Guild Wars 2

KillingFrenzy.7315:

a credible thread? lol I could care less

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth

Attacking breaks stealth; however, if the player uses an attack that missed, was blocked or evaded, they will not break stealth. Abilities that do not deal direct damage (like Choking Gas, Caltrops, or the Traps which do not deal direct damage) will not break stealth, even though they apply damaging conditions. Shadowstep or Teleport abilities will not break stealth; however, they will cause the transparent stealth effect on the player to end.

Now go back to your D/D elementalist.

Since this thread was about a bugfix rather than a nerf.

Because stealth ends when you deal damage, in most cases,
Caltrops and Choking Gas doesn’t unstealth you for instance.

Block, Dodge, Blind etc. prevents you from dealing damage,
and therefor doesn’t unstealth you.

I use it as an additional bleed/poison/burn remover to HiS and Shadow Return,
since my build lacks Shadow’s Embrace which most deep SA thieves run with,
Which I traded off for Cloaked in the shadows.

Overall I feel more tankier than times when I’ve left it out.
How much survivability it grants is fully situational.

And the 12 seconds regen heals for about 1.5k (can’t remember the exact value)

0/20/30/20/0

“Furious Retaliation, Side Strike”
“Infusion of Shadow, Cloaked in Shadows, Shadow’s Rejuvenation”
“Power of Inertia, Pain Response”

Shortbow as 2nd weapon.

Sigils: (S)Sigil of Paralysation & (D)Sigil of Bloodlust

Runes: Orbs, Eagle, Scholar, Divinity, Vampirism, Svanir. Or whatever you prefer.

Buffs:
Food: Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew. Might on Dodge +40% endurance regen.
Utility: Superior Sharpening Stone / Master Maintenance Oil.

Utility:
Hide in the Shadows
Shadow Refuge | Signet of Shadows | Shadowstep / Roll for Initiative / other situational
Thieves Guild / Dagger Storm

Equipment & Jewels:
A good mix of Berserker, Valkyrie and Knight. Towards 85%+ crit damage, 40%+ crit chance and 3k attack power unbuffed.

My personal usage and Tips:
Disable auto targeting.

Open with Infiltrators Strike, Cloak&Dagger to stealth and apply blind,
Daze your target with Tactical Strike, perform a full autoattack chain,
Cloak&Dagger to reapply blind and stealth, Tactical….

Keep uptime on Shadow Return, can easily and unhindered be done
by casting Shadow Retrun and an untargeted Infiltrator’s Strike while in stealth.
Or when using it to immobilize / Chase your target.
Or mid-fight when needed to remove cripple/blind/immobilize
HiS and Pain Response usually takes out burn, bleed & poison.

The Stealth chaining and Dodges keeps you at 12+ Might in the middle of the fight.

The blind from Shadow Arts is AoE and makes you a tough target even when facing
several enemies.

Use Larcenist’s Strike to remove Defensive boons, or if the target only has fury and might. Not worth using it more than once unless your target has every boon in the game.

Evade annoying channeling attacks that doesn’t break with stealth, using Flanking Strike and Dodge.

Got tired of writing.

Downed:
I like the downed state, allows to teleport out of AoE’s and other horrors to safer places to be ressed at. Smoke bomb>Heal>Teleport gives some additional seconds of heal, since the tele doesn’t break healing, should have longer range though.

The downed attack is AoE, and hence something standing in your way doesn’t stop you
from attacking the low health target behind it, an issue I had on other classes.

The stealth on underwater downed has to long time until it is usable, and usually
I’m dead or almost dead before I’m able to cast it.

Traps:
Should be buffed.
The thief from ambush trap dies way too quickly.
Tripwire only knocks down 1 target, imo I think it should stay up for about 2-3 seconds after triggered to knock down additional targets that tries to pass it.
Needle trap should immobilize and poison the first target that steps on it as
normally, and for a couple of seconds afterwards cripple and posion additional
targets that walk over it.
Shadow trap is situational and it’s fine as it is, even though it may not be worth
filling an utility slot for.

Caltrops:
Are fine as they are.

Last Refuge
Needs to be fixed to only trigger after casting, and stop additional
auto attack chains to continue.

The safest and fastest way imo:

S/D with 30 shadow arts and AoE blind when going in stealth..
Keep shadow return up, chain stealth and stunlock the target you find most annoying
til there are no targets left, and ofc dodge a couple of times.

High sustained AoE direct dmg, ability to get out of stuns and immobilization, ability to stealth and heal up quickly and is tough overall.

Any AoE condition builds with caltrops might be more effective if
you go up against a fully upgraded camp in EB with hylek guarding there
if you are good enough to avoid getting stunlocked, otherwise I find them pretty equal.

If the boss does have normal boons like Fury, Might, Vigor, Swiftness, Retaliation, Regeneration, Stability, yes.

However, it doesn’t take the stacked immunity to crowd control and other “stationary” boons.

d/p lacks AoE damage, and is vulnerable to AoE damage that ignores blind, is highly vulnerable to ranged attacks, and as the rest of the thief builds besides S/P and S/D it’s vulnerable to knockdowns, stuns & daze, it’s vulnerable to retaliation builds and other anti direct dmg builds.

In return to this, it has strong single target damage while being able to evade other close range targets, it is/can be anti condition like what every other profession can be
built for. It can be permanently in stealth but a thief running around permanently
in stealth is harmless, blackpowder>heartseeker can be interrupted by any build
with a ranged interrupt and heartseeker can be knocked down.
Backstab can easily be countered by dodging or jumping and turning around a lot
to make it hard for the thief to successfully attack you from behind.

Just because thieves aren’t facerollable by every build in the game doesn’t make them
imbalanced. And blackpowder doesn’t help you against GS warriors, d/d elementalists and shatter mesmers.

Edit: forgot to add, that using stealth through Blackpowder>Heartseeker is very clunky, and wont allow you to stack stealth more than 1 time with many enemies, critters and neutral/unfriendly npcs around. which gives you a total of 2½ seconds of active stealth. In situations like these Dagger offhand is supperior, since it allows you to re-enter stealth smoothly with cloak&dagger as soon as your stealth ends.
While with D/P you’ll end up with 0 initiative unless you are able to get 3 heartseekers through your smoke field.

As the title says, I’d like to suggest that WvW Siege Blueprints are
changed from Soul Bound to Account Bound, to simply allow them to stack
and for players to be able to use the blueprints they obtain on other toons.

The only possible way of achieving perma-stealth and one way of
opening up a fight from stealth without blowing utility skills
is by using Dagger/Pistol, and stacking stealth by blackpowder and heartseeker x3
in the smoke combo field. To actually be able to stay in stealth for as long as you want
you need 1 second prolonged stealth and faster initiative regen from traits.

With sword/dagger you are able to “stun” your opponent by going in stealth walking up
behind them and then using your first weapon skill, you then get off 5 auto-attacks
or something else for 4 seconds, before you can stealth and daze the target again.

Sword/Pistol might also be a good option early in the game, since it has the ability to
create a field that blinds opponents near you, it also has a channeled
damage skill which stuns your target and makes you evade attacks for its duration.

With Shortbow, spamming clusterbomb while close up, allows you to use it more frequently. And try evade attacks.

Thief gets a lot stronger later on when you have all traits unlocked and have some decent equipment.

When playing with and against zergs, I prefer SB, because of the massive AoE damage burst from range with cluster bomb, as well as mobility, evasion and the poison combo field.
S/D or S/P as secondary. Infiltrators Strike > Daggerstorm > Shadow Return.

0/30/10/30/0 – High damage, resilient and allows you to dodge 3 times in a row if needed.
0/30/15/25/0 – Same as above with 1 second longer stealth.

Offensive-Support build:
30/0/30/10/0 – Venomous Aura, like mentioned in the second post. Shares your venoms to nearby allies (Immobilize, Chill, Poison, Vulnerability, Stun), also shares the benefits from your traits: 2 stacks of might per venom, life steal on hit, an extra hit per venom.

Krytan skin w/ WvW chest and shoulders.

Most compatible with my taste.