammable leap and blast finisher.

I’m pretty sure they knew about it since the release of the game.
The stealth has to be earned and traded for. And you don’t really walk unnoticed as blackpowder can be heard miles away. And smoke screen, shadow refuge and blackpowder is also visible.

SA V – Infusion of Shadows sided with Acro IX or Infiltrators Signet is all you need
to have access to permastealth without blowing or using any other utilities,
allowing you to pick other utilities instead.
This requires that you perform 4 heartseekers through the blackpowder field, which
is tricky without practice and the slightest lag will disrupt it.

Also 1 critter, 1 attackable object, 1 npc or 1 enemy nearby and the combo may fail leaving you with half initiative and 3(4) seconds reveal, which leads to the thiefs
death if fighting several ppl. While a x/D thief can take advantage of this and if he’s
skilled at timing his CnD he’s only visible for ~0.1 seconds

D/P is annoying and hard to catch, they are also great at hunting down ppl, going
after one alone without the appropriate build for doing so is suicide unless the thief is bad.

Spending a lot of time in melee range > Rabid
Low ability to heal > Rabid
Procs on crits > Rabid
Low health pool > Carrion
Poor condition removal > Carrion

Also carrion has steady damage, you will always perform these less or more 800 sneak attacks, while rabid will put out between 600 and 1000.

And I’ve tried shaman, and find it awful. Sure sure you heal a bit more with shaman equipment, but a good P/D can easily survive against 2+ ppl, he might not kill anyone but the dumbest players who stands afk on the caltrops using his condition cleanse utilities and wonders why he still has bleeds on him.
But hey, the shaman P/D wont do that either. So Power or Crit chance is a much greater addition. It’s when a class has large access to burning and bleeds at the same time power/crit chance loses its value.

And 25% condition duration equals 25% more cond damage on P/D and by using all 2×2×2 runes and placing 5 points in deadly arts you’ll have 50% more cond damage as simple as that. And with the wild bill build 75% more condition damage for everytime you sneak attack. And besides that, you’ll also run around with 14+ might, depending on how many venoms you decide to roll with.
Doing ~10 more dmg per bleed tick might be better against classes with high condition management. Afterall you’ll do ~280 extra dmg on 7×4 ticks, not bad huh? While that 1 second extra will provide you with up to 800 more dmg uncleansed.
Caltrops will also have 2 seconds longer bleeds with wild bills 65% bleed duration
which can stack up to 20 bleeds along with sneak attack on ppl standing idle on caltrops.

Personally I’d only take cond dmg over cond duration when bleeds are around and above 10 seconds or if I have really high access to bleeds.

I find mesmers with S/P and GS annoying no matter what build I play on thief.
Never played mesmer, but I’d say something like.

Phantasmal Duelist > Magic Bullet > Blurred Frenzy
Phantasmal Berserker > Illusionary Wave the BP>HS combo

Use clones as shield from backstab.
Also try save and use stealth after the thief stealths, and while in stealth
be hard to predict, I’ve too many times been able to pull off successful backstabs
on stealthed mesmers because they usually stealth and go and stand on the middle
of the capture point turned towards the area where I stealthed.

Also, you need lots of burst if the thief is deep in shadow arts.

Edit: ah mixed the title with D/P, my bad.

lordhelmos.7623:

Skll 2: Little Friend
-Evade to the side and summon a fat henchman that charges the enemy while wildly swinging a mace. The henchman moves forward in a line with a cleaving strike. High initiative cost. The henchman disappears after completing its attack.

LOL

Otherwise I approve this. Always wanted a club to sap and sneak past people,
and it adds something thievish about being a thief.

Only 2 classes can use maces currently, and if one more user was added
it would suit thieves best in my opinion.

Other weapons which are only usable by 2 classes are:
Hammer, Longbow, Shortbow, Rifle.

Marduh.4603:

2) Rework elite skill http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dagger_Storm
It is completely useless in PvP. Using it you die. A less damage than auto attacks short bow.

So 8s stability, projectile reflect and combo finisher whirl is useless in pvp?
I agree though, it’s unreliable in making damage on few targets.
But once you pop it against a phantasm mesmer, spirit ranger or minionmancer,
it’s a really funny skill.

1. Revert things like lotus poison, stunbreaker on shadow return, clusterbomb range, initiative increase on some things etc.
2. Fix shadow steps.

Queto.5381:

The video that convinced me to play S/D before it was cool

SB* before it was cool.. oh wait, it never was. :p

Here’s some pure S/D, duels and outnumbered etc.
A while before all the nerfs and reverts and buffs and nerfs.
Watched it right after I made my first thief and that made me stick
with S/D for really long.

Use PvT and this priority:

1: Helmet, Legs, Exotic Rings, Exotic Back = 16 stats per 1% crit dmg
2: Chest (2H weapons)
3: Exotic Earring
4: 1H weapons
5: Exotic Amulet
6: Shoulders/Boots/Gloves
7: Ascended Items
8: Orbs
9: Exquisite Jewels

With cavalier helmet (if it existed), you would lose both 13 power to 13 toughness
and 12 possible toughness/vitality from the crit dmg rounding.

I remember when I was new to thief and me and 2 friends got jumped on by a P/D thief. The blind on stealth trait really kitten ed us off and we felt somewhat permablinded and the thief was pretty much uncatchable as soon as his CnD landed.

And what did they do? They buffed blind even more so now you have to hit something before the blind wears off. So yeah, the trait is excellent for 1vX encounters.

I even picked the trait over condition removal while in stealth, since I had pain response and HiS, the heaviest condition builds (except necromancer) are most effective in melee/close range anyways and you’ll be away from that while performing your sneak attack.

The blind trait helps you while immobilized and in really tight situations #3 saves you.

My favourite build, enough defense to keep you in an outdrawn fight
and really good damage on the combo below.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlYm6OXcS5E/5Ex2je6Tiy9woOtpdFwKA-jUzAoLI8VAJIg0HIqAQyLrZPBx0HSxtIas6aMl7Qq1uQ27ioVLFQEjBA-w

Backstab Execution Combo:
Stack stealth for 8-10 might > Basilisk Venom > Infiltrators Signet (+ Steal) + Assassins Signet > Backstab > Heartseeker

In sPvP an average of 7-10k backstabs from the combo.

The lack of mug and CnD makes GC D/D outperform this with their opening blows, but you are able to stay in the fight for longer and if you play smart the sucess rate of your first backstab is always 100% since the enemy wont know when or if you’ll strike him.
Basilisk goes up with backstab, and lets you freely Heartseeker and Auto attack your enemy.

Withdraw or Roll for Initiative with last refuge and 50% speed while in stealth,
is a life saver in tight situations.

Got interested in trying out that warrior build in HotM
http://i.imgur.com/sgVTo8B.jpg
Pulled nearly 17k killshot after dropping my hp to below 50%
Nothing special here, just a ranged attack hitting 70% harder than backstab. :p
Was able to pump out 12.5k eviscerate as well on the training npcs.

Didn’t try it out in hot join, but I can imagine I live much longer than I do on
a GC thief.

Here’s another vid with zerker guardian using GS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgYhGde9Qmc

I find S/D weak currently, it may be viable for tournaments using a
dodge spam boonrip GC build, it’s able to contest points afterall.

- The +1 on reveal as well as the earlier nerf of tactical strike(in spvp)
made it somewhat useless for other than interrupting stomps and BP>HS.
- The removal of the stunbreaker and the pathing nerf of IS>SR made a hard hit on
our mobility and damage uptime, especially against classes where we need our damage like guardians, engineers, warrior and engineer.
- The nerf of mug.

Leaves us only with the FS>LS buff.
Spamming evades and boon theft, yay.

The auto attack and FS/LS dps is currently too low in active pvp (evades counted)
unless playing a GC build with either 25/30 or 10/30/0/0/30, 10/30/0/30/0 works pretty
fine too.

Oh, and pistol whip, stun>1 hit and the target can walk away while you swing in the air
for same damage as your autoattack, so stronk skill. BUT! IT EVADES! yay, inb4 it ends
and you get knocked and kittened over.

Well, anyways, I loved S/D ever since I started playing GW2, and will probably stick
around with it until it gets nerfed even more.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Backstab has a cast time. Is it possible that one can avoid the reveal by starting the cast just at the right time so that you unstealth before hitting?

Yep, you can backstab outside stealth, which doesn’t benefit from hidden killer.

Same thing is seen with backstab>mugged steal
Mug removes stealth which makes backstab not benefit from hidden killer.
In this case, mug applies the reveal effect though.

On this double backstab case, the thief probably had a lagspike right
after casting the first backstab, which made him queue up another backstab.

I’ve experienced similar things from time to time.

Edit: changed the post after seeing Daendur’s confirmation that it applies reveal.

Helcor.9527:

So how do i counter this in less than a second im here to learn….

Average reaction time for a normal human being is ~200 ms.

Elixir S as soon as you get stunned by Basilisk when he teleports to you.

After you have easily countered the killspike, CC him a bit with glue and stuff,
dodge his cloak and dagger to prevent him from restealthing. And the 1980 armor
and 11.8k hp thief quickly will melt to your dmg.

Helcor.9527:

Travlane.5948:

you should NOT be taking 10k backstabs unless ur running basically 0 defensive traits and 0 defensive armors. what are you running on this guy? zerk? rampagers? carrion?

Carrion mainly. Still wayyyyyyy too much damage for literally a second

But not uncounterable, especially not by engineers.

Just use Elixir S as soon as he teleports to you, and the whole burst is countered.

0/30/30/20/0
10/30/10/30/0
0/30/0/20/30

bhagwad.4281:

Ghostwolf.9863:

bhagwad.4281:

No single person should be able to take out two equally skilled players regardless of armor, traits etc. If that could happen, it should be nerfed no matter the class.

The game is not designed around 1v1 neither around 1v2.
If 2 players aren’t traited nor equipped for killing a D/P thief,
the thief can even be the worst thief in town and would still be able to
take them out no matter how skilled they are at their build.

Like staff Elementalist and one of the zerg Warriors vs. Thief.
Kite the warrior and kill the squishy staff elementalist, he mists away, you reach him before the warrior do and you stomp him. You then kill the warrior by kiting and backstabbing.

Or against turret engineer and D/D elementalist, you dodge stuns/immobilizes 2-3
times in a row, then they successfully start to lock you down and kill you in 3 seconds.
And they don’t even need to be skilled to do this.

If a single thief can kill two equally skilled eles and warriors with on par gear (appropriate to their level and skill level), then there’s something seriously wrong with that balance. Regardless of what people say, 1v1s matter more than any other form of balance. Which is why mesmers and thieves are getting nerfed. For example, the phantasm mesmer build is only good in 1v1s and a total joke in big fights. Why was it nerfed? Because 1v1 balance matters. Anet knows this.

In many ways, 1v1 is the only balancing that matters. People dislike losing 1v1s even more than they mind losing the match. I know I do.

Still nothing wrong with balance here.

If a skilled GC staff elementalist, which is built around staying ~1000 feet away from the fights spamming AoE’s highly damaging and supporting huge amounts of people, is able to kill an equally skilled 0/30/30/10/0 D/D or D/P which focuses around single target melee damage, stealth and possibly mobility, we do have a balance issue here.

If a thief which has invested in highly in mobility is unable to kite a warrior who has only invested a few things in mobility, and what he didn’t invest in mobility he invested in damage and defence instead, we also have a balance issue.

The point is, if the player don’t have the required weapon sets, builds and utilities to counter something, how should the player be able to counter it and maintain balance?

Staff Eles can change to a D/D build if they seek to be able to counter thieves and
many other professions easily, nothing hinders them. But by switching to D/D
he wont have the benefit of staying far away from the fight, and will instead
have to stay in the middle of the fight, which elementalists are less suited for in zerg fights.

It’s logic! Metaphorically speaking.
2 people throwing paper on a fire, since they don’t have water or anything to
choke the fire with, the fire will keep burning. If they have enough paper however
they might manage to choke the fire. And 1 person who was smart enough to bring
water with him will be able to put out the fire easily. But yet if 1 of the paper persons
go against the water person, the water may get mopped up 1v1 by the paper.
That’s how classes and different builds work in GW2.

bhagwad.4281:

No single person should be able to take out two equally skilled players regardless of armor, traits etc. If that could happen, it should be nerfed no matter the class.

The game is not designed around 1v1 neither around 1v2.
If 2 players aren’t traited nor equipped for killing a D/P thief,
the thief can even be the worst thief in town and would still be able to
take them out no matter how skilled they are at their build.

Like staff Elementalist and one of the zerg Warriors vs. Thief.
Kite the warrior and kill the squishy staff elementalist, he mists away, you reach him before the warrior do and you stomp him. You then kill the warrior by kiting and backstabbing.

Or against turret engineer and D/D elementalist, you dodge stuns/immobilizes 2-3
times in a row, then they successfully start to lock you down and kill you in 3 seconds.
And they don’t even need to be skilled to do this.

Direwind.8409:

I have seen the revealed condition on thiefs, but im sure it doesn’t work, because I quite often seem them use stealth, attack lay blackpowerder, leap stealth attack again, stealth again Aoe stealth attack, lay powerder again… it goes on forever it seems, not once did I notice reveal do anything.

I saw you spent a lot of time in the mesmer forum.

Why not use your greatsword to interrupt the thieves leap through blackpowder?
Why not enter stealth yourself to prevent him from backstabing you?
Why not stand on top of your clones to prevent the thief from backstabbing you?

And for heavens sake you play mesmer, you of all should know how the reveal mechanism works, since you have better and easier access to stealth than thieves do.

The thief has 2 utilities, blinding powder and shadow refuge and 3 traits
that give stealth last refuge, one from trickery no one uses, and one on shadow arts barely anyone uses. Rest of the weapon skillls are interruptable and makes the thief waste initiative if done correctly.. Interrupt the thief from heartseekering through the blackpowder with your GS or place chaos storm on top of him.

The thief has 12 initiative, 15 if built for, blackpowder costs 6 initiative and heartseeker 3, or 1 if successfully applying stealth if built for. Interrupting Blackpowder>Heartseeker will make him, none the less lose 9 initiative, which leaves him with 4 initiative, it regens quickly for another blackpowder but he wont be able to
cast heartseeker for a while.

Edit: forgot 1 more trait which applies stealth on fall damage.

It does already have a 3 seconds cooldown, and 4 seconds cooldown in spvp
when taking advantage of stealth for damaging abilities.
And it’s counterable, unlike invulnerability and blocks of other classes.

And thief has the unique perk of being able to pick their fights and
in most cases escape anyone. Which is intended.

Just like Guardian can run around with 3k armor, and fully heal with several skills,
and chain blocks for a great amount of time, knockdown and gain protection
and tank 5 players, thieves can go in stealth, dodge a bit more
and has access to many teleports, which makes them hard to catch, but not uncounterable in fights.

I’ve noticed while getting knockbacked/knockdowned it’s not available
until the flying animation ends and you land on the ground.
Same with shadowstep and other stun breakers, pressing them immediately
when knocked down wont remove the stun and just teleport you while knocked down.
It’s annoying.

And against engineers that use slick shoes on top of you, you will
continuously be knocked down until the effect ends, and Roll For Initiative wont
take you out of it and you will be knocked down on the same spot in the middle
of the roll.

These are the only situations I know of where it has “bugged”.

As a thief you aren’t supposed to win in other than 1v1 and XvX situations in sPvP,
and not even all 1v1 encounters are possible to win against good players.

With a tanky stealth build like D/P (0/30/30/10/0) you might be able to keep pressure on 1 target while fighting 2(+), but you wont in normal cases be able to get any stomp unless they are poor or new players. But a build like this isn’t fully compatible with serious sPvP.

Though I’ve been using it sometimes for tPvP, my goal is to use my high mobility and high access to stealth to to run between bases and perform unexpected surprise attacks and take down squishy targets and create panic to help out my teammates,
as well as destroying trebuchets and its driver, soloing lords, forest creatures, distracting people etc.

With P/D, which is even less suited for sPvP, you might be able to win fights
against 2+ players while naked if you have caltrops out on top of the capture point causing pressure on and crippling both players who tries to contest. But the fights will be drawn out, and you wont be able to contest since you spend a lot of your time in stealth. And good condition cleanse will counter you.

D/D in a non stealth build using Death Blossom and Caltrops you create a good AoE
pressure. But for the builds to be tanky enough to take on 2+ players alone you will
take a big hit on direct dmg, and might not be able to kill anyone anyways.

How these builds perform in WvW while roaming is a completely different story though. :p

Personally I would consider something like:
- Sword offhand, to create another non stealth option in the dueling theme.
- Mace mainhand, to add a more thiefish stealth style without being assassin-like,
and pistol offhand for high cc, sword offhand for umm something unique.
Mace would be a very slow weapon, slightly heavier on initiative, successfull stealth attacks (sap) cause a 2 seconds stun.
- Longbow, high range, single target based and access to stealth to make it more unique
as a ranged option that benefits from shadow arts.

To see all this at the same time would be too much. I wrote all these
pretty much from role-play perspective, didn’t think through much
how well they could be implemented to our class.

So what about you other thieves?

I’m quite disappointed at this skill as well.

After a warrior trying to knock me down from a platform in Obsidian Sanctum last
night, I switched one of my utilities to Scorpion wire, hoping to drag that kitten
down on his kitten . He was dragged towards me and then stopped on the edge and stood up.

I find this very unfair with Engineers, Guardians, Warriors, Elementalist and Mesmers having the ability to knock multiple people of ledges, ranger 1 target (and I think it’s piercing), necromancers fear multiple ppl off, while thief can’t even drag 1 target off with a rope.

Since the “nerf” of Last Refuge, I feel like I can rely more on this trait.

And spend my time when going low hp on evading attacks and retreating instead
of trying to obtain stealth by other ways. This has greatly increased my personal
use of it. I have been killed about 6 times because of it after the cd reduction, mostly
when I have been attacked by high damaging attacks while in the middle of damage dealing or because I have had projectiles mid-air when it triggered. But I can say for sure it has saved me 10 times more than it has killed me lately. While before it used to kill me 10 times more than it saved me. Only thing I’d like to see done to it is that it
is queued up after attacks instead of being instantly triggered.

imo, hard to catch should reduce stunned duration or grant stability for 3 secs or something similar, to represent the agile acrobat style a bit better.

Some things in general when fighting thieves.

• Try predicting the thief, turning the front towards the thief in the right moment, will
  reduce backstab damage by half. If you block or dodge a backstab, you can make a quick turn which in most cases will lead to this.

• If the thief goes low, or tries to escape from several people, if you don’t have any ranged stun available to interrupt him, go stand in the blackpowder field. The thief will only be able to get 2 heartseekers through the smoke field (or if a poor thief he will be revealed) and this will make an impact on his stealth duration and he’ll go low on initiative faster.

• Thieves are extremely vulnerable to knockdowns, Stuns, Immobilizes and Chills.

• Aegis against stealthed thieves removes charges of venoms,
  but doesn’t prevent the thief from pulling off another backstab.