Guild Wars 2

True, they should fix the animation.

Some good reference on how to improve the animation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6pomaq30Gg#t=49

- Venomous Veins, gain -33% condition duration per stack against the conditions or effects the venoms you have triggered cause. (Idea taken from how regular consuming of small doses of different types of venom will make you resistant or immune against them)
- Bow Mastery, shortbow projectiles travel at 30% higher speed and 15% more range. (cast speed doesn’t increase).
- Guild master, call 2 thieves to distract and blind nearby opponents when you go below 30% health, lasts 10 seconds and 45 sec cd.
- Quick Pockets, 2 ini on weaponswap and 33% reduced cooldown on weaponswap.
- Power Shots moved from SA, and increased to 10%.

Utilities.
- Assassin’s Signet, penetrates 50% of the opponents armor and block on the next 5 attacks.

NinjaEd.3946:

I wouldn’t be wasting my time looking for them especially when roaming. Roaming is the most profitable place for thief to be, you can’t be upset that they cling to it. They don’t do well in zergs, they are barely of any use in havoc squads, they are a generally selfish profession. Even in wvw I don’t use SA for anything more than shadow’s embrace, but if you want to nerf SA then I want to nerf the Defense and virtues trait line for the heavy professions. If you don’t want us roaming why should you be able to help out in a blob?

This.

Thieves doesn’t have any huge channeled AoE hitting for 7k each tick like staff ele.
Nor do they have the defence, control and support as Warriors and Guardians. You might be able to tag on more enemies than other classes by using daggerstorm and choking gas and some slow clusterbombs, but you never do any AoE damage close to what a staff ele can do, this again shows what a selfish class thief is.

And all classes can make roaming builds that prove challenging for a thief to fight depending on the thiefs build (for instance warriors axe mainhand is tricky to fight against with any SA thief melee build while it’s a joke for P/D builds), this while everything a thief can do in large scale pvp other classes can do better, one good example is thieves can’t even stealth a zerg while it’s np for a mesmer.

One other class I find pretty much in the same position as thieves is engineer, while thief is more mobile and has better escapeability, engineers are better at fighting in open combat and will often kitten thieves up, while they also don’t do much good in large scale pvp.

MatyrGustav.6210:

These are all mistakes that happen to new thieves, you soon realize to never save Shadow refuge as your last invis. You escape with Withdraw followed by disabling shot, then Shadow refuge when you have enough distance. If you Still happen to get knocked out of the refuge use Blinding Powder run and use Infiltrators Arrow, then do it all over again.

Ofc, there are ways to set up a safe refuge, just as there are ways to counter a safe refuge. Blink+iWave, or simply toolbelt #5 for engineers, staff #5 for necros, warriors continue whatever they were doing before being engaged while playing with 1 hand and not giving a kitten.

And nearly no experienced player would bring Blinding Powder to tPvP, and reveal is 4 seconds and 2-4 seconds is all it takes for most damage dealers to mess up a thief while he’s vulnerable.

MatyrGustav.6210:

The only True consequence a Thief has is not going Glass Cannon. There is little consequence for a Glass Escape Artist Thief (Most OP Build)

Agreed to this, it’s difficult to maintain a high health pool on thieves and damage can be mitigated with blinds, dodges and mobility making toughness less useful as well, and besides that most players will have enough sustain to cover most of your damage if your burst drops by adding more vitality and toughness, while your healthpool will drop lower and lower through the fight.

So there is more to gain by getting high damage some minor vit and toughness to avoid getting 1 shotted and some burst condi cleanse.

MatyrGustav.6210:

That Sounds like a terribly Broken class to me lol. Thats the thing, everyone is OFF- Guard to Thief because hes invis. Theres nothing you can do, you dont know hes there and hes going to Crit Fire Explosion Thunder strike Backstab Kill you in 2 seconds.

It’s supposed to have the assassin role, like in all games, the assassin is always a difficult fight. They are specialized at killing everything, yet not best at killing anyone but those who are easy kills; bad or glassy players. This while they also have a high skill-cap.

Shield #5 on my engineer is actually quite handsome when I know a thief is going to backstab me. Restealth? Toolkit 4. This if I don’t feel like spamming some AoE.

Been almost a year since last time I entered a fight from stealth with a backstab, it felt inefficient. It creates way more spike dmg and it’s way more difficult for the opponent to regain control if you are able to land that mug, CnD or Heartseeker before landing a successful backstab. Also, not to forget meatshields that are available to most classes who struggle with taking a backstab.

MatyrGustav.6210:

Incendiary powder isnt avoidable, but you can avoid the bullets it comes on. If you happen to get burned, just escape, heal then come back and backstab him dead, which ofc requirse that you aren’t stealthed.

It isn’t avoidable, it triggers on critical hit, which means the engineer needs to crit for it to trigger, and to crit he needs to hit, it often happens it has triggered on me by the traited mines the engineer drops while low hp, after I’ve used HiS and going to escape, IP will then nullify the whole HiS. Unless you avoid all 100 attacks the engineer throws at you, it isn’t avoidable. Escape and come back? Say hi to toolbelt #5 and #3 and enjoy 1k confusion damage everytime you press a skill on top of the burning ticking ~800, he might also reward you with a a nice +6sec chill from grenade kit.
And you just used infiltrator’s arrow, you may use it again to get away from the engineer once you get the some initiative back, to then realize there isn’t much to do since you just used withdraw to heal up, and you drop shadow refuge, the engineer runs after you with permaswiftness and presses Shield #4, you dodge if you have any endurance left hoping that he double-tapped, but he didn’t and presses it again as your dodge ends, and there you are, a sitting duck with your head pressed against the ground. Happened to me many times, and I’ve done it even more. If it was WvW he might also have used bombkit and runes of perplexity, 20 stacks of confusion /,,/_ try dagger auto-attack trololol.

Taking risks is dangerous against engineers, but it is taking risks that will make you able to kill them and this will still stand no matter how many times you reset the fight.

^ why thieves can easily get their kitten handed 1v1, WvW, sPvP/tPvP

Cufufalating.8479:

I love how in the space on a few replies, this thread has devolved into whether or not thieves are OP even though this thread has nothing at all to do with that.

It’s some sort of GW2 form of Godwin’s Law.

“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Thieves approaches 1”

2306h out of 3430h on rouge, 498 days played.

Everyone who plays gw2 and are good at their class are ofc best, and if something defeats them it’s op or broken.

Personally I find myself very good, but there’s still a lot to learn if I’d wish to play at the same levels as thieves like magictoker and sizer I play mostly for fun and tPvP mostly to help friends, never cared about having an organized team or high ratings on scoreboards, what I like most is sharing my knowledge and teaching people who are willing to learn about pvp.

Face your front towards them.

He has a point with the one shot part. If the necro is using the Spinal Shivers trait, Sigil of Fire and Sigil of Air, getting one shotted by one “auto-attack” from lich form isn’t actually uncommon, if it crits and the both sigils trigger at the same time. Spinal Shivers scale up in power and crits around 7k while in lich form and the sigils scale up as well + sigil of air can critically hit. In total it can create around 15k dmg from 1 Deathly Claw if it brings you below 50%.

But Lich Form is highly situational, if for instance an angry thief is focusing you while in lich form it’s likely that you will have to cancel the form to use utilities, deathshroud or heal. And in a team fight if they have some bruisers with them, everyone will focus you as soon as you press that button, lone bunkers will often get turned into minced meat though. I find both D/P and S/D effective against Lich Form, P/D will struggle though since it’s “semi-ranged” and Lich form is most effective in mid range, 250-600 of whatever units the game is using to calculate distance, in melee when someone runs around you and dodges like a headless chicken it’s actually quite hard to land attacks, unless they are keyboardturning clickers.

imo, Necro is balanced. It has a couple of great strengths to make up for its severe weaknesses.

ahahahahah

(Message Body length must at least be 15.)

yeah, ferocity sucks. I used to count everything above 12 stats per crit dmg too high in terms of loss and gain.

10 power always gives 0.3%-0.5% more dmg, while 10 ferocity gives 0.66% only on critical hits.

They were talking about adding gear with ferocity as mainstat.

Chest.
101 Ferocity
72 Precision
72 Power

at 3k attack power(counting weapon dmg) you trade 1.0% dmg for 2% more crit dmg.
at 200% crit dmg your 3k backstab crits 6000.
With ferocity chest (202% crit dmg) it gets reduced to 2970 and crits 5999.
+ – 0, except the – that your base damage will be reduced.

ah and yeah, spvp is just fine.

I usually replace Shadow Refuge with it if I decide to use it.

After the nerf it feels a bit boring though, without trigger the teleport has a long cast time which can be interrupted and often will be. On trigger the might only lasts 5 seconds which makes it slightly more D/x oriented.

Other nice utilities would be:
- Signet of Agility for extra dodges, 1 cond removal and might.
- Signet of Shadows if you want more movement speed.
- Roll for Initiative is also a good option, evades, creates a gap, removes snares and restores initiative.
- Blinding Powder, this one is as strong as a stunbreak, AoE blind and stealth.

I was playing S/D + P/D earlier with 2/0/6/0/6 full zerker with some knight stuff, had quite a good time, omnomberry ghost and maintenance oil to get some extra damage and my crit chance up. I’m however quite annoyed at the low mobility, so would probably pick D/P as offset for stealth on demand and HS spam for mobility.

I think it was some vid by Amonatory or what he is called who inspired me.

Also heard Rune of Strength with min 25 Shadow Arts along with 10 Acro for Power of Inertia is a really nice way to go with D/D or D/P currently, thieves have been having around +15 stacks of might which gives quite handsome backstab numbers.

To answer your issues.
1. Be patient with your backstabs, judge when you enter stealth if you will be able to land one or if you are better off heartseekering to keep pressure, or simply if you will need to land another cloak and dagger after the opponent has wasted defensive mechanisms to go in for another backstab.

2. SB is still my favourite offset, might be a habit from tPvP, but in WvW with dagger mainhand P/D can serve you quite well too, if you feel it has low damage you have misjudged it try land a #3 on someone, sometimes it hits for 4k+, S/D and S/P are also really nice offsets with their own pros and cons, S/P can be used together with D/D well, but it doesn’t benefit much from SA, so I like D/D + S/P most with 5/6/0/0/3.

3. 2/6/6/0/0, 0/6/6/2/0 and lastly 6/6/0/0/2 and 5/6/0/0/3 if you wanna be hardcore.

4.
-Camera Rotation speed, get as high as you are comfortable with, it’s quite useful to be able to spin quickly.
-Turn off melee attack assist, this one is quite hax, since you can avoid melee attacks by hugging someone and walking through them or around them. It might be harder to position yourself for backstabs though. Also you will be able to walk through people while in stealth, without dodging.
-Instant ground targeting, learning to use this function will hone your performance as thief slightly more since it will let you respond quicker with ground targeting skills. Like for instance when you wish to perform and CnD combo with Shadow Step.

And a random hint: Many opponents will try to counter basilisk venom (if you use it) so a good way is to enter stealth and put it up, and walk after them while in stealth, then CnD and Backstab when the previous stealth ends or CnD>Steal>Backstab, this is good in particular against other thieves. Guardians will often put aegis up when you enter stealth though.

Crovax.7854:

1. Now far has either nobody -> cap
2. 1 person -> win 1v1 + cap
3. more than 1 person -> disengage and help end outnumbered midfight quickly

how is that wrong?

1. Proper, cap or decap, unless your team really needs you at mid to spike some glassy opponents down.
2. If the opponent is really glassy and you’re sure you can kill him quickly, home bunkers usually aren’t and it leads to outdrawn fights and then you’re there wasting your time while your teammates fight outnumbered at mid. If you however have capped the point when he arrives you may try to hold it to buy time and points depending on how your team fairs at mid, usually fights as a thief involve going off point or stealthing which leads to a decap and therefor all is vain.
3. If there’s more than 1 person at far, mid usually isn’t outnumbered.

Thief is a roamer, not a far-point assaulter, they both have different tasks.

I was wearing a mix of Carrion and Rabid.

Steal missed, so no whirling axe to reflect with, the warrior baited my dodges with bull’s charge and rapid fire.

I entered stealth and noticed the warrior chanelled through stealth, and got hit by nothing less than…

MatyrGustav.6210:

Every class has a weakness, and every class has to face and feel their weakness in battle. The thief doesn’t have to since they can invis and escape.

Thief is the opposite of necro in terms of strength and weaknesses. A necro is really sturdy and can tank a lot of dmg and push out a good amount of conditions or/and good sustained direct dmg. If a necro enters a fight he often can’t leave and also the opponent will have difficulties leaving alive. But if 3 people hops on the necro there is no escape. The thief is more inverted, he’s often screwed 1v1 or if 2 opponents enter, so instead he has high mobility and also stealth (depending on build) combined with good burst the small windows when he can cause damage. So that’s pretty much the thiefs weakness and strength in battle.

MatyrGustav.6210:

From my experiences playing thief, I can say that it is OP. In this game you can avoid most attacks but how can you avoid an attack when the attacker is invisible and you dont know hes coming even in an engaged fight?

I have this saying " If you cant do anything to avoid something, then its broken" especially if that something can take away most of your health.

There are far worse unavoidable attacks. For instance engineers trait “Incendiary Powder” that burns targets on crits takes away about more than half of the thiefs health if it’s not cleansed asap, and it has 10s cooldown while all the thiefs cleanses are on much greater cooldowns. and it’s certain to land in a 1v1 as long as the engineer hits and crits, it can’t be dodged unlike backstab which can be completely avoided and countered and also turned into a facestab which hits close to the same as an auto-attack. And mesmers Moa elite from stealth. Or minion masters npc auto-attack spam deals really heavy dmg and is impossible to fully avoid in open field.

MatyrGustav.6210:

To the people saying escaping isnt over powered. It is when your mistakes have no consequences, and you can re challenge the opponent until he makes a mistake and kill him.

Thief + Mistake = Escape
Other classes + Mistake = Die

So, getting pushed out out of shadow refuge after using shadow step to cleanse conditions or break stuns, while you have 2 initiative left and heal on cooldown has no consequences? Or getting stunlocked by a mesmer with stunbreakers on cooldown while some warrior is using Hundred Blades followed by an eviscerate(if you are still alive) has no consequences? Or taking 2 hits from Necro’s lich form and getting downed has no consquences? Or getting critted by an irrelevant skill and get 7sec of burning from engineers IP while you are at 7k health with condicleanse on cooldown has no consquences?

Thief is full of consquences, and often you don’t even have to make a mistake to get kitten at.

In general (they all have ways to get less or more mobility):
Warriors, Engineers and Mesmers have nearly as good escapability as thieves, while they also survive better in combat and has just as good dmg combined with CC’s.

Then we have Guardians, Rangers and Elementalist, they are slightly more limited, but yet very mobile.

And Necromancers are really terrible when it comes to mobility, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you will die for sure.

Except for condi troll thieves which are really strong in some situations and really weak in some, I feel the thief class is well balanced. And after all, it’s a god kittenin class! They should be able to kill whoever they want if they are good at their art and take someone off-guard, and only really strong and skilled fighters should be able to fight back.

All this was about sPvP and tPvP, if I bring up WvW, I still find them balanced, they are horrible in zergs, while they are strong in groups and solo, after I got hit by x2 7k meteor shower while trying to ress an ally I saw why.

I’m sure many thieves have run this build just randomly without reading the forum or any guides, but it never really became popular, just like 2/6/0/0/6 with S/D. And now just because some generic skilled thief played it and won with it in ToL it’s apparently is the best build, sizer played it so it must be op!

But I remember I tried this build out in the past when Arganthium was talking a lot about it, so he’s the one who introduced it to me, he was well known on the forum a while back (he even has a sticky thread) and he tried really hard to spread the build out to the community, seems disrespectful to christen it “Sizer’s build” in this situation in particular.

Carighan.6758:

Counter-question:
Ranger’s Greatsword only works at close range, it deals very low damage at larger range. How is that not an issue but the inverse is for the Longbow?

Good one.

I see no problem with distance based damage and other effects like warriors shout “fear me!”
At longer range Mesmers have a harder time dealing good damage with their GS, and I suppose that’s pretty much why the distance slightly increases their #1 damage, same goes for ranger. Imo there should be more things like this.

The best advice I can give is to try out a necro for yourself, that’s the only way to really feel how they are balanced. There are some stupid things like minion master builds that deal really high nearly unavoidable single target dmg while being really tanky, but high AoE or really high single target burst will make quickwork of them, and ofc that random awkward flesh golem charge which spikes people up against a wall for 6-10k dmg. But overall I find them among the most balanced currently.

Personally I find them less forgiving and way more strategic to play than engineers, although engineers are slightly more difficult to just hop on and play. With engineers you can do pretty much whatever you need to, necros and warriors might be a tough challenge in 1v1 but overall engineers are the jacks of all trades, they aren’t best at anything except being fairly good at everything, it happens quite often that it takes 2 or 3 people to kill a single engineer depending on builds.

Necros have really poor sustain, and also any CC hurt them a lot more than it does to other classes due to slow attacks, no blocks, no invulnerability, low access to stability (only some glassy deathshroud oriented builds have it, plague form and lich form), lack of vigor and long cast times on everything, this combined with the worst mobility and escapability in the game.

Your strengths as a necro are that you are able to cause really high pressure early and mid fight while being tanky and with some small access to light CC’s and fears, after that you begin to melt, this unless you take really high damage from a thief or any other single-target glasscannon while CC’d which is when you will go down really quick.

The fights I’ve won against good necros myself as engineer are the ones where I’ve tried to use my blinds and CC’s well, combined with leaving line of sight to get out of the pressure to heal up, after all if you get the most out of your heals with healing turret you can heal more than a warrior with healing signet and adrenal health active 100%.

Don’t stand in LB F1
Dodge LB #5
Don’t get caught in Sword F1
Dodge Sword 4, if you get hit, limit your movement til it stacks to 5 and cleanse.
Avoid Sword 5 counterattack.

Most condi warrs will have Bleed, Burn, Torment, Poison(sigil) and under some circumstances Confusion. And they can stack lots of all of them if you let them.

• Most thieves never put up a challenge.
• Staff Eles.
• LB Rangers, idk, rangers seem really popular among bad players. Sometimes I fight good ones (noticed by them using GS along with LB in a strategical way), and these put up a real good challenge and the fight gets a lot based on luck unless I catch them fully off guard.
• Many warriors.
• Most mesmers, condition or PU and phantasm mesmers can sometimes be challenging or a really good shatter mesmer.
• Horrible Engineers (the engineers who run away instead of chasing you across the world just because thieves are the easiest fights for them if they play right while they believe their kitten grows 1 inch everytime they kill one)

Here’s my favourite solid and a bit more defensive build for WvW and world PvE content. It wont go near the strength of pure S/D, S/P or D/P builds though, but it’s however quite versatile.

I put together this one since I always avoid putting points in Shadow Arts in non stealth builds (and rarely even in stealth builds), and I don’t like sacrificing a lot of damage for small gains.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAV4alsMpwplOx3J0PNBPBt9sbQA8LK9ejaA-TVCFABAcFAKU9nrUCikyABeIAOpUJJlU1s/Qa6GCAgAczbmNbzgje0je0je0u5Nv5Nv5NLFg5KjA-w

Pros:
- Perma Swiftness and Very Mobile.
- High Damage.
- High initiative pool.
- Dodgy.
- Decent condition removal.

Cons:
- Not the strongest 1v1 build.
- Lack of shadow refuge for safe retreat.
- Letting yourself get heavily bombarded with conditions equals death.
- Low sustain if you get hit too much.

Utility:
- Signet of Agility – Part of perma swiftness and 1 cond removal.
- Shadow Step – 3 cond removal, stunbreak and mobility.
- Hide in Shadows – Bleed, Burn and Poison removal.
- Roll For Initiative – Stunbreak, initiative gain and removal of snares.
- (without target) Steal for Might, Fury and Swiftness.

D/P or S/P(both most recommended for nice synergy with SB), P/P or S/D as 2nd set, they all have their useful sides and are usable.

lol, he was obviously downed when he got hit by that amount.

And yeah, lich form is insane, especially with sigil of fire and sigil of air, and the trait that casts spinal shivers when the target goes below 50%, if fire and air procs at the same time as that trait you get hit for 10k+ dmg while below 50% health, gl surviving.

panicbutton.1053:

I was just testing it to see if it at least adds more evade time, but it doesn’t.

So basically they added more back-dodging distance but didn’t make it during the leap itself. Maybe they were trying to make the distance greater, but didn’t factor the speed of the move itself?

Nah, their goal was to create a window where you’re open to attacks while using Disabling Shot two or more times in a row without altering pre-cast which would make it unreliable as a dodge. To further refine it they added the backpedaling to the end of the evade animation to represent the small window where people can strike you to make it easier for people to see when you’re open for attacks.

I’m okay with the evade reduction, but this new animation isn’t that great, it also hinders you from entering a normal dodge during the backpedaling.

A thief requires quick reactions and accurate predictions to kill people.
Likewise other people require quick reactions and accurate predictions to kill thieves.

Always be one step ahead of your opponent, for instance you can know when a warrior will cast eviscerate before he even knows he’ll press the button himself. Sometimes it ofc can be fully random and hit you at the right moment and kill you. To be able to be one step ahead of your opponent you need a lot of experience and knowledge of other classes, but to be able to process the knowledge and experience you will also need to know how to utilize the thief to its maximum.

In sPvP Thief is the only class I’ve played where I have never at any moment been thinking “Oh look there’s a -class + build-… free kill huehuehue..” All classes and builds can be a challenging attempt in 1v1 for thief. As a thief you should try to avoid 1v1’s as long as you can gain anything better by going elsewhere, you have really great mobility in spvp.

Thief was my first class, and in the beginning I never had an easy time in PvP, pretty much everyone was ganking me, and elementalists could pretty much choose between ganking me or just as simple, run away, back then. This ofc started having an impact on my motivation and I started watching some vids on youtbe and noticed Wild Bill (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F8FcUCoyBQ&feature=kp)
after watching I learnt a lot of nifty tricks and decided to try out his P/D build, suddenly I found myself killing people in 1v2’s and 1v3’s in spvp, even naked a couple of games.

But in an sPvP perspective, I was a bad addition to the game, I was completely annoying to the other team while I did more bad than good to my own team, but it did give me more motivation to stay on thief. Afterwards I swapped to D/P + SB while perma stealth was still possible (0/6/6/2/0 with might on signet and 2-3 signets) and I could appear out of nowhere backstabbing for 10k+ on squishy opponents, and during my time on P/D I had learnt a lot about the other classes and I could outplay them better. I enjoyed this build a lot too, eventually it got boring and like P/D it was never really good for the team and frustrating for the opponents. Eventually I started playing more with D/D+SB 5/6/0/0/3 and D/P or S/D+SB 2/6/0/0/6, and I began learning to optimize myself for tPvP and avoiding mistakes and awkward situations and with high mobility I was moving around the map quickly to aid my team with quick and clean kills and AoE pressure and back-capping. Suddenly I felt like a so great addition to the team that I even felt like I was carrying the pugs I play with.

Sorry for wall of text, but could be useful to share some experience.
Here are some of the best direct dmg builds I’ve played for sPvP:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Made-a-thief-need-a-bow-build/first#post3982277
I placed them in tiers based on how great they perform.

And as for leveling try S/P, you’ll have a nice cleave on AA, Pistolwhip for evade and blindfield to keep yourself from getting hit.

garythesnail.8475:

Ridiculous animation.

agreed, they should make it more like this.

Shockwave.1230:

Mesmer illusions in shatter builds are the best form of AI I’ve seen implemented in PvP.

Imo all mesmer builds are quite good with their AI, even pure phantasm builds.
They are passive like all pets, that’s true, but they are highly telegraphed and easy to destroy.

The rest of the pets in this game have abilities that are hard to spot before it’s too late that randomly will screw you up while they are being sturdier than the player itself.
The phantasm mesmer actually needs to be skilled to be competitive, while a minion necro will always perform close to the same; destroy squishy players in seconds, while getting destroyed quickly by sturdy players with high AoE and damage.

RedSpectrum.1975:

From what I gather in this thread:
Good thieves=tPvP high tier popular tourny level status
Bad thieves=everyone else
There is no middle ground folks, you are either good, like really good, or just flat out bad

That’s just about it.
- Stream. This one is most important, if someone streams he’s skilled.
- Have a good team. Otherwise you wont be on scoreboard which makes you good.

Personally, the only Thief I’ve seen something special about is Magic Toker, no doubt the rest of the thieves are good too. But for sure not the best thieves in EU and US.

lol.

- Moonwalking animation added to Disabling Shot, a new way to CC yourself.

So currently it dodges for .6 sec and you are CCd for .3sec while it uses more initiative than flanking strike which works way much smoother.

KingMango.9785:

About Dagger Storm, it can be canceld with dodge and you stay with stability.

You may cancel Daggerstorm by pressing the command that stows weapons.

Personally I have it bound to the mousewheel since there are many other things that can be canceled using stow weapons too. Even Cloak and Dagger if you see someone applying blind or aegis the moment you press the key.

An alternate way is weaponswap, plan what weapon you want to use after canceling DS and done.

I recommend using these methods instead of pressing the invaluable dodge key, unless you have 3p in acro and signet of agility.

Nimrud.5642:

So all in all, its not un-ethical to use it or something like that? I just dont want to be hated. Thx for the answers.

If you don’t want to be hated, play…. umm… Mantra mesmer.

If you insist on playing thief, never go into stealth! never dodge! and for God’s sake never press 2 if you’re using dagger mainhand, and never press 3 on P/P, S/D or S/P, not on D/P or SB either. The only thing you are allowed to do is 4 on D/D and SB, although people hit by SB’s 4 will give you the " ‘-_- "-face. SB’s 2 is quite okay too, but pure torture for yourself, since you’ll be in queue for the next game before it lands on the ground, sometimes people you were aiming at will get hit by it a while after they’ve logged out and when they log back in the next day they will find their character dead and are totally clueless what happened.

If you’ve made all this clear and still wants to play thief, forget everything I said and use whatever elite you want to. Since all of them have counters, none of them are an unorthodox choice.

Nothing wrong with TG, except some AoE may take down the thieves quickly.

TG is very strong in 1v1, while BV can be more useful in a team fight to help locking down the main target. DS grants stability, projectile reflect and some nice AoE.

All elites have their strengths and weaknesses, if you feel TG will help you and your playstyle more you should certainly use it. I often choose BV simply to help me land my burst with D/x or to finish off an AA chain or land LS with S/x and the low cd makes it frequent. Sometimes I choose DS to provide a lot of damage against all the pet people.
If I have a poor team comp I pick thieves guild so I’ll be able to stand my ground better.

-Turret Engineers.
-Grenade+Bomb Engineers. Many counters, high armor, high condi dmg and CC’s along with 35k+ heal per minute.
-Condi Necros, usually dish out more conditions than I’m able to cleanse while staying offensive, forcing me to go defensive which will lead to an exhaustment of initiative and utilities.
-LB+GS Rangers, most are horrible and die easy thankfully.
-S/Sh+GS Warrior, any axe build can also be frustrating to fight, when you think you have them they suddenly eviscerate you for 9k.
-Sc/F+GS Guardian.
-D/D and Sc/D eles are tough to fight if they are played well, but there are many obvious counters against them.

musu.9205:

But since thief highly counters mesmer

Never noticed this, 4/4/0/0/6 shatter.

And no to your request, 3s stability from a stolen ability from a steal that might not even land and clones usually deal with Aegis. You can also make a build focusing on destroying boons if it bothers you that much.

I like the idea.

Simply some trade-off for joining.

afaik tournaments are meant to be the more serious part of PvP, if there’s no punishment and yet rewarding, many people wont take it serious enough.

Might as well be a small PvP progress line for an accbound “tournament certificate” which you lose if you aren’t eligible for a reward from the game you joined, and the line can be reactivated once you lose it. If you join with a group however, this shouldn’t be required.

Note: small, pretty much like tier 2 or something of the other lines.

Indeed not for faceroll people, but for trolls and engineers it’s the perfect map.

And that cannon one shotting elementalists and thieves.

Mug gives you ~100 hp/s if you invest in 30 trickery and Sleight of Hand combined with frequent steals, which is 1/3 of how much withdraw heals per minute, which means 33% more sustain.

@op: The build looks quite ok if it fits your playstyle. But the lack of mug, 1-15% dmg and sleight of hand for daze and cd reduction, makes it unable to really beat the 2/6/0/0/6 meta which might make it feel a bit lacking in some parts.

It’s easily dodgeable, unless the warrior forces you to dodge using frenzy>bc>hb combo followed by him swapping to rifle and volley which also hits quite hard, then you pop HiS or some other stealth and he hits you with killshot while you’re stealthed.

However, stealth + their stolen projectile reflect is quite nice

Mesmers and Eles have the best downed states imo.

I’d rate them like this based on how easy they are to counter, how much time they win you, and if they have any great AoE utility or if they deal good damage.

1. Mesmers invis and a clone to confuse inexperienced players, Phantasmal Rogue hits like a truck.

2. Elementalists can just vapor form and gtfo, and this is the only downed skill that potentially is impossible to counter, the rest of the ele downed skills are quite meh though.

3. Thief teleport can be countered by thieves, guardians, mesmers and elementalists. But as Axel said, if done right and with some luck and confusion, you may deny 3 stomps. The stealth attack when downed hits really hard, and can be thrown 2 times if you are far enough away from your opponent. #1 bonces between targets.

4. Rangers, I really hate stomping rangers, with some of their builds their pet may totally kitten you while you try to stomp them. Annoying AoE daze, stealth prevents it unless some friendly player is nearby. Once the pet heal becomes available the ranger will outheal all your damage, which makes downed battles against rangers unwinnable and they will also outheal your damage even if you’re not downed.

5. Guardians, a short-cast AoE knockback, totally annoying. And a heal with some neat dmg around you. And #1 is quite lame.

6. Necros, lifedrain which can sustain their downed health while dealing dmg, a fear and a poison field.

7. Engineers, throw junk may randomly stack you with ridiculously long chill durations, knockdown, AoE knockback, in some situation they may be able to deny 2 stomps.
Engineers are even annoying in skyhammer while downed.

8. Warriors, knockdown and vengeance. Vengeance can be both useless and useful. I wish it had higher chance to revive you completely in PvP untraited.

sPvP
v

I always bring Shadow Step, with whatever build I use, it’s simply the most versatile utility. It grants mobility, 2 stunbreakers within the window and removes 3 conditions.

With S/x, #2 to deal with damaging conditions and withdraw against movement impairing.

With D/x, Hide in Shadows to deal with damaging which often comes from AoE and pets. And dodge, blind and daze to prevent the rest.

Annoying when Necromancers stack 1000 years of cripple though or when sword offhand warriors press their I win button called Impale which is a ranged attack that stacks up a loads of high duration torment which is likely to take away your whole health pool while your daggers almost feel blunt when you hit them, that is if you don’t run sword mainhand, nor have shadow embrace or shadow step available.

I wish Infiltrator’s Arrow would remove cripple and torment, to at least have something to counter condis on SB as well, could be a trait in acro. Or 1 condi transfer to a random target within the reticle making it a big trade-off to use infiltrator’s arrow.

Weird that you haven’t received a single answer yet.

1. For armor sets I suggest Berserker and Valkyrie mainly, it’s easier to attain high crit chance on thief than on mesmer. I however put on some Cavalier or Knights if I go deep into deadly arts and feel I need some defence, mainly for WvW. (5/6/0/0/3)

I suggest aiming for 14-15k hp if you wanna be a bit more defensive, if you go deep into shadow arts you might need some more dmg mitigation 2300-2400 armor is a good goal. 50% crit chance and 225%+ crit dmg with power as mainstat on gear for maximum power is a nice goal. Rune of strength if you go deep acrobatics.

2. And yes, P/P grants higher dps single target. It’s good to always bring all weapon combos with you wherever you go.

I run S/D with 2/6/0/0/6, and I deal extremely high single target dmg and I’m able to daze my opponent a lot with steal and tactical strike, and rip boons quickly. I never liked acrobatics line too much and I prefer some light CC, positioning and only dodging key attacks.

Edit: forgot to add that you can also make a decent might stacking build with shadow arts and keeping 2 points in acrobatics for power of inertia, Runes of Strength and ‘Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew’ for food.

I find condi P/D quite strong in sPvP and tPvP right now. Mostly because of how versatile it is, I can roam with high mobility and burst nearly as good as the GC builds, or I can fight on middle, or I can troll at far holding off 2 to 3 players.

I was playing a build like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqYVlsMp7pNPx0J8PRRSBx9CCQC8uF1I+60DA-TpxCwAAOEATOBAaLDQ5IAI5BAMb/BA
And could contest quite good, it’s all up to you whether you’ll contest or not.

My burst rotation was:
Shortbow > BV>Steal to rip 2 boons and proc runeset next to the enemy > Weaponswap to trigger BV and put 4 bleeds and poison> CnD> Dodge for Caltrops > Sneak attack > Shadow Strike.

Sometimes Shadow Refuge for lifedrain on Sneak Attack.

Result:
5 Confusion, 3 Vulnerability, 20+ sec Poison, 12+ stacks of bleed and 3 torment.
If someone has their condi cleanse on cooldown they melt like butter.

On middle I was pressuring my opponents with caltrops, poison field and clusterbomb shatter spam.

Aberrant.6749:

Eng’s often have a lot of skills which are weaker, but they have it in greater number. The kits themselves are not cd based because of that (fair tradeoff). The toolbelt and all skills do have their cd’s increased due to chill (seems fair to me).

There are things the other classes don’t get that thieves do. Again, it’s all tradeoffs. But it’s not like the other classes are less effected by chill than a thief… thieves can teleport/disengage/re-engage at will which often makes chill’s slow kinda “meh”. Yes it makes landing backstabs harder, but that’s far from the only tool you have at your disposal.

I took engineer kits as an example, simply because they are 5 fresh weaponset skills with no cooldown on swap, which looks forgiving and is something that makes all other weaponswap-cooldowns in the game look unfair. I’m however not doubting engineers are balanced around them.

Never stated other classes are less affected by chill, those who are less affected by the movement decrease are often more affected by the cooldown increase, some plenty of both, and some not much by either, like Spirit Rangers, and some are hardly affected at all because of Dogged March and Cleansing Ire + LB if not Berserker Stance.

Teleporting away when getting stacked with high chill durations is an example of the tradeoff thieves have to do in order to survive when getting stacked with high chill duration. This is an initiative hungry method and can be accompanied with Shadow Step which is at a higher cooldown than most chills I know of, this while you are not performing anything offensive in a PvP manner. As I stated earlier, chill doesn’t reduce initiative regen but it does increase initiative use significantly, Shadow Shot spam to stick to your opponent with D/P, heartseeker if D/D, IF and IR spam if you’re S/x to get rid of conditions, S/P #3 til you’re safe, or switching to SB for #5 which costs 6 initiative or using #3 to avoid taking any extra damage.

Withdraw is by far the best counter thieves have against chill, it allows them to get rid off chill completely and stick to the fight by not using initiative, but by picking withdraw they will be way more vulnerable to burn which is just as dangerous to thieves as chill, and those with high access to chill usually have high access to burn,
also put poison on top of that and it gets nasty.

Khalic.3561:

It’s funny because it’s unfair for the same reasons that thieves would see chill effecting initiative as unfair. Every time you swap out of an attunement you receive a global CD increase on all the skills in that attunement, regardless of whether or not you actually used them or not.

Discuss this with engineers who don’t have any cd at all on their kits.

Also thieves receive a cd on every skill on both their weapon sets if they run low on initiative, while elementalist still have 2 attunements to switch to if they swap, one which has some decent healing and good condition removal if they go deep into water line. If the opponent chills you right after you swap from water, it’s more or less skillful play on the opponents side.

Khalic.3561:

And every argument about how strong the slowing effect on chill is against thieves, because of how they need to reach melee range to do any damage, applies to D/D eles as well.

I agree that’s a bad argument, since chill doesn’t prevent thieves much from dealing damage in most cases, except for backstab which becomes impossible while chilled.
Where it hurts thief most is positioning and movement, thieves quickly gets mown down by AoE’s and AoE condispam. While Guardians, Warriors, Engineers and D/D Elementalists are way more tanky and can hold their ground on capture points.

Ever seen any of these discuss much about positioning? You see it quite often on the thief part of the forum and hear about it in thief vids.

tl;dr

On thief, chill is a death sentence, unless I’m playing an S/P or S/D build with Withdraw or/and Roll For Initiative which is pretty much anti-chill and cripple. Buffing chill against thieves would be like beating a dead horse when there are worse things running about.

Although chill doesn’t reduce ini regen, it increases initiative use significantly. The only times I actually go fully dry on initiative is when I either miss 2 CnD’s or when I get chilled and locked down and have to waste lots of initiative on evasive skills or/and mobility skills to move around and try stay alive.

Try find another class that has to use all its weapon skills in a non-offensive way to stay alive and then run away and wait for cds to go off before eengaging the opponent.

Also except Withdraw and Roll For Initiative, thieves don’t have any good way to deal with chill and heavy condispam. Shadow’s Embrace often removes chill last and after stacking lots of stealth using shadow refuge to clear plenty of conditions, I’m usually walking there like a robotchicken getting stacked with new conditions as the old ones get cleansed while I’m chilled and stealthed.

Yep, traits can be reset whenever you are out of combat, so you may experiment with things just as much as you’d like.

A bit more like WoW in the old days, but still not quite the same. You have 5 trait lines.

For thief:
Deadly Arts: Focuses around being, well, deadly, it has a few traits for venoms, some traits for control and some dmg increase.
Critical Strikes: This whole line is fully focused around direct dmg increase.
Shadow Arts: This line is known to focus a lot on stealth, but also some support and a nifty lifedrain from venoms. 5% SB damage too for some unknown reason.
Acrobatics: Says itself pretty much, mobility and being slippery.
Trickery: The thug line with some tricks, some support, and buffs to the steal class mechanic.

So, you can pretty much create the thief you wanna be using these trait lines. And at lvl 80 or in PvP you will have enough trait points to fill out 2 and 1/3 lines, a total of 14 trait points.

So Deadly Arts 5, Critical Strikes 6 and Trickery 3 and you have a pure assassin.
Deadly arts 2, Critical strikes 6, Shadow Arts 6 and you have a more stealthy ninja-like build.

You can have a look at things here
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQBAA

Hello ceces, glad you’re enjoying the thief and gw2.

@PvE: Thieves have among highest single-target dps in the game and some neat melee AoE and ranged options. But it however can feel like you die much easier compared to other classes. Top weapon-choices for PvE is switching between D/D, S/P, P/P and SB.
@PvP: PvP is split in WvW and sPvP/tPvP.

• @WvW: in WvW all your equipment will take in account and you can run around freely on 4 different huge maps + 1 seperate map which is independent from the server scores, if you are low level you will gain uplevel status and stats close to those of lvl 80’s, having good gear as low level will be taken in account as well. In WvW there’s a lot of stuff to do, capturing towers, camps, keeps, killing supply caravans to cripple enemy upgrading of towers, fighting other players. All this can be done either alone, in small groups or with huge groups called zergs. WvW stands for World versus World, and is a war between your home server and 2 different servers.
• @sPvP/tPvP: When about to enter sPvP you go to Heart of the Mists, here you can go whenever you want and it’s a nice place to experiment with things, everyone has equal stats here and it’s based on traits and an amulet that comes with different stats, everything is free except if you want different weapons. sPvP stands for structured PvP, and would be called “battlegrounds” compared to other mmo’s, while WvW is a world more similar to the PvE one. tPvP stands for team PvP and is GW2’s form of “arenas” which works pretty much same as sPvP, just that it is rated, and has better rewards, you can either join solo or team, solo has a fully random match up while team will place you as a stand-in to a team consisting of 4 or less, unless you form your own team. But it is advised that you get good at PvP and learn your role before heading for tPvP. sPvP is where you can practice that, and don’t be afraid to get ganked by high rank players who play like haxor, one day you’ll be one of them if you keep playing.

@Skillbars: You’re limited to weapon set skills which variates between classes (thieves have 2×5 and engineers for instance can reach 5×5), and 5 utilities, 1 of which is heal and 1 is elite. But GW2 is about a lot more than having lots of skills to press.
@Skillpoint refund: nope, but after playing for a while you will in the end have every skill unlocked, you gain 1 skillpoint per level + 1 per skill challenge.

Your build consists of traits (which you can start unlocking at lvl 30 in PvE), 2 weapon sets, utility skills and gear stats(amulet in pvp)

D/D = Dual Dagger
D/P = Dagger Pistol
S/P = Sword Pistol
SB = Shortbow
etc. so you get an idea

To clear up the different dmg stats:
Power = Raw damage
Precision = Crit Chance
Ferocity = Critical dmg (15 = 1% more dmg from critical dmg)
Condition = dot dmg (bleeds, burns, poison, confusion etc.)

Ritt.3069:

I ran the set and spec in both s/tPvP and WvW long before it became cool. Now after one tournament every Sizer-wannabe is running it and I feel like smacking my head.

+1

But I however find it rather cute when they die to one BV > CnD>Steal> BS-combo.

Using stealth along with teleports or leaps is indeed rewarding if you want to escape, but that same guardian going with his own zerg can actually fight there in the middle of the zerg, while the thief gets mown down even if he’s stealthed.

Stealth is indeed not trackable, cuz then it wouldn’t be stealth. But stealth is more predictable than in most games. Stealth itself doesn’t have any hard counter, but there are plenty of counter-heavy things to use against stealth.

Since you play staff ele or wte, I’ll just feel sorry for you. Since I mow down most by just using dagger auto-attack since they usually will counter my backstabs since they are able to, Axe warriors can do the same with their powerful auto-attack and maybe a 10k eviscerate or 2 in a telegraphed but unpredictable manner unlike backstab, to take down that same elementalist.

And lastly, Stealth=/=Invulnerability.

Since I’ve invested in a stealth heavy build I have 2 dodges at my disposal which I blew off against bull’s charge+hb and volley. This warrior was a really good player, a pink charr from desolation. And here’s what he hit me with while I was stealthed.

I would indeed love a target last target button, never been fond of the too basic targeting in this game. Though it must be added under the circumstance that it identifies the last clone spawned before or the first mesmer clone spawned after losing target of the mesmer as last target. Same with thief guild and ambush trap, and the charr backup etc.

The rest of this threads content is bullkitten.