Guild Wars 2

it is more noticeable with certain builds, but not a big difference. not as massive as the difference in rarity levels in WoW as an example, but definitely worth the upgrade seeing as exotics aren’t too expensive. it also makes a bigger difference in WvW and PvP in my opinion, as any edge you get over another player helps.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

I’m experiencing some incoherency with this.
When I play my Warrior, DD/PD Thieves are 2shot free kills, P/D thieves I just run from.
When I play my Thief (DD), all Warriors are free kills.

How is this even possible?

many people still don’t try to CC or predict a thief’s movement and actions as they should. I still run into some who don’t seem to have any kind of defensive utility slotted. add to that glass warriors are still the most common from my experience and it is explainable.

that said, any warrior built even slightly defensively has a large advantage over burst thieves, they just are not as prone to do it as guardians, who find it far easier. given two equally skilled opponents in proper builds I find guardians and warriors my toughest opponents when I am in a burst build, and necro’s and guardians when I am in a condition build.

as for DB, why would it need to be re-worked? it is GREAT for condition builds, is used for one of the main leveling builds, and you are in evasion for part of it while applying 3 good duration bleeds to multiple targets so the initiative cost is quite reasonable. you don’t like it because you don’t use it in a burst build, but thief condition damage is based around weapons that can both burst and bleed. IE short bow, D/D, and pistol main hand depending on the off hand can be used for either condition damage or ranged burst.

as for dancing dagger, the damage isn’t supposed to be high, the 50% nerf told us that much. it is a ranged cripple, which is nice to have with a dagger or pistol main hand, and it is a bouncing cripple. it may not be the best 1v1 cripple in the game, but most thief weapon abilities are situational. head shot is a ranged interrupt, heart seeker is near pointless when an enemy is above 50% health, and it is invaluable if your gap closers are on CD and you don’t use signet of shadows. wouldn’t complain about an initiative decrease to 3 since the nerf though.

as for 1, channeled attacks continue through stealth as long as they start before you go into stealth, so those could be what is hitting you as far as ranged attacks. it is widely believed to be a bug, but to my knowledge anet has yet to acknowledge it either way(not surprised). also, auto attack chains will advance if they hit you, even if you are stealthed. they can track you to a degree using that if you are being chased down in melee.

as for 2, check to see if you still have the stealth buff, sometimes you show as visible on your screen but are still in stealth. it is a known bug. also, if you leave shadow refuge before the duration is up, you are knocked out of stealth and given revealed. that may be what is happening as well, if you were unaware of that.

if it is the one where he charges and then knock downs, sounds like bull’s charge. it isn’t too hard to dodge. if he frenzies to make it faster just shadow step away and continue to wail on him while kiting. we have trouble with control builds but if he doesn’t have a GS for his second weapon set you should be able to kite him assuming you keep a >600 range.

equip a stun break. shadow step can seriously screw up melee focused stun into burst combos. blinding powder can blind him and can be used under most CC. if you use sword double tap IS to break stun then roll away. your best bet is to engage him at range when possible. what build and weapons/armor are you going to end up with? it would help formulate a counter.

they do stack, and there is a cap at 100% duration. also remember that pistol bleeds only get an extra tick every 25%.

zerotenshigg.3756:

Most damage you want,
Puts traits into Trickery or Acro w/e

If you want the MOST damage, then go GC.
GC= 25(30)/30/(10)/0/15 Somewhere like that.
Can’t say you’ll get warm welcomes into any group for DGNs or FOTM.

But The caltrops isn’t worth it as it last 4 seconds and is a smaller aoe, if you’re going CND build…

ignore this….

dodge caltrops have a shorted duration and less bleed stacks on top of a smaller area, but the damage still adds up, if you make the effort to properly place them and actively use them. if you use them, be sure to eventually go 15 into acrobatics so you can dodge more often. for the purpose of a straight forward answer, they are definitely worth using, but might on dodge would serve you better if there is more than one condition user in your group thanks to the 25 bleed stack cap.

SmokeyNYY.7841:

Red Falcon.8257:

“AoE capped”? DS is not an AoE.
It throws daggers that bounce once to a nearby target.

Dagger storm is obviously an AoE skill. Why do you think it it hits multiple people hahaha. Oh boy.

you can hit multiple people with attacks not necessarily categorized as an AoE. dagger storm is one, it doesn’t have an area of effect as much as a randomly targeted bouncing projectile. it isn’t limited by the game’s AoE restrictions, instead having a 1 bounce cap per dagger. that said, there have been no nerfs to it as far as I know. people have started to learn to stop shooting at you while using it though. that would cause less numbers to show up.

the daggers will have higher burst, but the sword gives you the advantage of infiltrators strike and the ability to daze from stealth, indirectly increasing survivability, and increasing mobility.

part of it is you being up leveled. honestly, zerg fights are not where we are at our best. short bow’s cluster bomb hurts, but at range takes a while to arrive, trick shot works well if you can get inside 900 range without being melted. that said if you can get into the enemy zerg there is plenty you can do. drop caltrops from stealth into the enemies front line. burst someone down, get out and do it again, point blank cluster bomb with signet of malice up. just don’t try to enter the zerg from the front. if you really feel like doing some damage, and have some friends/guild members on, you can stealth yourself and 4 others with shadow refuge, sprint into the enemy zerg, and open up on full AoE burst. you can use signet of malice, stealth into the enemy zerg, drop caltrops, then dagger storm for massive damage while healing for large amounts. just stealth out when dagger storm ends. you will die the second someone thinks to rip stability off of you though. one big thing is until you get more experience, try not to run into a zerg v zerg fight full glass cannon.

if you think stealth stomping is unbalanced, then what do you think about the more effective stability, invuln, and haste stompings?

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Incurafy.6329:

1. Thieves can stomp while stealthed because stealth is a class mechanic. This is different to a Necromancers Death Shroud mechanic because…
2. Stealth does not equal invulnerability, Thieves still take 100% damage while in stealth and AoEing or even just auto-attacking a stomping Thief (or using ANY form of CC) will kill them very quickly.

Seriously, please do some research before posting ignorant garbage on our forum; there’s enough of it already.

So are you claiming that DS is not a class mechanic, AND that it makes you invulnerable?

just pointing this out, but stealth isn’t our class mechanic, just something heavily featured in our class. kinda makes the whole argument pointless. also, to address the OP it is basically like stability/quickness stomping, we aren’t the only ones who can do it, and we are far from immortal while doing it.

honestly the problem with using it as a gap closer is that it costs enough initiative to screw you over compared to other gap closers we have, and that it would require weapon swap to be off CD. the problem with lowering it’s cost by more than maybe one is that with the right utilities and traits you could potentially blink off into the distance at a rate that makes thieves and D/D eles current state look slow.

well, like keltset said, unlike with your guardian you can’t trade blows or commit to a fight for too long. most thief builds simply don’t have the staying power to stay un-stealthed in the open for too long. you need to pick your targets. look for the enemy that needs to die or someone already injured, standing to the rear of the enemy group, or someone you know is a squishier target than the rest. apply your burst until they realize what is going on or are dead, get out, recharge, re engage.you can also use your slippery nature to your advantage, draw enemies away from objectives, or strike into them and run to keep them occupied at one point. the short bow is your friend. you can stay on the edge of large fights and apply pressure to the enemies with AoE damage, then run like the wind if they try to catch you. generally just never fight an enemy who knows you are coming for him, and has the luxury of preparing for you. you should also be aware that guardians, warriors, and necros are most likely going to be very hard to kill while you are learning, as their defensive nature and , for the warrior and necro, their health pools will make things difficult. you do play a guardian though, so they may be easier for you than they were for me starting out.

:edited for typos

bladie.5084:

the problem with s/p is that pistol off hand sucks. pistol needs a buff to actually make s/p on par.

the pistol is a great off hand. it has an on demand ranged daze and blind. the smoke field from black powder helping you stomp people is also a major bonus.

with your apparent lack of toughness, vitality, and defensive boons, yes. and your 5k hit on him almost halved his health as well. GC vs GC things end quickly.

no, but you can throw it without a target to try and hit them. same as weapon attacks against stealthed targets.

that may be part of the pet AI rework they did for necros. they did it to stop the pets running off and attacking things you didn’t want them too, and the thieves may share the same AI.

well, for P/D conditions both short bow and D/D work great as off hands. both have access to AoE bleeds, while d/d lets you still have access to CnD and short bow gives you a poison field, and more mobility. oh, and a spamable blast finisher.

for any power based build, short bow is an amazing second weapon, for any build heavily using stealth, another melee weapon in the main hand of the second slot can allow you to weapon swap after stealthing to surprise your opponent with a diferent stealth attack. go into stealth with d/d then surprise them with a sword daze. or go into stealth with s/d and smack them with a s/p PW from stealth so they don’t see the initial wind up. most of our weapon sets have at least some synergy, but the utility of short bow makes it somewhat hard to give up.

Iohanna.4863:

Sinsko, Gungnir is incorrect.

Precision, Toughness and Condition Damage are good stats for a standard 0/0/30/20/20 Bleed Thief (Pistol/Dagger + Dagger/Dagger). Carrion is not optimal because Vitality is a dump stat for any Thief with stealth condition removal (toughness will save you from burst).

If you put Sigil of Earth on your pistol or dagger, you will apply bleeds when you crit.

one bleed at most every 2 second CD, your direct damage is higher with carrion, and you can take a hit better with it. also, he is talking about PvE. that means that even if he is using the standard P/D build, he isn’t using stealth whenever he needs to AoE, he would be using DB spam. that would mean he would have to utility into stealth in most situations against groups of mobs. even on demand stealth cleansing wont save you from a 14k hit after toughness is taken into account when you have that much or less hp in your build. sure you can avoid the big hits, but because he has such low health, he has less room for mistakes.not to mention toughness tends to be less useful compared to vitality on a thief anyway.

yeah, the rabid set is more for condition warriors/necros than thieves. without power your crits will be near worthless. your next to non existent HP will get you killed by the first condition heavy, or hard hitting encounter you enter. toughness is not too great compared to vitality for thieves, when you have to make a choice between the two. and your non crit attacks damage will be negligable. carrion gear is basically a perfect fit for most condition thieves. the vitality fills one of our greatest weaknesses, the power makes our attacks a nice compliment to the condition damage we pump out, and the main stat on the gear is condition damage.

D/D conditions is one of the two most efficient leveling builds. the main thing is to pull a group, and DB spam after dropping caltrops. it also gets easier at 40, when you can put 20 points into trickery. with the 15 point bonus and initiative gain on steal you can DB away all your initiative and then steal so you have enough to get one more DB off.you also have two available traits, I recommend caltrops on dodge and thrill of the crime or bountiful theft. after than points into acrobatics, then power last. with all the dodge caltrops, and the extra DB you can get in most fights things will die fairly quickly. just remember the build is more effective against multiple enemies than one. even more so if you use signet of malice. the gear you should use when it becomes available is carrion, which has condition damage/vitality/power on it.

the other is sword/pistol. you use pistol 5’s combo field to blind everything in melee range then beat the crap out of it, refreshing black powder when necessary. standard power/prec/crit damage priorities for your gear. at later levels berserker gear is priority. your main source of survival are blinds, pistol whip’s evade, and your ability to interrupt as needed with pistol 4. you also have an instant gap closer, and your auto attack is an AoE. once again signet of malice works well. you are less able to take a hit than your usual condition thief, but you are less likely to be hit.

the main problem is that the precision without power makes even your crits lackluster, while you give up vast amounts of survivability from the vit on carrion. anything with crit damage doesn’t have condition damage, so to amp up crit damage you have to give up your bleed damage. rabid is meant more for condition necro’s and warriors. they get higher payouts from toughness because of their high base health, and both get talents to apply bleeds on crit.

with d/d for leveling through power, it is much less efficient than d/d conditions. that said, critical strikes, shadow arts, and acrobatics can make you able to kill one enemy after the other quite quickly while being very hard to hit while leveling. good utilities are shadow refuge, caltrops, signet of agility, and blinding powder, and signet of shadows for traveling. honestly most of our utilities can be very useful in PvE. I also recommend a short bow for your second weapon, to help with groups and enemies you just can’t let near you. have you tried out sword/pistol yet? if you haven’t is a very efficient power based melee build for leveling.

ChonieRanchito.1270:

thanks for the advice but i have come across another problem.

I used the runes and have 45%, 30% from traits,10% from sigil of agony and 16% from veggie pizza. this adds up to +101% bleed duration.

vital shot gives bleeding(4.75s)

when mousing over the bleed stack it on the enemy it only says 7 seconds.
when actually timing it with a stop watch, its closer to 8 seconds.

now 2 × 4.75 =9.5 why am i only getting 8 sec?

vital shot’s base duration is 4 seconds. some sources of condition duration show up on the tool tip, but others don’t. the extra .75 seconds is from one of those sources you listed.

the duration bonuses stack, so 2 of each will give you 45%, but for pistol bleeds (and most thief bleeds) you only get an extra tick every 25% duration so plan foods/runes/sigils accordingly. flanking strikes does not include condition damage. usually unless it directly states condition damage it is safe to assume it does not affect it.

Edited for spelling errors

hemlocked.5364:

sealth is an effect that last a short period of time when you use certain skills. it’s not a permanent effect, or an effect that last until you attack (like in wow.) Although attack will break stealth. personaly i have found it to be useful in two ways.

one to shed aggro, for instance if i was fighting one monster and acidentally rolled into another and start taking too much damge, i will throw blinding powder and go stealth which buys you a few seconds to run, or let you healing skill recharge.

second when you attack with your #1 skill (primary weapon) while stealthed, you do a special “sneak attack” depending on the weapon you are using.

one other thing that i have noticed about stealth, is that there seems to be a short cool down time, so if i use blinding powder and then attack (breaking stealth) and then imediately use another skill that would stealth me it won’t. (just what i noticed, perhaps someone else has notice this as well)

hope this helps G/L

when you attack from stealth you get the revealed debuff. it makes you unable to stealth for 3 seconds.

kurtosis.9526:

I was just experimenting with Improvisation today and came here to ask about it.

There’s a problem – it does not work when I only have signets equipped and none of the other skills. It does seem to work when I have mix, like signets + venoms or signets + Tricks.

Anyone else get that problem too?

it is random between all types of skills, even ones you don’t have equipped.

it isn’t that toughness is bad, it is just that with our low base HP vitality can benefit us more. in PvE there are attack that can still kill a high toughness thief that a high vit thief would be able to live through. as far as build help, what weapons do you like to use? do you prefer to be tankier, or to give up some survivability for higher damage? give us a bit more information and we should be able to help you find a build you like.

try this http://www.gw2armor.com/

Kaizer.7135:

Jinks.2057:

Scholar has most burst damage

This.

If you’re going D/D I’m guessing your going backstab, which needs to have as much DPS as possible. Rune of Divinity isn’t that good for backstab, 60 extra points in vitality and toughness won’t make a difference to your squishy-ness.

scholar has more burst damage when you are above 90% hp, to be completely accurate.

dancing dagger lost 50% damage, and cloak and dagger got a 33% nerf for structured pvp. cluster bomb ate a 15% damage nerf. all the relevant nerfs I can think of at the moment.

divinity are great, the extra vit and toughness never hurt, and you still get some precision and power on top of that. I am guessing this is for sPvP so orbs are out. it is really up to your preference, but if I remember correctly you wont get better crit damage out of any other runes.

divinity runes do stack up to the 6 piece set bonus they have. there are only 6 possible rune slots at any given time, your underwater breather swaps with your helmet underwater, so you never have both equipped at the same time where rune bonuses are concerned.

it isn’t really as simple as that. most thief weapon sets are viable for PvE, WvW, and sPvP. S/D, S/P, D/D (which works with conditions or power based damage) P/D shortbow and even P/P somewhat. They all work depending on what you want to do. there is no definite best, what play style do you like, what weapons do you want to use, and which of WvW, sPvP, and PvE is your main focus are the three main questions you need to ask before designing or picking a build.

I prefer to keep a dagger main hand in my second set swap. death blossom is great when you have several enemies around, and amazing for supply camps. you can also open on someone with daggers, use all your initiative and the steal initiative recharge to get 4 DB off, switch to p/d, blinding powder, and then sneak attack. massive bleeds on your target, and you can CnD almost as soon as you possibly can if you wait most of the 4 second stealth before you attack. you just need to keep a short bow in your bag for sieges and the like.

you should generally avoid putting points into a trait line just for the stats. major and minor traits should be what you look at first. pick the ones that have the best benefit and synergy for the build you are working on, at max level the stats are more of a bonus than the primary reason for a trait line as opposed to when you are at low levels. that gear set is on the power based side obviously, but it isn’t the best armor for thieves. mixing it with valkyrie gear can make you rather durable though. is it exotic gear? if it is just rare you can get most of your money back on armor/weapons by salvaging them with the best kit available from vendors and selling the materials you get on the TP.

not really any other support options. support isn’t exactly our specialty. I believe the radius is 300, so you basically need a group of one type (ranged or melee) not prone to scattering or good communication so everyone can collapse on you on command to get the best benefit.

the thing is, D/P isn’t supposed to be invisible 80% of the time. they actually cant be while being able to kill anyone. with any thief you have at most a 4 second stealth (without stacking stealth through utilities/combo fields) and a 3 second revealed debuff. that is at most 57% stealth up time, if you are attacking. the issue is the rendering problems that make us unable to be seen in WvW for a short time after stealth is broken. this is something a net has been working on, and a relatively recent announcement has said they are working on fixing it, and making good progress. it mentions the three things they need to do, and bringing in a new programer, just to work on code efficiency for WvW. hopefully someone can link the rendering/culling update, since I can’t seem to find it again.

tl;dr once again, it isn’t stealth, it’s rendering that is the issue.

the thing about pistol is consistency of damage and stealthing regularly, allowing you to get the most of shadow arts traits. to do decent damage with it in a condition build it requires you to stealth to use sneak attack to stack bleeds. it can be more consistent in single target situations, especially in pvp and wvw. DB has longer lasting, AoE bleeds, but against players it is easier to dodge than sneak attack and vital shot. they D/D and P/D can be used together to meet your needs. D/D for groups, and P/D for single targets, especially powerful targets. the two sets have great synergy. another tip is if you have points in trickery, don’t use steal immediately. if you can close without it, and then DB, you can get an extra DB off from steal’s initiative recharge.

what is this for? pve, pvp, or wvw? mug is near useless without criting. those 10 points would be better off elsewhere. in most situation DB is more than enough AoE, so SB for AoE is really only useful when you need range on top of AoE. you will normally know when those situations are coming, so I would recommend a pistol main hand in your second weapon slot and keeping a SB in your bag for those situations. with just D/D you wont be stealthing without utilities too much, so you may want to see where else you can put the shadow arts points unless you go with the pistol in the second weapon slot idea. as for what to add to the weapons, with dd/short bow you could use corruption/agony for the daggers. if you go with the pistol in the weapon swap slot you could put geomancy sigils on both main hands, and corruption on your off hand, so you can always access the corruption bonus unless you need to switch to short bow. then you can go in, DB till you are out of initiative, switch weapons to spread more bleeds, utility to stealth, sneak attack with pistol, and continue fighting. swaping weapons/fighting style as needed stacking AoE bleeds with every swap.

for the most part, yes. precision helps other professions condition build far more, since some get bleed on crit through traits. it gets better at higher levels when you can get carrion, which has condition damage/power/vitality. carrion gear was pretty much made with condition thieves in mind.

max PvE survivability would mean S/P or a D/D condition build. with sword pistol you focus on preventing damage with blind, and using pistol whip to stun and put you in evasion for part of the attack. you also have a very short duration second ranged daze with the pistol off hand, so you bring a good bit of control and interruption to the field. with D/D condition on the other hand, you have a large amount of hp and your main attack stacks bleeds while putting you in evasion for part of it. you can get more out of caltrops than non condition builds, and since your damage comes through dots, you can still be hitting an opponent while you are reviving allies or getting out of the big bad red circles. with that build, a pistol main hand in the off set, and a short bow are interchangeable depending on whether you need to kite a single enemy while stealthing to heal, or lay down AoE damage.

carrion is your best bet, and the vitality is a major bonus seeing as thieves share the lowest base health pool with guardians and elementalists, with less access to damage mitigation. that said I do believe there is a healing power/toughness/condition damage set. you will get lower bleed damage but combined with carrion accessories you would have better survivability. 2 krait/2 afliction/2centaur runes will give you the most bleed duration, while 3 krait/3affliction will give you a bit more condition damage. one important thing to note is that pistol bleeds only get an extra tick every 25% durations, and DB gets an extra tick every 10%

part of it may be lag, but at anywhere approaching full range HS can be unreliable against moving targets.

well, stealth on steal has issues with main hand pistol. you will just end up with the revealed debuff a lot. I would also suggest bountiful theft or thrill of the crime over initial strike, but other than that it is the standard p/d build

well, you are in evasion for a good part of that root, and you can use steal to teleport to your opponent mid PW. you can also roll out of it.

condition damage is very viable, very few people run a lot of condition removal and for those that do it usually just takes longer to kill them. bunker guards/eles should just be waved at then you should both go separate ways though. the standard p/d build is 0/0/30/20/20 taking initiative on stealth, condition removal in stealth, and healing in stealth from the shadow arts tree. acrobatics and trickery traits are more flexible. carrion gear is probably the best to start with, and it has decent power so your attacks direct damage can help you kill. I recommend a dagger main hand in your second weapon set so you are D/D when you switch weapons and keeping a short bow in your bag. I’m not the best with s/d so I will let someone more experienced help you with that. I would also recommend giving S/P a shot if you like it. the PW nerf hurt but it is still more than viable in WvW, though it tends to get looked over a lot.

it is a known issue with a pistol main hand. for some reason it makes you auto attack when steal connects making you get revealed. works just fine for other weapons I have used it with though.