Guild Wars 2

Well, Fat Disgrace, putting 30p in the Shadow Arts-traitline makes your build more forgiving. With 30 points in the SA-line you may gain a good amount of sustain, a really good condition removal and blind on stealth, it overall makes you hard to take down for an average player if you use it correctly, and all of it works in a passive manner which is quite frown upon these days (healing signet for instance).

However, in sPvP every extra second spent in stealth for no strategic or team-serving purpose is wasted time, this could cause your team to see you as a troll.

Also you sacrifice damage, mobility and a lot of other utilities to gain these stealth passives, which in some cases might make it both difficult for you to take your opponents down and for your opponents to take you down, combine that with spending a lot of time in stealth and not even being able contest points while in a fight and you’re quite a troll.

However 0/30/20/0/20 looks like a quite decent and balanced build to practice with and as long as you enjoy it and you don’t wish to have more damage or mobility you don’t really have any reason to not stick with it.

Yep, signet build has highest achievable burst.

Here’s a non-signet version.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAoYVlsMp7pVOx0J8PNhs9YnqQey/AZpzgmaJA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNKYBxkCA
Hard to play, but makes shortwork of ppl you want dead once you get the hang of it.
In fights; stand outside the middle condihampoint and lol at your 4k clusterbombs and poisonfield, be patient to find the right moment to go in with D/D and strike, move across the map quickly to help teammates in danger.
Mitigation comes from using movement, positioning, line of sight and dodges properly, when additional dodges are needed you use shortbow.

You know you’re playing right when your opponents feel like you come out of nowhere and strike them down while they already feel pressured, and when drawing on their last breath lying on the ground they say “noob, 2 2 2 2 2, kitten, kitten YOU”

And important! If an engineer tells you “2 2 2 2 2 2” you answer "swiftness swiftness swiftness swiftness swiftness swiftness "

As Rome stated, it serves a more team supporting purpose, this trait is perfect for builds like Ninja Nurse, Ninja nurse might actually become the new meta build after the dmg reduction.

Sleight of Hand is OP, well.. Actually it feels more or less essential, going more than 15 points in trickery always makes me feel dumb if I don’t sacrifice something in order to pick up Sleight of Hand. I’d rather see Steal brought down to 30 seconds base cooldown, and the -20% cd reduction eliminated from sleight of hand. And possibly SoH changed into “Daze and return 20 energy whenever you successfully steal from an opponent”. This would make me feel less bad for picking just 20 or 25 points in the trickery line, or trying out alternative builds.

1sec stability on reveal? 30 Acrobatics? Addition to higher skill play? At higher levels of skill I’d believe a 30 acro thief would simply just dodge the CC rather than setting up stealth and trying to hit an opponent to get revealed, the thief will most likely get stunned until the whole stealth duration ends if he tries to stealth next to a warrior spamming his hulk abilities.

Yep you read right, the runeset has a cooldown.

The runeset with the right build is indeed powerful, even more powerful than the elite itself. Thieves have no burst cleanse of conditions which makes it really useful to carry runes of lyssa, and the thief spvp meta builds have poor condition removal overall.

If you play D/P 10/30/0/0/30 for instance and get stacked for 30 seconds of cripple by a necromancer, while you have shadowstep on cooldown you gonna have a long boring walk, unless the necromancer killed you. Although I suggest more damaging rune options for D/P.

Hambow has really long immobilize, bleed and burn, popping lyssa the moments you get caught in that will usually save your life and grant aegis, stability and protection against the powerful hammer attacks you will face til you gain control of the fight.

If you use withdraw as a heal, you may also gain a random 10s boon every 15 seconds,
but overall the runeset is strongest in short fights, for longer fights it’s quite weak except the random boon.

If you play a classic x/30/30/x/x build in WvW there are better options imo.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Commando_armor

you can obtain chest, shoulders and legs from personal storyline, somewhere between 60 and 75 if I recall correctly, the rest of this pvp set isn’t obtainable.
And eyepatch ofc from gemstore, no idea about the boots and gloves she’s wearing.

Your role is roamer, so you should always focus on getting around the map quickly performing several tasks.

- Support homebunker by making the fights at homepoint short. Only if he’s threatened, if an opposing player is unable to overpower the homepoint bunker he’s wasting time there which adds to your own teams score.
- Support mid by locking down and terminating the main target, if the situation allows.
- Support mid using AoE and poisonfield from SB.
- Execute players! Heartseeker+Steal / Heartseeker+Infiltrator’s Signet.
- Secure stomps! Perform Stomps, learn the shadowstep stomp techniques against thieves/clustered situations/guardians, stealth stomp mesmers, and blind everyone else using blackpowder.
- Decap/cap empty far.
- Mainly avoid fighting alone, if you end up fighting alone judge whether it would be necessary, a necessary situation would be if you can easily prevent a point from getting decapped or if you can make shortwork of whoever attacks you. If you’re higher prioritized somewhere else just leave it.

It’s important to learn all the combos D/P has to offer and also all Infiltrator’s Arrow shortcuts around the map.

ramorambo.6701:

just use hide in shadow with d/p

Thnx, corrected the link.

Tend to forget switching between the 2 ingame as well, HiS with S/P or S/D. o.O
However withdraw works ok with D/P, although the bleed/burn/poison removal is quite essential without sword-mainhand when up against condispam.

S/D = Sword/Dagger
SB = Shortbow
etc.

However, personally I’d recommend S/P + SB.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAsaVl0Mp7pVOx0J8PNhs9oC1Jey7BZNWmlWBaC-TsAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNsYBxsAA

or D/P + SB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAoaVlsMp7pVOx0J8PNhs9oC3Jey7BZNWmlWBaC-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINsYBxsAA

Kanenas.4906:

How does it destroy the backstab builds? If a block or blind is longer in duration than the stealth, the thief will not hit anyway.
What I propose will reward the good thief, who will not try to hit when he is blinded or when he sees that his opponent is blocking.
The bad thief who will not notice these things should be punished.

Both bad and good thieves will be punished in this case.
No matter which of them enters stealth an 8 seconds aegis is an 8 seconds aegis and both have to strike it to remove it.

Not striking the aegis and instead sitting in stealth waiting to remove the aegis and restealth will lower overall pressure to get through all sustain of the opponent, especially if the opponent has access to several blinds, aegis and blocks it would make it nearly impossible for the thief to ever land a backstab. If however the thief removes the block or blind using backstab he will be revealed and the opponent will after taking 0% damage enter a very aggressive manner and cause devastating dmg to the thief who only sits on his auto attacks, 10.8k base hp, below 2k base armor, 2 dodges, no notable hard-CC, no protection and no aegis.

As it is now, landing a successful backstab on for instance a good PU mesmer or Guardian is already hard, and even if you do they have the sustain to deal with them.
Same goes for necromancer and engineer, both don’t have good access to blocks, but however they have many other nifty counters to getting stabbed in the back.

On a side-note.

Check out Yishis vids, his vids tend to grow some hair on bad and new thieves chests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8Lh8Oogl6Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEEYhovtwBo

And his build:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-c;4RwkZ0J5R-Vd0;9;5TT9;225B35A0;3JNV4-F04m9fgm9fgm-FTF6-6-N_schVlWYXv21475230B-2c;5kV05NV05;9;9;9;9;86-6U

The base is pretty much 30CS and 30SA, with 10 points wherever you desire.
2.4k armor and 15k vit sets you up good defensively without losing too much damage.

Good place to start.

In spvp, I wouldn’t recommend D/D, and instead D/P.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAoaVlsMp7pVOx0J8PNhs9oC3Jey7BZNWmlWBaC-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINKYBxkCA
Not bothering finding good vids, but Caed might have some nice highlights.
http://www.twitch.tv/narcarsis

Going 30 in Shadow Arts mostly means you will be a lot less dodgy and if you want a good enough dmg output to get through most opponents sustain you will need 30 in CS.

Going 30 in Shadow Arts for rejuvenation and embrace, means you have chosen decent healing and decent condition removal as your mitigation. Yet it’s nothing like for instance engineers with backpack regenerator and stacking blastfinishers with healing turret achieving up to 30k heal per minute, with 0 healing power.
That both beats Shadow Rejuvenation in sustain and burst heal.

Zero Day.2594:

See that skill needed some bug fixing… obstructed 80% of the time because a blade of grass is sticking out, 9.5% of the time misses, 0.25% lands but is blocked/mitigated and 0.25% of the time hit and does damage… Costs 3 init.

Might as well have a skill that just uses up 3 init and doesn’t do anything, at least in the toolip it can say “Does nothing.”

This doesn’t sound immersive, they should also fix some mechanisms.

Missing Dagger.
Throw a dagger that misses your opponents, and doesn’t return to you, so you will have to go and pick it up to throw it again.

Best roaming class, no. But it’s strong at escaping, and that’s always handy in WvW.
But as a thief you may find 1v1’s or 1v2’s that takes a lot more effort and carefulness than on other roaming classes like engineer, mesmer or warrior.
Do you like challenge? In return you may also find fights that can seem a lot more smoother than the ones you’ll find on the above 3.

Fun? That’s more or less personal, if you are a fan of assassins, thugs, bandits, rogues and ninjas it may always lead you to the class that represents them. Then however you might not enjoy the weaponsets or mechanisms. On thieves, pretty much your main dmg is always on #1, and on sets like S/P and P/P burst goes on #3, this may make you feel like you’re really limited in options how to deal your dmg to your foes, it’s fully the opposite to Elementalist which has many options on how to set up their dmg.
What really is challenging on thief is to know when to disengage or when to go full assault, what to use your dodges for (unless in a dodgy build) and how to counter your enemy. It’s many times unforgiving to fail a dodge, necromancers can for instance stack you with really long chills (7+ seconds), with a lot of other conditions on top of that, all while you are feared. And thieves don’t have any burst cleanse for conditions except runes of lyssa. But that 7+ seconds chill from staff is on 20 seconds cooldown, and you’re either dead or really low health after the necro has stacked his conditions, 10.8k base hp, a signet of spite + a dhuumfire proc goes through that if you don’t have any ways to cleanse.

Finally a thief vid which stands out from the crowd, well played and nice teamwork.

And charr thief for once suited well in this war-theme.

I have been summoned from the depths of hell to spread evil on the forum !

I’m in a writing mood today.

Thief is among the top classes in 1v1 for sure, since it more or less can defeat everything with enough patience and skill, since I brought patience into the picture, it’s not the strongest for s/tPvP. most of the 1v1 fights against any of the meta builds are outdrawn fights and a waste of time. So your goal should always be to keep high pressure using SB in team fights, disable targets using blinds and interrupts, kill other zerkers using high burst and effectively turn 1v2’s on your homepoint into 2v1’s, and decap far ofc !

Against necros, when they are low hp and in full deathshroud a good solution is to steal their fear and spam heartseeker on them, their lifeforce melt like butter.
If you need to gapclose in to the necro sitting on his runes, you may dodge and use steal or infiltrator’s signet at the same time to break the runes unharmed. And remember Shadow Step cures 3 conditions, so can be effective take out their insane chills and other things which they most likely will have back up within a blink of an eye. Against minion necros, walk out of line of sight a lot to lure the npc’s away from the necro, engage and damage him, rinse and repeat. #5 from pistol also blinds the minions. If you get immobilized you are most likely to get hit by putrid explosion(?) from the 2 bone minions, getting hit by 1 is lethal, getting hit by 2 is deadly, also don’t walk near walls if they have a flesh golem:
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/133663/glesh_2.jpg
Yep 8k+ dmg from the fleshgolem..

Against warriors, steal is the most powerful thing you have at your disposal. You can use it in several ways, for instance, it can rip their stability and daze them, allowing you to instantly interrupt them at will which can save your life and stunbreakers. 90% of all warriors you’ll fight are using berserker stance, since most of your mitigation comes from blind it’s a good idea to outwait their berserker stance before engaging them offensively. If you have their stolen ability and their berserker stance is down, pop out a blackpowder field and use the stolen ability for the “permablind” and damage, if steal is off cooldown by then you may throw in an additional steal and repeat, and if they just switched to LB all the better. Also avoid spending too much time in their fire field, although they most likely are direct dmg hambows, a lot of your hp falls to the fire field. After popping fire field they also in most cases sue Arcing Arrow which hits like a truck and grants them 3 might, before setting up this combo they may also use #5 for the immobilize and bleeds, if you don’t break out of this you are a bird with broken wings in a cage with a lion. Also throw in some more or less random #4’s from time to time, especially while he’s using LB, any warrior who gets a skill from his kitten nal of OP skills interrupted by a thief is a grumpy warrior.

Engineers, in melee keep as high blind uptime as possible, I would mostly not suggest melee at all, they have counters for everything a thief can do in close range, but blind weakens them significantly, and a couple of backstabs might be essential to get through their high sustain. Dodge the dangerous grenades using shortbow, dodge any cc thrown at you, fighting them on top of their elite turrets is suicide. Poison, clusterbomb them and dodge. Their stolen ability is more or less useless, never use it when you are about to stealth since dmg from it breaks stealth, but! If you throw a clusterbomb at the pool of dung. it actually gives you and your teammates sexy purple bubbles that grants all sorts of goodies if the engineer is facerolling enough to hit you.

And some handy combos since you are still new.

" > " Followed by
“>” Mid animation

Usefull teleport combos:
Black Powder > Heartseeker>Steal(or infiltrators signet) > Backstab
Heartseeker>Steal(or infiltrators signet)
Blackpowder>Steal(or infiltrators signet)
Dodge>Steal(or infiltrators signet) for all sorts of traps

While in stealth:
Shadow Shot>Backstab
Backstab>Steal(or infiltrators signet)

Stomping guardians and stomping in tight situations:
Stomp>Shadowstep Away>Shadowstep Back(right before stomp ends.)

To answer some riddles.

I was nearly full glass cannon, executioner to work well with both D/P and S/P
The damage is a frontstab on protection, the guardian countered my backstab simply by backpedaling, the guardian was quite sturdy overall.

After my miserable frontstab, I switched to S/P and finished him off with that, then I checked the combat log, lol’d at my backstab and thought I might share it here since a lot of ppl aren’t aware of anything else than 9-15k backstabs.

How do my enemies counter this OP demedge?

Edit: Nurf pliz

As usual, avoiding looking like everyone else and creating my own styles.
Thanks for the eyepatch anet <3

Domey.9804:

Ts is crap in pvp (4sec revealed + shorter daze, horrible aftercast from cnd).

They nerfed it and then accidentally nerfed it again without un-nerfing the previous nerf nor compensating it, and then they fixed rounding making the daze even shorter, making it a horribly nerfed to death skill.

If you happen to be in stealth with sword mainhand you are better off striking from in front for the blind which they actually buffed which didn’t need any buffs, or doing a LS or Pistolwhip.

Also while stunlock builds were viable we had a stun breaker on 2nd sword-skill, which made it hard to lock us down and since stunlock builds weren’t really dodgy or had access to stability, we relied on this skill.

Then they suddenly wanted S/D thieves to be dodge spammers, and buffed flanking strike while everything else was nerfed to oblivion.

CnD nerfed, Dancing Dagger nerfed, Tactical Strike nerfed, Stealth nerfed, Infiltrator’s Strike nerfed.

Overall it looks just fine, a few things I’d like to point out though.

Shadowstep could replace Roll For Initiative, which would add removal of 3 conditions, 2 stunbreakers within the SS window and additional mobility to get around quickly.

With the added emergency condition removal which you can trigger at will, you could take out the unreliable trait Pain Response and add something for overall sustain.
Quick Recovery, Fleet of Foot, Power of Inertia.

The haste trait from CS line is lovely with S/P, would personally choose it over Side Strikes.

Sigil of Force adds more dps than Sigil of Accuracy for direct dmg builds afaik, haven’t heard anyone saying otherwise.

Personally I wouldn’t play this build with S/P, I would miss the frequent gap closer, boon removal, daze and mug from steal. Although I play S/P with 25/30/0/0/15 a lot in WvW. The current build could however work quite well with S/D.

Personally I’ve played Guardian, Mesmer, Engineer and even Warrior a lot lately.

And every time I change traits on any of these I feel amazed by how many viable ways to customize and personalize builds there are. In this order where I feel I have most options: Guardian > Engineer > Mesmer > Warrior.

Thieves used to be the same about a year ago, but after all nerfs and minor buffs thrown around, we are now stuck with 10/30/0/x/x, there are other builds out there that are fun to play and personal, but often they are underperforming and doesn’t feel competitive enough, and I don’t have this feeling when trying builds alternate to the meta builds on the classes I mentioned.

For a thief to do well in higher level tpvp these days he needs a huge amount of experience and always stick to his tasks, most thieves lack one of either.

Some say “oh yieah imma bunker on ma feef, S/D dodge spam trololol, for murica!”
And it requires a ridiculous amount of effort to do this well, and it’s highly counterable by others if they are good at timing attacks between the thiefs evade frames. Why waste time on this, when you could just roll a guardian, and follow the same rotations as always not even watching out for what’s flying around.

Thieves driving away damage dealers? I one shot the remaining hp a thief has with my shatter mesmer if the berserker lands his whirl. I kill most classes way quicker with my mesmer than with my thief, at the cost of that I will face more hard counters than I do with say D/P thief. Ah, and allow me to log my meditation guardian, incredible burst and survival and I can do multiple tasks depending on where I’m needed, while on thief I have to scout and think “hmm will I manage to take down that guy(any class except elementalist and thief) at the treb?”.

So where does thieves actually excel? From my perspective it’s just the shortbow #5 that can shortcut around the map with ease and many of these shortcuts could even be considered glitches. Highest sustained mobility, no doubt about that, this allows them to get across the map quickly to decap, but 1v1’s usually lead to outdrawn fights and you will often have to leave the capture point to let it go to the enemy’s favor just because it doesn’t take much AoE and you go down, and 1v2 is hardly possible unlike on engineer and guardian. In Xv1(+x) thieves however bring a lot of tools that will make the targeted player go down with ease, they also bring steady AoE but not any heavy burst unless S/P with its small cleave area.

I like high risk high reward, and this is the main reason why I was sticking on my thief for almost a year. But after playing a lot and learning the alternative professions,
I’ve started feeling that I can have higher reward at lower risk most of the time, this makes it feel bad to play thief. The only positive thing is that the curve is quite steady on thief, there are not really any hard-counters as I’ve faced on other classes. But there are counter-heavy things like Necromancer, Engineer, Guardians etc.

That’s all for me.

Elementalist, the whole class should be erased, they are so kitten annoying.
Reminds me of a bee when they run around with their daggers and shocking aura and trying to dmg you, and then suddenly run away to heal up. And looks so silly when they spam scepter 1 from air attunement along with some 2’s and 3’s walking towards you for a RtL and an updraft for some extra dmg and knockback. And gc staff elementalist doing way too much AoE dmg over capture points, while they die with 2-3 hits, annoying.

Minion Necromancer, minions automatically doing most of the job, while also the necromancer can cause devastating dmg and control. And they are so weak to high AoE that it’s silly.

Spirit rangers, too much dodge, protection and 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 with spirits.

Well, nah, I think everything’s fine, but I think there should be more build variation and more possible roles for all classes.

Got 2 thieves.
- Human male, never been a fan of beast races. I usually prefer Elves or Demonic inspired humans in fantasy.
- Norn female, she’s P/D and I felt norn female would fit in well in some sort of western theme.

On a side note:

Lawful.5314:

Is there a list of T3 armors i can view for each race?

Whut?

Shadow’s Rejuvenations healing coefficent is 10% healing power per tick, so on 1000 healing power it heals 293 + 100 per tick.

Looks just fine, dunno why’d you want 5% crit chance on death blossom though (CS: Combo Critical Chance), well.. each his own.

Not worth messing around too much with ascended equip yet either, since soldier “BiS” will change once ferocity is introduced.

25/30/0/x/x – Surely is max damage.

DA – Mug, Combined Training(S/x & P/P) / Dagger Training(D/x)
CS – first 2 dependent on build or what you prefer, executioner on grandmaster.

Acro – Whatever you prefer, none makes much difference.
Trickery – Thrill of the Crime or Flanking Strikes depending on fury uptime in group.

I personally play 10/30/0/0/30 steal and signet build, since it brings me some sustain, high damage, vigor, 50% group fury uptime.

As long as you play thief, play what you enjoy most and play best, because there will always be things out there that are more cheddar, like perplexity engineers, PU mesmers, warriors and zerker guardians.

Personally I don’t find the difference between D/P and D/D to be really meaningful when both sets are played well. D/D requires you to keep an eye out for the enemy’s boons, higher situational awareness and good positioning. D/P is more straight on with stealth out of nowhere and the ability to spam blinds and teleports, making it overall a bit easier, but on a wide perspective D/P has a high skill-cap too.

I’ve played through every weaponset and nearly every build and grew tired of outdrawn fights and stealthspam to survive, and the whole idea of putting a mere point in SA makes me wanna vomit. So, most of the time I play:
25/30/0/0/15 – D/D + SB
10/30/0/0/30 – D/P + SB | S/P + SB | S/D + SB

Couldn’t agree less, in all game modes it should be instant, I don’t care whether it’s usable while stunned or channeling, but instant it should be.

Currently the best use of the kitten skill is to clear a condition.

If they want the game to be fair there are plenty of other skills that need a cast time as well, like; Focus #5 on guardian, Staff #2 on mesmer, D/x Air #3 on ele.

This is probably the closest to lara croft you can get.
http://imgur.com/a/j44FI

Norn T2 medium legs and krytan chest.

other cosplays:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/87557-the-ingame-cosplay-thread/

Thought I’d make a thread here to check if it’s intended that burn should tick ~130dmg at lvl 22, pretty much 10% of my healthpool on my a few levels downleveled guardian.
Can’t imagine going against these mobs with a character of the same level.

Destroyers in Kessex Hills fyi, but also I’ve noticed the same from other firemobs.
Sure, I like the challenge, but then please bring the rest of the game up to same level of dmg as this. Feels poorly scaled to vs 10 ettins and go out alive while I get killed in 3 seconds by 3 destroyers.

I’d rather see burning at longer duration and lower dmg, to teach new players to use condition removal.

25/30/0/0/15 – D/D + SB – Signets of Power.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmCO3cy4E/5Ex2DfKUe6fgs6MoZLB-jkCBYfCiEEQEFgUBAZmFRjt4qIas6aYKXER12bDRziO1SBExyI-w

Nearly max damage, some damage traded for some utility I find more or less essential.
Basilisk venom, blow signets for might, cloak and dagger+steal and backstab, overkill dmg in most cases.

25/30/0/0/15 – D/D + SB – Variant, I call it; the assassin.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPncS6E/5Ey2jKcn4J/DklODaqlA-j0CBYfCiEEQEFgUBAZmLjN1MQFSFRjVXDT5SIS7K12bFRrWKgRVGB-w

This one requires quick reflexes, I usually put on some soldier armor or valkyrie to be able to last some dmg in general since there will always be some if the fight lasts longer than 3 seconds. It has high mobility, you can also get travelers runes if you feel you need +25% movement speed.

10/30/0/0/30 – D/P + SB
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmaPncS6E/5Ey2jKcn4JvHk1YZWaFoJA-jkCBYfCiEEQEFgUBAZmFRjtQqIas6aYKXER12bDRziO1SBExyI-w

Same build as you find lots of thieves using in sPvP, stealth on demand from BP+HS, and lots of utility.

10/30/0/0/30 – S/P + SB.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmaPncS6E/5Ey2jKUn4JvHk1YZWaFoJA-jkCBYfCiEEQEFgUBAZmFRjtKqIas6aYKXER12bDRziO1SBExyI-w

Another fun build, Pistolwhip got really nice some patches ago and there’s really good utility in this build.

Customize them after your own liking.
Scholar, Divinity, Travelers, Lyssa, and Ogre are my favourite rune sets.

Full zerker often feels too glassy in WvW, I often put some soldier or valkyrie to make
some room in case someone knows how to counter my spike.

These above are all glassy builds, you can however pick x/30/30/x/x to gain a lot of survival in stealth builds, but I feel it breaks the whole concept of being glassy.

After trying out guardian for the first time for about 27 games today.
Seeing how easy it is to apply block, blind and invulnerability everytime the thief enters stealth and in other ways screwing up the entered stealth for the thief (aoe damage).
I completely disagree about the reveal on block part.

I however find Blackpowder quite strong with its frequent pulses of blind, mitigates pretty much 100% of all your attacks if you touch it.
Easy access to stealth, yes annoying, but so is my easy access to blinds, blocks and insane burst.

I really enjoyed my thief hunt earlier.

At one point a thief was “perma-stealthing” at a capture point. I pretty much just jumped around and spammed attacks, with some facerolling involved, avoided some backstabs. And suddenly everything got silent.. and 5 seconds later the thief appears next to me throwing rocks.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Does this require food or no? And also, how does this build work in zergs?

I usually use Shadow Oil for permastealth and globalpeople meatstew to kill people before they can react.

Doesn’t work well with zergs, but if you use shadow oil and daggerstorm you can
1v10 while being permastealthed.

D/P surely has the upper hand.

Remove blinds using steal or dancing dagger, CnD him when he BP>Heartseekers towards you.

The main concern is not to land backstab, but to win the damage race and avoid their backstabs. I run 25/30/0/0/15, I usually outdps them with AA.

Another nice way is to go in SB and just be difficult to hit and let them waste initiative, then switch to Daggers and spike them.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Wait….why does this have standard 12 initiative……RAGE!!

Yeah noticed that too while roaming the other day, must have bugged after I selected Combustive shot.

Although it doesn’t show anywhere, combustive shot contains Cleansing Ire, somehow it’s not ground targeted though and makes a huge fireball come out of the thiefs kitten .

Bunmaster.9734:

I am dissapointed with your noob build of using GS AA, change it to Axe AA NAO!

Edit: And BS should be a non-channeled 100HB, with cleave ofc.

Well, I’m waiting for 2H axes to be implemented in the game. The 1h axes do poor
backstab dmg compared to GS which one shots full bunk guardians.

Hello Tryble.

Keep in mind, Backstab does half damage if he strikes you from in front so make a good use of positioning and rotation of your character and try to predict the thief. Normally the builds with highest damage have 3s stealth and blackpowder+hs always gives 3s stealth no matter what build. So anything that will prevent him from hitting you will do the trick, be sure to also use the sigil which gives 50% endurance back on weaponswap to allow you to throw in an extra dodge if necessary. Having swiftness up and you move around will also make it hard for the thief to land a backstab.

Chain your cooldowns well, the better you’re at it the longer you’ll last against the thief, by throwing in some damage as well this will force the thief to play more defensively and will disable him from playing fully offensively which in the long run will cause too high pressure in a short time.

Also the block heal is really handy when the thief enters stealth.

Kolly.9872:

Even this build is UP compared to Warriors …

True, 30/30/30/30/30 can provide a good challenge to a skilled warrior.
But we needed something stronger, something that could take down warriors with ease.

After closing in on 3000 hours in the game, I’ve finally come up with the build. I’ve both played thief and warrior to learn how to master them, theorycrafted for 20 hours every sunday, to finally achieve this build so many thieves seem to have, the build that has insane regen, insane mobility, insane condition removal, permastealth, permablind and backstabs for 17k.

So here it is… The Almighty… The legendary….
40/40/35/40/40 – GS/P + SB

Someone should test this, it’s quite likely it’s true though.

A while ago some bug caused clones to get destroyed while the opponent was in stealth, they fixed that afaik which could have lead to that the clones keep targeting the player in stealth.

After they give us a way to counter block and blind spam, condition and aoe spam, high CC spam, etc. sure. Til then I’ll continue playing my warrior and engineer, and occasionally mesmer who has way better team support, higher damage and survival at the cost of some mobility.

Your build looks quite ok. I’d however pick zerk over assassin. Assassins signet, meh, it offers no utility except some extra damage, and I’ve learnt to live without the 25% movement speed and take higher advantage of teleports and the utlity infiltrator’s signet brings, infiltrator’s signet also partially replaces infusion of shadows, which lets you pick up blind on stealth which is powerful.

Uncatchable is not really a wise choice imo, it lets enemies keep track of you while you’re stealthed and dodge, I’d pick mug instead for this kind of build for some extra dmg. I also prefer cheaper foods. Lower crit chance than your build but I find that ok with hidden killer. But something like this imo:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmiOncy9E+5Ey2jeqCJKuHJlT1UaFoJA-jwyAYLBRiSgoCgJPl10ngYxtIas6FMV5iqVmAeDGta3BgMA5bB-e

This one however is quite raw, many thieves have 15k hp and 2.4k armor as magical numbers for roaming, can be achieved with zerker + soldier or valkyrie/zerk/cavalier.

I’m not sure what kind of build you seek, stealth builds are more or less meant to be sturdy and last for long fights, scholar runes is usually not the best option for these builds. If you want to get the real feeling of being an assassin you could sacrifice the stealth part and go 25/30/0/0/15.

As for armors:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Duelist_armor_%28exotic%29
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Svanir_armor
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Inquest_armor

Mix and match til you have some satisfying results (pro tip, you can use the pvp locker in heart of the mists). Duelist is probably the best early option since you can buy it for gold from the tradepost.

lol, dunno what traumatic moments you have been through, but I find it rather cute when that fragile little thief comes with his blind field and whirling axes.

Depending on what weaponset I run, either slam them to the ground or eviscerate them in the face for 9k, or create a gap with GS or HB them down.

The skill is balanced, using it in the middle of a group equals death by AoE, 1v1 it’s counterable, reflecting projectiles? wait for it to end.

And for the thieves, it gives them a counter to the high sustain a warrior have, also
if the warrior is mindlessly using LB or Rifle it reflects their projectiles back. Getting hit by LB #5 equals death to any thief who can’t break out of it.

Nothing new that 284 stats on amulet equals 15% cd, this creates a loss of 134 stats which isn’t fair at all against condition and bunker builds who maintain all their stats.

I would rather see those 134 stats moved to toughness, vitality or healing power.

I was hoping for Ferocity in sPvP since it would actually mean a slight increase in dmg afaik.

Or try mystery coffers, then salvage if you get something you don’t want and create something nice.

You may want to check here for pvp mystic forge recipes:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/55030-pvp-mystic-forge-recipes/

Never been a fan of the trickery traitline for dual daggers.

Here’s my assassin build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPncS6E/5Ey2jdqC5J/DklODaqlA-j0CBYLCiEEQEFAUBgJPLaN7JglhFRjVvATVaI16SQeDFRrWGg8tA-w

The damage tend to be quite overkill most of the time, so I invest a bit in defence
to survive a bit of whatever AoE the enemy throws at me. High mobility and quick kills.
Shadow Refuge or Shadow Trap, I find Shadow Trap more powerful in many situations since it’s an instant 5 sec stealth and allows me to get away from huge blob-o-war situations. Key elements of survival is positioning (be sure to turn off melee assist!) and teleports, dodge the most annoying stuff, and switch to shortbow and throw in some 3’s if it gets awkward like while under immobilize forever.

Edit: Picked cheap foods too (fyi)

And here’s the version of it for sPvP.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPncS6E/5Ey2jKcn4J/DklODaqlA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNoYBxsAA

Remember to use it with cautions, always read the situation whether it’s better to go in with daggers or stay passive with SB, SB deals really great damage with this build.

Dee Jay.2460:

Conditions melting targets faster than any D/D Berserker build ever could.

Just shows you how broken Conditions are.

Nah, let’s make immobilize stackable and nerf crit dmg.

Amusing vid though, although I’m not a fan of repetitive 1v1 highlights. lol’d at the predator vs. engineer moment at one point.

D/D + SB still works, it’s just difficult to stay competitive with the set, you barely find glassy to balanced builds which you bring down with ease these days, you’ll mostly find AoE and condition spam bunkers, and builds containing PvE elements which are able to burst you down in 3 seconds sadly.. But it still does its work well by getting across the map quickly to turn 1v2’s into 2v1’s in seconds, and SB grants great damage at mid and clustered situations overall, the poison field is also really great utility.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPncS6E/5Ey2jKcn4J/DklODaqlA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNoYBxsAA

S/P got a small buff, the time between the stun and the flurry on Pistolwhip got significantly reduced allowing it to cause a good amount of damage before the prey walks away. However, Haste effect got cut in half, but the haste on proc is still quite nice.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAsKlYmTOJdi/cCZ7RFqT8k3DyasMLtC0EA-ToAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNKYSB

D/P, well.. There’s not much needed to be said; on demand stealth, “spammable” blind+teleport, blindfield, HS and backstab. Offers the good stuff of D/D + some more utility, slightly less dmg though.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAoKlYmTOJdi/cCZ7RF2T8k3DyasMLtC0EA-ToAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNKYSB

And S/D, I found this build most playable and enjoyable atm, but CS + Trickery dazelock or CS+ Acrobat variations are also possible and offers more dmg.
Really high ini regen and really dodgy.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlYm6OncS6E/5Eh3DyO2wqVgmdP4qV1KA-TsAg0CtIKSVkrITRyisFNKYZx0CA

The build I’d recommend most is S/P, it offers cleave and the evade from pistolwhip which is really nice when fighting AoE condi spam, it also offers condiclear on the weaponset, blackpowder is also a really great tool while in melee on top of points. Using PW together with infiltrators signet or steal allows you to teleport while pistolwhippin or using them right before the PW stun hits lets you stun them the moment you teleport to them, some ppl also like to get immobilize into their S/P build to lock players down more.

Don’t underestimate the trickery tree.
The daze from sleight hits after the boon rip of bounti, which allows you to instantly interrupt players with stability in one simple click. Bounti also gives you vigor which makes up for not having feline grace from acro. Lead attacks makes up for the dmg loss when not going deep into deadly arts. And steal on ~20sec cd

CnD and Mug are fine as they are, if anything I would want the crittable Mug back to make D/D thieves rock in sPvP again. Although I like the nice sustain the small heal provides 30 trickery builds.

Moving the damage to rely more on backstab isn’t a good idea either, it can be incredibly hard to land a successful backstab against a good opponent, making the overall damage come more from AA and CnD, and HS for situations when you wont be able to reach for a backstab on your opponent. Personally I would want the dmg to be spread out more.

Infiltrators Strike>Mug>CnD>TS is a small burst S/D can create currently, and that would be broken as well.

And not sure about Protection for thieves, especially not on the weaponset.

This pretty much sums it all up.

The only thing good about it is the low cd for an elite (runes of lyssa) and that the tiny effect it has doesn’t have to be used in the other more useful utility slots where you can pick up signets, shadow refuge, shadowstep or blinding powder, I would never trade any of them for basilisk venom, I would however trade basilisk venom for devourer venom.

imo basilisk venom should penetrate stability but be stunbreakable.

Nothing new that this ability disables any class in the game, isn’t just for minion necros in particular. Thieves lose access to blind, mobility and stealth, Guardians aren’t able to chain blocks and blinds, warriors their healing signet and adrenal health, list goes on !

There are other elites out there that have more situations where they are powerful, aside from moa with a 10 seconds disable in Xv1-
- Lich Form, in a team fight or 1v1 this skill can be devastating if it’s used by a power necro.
- Plague Form, pretty much invulnerability from melee for 20 seconds.
- Spirit of nature, dem heals and ress.
- Tornado, high CC.
- Rampage, high CC and mobility.
- Elixir X, Random between rampage and tornado.
- Mass Invis, really great utility.
- Thieves Guild, CC and a good kick in dmg.

All have their situations where they are too strong and situations where they are easily counterable. Getting moa’d can be countered in itself, you maintain dodge and you have a mobility skill on 5, also mesmers are highly dependent on LoS. I think moa is just fine, counterable in and out. But an ele entering tornado is only counterably by ranged attacks and stability, which can be really annoying when they’re on top of a capture point.

Amonatory.2453:

I dont understand why you all say you cant kill necros, engis and warriors…… I can kill them usually with ease with s/d. Engis are really only powerful when they use perplexity, but you can still kill them.. I have yet to come across a build that I cannot beat.

A really good Necro, Engineer or Guardian with the right builds usually have the odds on their side, you can even find these chasing thieves. And some warrior builds in WvW are like fighting a stonewall; your fists bleed while you didn’t even scratch the wall. A skilled mesmer is usually 1:1 with thieves. A highly skilled ranger can also reach 1:1, but takes a lot of effort and experience.

I pretty much kill 92% of everyone I find 1v1, if the 92% of who,e I killed learnt from the 6% who killed me or I had to run from, maybe we would have less complaints about stealth.

Tested a different S/D build earlier in sPvP, was really fun to play it and worked better than expected.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlYm6OncS6E/5Eh3DyO2wqVgmdP4qV1KA-TsAg0CtIKSVkrITRyisFNKYZx0CA

Credits to Arganthium.5638