Guild Wars 2

Included a very basic Shadow Arts D/D build, inspired by:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/first#post2196794
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Mugi-D-D-Solo-Outnumbered-Video/first#post3147902

It’s affected by the opportunist nerf and the base ini regen buff.

Greetings fellow thieves!

Thieves look pretty doomed for now, but there will still be viable builds out there.
We can’t know for sure how well we will compete with other classes after the Dec 10th changes yet, we can only expect things, calculate and speculate.

I created this thread for all who doesn’t want to give up their favourite class and adapt to other classes who can do things just as good or better than thief and still remain viable in terms of damage, mobility and survival.

The main purpose is to discuss and share builds. I’ll fill up with builds below, but I will need some help from the rest of the community.

So let’s do what we thieves do best.. Adapt to other builds if necessary.

Posts from Anet:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/first#post3133119
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Dec-10th-thief-changes/first#post3149311

PvE:

WvW:

D/D + SB 10/30/30/0/0, roaming:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPncS6E/5Ey2jeqCJKuHOVS1UaFoJA-jEzAYLBRCCERBkKAk8UWzeCiVtioxqXwUlCp6yI7NGyq7IySBYuyI-w

sPvP:

tPvP:

Thanks for giving thief community some thoughts Jon.

I find it acceptable if Infiltrator’s Return wont function as an escape for stuns.
But the cast time eliminates skillful use and avoidance of stuns and high damaging attacks as well, also it makes Infiltrators Return interruptible, unforgiving and the usefulness of it would decrease by huge marginals. So why add the cast time? If just by making it not castable while stunned and make it interrupt current action would do exactly as you wish?

Also I think you should make the shadow return circles a lot clearer and marked with enemy/friendly color as well, making it easier for the opposing players to spot where the thief may teleport, instead of directly whipping the thief.

The proposed vigor changes you mentioned are reasonable, they still make a hit,
but much lesser than the suggested ones earlier.

Really entertaining vid and lmao @ the thief clones shooting lightning bolts.
I like the way you made boxes helping us keep track of the fights and commenting.

Would be nice to know your build too, looks pretty balanced with high cond dmg, decent direct dmg and quite good survival. I would guess 5/0/30/20/15 with a mix of Celestial, Carrion and Rabid.

Doggie.3184:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Oghier.7419:

D/D didn’t get nerfed. Increasing base initiative gain by 33% is a pretty big deal.

It’s more than a big deal. It’s a MASSSSSSSSSIVE buff to all thief specs.

Critical Strikes + Trickery S/D? :o

R.I.P. 10th December 2013

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:

• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

in sPvP.

For 1980 armor and 14k health pool, stability and protection only through theft, low access to blind, dodges which were already a bit harder to maintain than in other builds, not being able to escape stun chaining and burst using Shadow Return for a class/build that can’t affort to be locked down for even a second will be the death of it I’m afraid. Otherwise, the base initiative increase would have been a really nice addition and made the setup smoother, more fun and the ability to stay in team fights for longer.

I’ll enjoy my last month with it, then I’ll see what I do.

Would require that every traitline is redesigned, and even though that, build variation will be a lot lower and everything would feel too simple, like Mists of Pandaria.
It already feels like everyone is playing the same builds. Stats on gear are there to let you customize your build for whatever stats you need. If going 30 pts in a power line and 30 pts in a crit dmg line, it is really good that you are able to improve defence by customizing your gear.

And people stating that you can’t play PvE content unless full berserker are dumb, most dungeons are doable with 1-3 ppl, so why on earth would you need full berserker for other than quicker boss take downs. In some dungeons it’s even better to have higher defence. Berserker is the way to go if you can survive the whole fight without problems, just because; why not?

And people stating that you can’t go to WvW unless full Pvt are dumb as well, in WvW it depends solely on your role. If you deal AoE damage from range you might as well go as offensive as you want, if you want to be well-rounded, mixing Pvt and Berserker is a good way. If you wanna be a sponge sucking up AoE dmg in the front lines full Pvt.

If something like it would be implemented, will never happen though, I’d rather go with stat sliders, allowing me to adjust every stat as I want.

Yeah, D/D actually got a buff if playing 25/30/0/15/0 or 10/30/30/0/0.

Mugi got buffed!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Mugi-D-D-Solo-Outnumbered-Video

S/x after the IS and vigor nerf on the other hand will die like critters if they get locked down the small time frames they can, and less vigor means more of these time frames.

D/P combined with blinding powder, I believe still will be just as strong. Just without permastealth.

JonPeters.5630:

• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.

From what it looks like, IR wont work while under hard-cc. And the cast time makes it impossible using it as a dodge against hard CC and attacks with 1/2s and below cast time. I suggest adding cast time to IS instead, creating a time gap which would let the opponent close the gap created by IR, and do exactly as you wish and at the same time not destroying IS>IR. The idea would be to reduce range of IS to 500, make it drop circle, charge for 1/4s or 1/2s and tele-strike, and can be done while moving.

• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

The reductions are too huge here, otherwise, I’d rather see them at 6s and 12s. Simply because 4s or 8s without Feline Grace is really low. And 75% AoE vigor uptime is one of the best supports a thief can bring, and in pvp random dodges often prevents it already.

Thieves already have many anti builds, pistol offhand shatter mesmers, power/condition necromancers, condition engineers, trap rangers and more. Even with my close to 1600 hours played on thief, average to skilled players on these can be hopeless to beat. And I feel the nerfs written above will make it even easier for them along with many others to take me out. I want balance and yet have the means to outplay my opponents.

Fade.7658:

Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.

There we go..

R.I.P. D/P WvW
R.I.P. D/P 10/30/0/0/30
R.I.P. S/D 10/30/0/0/30
R.I.P. S/D 10/30/0/30/0

Engineer forum, really strong class in the right hands, low amounts of QQ.
Elementalist forum, a nearly abandoned class, with a few people left trying to keep a smile on their faces.
Guardian seems quite fine too.

I’m not a teamplayer and I will never be one.

I don’t like following blobs and going with friends feels like babysitting.

How about a new boon!

Loneliness – Grants increased stats per enemy who is nearby when alone. This would enforce teamplay to those who are about to group kitten that lonely human female elementalist uplevel a dark evening in autumn going home after being with her friends or getting vista points.

Or that poor young thief permastealthing to survive getting trolled by a group of 4 or so.

Make a warrior .

Sure, why not? Firstly, what kind of build are you looking for?

A support-wise examples:
If you get 30 points in shadow arts you can choose between Venomshare and Stealth Heavy. Trickery is also great for support, steal and share 2 boons and 75% vigor uptime and 50% fury/swiftness/might uptime. If you however get shadow arts and trickery, you are better off with a condition build, 10/0/30/0/30 will let you share venoms, life steal and 2 might per venom, or switch out your traits and utilities and have lots of useful utilities for offence and defence, or 30/x/30/x/x will make you deeper into venoms and also be quite viable even with a direct dmg build.

I would love to see a function to right-click and split armor skins to buy whichever
part I want seperately. Possibly for 150 gems per piece.

Why? Because it’s more friendly for everyone who just wants a piece or 2 from a specific set. While full sets sold will decrease, sales of pieces seperately would increase from both the rich and the poor. And making it a bit more costly to buy the pieces seperately would create some sort of balance, but yet more efficient if you just want 3 parts and don’t wish to spend 800 for the whole set, meanwhile being rewarded with a bonus for buying the complete set.

Discuss !

Low hp pool, low EHP, and poor condition removal.

Sacrificed 350 EP and 2.2% dmg reduction for an additional ~3250 EHP and larger health pool. Changed SoS for Shadowstep for mobility and condition removal, maintained 25% movement speed through travelers rune. Added 3 more initiative and 15% more damage (under the right circumstances), removed mug and steal buff since your both sets are ranged and poor access to stealth. Withdraw or SoM can be discussed, imo Withdraw is a better decision in open field combat and prevents you from being locked down by movement imparing effects which in thieves cases leads to a certain death.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.3|a.1c.h17.a.1c.h19.0.0.0|5.5c.hz.d13.0.0|1c.71m.1g.71m.1c.71m.1g.71m.1c.71m.1g.71m|2s.d19.2s.d19.2t.d19.2s.d19.2t.d19.2s.d19|0.u58b.0.p39.f4|54.1|58.5e.5g.5c.5v|e

The build can be further optimized but this is a good start, that’s my 5000000 cents.

Necrotize.2974:

I’d just be happier if there was something that they had to coordinate to get that regen. But alas, it is all passive and better than some active heals…

Not to mention I find it weird that endure pain doesn’t prevent point capture and burst skills don’t use up your adrenaline if you’re bad enough to miss with them…

^

or in spirit watch while holding the orb, use adrenaline to gain distance with hammer, endure pain or shield block to gain invulnerability, np.

Press steal or get stealth triggered and you drop the orb on the ground..

Red Falcon.8257:

Your opinions don’t matter, maths does.

Healing Signet heals 395/s
Healing Surge heals 9895 aka 329/s

Just make Healing Signet heal 329/s.

Let’s take closer look on what’s achievable in 30 seconds.

Healing surge 9895 + 3600 adrenal health = 13495 / 30 = 449 hp/s

Healing signet 29 seconds 11368 + ~1 sec cast time active 3275 + 3600 adrenal health. = 18.243 / 30 = 608 hp/s

1200 dps on ~3500 armor to at least just have only 50% of the dps outhealed, while having to dodge hammer and mace attacks and get stunned anyways + the target has blocks and invulnerability to counter bursts, isn’t really easy.

I wouldn’t have anything against this strong heal, if it wasn’t passive.

Vixar.4570:

Knightlight.7691:

After FINALLY finishing my incinerator yesterday, I decided to finally finish her look as well. I present Velia Contessa:

What chest and leggings are that?

Chest, Krytan from gemstore.
Legs, Vigil.

Nerf passive play, and buff active play, that’s my opinion.

I decided to try out sPvP the other day with the new adrenal health and healing signet combo. And while testing my setup, I equipped Settlers amulet and poked the engineer npc, the same npc who can 3 shot my thief, I lost some k’s of hp and stared at the screen, then I went for a cigarette and went to lie on my sofa and watch tv, several minutes passed and the moment I checked the screen even the NPC got bored of me and stopped dpsing and went back to his starter point.

I changed my build, 0/10/30/0/30 to be specific, equipped valkyrie amulet, and went
to some hot join, barely touched my dodge button, could pretty much ignore conditions unless I had 10+ stacks of bleed long poison or burn, used shield block and endure pain to counter bursts, stunlocked and dealt mediocre amounts of damage, I felt like a God. If things went bad, usually in 1v3, shield block and endure pain and walked away and used hammer burst to gain distance, and break LoS to avoid ranged damage. The only required skill was to time stuns, and knowing when to counter bursts with forms of invulnerability, and when to dump adrenaline for condition removal, but just pressed Signet of Fury if I wanted to refill adrenaline. My experience on warrior in PvP is limited, let’s be honest, I’m kittening noob, never even went to WvW with my warrior, and I died 2 times in 6 games and was among the top scorers. This type of passive survival is just too much, allthough bunker guardians and engineers can be too much sometimes, they at least require skill and cooldown management, and go down once they are out.

Sure, warrior always used to be a bit below other professions and were not wanted in tPvP, and they needed a buff, and now when they finally are viable and loved, people are afraid to see nerfs bringing them back down because of QQers.

But I think the passive heal needs to be toned down but scale better with healing power and survival from other sources to be improved, and possibly heal from dumping adrenaline? Or something like that.

And also the other classes needs to be brought up a bit to make them compete better with warriors, also I think thief, elementalist and guardians(can be discussed) should receive a slight increase in their health pool and heal to compete as good as the rest of the classes against condition builds.

^__________^

For Zergs in WvW I’d use 0/30/20/20/0, Shortbow.
Soldier: Head, Legs, x2 Rings, possibly SB and Chest if I want more def.
Berserker: Everything else.
Signet of Malice or Withdraw, Shadowstep, Daggerstorm.

For Roaming and smaller groups 10/30/30/0/0 or 0/30/30/10/0
More info is here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/first
Works for both D/P and D/D.

For sword roaming 0/30/0/25/15, 10/30/0/30/0 or 10/30/0/0/30 and I also find this one really fun to play and troll with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHuP3eNfmU
Usually full berserk, with some valkyrie or soldier depending on how many ppl I fight.
Shadow Trap solo, Shadow Refuge with friends.

For Dungeons I prefer 10/30/0/0/30 (50% group fury uptime), 10/30/0/30/0, 25/30/0/15/0, 30/30/10/0/0, 25/30/0/0/15. Full berserker, possibly some valkyrie if I feel glassy, or Soldier and Berserker in same setup as for WvW.

Signet of Malice or Withdraw for sword mainhand, HiS for Dagger mainhand.
And P/P and SB ready for times when it’s hard to melee.

ibrennanhuff.3597:

Oh yeah, this needs to be a thing. I can only imagine what a legendary 2h axe would look like…

(looks at other legendaries and scratches my head)

I’m fine with people selling their services.

But, clogging the dungeon finder with advertisements for other purposes than simply looking for people doesn’t look really nice, and I think 3rd party websites and guilds should be the home for that.

Unless some social feed with several sections (dungeons, pvp, guild, wvw) was added to GW2, where you can advertise whatever you want against a small fee, to prevent heavy spam.

FarFromLuck.7042:

How’d you get the priory as well as the whispers gear?

Get Priory/Whisper/Vigil on an alt, buy the armor piece, transmutate it to an item of blue or lower quality using a transmutate crystal, the item will now be account bound and you can pick it up on your other alts and transmutate.

Mostly been playing Hammer/Mace/GS recently while on my warrior.
Haven’t really seen Axe mainhand gotten any nerfs, just that empower allies was moved to 2nd tier. but I coughed up some example builds that you could look into and shape after your own liking. I’m not really good at setting up warrior armor though, just used some general basics.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAneRjkO9utQqQMxBEkCNsKMPMigoIUKmjNE-jEyAYLBRCCAVIiJvioxWGLiGreBTVSEV7NKiWtUAMJMC-w

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAneRjkO9utQqQMxBEMDNsKMPMigoI0HmDA-jkyAYLBRCCAVIiJvFtm9CYVsIas6FMVpQquMyejioVLFATCjA-w

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAneRjcOBvtQqQMxBEzDjIIKiTBoQ9YO2w4A-jkyAYLBRCCAVIiJPl1sngYVsIas6FMVpQquMyejioVLFwoCjA-w

This one (vid included) seems untouched too, if it suits your playstyle.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Axe-GS-WvW-Build-Video-17k-20k-Crits/first#post2386298

Some examples of useful counters (traits and utilities), I could bring up every effective thief counter from every class, but I wont for now unless someone begs for it.

For eles: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJArYhEmmbyRyQlBAiHAAgEA-j0gAYbAJOQqAQKgIWGB-w

For Engineers: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUl0pyXH5y5F1LA-jEgUARsMC-w
Slick Shoes knockdown locks the thief on spot and is extremely effective unless the thief has picked up shadowstep in utilities or prepared with sword mainhand.

Burnfall.9573:

So what i’ve been doing lately is, whenever i encounter a thief or thieves, i just stand there and give them my body, afterall; it’s not worth fighting for what is already dead.

Allthough this made me lol, I’d like to suggest that you don’t give up.

There’s universal PvP builds for all classes that have tools to counter most builds including thieves. Full soldier is not the way, without a good offence you are just that same kid getting picked on by bullies, just that you covered yourself in plate armor,
picking up a huge sword to smash the bullies faces and removing some armor to swing harder will suffice.

Just get high enough stats to last through kill spikes, not only thieves can spike, all classes can. And I’d say 21k EHP is the softcap to last all but the most extreme ones.
Having above 4000 effective power will also let you effectively fight back once you have lasted through the kill spike.

Calculate it here: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/
Edit: small warning, the site seems infected with something currently, but nothing dangerous. Just close the ad.

Invulnerability and blocks are also extremely useful against kill spike builds.

And why on earth should toughness and vitality stacking be acceptable if there wasn’t a counter? As Jesus would have said; as the counterer counters you, you shall counter the counterer by dodging at the right moment, using blocks, stunbreakers etc.

This is probably what the thief that gibbed you were using.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzIWX-AQV8

And this thief is far above the average thief you find in WvW.

I have my warrior ready and preparing a necromancer, in case things go bad.

In terms of buffs, I want D/D back to its former glory, improvements on S/D to counter boons, S/P buffed, P/D needs a small buff on damage to be as competitive as other condition builds. Many traits in Deadly Arts and Acrobatics lines to be reworked and improved so choosing Deadly Arts over Critical Strikes could be just as viable.
And I also think there should be larger access to Feline Grace, or the healthpool of lower health classes to be upped a bit so they can compete better with Necromancers and Warriors.

Yggdrasil.7940:

• I don’t understand your reluctance with my proposal : if nobody use HS above 50% because it’s so inefficient, how would a small nerf of its coeff (like 0.7 instead of 1.0) affect you ?

You pretty much answered yourself there, spamming heartseeker is inefficient and an initiative sink. The thief could have done the same amount of damage by using
CnD>Backstab(>steal)>heartseeker, while at the same time maintaining high initiative as a reward. Counter the HS spammer and he’s puinished. If he got allowed to freely pull off 4 heartseekers due to lag, then it’s the lag you should blame. And HS is counterable; stun, knockdown, daze, immobilize, dodge, block, blind, chill and cripple for distance reduction.

I just don’t promote anymore nerfs that affects D/D.

For D/D it’s the main gap closer, reducing the damage by another 30% after the 20% last year, reduces overall damage sources for the set even more.
With all other classes receiving buffs it’s becoming harder and harder to deal damage to enemies, so I don’t see any room for more ways to nerf thief damage, and thief damage wont ever receive a buff since there is no room for that either.

14 September 2012
Heartseeker: Reduced damage of the 100%-50% threshold by 20%.
November 15, 2012
Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.
Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.
April 30, 2013
Mug trait: Can no longer critically hit.

I agree that it can be frustraiting when a heartseeker spammer is at the right place at the right time. But all classes have elements of facerolling. On a LB ranger you can for instance just fist your 5 buttons instead of pressing one repeatedly, and when every skill is on CD, you have killed the player if he didn’t have any endurance or LoS breaking terrain during the keyboard smashing. It’s just something to accept, that every noob can’t be outplayed at anytime.

You can if you are immobilized. Chill and cripple also reduces the range.
If a wall is nearby you can also do it against a wall or corner to keep you in spot.

I play S/D, 10/30/0/0/30 with berserker amulet, so I’m pretty much a piece of glass running around with 14k health and 1980 armor.

And I ran into a thief while going to an enemy capture point, and I could pretty much read on him what he will do, spam heartseeker. I ignored him and continued running, with him spamming heartseeker in my back. Eventually he got me to 6k health after 4 heartseekers which is nearly his whole initiative pool, I healed up and attacked him and got him low quickly, meaning he was really glassy.

If you can ignore and tank someone spamming a skill with one of the glassier setups until the resource for the skill is empty, while playing the glassiest medium setup, how can that skill be overpowered? Should be buffed above 50% with some trait imo, since all bad thieves needs something to carry them, like all classes have their things to carry them.

Everything just depends on where you want to place your burst and how you play.

It’s impossible to stick above 90% health in longer fights, but if you build your thief for quick takedowns, scholar is the best choice.

If you want a balanced option use divinity.

If you want to boost your ability to execute, Runes of the eagle.

If you want a condition cleanse and gain all boons, Runes of lyssa.

If you can’t play without 25% movement speed and wish to clear up a slot, Traveler.

Centaur runes if you build for perma swiftness and mobility.

If you mainly wish to just boost your overall dps ruby/beryl orbs are just fine.

And I’d say 50% crit chance + 20% from fury, is just fine in terms of dps, afterall it’s 83% crit chance with keen observer and side strike. So, converting power into precision at these numbers is just a dps loss, so sigil of force and sigil of bloodlust over the accuracy ones.

ofc this needs to be thought through and planned well. Adding bleeds to every single attack isn’kitten And some attacks could have really short bleeds that wear off quickly and prevents simple stacking.

Spellcaster enchantments that I had in mind could have torment, burning or other conditions.

P/P thief unload could add many stacks, but at really short duration, so Sneak Attack would still be the main source of stacking high amounts of bleeds. But at the same time, improve the set to work as a condition set.

S/P to reach nearly same bleed stacks as warrior S/S

I like the ideal of having high build variation and playing any weapon set as I like to.
So after thinking a bit about P/P and P/D on thieves I came up with this idea.
A new function, weapon modification. The main thing would be Razer Sharpening and Hack Force Sharpening.

Examples:

• If I played a warrior with Sword mainhand and would want to go more into direct dmg, no problem, I’d select Hack Force Sharpening which would reduce or remove bleeds applied by the weapon set and add more direct damage instead.

• If I played ranger with longbow and would want to make a
  longbow build based around conditions simply sharpened arrows.

• S/P thief, Razer sharpening, making Pistolwhip cut and apply bleeds instead of bluntly chopping my target.

• For spellcasters, possibly enchantments for their magical weapons.

• Shield modifications, Buckler or classic shield. Buckler for atk power
  and Classic for extra armour.

My ideas are really basic and haven’t yet thought through them more advanced but I do realize a change like this might and will trash some synergy in weapon sets and would take a lot of balancing and testing to make it a nice addition. And like every idea or addition to a game, it has its pros and cons as well. But I see it as something good that players are able shape the weapon set as they like, without having some ability on it adding 3 stacks of bleed to favor condition builds while some other is the strongest direct damaging ability the class has.

Discuss.

I usually recommend P/D to new thieves and players since it’s very basic and easy to learn and allows them to practice basic things like hitting cloak and dagger, basic positioning and countering of other classes.

As a set, P/D is a bit weaker and less competive compared to the condition builds of other classes. It has no class-based access to burn, poor access to confusion, torment only if you choose between sustaining high bleed and torment (and ofc from venom), the rest of the conditions are mainly from utilities. And because of this, P/D deals best dps gearing for a portion of the damage to be direct damage (carrion, rabid, rampager), and choosing +cond+def+def is less viable than it is on other classes.

It used to be quite competive and strong while other condition builds hadn’t received major buffs and are as strong as they are now and everyone didn’t run around with good condition removals back then.

It’s however still viable for roaming, and keeping pressure on people in spvp though the 1 second extra on reveal made some impact on overall burst, it has survivability on troll levels since you spend most of your time outside of melee range.

And as I meantioned earlier, it’s easy to learn, but just as minionmancer you can be highly skilled with it too, but wont ofc be as strong as a skilled minionmancer, but will let you endure outnumbered fights better if you are good.

So since P/D is quite simple (boring), among the weaker of condition builds and our direct dmg sets are between medium and high in competiveness, and gives higher reward if skilled. It’s simply used less.

My suggestion would be to break loose from the 30 points in shadow arts.
Shadow’s Rejuvenation and 2 might on stealth is only good if you spend a lot of time in stealth, and if you spend a lot of time in stealth you’d need greater burst or condition damage.

And place 10 more points in trickery for 1% dmg per initiative and cooldown reduction and daze on steal, and while at it 10 points in deadly arts for mug since it gives pretty much same heal as what shadow rejuvenation would over those 20 seconds.

This one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHuP3eNfmU

It’s an incredibly fun build and survivability on troll levels, your damage will be much lower than the damage of 30 CS, but I surely found it viable for outplaying and killing other players. And what you can’t kill, some of those warrior roamers mostly, you easily escape from.

I’m not really scared of anything, but I’ll make a small review on every class anyways.
Don’t really know in which order to place them, this one is quite accurate on what I dislike most to be fighting.

Engineers, always had a problem with average engineers. Skilled ones can be quite unbeatable, or they instagib you if you make a mistake. Only way to win is to outlast them which sometimes isn’t even possible, or burst them down in the first seconds, which sometimes isn’t even possible as well. They however require skill, which I approve, and therefor I find them balanced.

Necromancers, same as engineers, just that it doesn’t even take an average necromancer for them to be hard. I can count times I’ve beaten a minionmancer 1v1 on my 2 hands, and none of those I’ve managed to beat were above average in skill.
Weapon sets I’ve fought them with: S/D, D/P, D/D, SB, P/D

Really skilled condition Rangers, really high burst. If spirit, they deal less burst but are a lot more tankier making them outlast thieves. Really skilled LB+GS rangers are also quite hard to beat. Most rangers are bad, and stand on the same spot spamming attacks.

Mesmers are mostly annoying since there are so many variations, sometimes all it takes is to just bring out shortbow and spam cluster bomb even when fighting against 2 mesmers. And sometimes you have to outlast them, and sometimes burst them down in the opening, and condition mesmers are meant to be unkillable apparently.
I however find mesmers quite balanced, with high skillcap and relatively easy to do well with.

Glass cannon Guardians, immunity and boons sided with really high damage.

Warriors are currently not worth fighting, they are hard to damage in every way and
1 successful lockdown kills the thief. As a thief they are hard to melee, they have quick access between 2 weapon sets (15 discipline) and are able to constantly use an ability and chain cc. And healing signet and adrenal health outheals shortbow.

Elementalists are a bit weak currently, but really skilled ones can be a great challenge fighting, been a long time since they’ve annoyed me though and they could use some improvements.

Thieves have mostly been my easiest opponents since most are bads, I was ignoring and didn’t even dodge one who was spamming HS on me the other day in a solo-queue, when he finally got me to low hp I attacked him and got him low quickly, and he stealthed and ran away. Sometimes, these bad thieves are at the right place at the right time with their HS spam though. Fighting really skilled thieves is exciting however.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/first
Nuff said.

Oh, and also a vid from from the same player (I believe),
it shows off the good damage and survival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrQdXFn7OxA

Surviving in Zerg combat requires SB, good positioning and avoidance.
Go with D/D or D/P to take out stray-pugs when you spot them.

From 2 to 1 is a 50% nerf. Which means 3 boons from 15 initiative, instead of 6 boons.
If a warrior doesn’t manage to dodge a Larcenous Strike, we manage to counter their signet of rage using up all of our initiative.

The nerf didn’t only make it easier for bunkers to survive with S/D thieves nearby, it also made a large impact on thief survival. S/D steal builds was pretty much boon builds, and imagine all other boon builds getting nerfed to 50% less boons. O:

hmm if I would suggest something.

1. Steal 1 boon per 3 boons on target.
2. a) Steal 1 boon and an additional if the skill critical strikes, and in PvE steal 2 boons and one additional on critical strikes.
b) same but inverted, 1 less on critcal strike.
3. Revert back to 2.

Firstly: sPvP? WvW zerging or roaming? PvE?

I play S/D + SB currently because it’s the most fun weapon set, not because I find it more effective than the others. Sure, it’s the only set left you can go pure glass and deal great sustained damage and stay in fights for long, your only limits is your own skill, S/D requires great positioning and great reaction time. To push S/D to its limits, you can go with 10/30/0/0/30 with steal buffs in trickery line and mug from deadly arts.
Lyssa Runes + Basilisk venom for condition removal, or Runes of Melandru + -cond food, Shadowstep for removing 3 conditions, and infiltrators strike>shadow return for sustained condition removal. Withdraw to remove additional movement imparing effects. Your source of damage will be mug and auto attack mainly, infiltrators strike or basilisk venom to lock people in place and position yourself behind, always position yourself behind. Throw in a CnD and TS when needed, or FS>LS for extra evasion and dmg. If traited, steal will give you 75% vigor uptime which makes up a bit for leaving out acrobatics traitline while giving you awesome utility from steal.

0/30/0/25/15, x/30/x/30/x and 0/30/20/20/0 are some decent builds as well with their own pros and cons.

Other viable options for WvW is D/P with x/30/30/x/x or 0/20/30/20/0.
It’s a relatively easy set to learn, BP>HS and backstab from behind, Shadow Shot to close gaps. Requires a lot of experience to master too, and people will hate you for “cheap mechanics” like perma stealth from BP>HSx3 or HSx4 depending on initiative regen. Against npcs and players worse than npc, you can also drop blackpowder and melee-autoattack from inside and keep them perma blinded.

Dragonax.6487:

Ghostwolf.9863:

Dragonax.6487:

Let say if a noob thief vs a noob of other classes. Noob thief has 99% chance of winning just for the stealth button.

If a noob thief vs an experienced other classes who know how to deal with them, noob thief has 99% chance of losing because once their stealth is countered, they are like a naked woman in a life time prison for males.

But if a skilled thief vs a skilled other classes, skilled thief has much higher chance to win… again because now they know how to use stealth better + know how to counter stealth counters, and there was no hard counter to stealth so suck it.

A couple of questions to you kind sir.

What’s the hardcounter to healing signet and adrenal health?
What’s the hardcounter to CC when you don’t have access to many dodges nor stability?
What’s the hardcounter to minions, clones and spirits sucking up your dmg ?
What’s the hardcounter to having a lot of, in many cases unavoidable conditions on you when your condition removal and health pool is lowest in the game?

1. Condition build with poison , or 16k back stab, anyway Tanky regen warrior deals no damage so unless you suck kitten u should come out winning after a long fight no matter what
2.Blind is the best counter for soft CC, hard CC doesn’t last long
3. Stealth, and u have plenty of time to find the true target
4. There is no unavoidable condition, if it’s target surrounded conditions, again stealth and wait for it to cool off. Low health ? Stealth and reset the fight at will.

1. 16k backstab with a condition build? Tanky regen warrior deals no damage, whatabout on a thief who deals 16k backstab on a tanky regen warrior? Not even possible fyi.
2. Hard CC doesn’t last for long? I remember being Stuned, Immobilized and knockdown for up to 10 seconds against warriors, and thats’ when I’ve utilized Infiltrators Strike and shadow return to escape damage, and also dodged a lot of the CC.
3. We need to strike from behind, if the pet-whatever stands on top of his pet, the pet sucks up all damage, since the pets in many cases have bigger dmg zone than the players, and not to forget they suck up AoE dmg, and many times makes the player take 0 dmg.
4. It’s unavoidable if you want to deal dmg to the player, otherwise true, you can stay away from the player as well. Which means you don’t have a higher chance to win.

Dragonax.6487:

Let say if a noob thief vs a noob of other classes. Noob thief has 99% chance of winning just for the stealth button.

If a noob thief vs an experienced other classes who know how to deal with them, noob thief has 99% chance of losing because once their stealth is countered, they are like a naked woman in a life time prison for males.

But if a skilled thief vs a skilled other classes, skilled thief has much higher chance to win… again because now they know how to use stealth better + know how to counter stealth counters, and there was no hard counter to stealth so suck it.

A couple of questions to you kind sir.

What’s the hardcounter to healing signet and adrenal health?
What’s the hardcounter to CC when you don’t have access to many dodges nor stability?
What’s the hardcounter to minions, clones and spirits sucking up your dmg ?
What’s the hardcounter to having a lot of, in many cases unavoidable conditions on you when your condition removal and health pool is lowest in the game?

Justin ODell.9517:

No, this was a temporary change because many people were asking for holiday rewards.

Someone, somewhere in a place unknown said they wanted holiday rewards.
So your decision is to remove sPvP rewards and add 5 bags of candy?

With all due respect sir, why not sPvP rewards + 5 bags of candy? Just because there’s some weird madking stuff going on doesn’t mean you need to cripple original rewards. Holidays should be good times, and something special, not a nerf. :p

And for the record, 5 rng bags isn’t rewarding at all, when I otherwise could equip my 6 characters with cool looking armour.

It has always been a half second, but it was rounded up to 1 second due to a bug which was fixed the 15th. And it was already weak while it was rounded up to 1..

So I hope they’ll make it longer or add immobilize to it or something..

Forget burning, I want a thief minion build, with 6 minions that outdps whoever tries to kill them, and also they’ll suck up all dmg that is trying to be done to me and work as shield, and give me armor for every one that is out. Also I want 20k hp + a button I can press for getting 50% extra hp and protection. And a gtfo button that puts every condition in the game on someone.

If not, I’m fine with a healing signet that outheals 70% of glass cannon S/D thieves autoattack.

I find Runes of Lyssa essential for S/D, you will often these days have every condition in the game on you. And without a single point in SA I find Shadow Step essential for additional condition removal, and solo I find a well used Shadow Trap way much better than Shadow Refuge. Signet of Shadows, only if you can’t live without the run speed, otherwise Infiltrators Signet, Blinding Powder, Roll For Initiative or Signet of Agility.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQNAsYVlYm6NHdy5E/5Ey2jeqC5J/DkVPDuyqA-jwyAYLioRCCERBkKAk8W0a2LgVxioxqXwUlCp6yI7NKiWNA-e

Ascended:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQNAsYVlYm6NHdy5E/5Ey2jeqC5J/DkVPDuyqA-jQDBofCiYLJjgAioAgKAM5RZN7RQsKqIas6aYKXER12bKamzAG0pGA-e

Personally I use this one in PvE, WvW and sPvP.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQNAsYVlYm6NncS6E/5Ey2jean4JvHO4YZWaFoJA-jQDBofCiYLJjgAioAgKAM5RZN7RQsKqIas6aYKXER12bKamzAG0pGA-e
Instinctual Response for solo, Thrill for team.
Shadow Trap for solo, Shadow Refuge for team.

Honestly, overall this patch is good and the game goes in the right way with many things. Every class seem to be crying about being nerfed atm though, and crying about how the other classes got buffed and them being the black sheep, It’s quite adorable.

Currently I play S/D, and I’m quite fine with the nerf on Larcenous Strike, when you needed a lot of boonrip it wasn’t enough anyways, and when you needed just a bit it was way too much and cheap.

I however think Bountiful Theft should steal and share 3 boons to compensate this nerf, also as Anet once meantioned, they want to improve thieves on the sharing and team-play part.

The buff to venomsharing was good, but still venom playstyles need to be improved more. 2 might per venom(utility slot even !) is very little, when engineers and elementalists can put out a fire field and blow up stuff for 12 might stacks for instance. And venoms need secondary effects, condition cleanse or something, medical use of venoms, huhu, cuz using a whole traitline dedicated to something you just can have in utility slots, pretty much forces you to use all the utilities of that specific type, otherwise it wouldn’t simply be worthwhile. And in thieves case, these utilities are just conditions that can be applied to enemies (and some trait related things like lifesteal).

S/P needs to be improved too, either increase Pistolwhips stun or damage, or unroot it.
And possibly adding a strong final blow to make it more worthwhile to finish the whole animation on the opponent, making venoms, steal or other things that will let you reach your opponent more useful.

Many other traits in the thiefs traitlines also needs to be overlooked and be found ways to be improved as well.

Krayzic.4860:

Hi, I know this might be a little bit off-topic, but is it really worth it to start a thief now? I’m pretty new to this game (lvl 60 warrior in about a week), and i just decided to start a new thief. At the same time as I’m looking for hints and guidelines at the forum, I can’t help but see a lot of negativity towards the new changes to the thief, like people saying they won’t play them until they’re getting buffed again. So yeah, are there still any strong builds for thief? Is it worth it to start a thief now, or should I go for an other profession?

Thieves are just fine for now, if you are interested in one, make one.
Otherwise it’s also good to learn since you’ll be fighting them a lot anyways.

But we can’t know what evil plans Anet has for thieves the coming weeks and months.

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

Old
“Remove one condition every 3 seconds while stealthed”.

New
“Remove conditions periodically while in stealth.”

-Conditions removed: 1
-Interval: 10 seconds

Sanduskel.1850:

Calm down, it wasn’t nerfed.

Explain?

Answer from Arenanet.

Josh Davis.6015:

This is a tooltip error. It still works correctly at 3 second intervals.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Shadow-s-Embrace/first#post3027445

Noerknhar.3826:

The last thing is about thieves. Well, I don’t want to make this a flame post about thieves (even tho I think the thieve-dev is just laughing the entire day about all other devs that their classes aren’t as ridiculous as his is), but seriously: Another explosion finisher AND two immobilize-removals? Immobilize is like the only thing that you can kill a “I’m stealthed and I port away for like 3000 ingame units every 5 seconds”-thieve. Why exactly does a thieve need such skills then? Because they were bugged? kitten it, make those bugs a feature kitten .

Withdrawal and Roll For Initiative always were Immobilize removals, the only thing they changed on them was that they’ll remove immobilize at the start of the animation instead of at the end of it, which will give us a gap as the utilities are meant to do.

In the patch vid we also saw in the tooltip of Shadow’s Embrace that our condition removal in stealth may increase from 3 seconds to 10 seconds, and if it’s true, this is a huge nerf for stealth-built thieves, especially against necromancers.

And there is nothing such as teleport 3000 units every 5 seconds.

Combining everything, you can do this with all 30+ seconds cooldown, besides infiltrators strike which teleports you back and forth and is “cooldownless”.
We blow 2 utilities for 900 and 1200 range, inf strike 600, and steal 900 (1500 if traited which is rare), this is 3600 units. But 3 of them requires a target, which of 1 requires you to be in range, and the 4th shadowstep is ground targeting. Sure switch to shortbow, and pull off 2 infiltrators arrows as well, and the thiefs initiative is empty.

So yeah, in this patch thieves will only get a minor buff to build variety, and possibly nerfs to the stealth-based builds, and even S/D may get nerfed. Blinding powder however will become more useful for Pistol offhand thieves.

I’ve fought at least 1 of each class that have been early unkillable even in 1v2,
even warriors in 1v3 with their immunity to movement imparing effects, and thieves have been one of the easiest kills for them.

Sure, most classes are geared for defence, and many for condition damage to have better survival than thieves. But also thieves are supposed to be the best single target class in the game, currently they aren’t, and their defence relies on staying in stealth or getting out of combat quickly, how do you perform damage while using these survival mechanisms? answer: you don’t! instead we are given high burst when we can use it, there are counters for burst; boons, toughness and crowd control.

12 bleeds ticking for 100 dmg for 10 seconds is enough to kill a thief with base hp, imagine what some confusion, burn and crowd control do then, and there you got a hard counter. Or roll a warrior and take a mace or hammer and spam stuns and knockdowns, and healing signet and adrenal heal, dogged march and runes and food for -condition duration. Or minionmancer in spvp, always had a hard time fighting good ones, even bad ones who stand idly by.

If you have played thief enough to have fought every kind of build countless of times,
you know what happens when that build that tears you down in seconds in 1v1 shows up in 1v2. And you know what happens if they nerf your only way to have a chance against these builds, a chance where not even skill is enough to take them down and you rely 80% on luck when fighting them, even after changing your traits and utilities to the defeat them.

A meme for you. I don’t think they are broken, I think they are fine as they are, but following your logic they are just as broken or more broken than thieves.

Screw full zerker and screw D/P.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlYmSO3bS6E/5Ex2jeuTeqVgmdP4q8tKA-jEzAYLBRiCAZBiKAm8W0a2LgVxioxqXwUlCp6yI7NAcHMa1SBExyI-w

Lyssa runes for condition removal and to gain all boons.
Shadow Trap to escape or reset fights, or simply for some extra burst.
Infiltrators Signet is great and works same way as infiltrators strike + stun break.
Withdraw to remove movement imparing effects.
Shadow Step for extra mobility, stunbreak and additional condition removal.
Valkyrie jewels to provide some extra defence against condition dmg.
Shortbow for AoE and zerg fights.
Some soldier parts to provide some protection, with full zerker other thieves kill you
just by critting 2 cloak and daggers.

As soon as you pick up SB or S/P, condition heavy builds will be your anti-builds.. As long as you get hit by them.

Otherwise:
Runes of Lyssa and Basilisk venom. All conditions.
Infiltrators Strike>Return. 1.
Withdrawal. Movement imparing.
Hide in the shadows, burn, poison and bleed.
Shadow Step>Shadow Return. 3 conditions.
Pick up 10 points in shadow arts and add some stealth. 1 per 3 seconds.
Pain Response from traits. Bleed, Poison and Burn.
Ranger Stolen healing field. 1 per second?