Guild Wars 2

Switch to D/P and most problems are solved, let anet keep this ignorant change that contributed in making D/D lose its popularity, cuz kitten D/D, that’s why.

D/P blindbot with stealth and interrupts on demand should receive all love!

D/D with its reliance on positioning and using dodges 100% correctly and landing CnD’s to tactically use stealth or pull off a backstab is just for nubs and bad people, this set should be hated by anet and everyone!!

Blindbotting, afk blocking, condispam, AI and healing signet. This is skillful pvp and must be buffed while everything else shall be purged!

This looked quite bad at first, but after some thinking I feel it’s among the best suggestions about changing the thief class mechanic to fit better into the game so far.

But not good enough to actually be good, since it ruins the purpose initiative had in the first place.

This is one of the reasons thieves will struggle in 1v1s at higher skill levels,
it can be incredibly difficult to land good burst.

While at lower skill level the opponent might drop some AoE and expect the thief to come out of stealth with a bouquet of flowers, but as soon as they realize the thief will take them from behind, they squeal like the tiny dogs they are and enter the forum seeking for nerfs.

Ah, so burst was it. Dodge all crap that will affect the fight (CC) or nearly kill you,
if dodge is on cooldown use #3 for blind and a nice amount of dmg, against channeled skills and defensive skills with cast time use #4, never underestimate this button, and never underestimate unloading auto-attack chains along with blackpowder if needed.

Backstab, unless you gain anything from stealth (waiting out cds, AoEs or buffs for instance) end it quickly to keep pressure or contest, if you are unable to backstab, either frontstab or shadow shot and heartseeker if the opponent is low hp, if the opponent is facing his back towards you but you’re out of range for backstab you can do one of the following combos pressing these things nearly simultaneously with priority on what’s first:

Backstab>Steal
Backstab>Infiltrator’s Signet
Backstab>Infiltrator’s Signet>Steal
Shadow Shot>Backstab

Against low hp replace backstab with heartseeker for the 3 first.

And yeah, walking through your opponent and turn is a good way, so is shadowstep and backstab, although shadowstep is the utility I would least want to have on cd.

I played meditation guardian once.. with my fist.

Ryuujin.8236:

fabz.4736:

hi there was roaming in wvw using s/d full glass and ranger started attacking me i have vs alot of rangers before but none that have done this sort of dmg 8.7k maul and 7k counter strike kick is that normal. yes im aware im full glass but iv never seen that sort of dmg

Both these skills are extremely large telegraphs.

Maul creates a huge glowing bear claw and roars as it’s used, it also takes a good 1/2 second to land, counter – like any riposting skill, the user holds their blade at an angle and you get that low “hum” sound; many classes have powerful ripostes to watch out for.

Rangers also have a trait that guarantees that their opening strike is an automatic crit. Combined with some other one-shot boosts it’s very easy to create a devestating opening maul. But, like the backstab of a thief, is something you should be able to anticipate and counter very easily, once you know what to expect.

(Inb4 "easy for you to say as a ranger. Reason I’m in the forum is because I’m levelling a thief)

Except the ranger uses counterattack which can be pulled of immediately when the thief is unloading an auto-attack chain, followed by a hilt bash and maul.

Rangers are counter-heavy against thieves in the right hands and I like it this way, not much room for screwing up on both sides.

Posted my 2 favourites the other day

(Scholar Runes for max dmg, you are not meant to get touched much with these)
Old School D/D + SB, really high SB dmg and highest possible spike dmg with daggers while remaining viable in terms of survival.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVlsMp7pVOx0J8PNRLBtdHi+H87N6+gAA-TpRBwAROCAX3fYxhAgcZAAnAgHPAAA
Aggressive old school D/D + SB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVlsMpxpVOx0J8PNRLRtdHMCfgXvh2PQAEiA-TpRBwAROCAX3fYxhAgcZAAnAgHPAAA

Skelk venom as a heal is horrible, long cooldown, long cast time which makes it interruptible, the 2nd part of it is counterable with blind, dodges and blocks.

With reduced venom cds it gets a bit better, but the fact that you have to put a lot of effort and timing into hitting the 2nd part of the skill, it remains bad.

Withdraw on the other hand removes conditions that affect your mobility (awesome for condispam wars 2), and it dodges which can mean you may dodge 10k incoming damage when pressing it, it’s instant. This heal is win in any situation.

Bow can’t really hold its own ground. But yet, it’s the best weapon to have with you in sPvP, even the main weapon by some accounts.

But to spike a single target you need a good melee set.

I’ve played all the following builds a lot and felt I’ve contributed greatly to my team in sPvP and tPvP. I’ll sort them based on how good they perform.
———————-
Tier 1.

(I’m using Runes of the Eagle as a basic runeset for these builds since it’s a good static runeset, without any procs or reliance on anything except the opponents health, personally I use other runesets.)
Trickery D/P + SB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVlsMp7pVOx0J8PNBNBt9DGeE8OMfpMaFAA-TpRBwAROCAz2fYxhAgcZgHnAAAPAAA
Trickery S/P + SB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNBNBt9wbQE8OMfpMaFAA-TZRBwARODAz2fYxhAgcZAAPAAA
Trickery S/D + SB, works well with both HiS and withdrawal as heal.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNBNBt9wbQE8OMfpMaFAA-TZBCwAAOBAOeCAw2fAxhAIcZAA

Tier 2.

(Runes of Strength since these easily self-produce or steal might)
Casual Acro S/D + SB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp7pVOxwJ8PNBNBt9E6QE0KAdfko0XA-TZRBwAReCA02fYxhAgcZAAnAAA
Evadespam Trickery-Acro S/D + SB (popular after tournament of legends)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp7pVOxwJ8PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdfko0XA-TZBBwASeCAAOBA12fgxhAocZAA

Tier 3.

(Scholar Runes for max dmg, you are not meant to get touched much with these)
Old School D/D + SB, really high SB dmg and highest possible spike dmg with daggers while remaining viable in terms of survival.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVlsMp7pVOx0J8PNRLBtdHi+H87N6+gAA-TpRBwAROCAX3fYxhAgcZAAnAgHPAAA
Aggressive old school D/D + SB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVlsMpxpVOx0J8PNRLRtdHMCfgXvh2PQAEiA-TpRBwAROCAX3fYxhAgcZAAnAgHPAAA

If you are actually looking for something basic for world PvE and WvW.

Basic SB + S/P, for solo pve and WvW zerging, no idea about runes. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl8MpypFOx0J0PNBPhs9gGB8Lav3CC-TFSBwAFV+lwcUknAoEEl+AEmcWcIAyp+DgTAApAMXZE-w

The best runesets imo are: Eagle, Strength, Scholar, Lyssa, Travelers, Wurm and Ogre.
Sigils: Force, Air, Fire, Bloodlust.

Other runesets and sigils are good as well based on how you play and modify your build.

The best builds for low stealth usage are the acrobatic S/D builds and the S/P build.
The D/P build can also be played with low usage of stealth, but to achieve great spikes it’s essential to land a good backstab.

I choose to exclude P/D and D/D condi builds, but they are quite strong after april 15th.

Highest mobility and escapability, excellent for back-capping, claiming buffs and stealing npc kills (dagger-mainhand). And getting from C to A quickly to help home bunker turn 1v2 to 2v1.

On demand poison that creates great pressure on nodes, decent ranged aoe and blast finisher from clusterbomb.

Taking out other dangerous glass-cannons quickly, having that staff ele stand on high ground spamming insane AoE will destroy any team, or that powermancer in lichform.

With pistol off-hand and 30 trickery, on demand interrupts.

Dagger-mainhand has the best ability for executing low-health players, It’s the best class for ensuring a quick and clean kill on a specific target in team fights.

Cons:
- Weak to condispam.
- Weak to AoE and passive dmg.
- Lack of unblockable abilities.
- Stealth is one of our strongest mechanics and a lot of the class is balanced around that, stealth will get nodes uncontested or even capped if someone avoids our dmg from stealth.

Same as I’m thinking when I’m fighting a hambow warrior with soldiers amulet while I’m on my engineer.

I suppose it was S/D 10/0/0/30/30, many thieves got interested in that build after tournament of legends. I wouldn’t pick it up myself, for the exact reason you mentioned there, it wont kill you and the fight lasts too long, and it can’t push or pressure you off points, and it’s still really fragile if it gets locked down or taking something like an eviscerate from a warrior between the dodge frames.

Haven’t received much hate, but these are some. I’ll use fine words.

- Homosexual – unknown meditation guardian for unknown reasons.
- Blindspammer.
- 2222222 by an engineer while playing D/D in tPvP which I replied swiftnesswiftnesswiftnesswiftnesswiftness to.

- Some general ranting by a thief having a tantrum in EotM saying that he’ll come back to beat me, when as I was just standing looking and letting him get the opening and killed him afterwards, and he called me noob and said that he thought I was afk.

- An engineer calling me noob because he couldn’t kill me and I couldn’t kill him either.
- 3 spammer – map chat, because I was bored and played S/P + P/P in hotjoin.
- One guy claimed he will have sex with my mother after I killed him, and I replied that I will have sex with his father.

Think I covered everything.

Mug is the shadow of its former self.

If it critted, it used to fill the gap needed to spike down builds with medium tier defence, while it could be overkill towards low defence, which is why it got nerfed.
But hey, look at engineer, they hardly scratch warriors, but while landing Incendiary power, poison darts and static shock they decimate thieves.

Nowadays after all thousand pages of thief QQ, thieves are more about wearing down your opponents with high pressure and dazelocking, some AoE will strip away a high portion of your health which even makes this feel cranky.

I got tired of all bullkitten, and went with condi P/D which I have way higher burst with (unless my opponents are able to cleanse quickly) and can 1v3 all day with.

I lol’d.

Nice discovery, maybe all my quaggan tonics will sell off for a good amount of gold now.

My favourite S/D build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0Mp7plOxyJ8PNBNBt9wbQE8OMfpMaFAA-TZBCwAAOBAOeCAU3fAxhAIcZAA

Dazelock n’ burst S/D. Because you are not hurting anyone while evading all the time.

Eagle, Strength, Ogre, Scholar, Lyssa, Travelers, Wurm, Hoelbrak.

Krait for condition builds.

- When you find yourself staring to much at knives in shopping malls.
- When your reflexes are above the average of a human being.
- When your situational awareness and prediction in traffic and other stuff are overperforming.
- When you wake up and think about what build you should bring to work and have a hard time figuring which will be most useful.

Summon 3 warlocks on high ground, bring someone to bomb with extra conditions,
and boom you have 30k+ dmg pumping out passively every 6 seconds + your own weapon damage. But alas it’s not broken ! 4-6k backstab every ~6 second is, cuz teef so opee.

Yes, 13k backstab is possible too, but it’s not easy and least of all passive, hell I got dodged and countered a lot while trolling with the glassiest thief build in spvp, but I suppose EU players are better than US players-

Most thieves would agree signets of power with 4 signets is broken or/and useless.

6/6/0/0/2 with 21 might from blowing 4 signets and steal + scholar runes vs. squishy elementalist, 26.7k spike dmg. But the thing is, it’s overkill dmg vs. a glassy elementalist, but a warrior on the other hand would survive the spike and stunlock and kill me right afterwards.

hihey.1075:

Vanthian.9267:

Miniponki.2683:

Hey Guys,

Since all my Friends are like “Thief is the hardest class in PvP” i want to know: Is it really that hard to play him? I’m not trolling or anything but all i see is their s/d #3 skill spamm which doesnt seem to be that hard :/

It is not hard at all. Thieves just complain because they don’t’ want a nerf. it is not hard to go in stealth every 4 seconds then just wait around till target blows their cool downs then spam backstab or whatever you plan on spamming (because that is literally the only thing a Thief does).

The class as itself is a joke but with the broken stealth mechanic is just ridiculous. Not to mention all the PvE (aka WvW) Thieves thinking they are pro (such a joke).

Its skill floor for Thief is by far one of the lowest, only higher than Mesmer. If you are decent at playing PvP games you should not die on a Thief at all, in any situation. Just stealth and run. It doesn’t get any easier.

(Note all the pro players begged Anet to change the horrible stealth in this game before they all jumped ship which happened almost a year and half ago)

Learn to play dude.

^

Originally by: Bowflex.4502

What: Forced Stealth
Suggestion: Right click buffs like stealth to remove them.
Why: You are unable to contest/cap or obtain buffs while in stealth so this would be an Improvement to stealth in sPvP for builds that relies more on it as well as thieves/allies who are unable to leave stealth when they need to.
Thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Suggestion-removing-buffs-or-stealth/first#post3945846

Zenith Kris dagger skin from achievements:
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/gw2-zenith-kris-dagger-2.jpg
And other dagger skins from the gemstore.

And soon this one from WvW if your server gets first place and you’ve done the meta:
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gw2-mistforged-heros-dagger-animated.gif

Otherwise you can just get higher level daggers, since you unlock the skin from the wardrobe anyways. this is one of my personal favourites:
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/gw2-corrupted-dagger.jpg

+1

Just annoying when you’re stuck in stealth, not just for capping nodes but also for contesting when your opponent guardian spams all his blocks and blinds.

Have a long cooldown on weaponswap?

The most agile class in the game, with both weapon-sets using same resource pool for their abilities.

I feel it would improve skillcap further and how well thieves fare in sPvP if the weaponswap cooldown was reduced. And various weaponsets could be used together
better mid-combat.

It was noticeable even before the patch when the lock hit someone.

Now you notice by their healthbar dropping by 30-40%

tooltip says ~660 dmg with my build, it was hitting ~1500 non crits.

Xbon.9086:

it’s always done a good amount of damage even without traits towards it.

Indeed, but not like this.

With some conditions in the middle of combat it usually did 2.5k- 3k. With 3 conditions I was able to crit 6k+ on the light golem.

Time to try it out in spvp xD

Yep, the warlock is bugged. crits 3k on heavy golem and 4.8k with some simple staff conditions. :p

afaik, any third party applications that interacts with anything inside GW2 including the use of macros are strictly forbidden.

However I think you can bypass this by having something put text in the copy-memory and then manually paste it in the chat.

From rules of conduct:

20. You may not use any third-party program (such as a “bot”) in order to automate gameplay functions, including playing, chatting, interacting, or gathering gold or items within Guild Wars 2. You may not assist, relay, or store gold or items for other players who are using these processes.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Necros would need a complete overhaul if their base health got lowered. Health is their only actual defense, since they lack dodges, invulnerabilities, blocks, evades, and immunities entirely.

Adjusting health of classes is a big change, I would see no problem with necros receiving other mitigation methods. I’m mostly fine with things as they are currently though, but it does make it impossible to scale dmg in a healthy way when the base hp difference between low and high hp is 8k

For the sake of boredom I stacked some vit in pvp on my necro.

Thieves are pretty much free kills to my engineer with its insane condi dmg, but as soon as I go up against a hambow warrior I feel my dmg sucks.

Maybe if they took necros and warriors out of the clouds with their high healthbars and slightly increased the hp of thieves, guardians and elementalists they could make conditions far more balanced.

A good user-interface is a user-interface where you can access what you need easily and smooth with as few clicks as possible, unless you’re doing something deeper.

Overall, GW2 has had a flawless user-interface and things have still been improving since release. But now, something finally bugs me.

Whenever I want to access my equipment panel to overlook my stats or change some pieces of equipment for other stats it brings me to the recent hero panel I opened or to the root panel. This puts the equipment panel 1 button press and 1 or 2 clicks away, and since stats are mandatory values in an mmorpg I feel this panel in particular should be the prioritized panel.

Small note since I’m starting to feel ungrateful:
Overall, I have been enjoying this recent patch a lot, a big thanks to everyone who brought us all of the new features and changes.

Made an example of where I’d want to go when I open the Hero-panel.

Fear is fine, annoying and strong, but not OP. What bothers me most is the high chill duration necros have access to and the flesh golem spiking people up against walls for 8k+ dmg occasionally.

Seems we do have some more build variety.

D/D + SB 6/6/0/0/2 with revealed training, seems after some testing just as good as 5/6/0/0/3, just for that it’s for more pressure instead of mobility and flexibility.

Anyone tested the CS trait with Daggerstorm, SB and S/x AoE damage? I can imagine it would provide some quite nice sustain that way.

Thing is mates, everyone got their crit dmg nerfed. If you’re wearing soldier you might drop some of it for valkyrie, through this I was able to reduce the crit dmg loss to just 10% which I’m fine overall with.

I agree though that fights against condi bunkers seemed hopeless even before the patch.

10/30/….{cough}2/6/0/0/6 – S/D + SB

DA: III
CS: VI, X, XI
Tr: V, VII, XII

Berserk ( w/ valkyrie in WvW)
Runes of the Scholar
S/D – Sigil of Paralyzation and Sigil of Fire
SB – Sigil of Bloodlust and Sigil of Fire

Your precision is unaffected, you could have tested it before asking.

From the few games I’ve played I feel my current build mows down people just as good as it used to months ago. And I find the buff to sigil of paralyzation really good with it, against guardians I can keep them locked out for ~6 seconds and I’ve seen up and around 4k blows with crippling strike and larcenous strike.

However there’s many PvE players and 8v8 trash around, might contribute that it feels easier.

Carpboy.7145:

I think runes of the wurm could help get some ferocity back, especially going deep acro. Hard to tell rho

Noticed those runes earlier while tinkering with my D/P build, we’ll just have to wait for a build editor to be updated I suppose. Unless someone is willing to deal with maths.

Before the patch I however had some calculations made that if Ferocity main stat equipment was introduced it would be a tragic dmg loss to switch from Power mainstat to Ferocity, I could however be mistaken.

Improvisation refreshes random utilities of one type no matter if you have them equipped or not, which means whether it is Venom, Signets, Deception, Trickery or Traps it’s random.

Combined Training only works on the dual wield skill #3 as intended.

in PvE / WvW I switched out some soldier for valkyrie to reduce the dmg loss,
ended up at a 10% loss on numbers of my burst. Still running 10/30/30/0/0 not even bothering with the new traits, tested the DA one and it felt lackluster.

In sPvP I picked up S/D + SB again, which feels way smoother with lower damage flying around. Since no calculators are updated I’ll write down my current build, it’s pretty much the infamous S/P build just that it’s using S/D instead and aims on dazelocking using steal and tactical strike and dealing heavy pressure with auto attack,

S/D+SB-2/6/0/0/6

DA – Mug
CS – Practiced Tolerance, Critical Haste, Executioner
Tr – Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Sleight of Hand.

Berserker Amulet
Runes of the Scholar
S/D – Sigil of Paralyzation & Sigil of Fire
SB – Sigil of Fire & Sigil of Bloodlust

Heal: Withdraw
Utility: Shadow Refuge, Infiltrator’s Signet, Shadowstep
Elite: Any will do.

Please share if you actually have a way to use the new traits and runes, if not for the sake of sharing, do it to prove my doubts wrong.

And my current look after the patch, some minor clipping, but otherwise I like it.

If it was about bringing up condi builds in PvE they could have just increased the physical resistance of mobs by 10%.

In 10/30/30/0/0 pre-patch Risen Plaguebearer:
4.1k Cloak and Dagger
7.4k Backstab

Post-patch:
3.7k Cloak and Dagger
6.6k backstab

I removed some toughness, increased hp and crit dmg a bit though.

… When you wake up and can’t decide which character you should bring to work.
…..To later realize you aren’t allowed to pvp at work.

in 1v1 perspective thinking of what potential the classes have when played by an experienced player:

1. Necromancers and Engineers have the fight in their favor, unless they make severe mistakes and/or the thief uses non-classwise mechanics (LoS for instance) to gain the fight in his favor.

2. Guardians, can completely avoid taking damage against thieves while they deal fatal AoE burs, if the thief however is able to successfully kite them while taking low damage and find an opening when the guardian has cooldowns they can bring the fight to their favor.

3. Warriors and Mesmer (yes PU too) are strong against thieves in the right hands.

4. Thief vs. Thief.

5. Elementalist and Ranger, it takes a great amount of efforts for these 2 to match the thief.

In team fights and roaming however they are generally among the strongest.

SA > AC when it comes to D/D.

In theory many things can be said, like “10% more dmg and dodge equals 100% mitigation”.

Dodge can be valuable when you can dodge around and deal heavy blows, but when it comes to D/D you want to stick to your target to get off auto attack chains and cloak and dagger, thus damage mitigations like toughness, vitality and regen are a lot more valuable, and stealth on steroids while you try to land your backstabs is simply awesome.

imo D/D is awful with deep trickery or acrobatics, however D/P works really good with either of the lines, since it’s less dependent on hugging your opponent, and trickery works really good in particular because it has access to extra damage mitigation from blinds and the low cooldown on steal is a buff to the 5>2>F1 combo.

Here’s what from my personal experience would call the viable zones for both weapon sets. If you have a trait spent outside of these zones your build will underperform severely compared to what you can mix and match within them.

As a main thief, I find really frustrating that pets shields against backstab… its like a free mitigation mechanism on top of the already OP regen, semi-invulnerability, dmg reduction and evasion they get from various traits and utilities.

Is it only me or it is a problem for everyone?

@op: use evasive or ranged pets.

GW2:
Darkmoon
Deathwalker

Other games:
Ghostblade
Shadowblade

Always something containing Dark, Shadow, Death, Blade, Ghost or something Demon-like. I often think about a small backstory for my characters to then pick a name based on that, I’m usually unable to create a serious character without it.

Asura if you want everything you do to hardly be visible.
Norn for snow leopard, really useful mobility skill.
Human to simply look awesome.
Sylvari looks really good as thieves as well and also have a useful racial or 2.

Also if you enjoy fooling people, create a huge norn or charr and people wont recognize you as a thief at first.

Afaik, they decided to name them thief due to that it describes the GW2 class more widely. It’s weak unless it has control, selfish, easy to run away with, steals stuff, has a lot of tools, only a part of the thief class is purely about assassination.

Since thief is the wide title for the class, whatever you want to define yourself as is a role-play element. Pick up daggers and sb and some assassin-looking armor, go deadly arts and critical strikes and you may simply call your character assassin.
S/P and some pirate-looking armor and you have a pirate, P/D if you want to feel like a bandit, S/D for ninja. Just some examples.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin

This topic seems too one-sided.

/initiate Devil’s Advocate-mode
I believe blocking a thief is the right thing to do, after all if I’m unable to counter a thief due to lack of knowledge and cooldowns it’s a clear sign that the thief-player is horrible and the class is too strong. I think they should implement toggleable autoblock function towards bad thieves who are able to kill players, while also letting the player whisper curses at the thief while he’s unable to whisper back.
/disable Devil’s Advocate-mode

Well, gaurs have semi-decent mobility, but as a trade-off they have other beneficial abilities instead. They can seem quite tanky and cause a good amount of damage with the horns.

I like dueling pu mesmers.

With the casual x/30/30/x/x, I pick up D/D and P/D. During the fight I create a good balance between offence and defence, sometimes sitting a bit extra in stealth for the cond removal and health regen. P/D allows me to create good pressure without standing near the mesmer which protects me from them blowing up clones and chaos storm, and on top of that it has among the worst auto-attack in the game which gives me a quite solid protection against confusion, going in with D/D at 5+ stacks of confusion along with getting hit by illusionary counter for 5 stacks of torment is usually what kills the thief in fights with pu mesmers.

As utilities Shadow Refuge for x2 sneak attacks and lifesteal, blinding powder for emergency stealth, shadowstep for stunbreaker and cond removal. Once the Mesmer is low I go in with D/D if I noted he recently used Chaos Storm. As I run executioner instead of hidden killer, 1 backstab and a heartseeker or some auto attacks are enough to kill a pu mesmer below 50%.