Guild Wars 2

I would recommend the last 30 points into deadly arts, that way you can make the frequent stealthing heal you, remove conditions, and restore initiative. at the least 10 points in for 2 initiative on stealth would be recommended, as it makes CnD refund two initiative when it hits. power isn’t gonna net you too much gain unless you want to go the mug/BS route, but that build can be killed if it gets looked at wrong. you could also put another 5 into trickery for the extra initiative.

maybe
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckzzc0zMMFlvMMolvM0xx0azaqVmqV

the points into shadow arts make stealth last longer, and gives you reliable condition cleansing if you frequently stealth. it also makes shadow refuge restore 2 initiative per pulse on top of the extra healing and cond cleansing from the long stealth duration.
your dps is 0 if you are dead after all, and the build is still able to put out high damage.

pugo.8039:

thanks for the replies, good to know there isn’t diminishing returns for cond damage. my build at the moment is 20 deadly arts, 30 acrobatics, 20 trickery. mostly relying on dodging via V and DB spam to not die as opposed to stealthing. I was also considering dropping 10 points from acrobatics to another field but i didn’t really like the look of anything else, and i figured 100 extra vitality was okay. I didn’t know there was a toughness/condition damage/healing set, at the moment i’m leaning towards that since it won’t detract from my damage output.

it will detract from damage output, just not by a lot. the majority of the damage loss is non condition damage, which adds up if you are in full carrion. I’ve seen the math somewhere before. it is also worth noting that set is usually used more in p/d builds, or if you stealth somewhat often, combined with 30 points into shadow arts, so you recover hp while in stealth while not taking a lot of damage due to high toughness. if your gonna brawl it out, carrion will probably serve you better. you will kill faster in it, and if you know what to dodge you wont take many of the big hits people can throw your way.

Icetrinity.3804:

@Gungnir

I play a roamer in tourneys (with guild). I don’t really enjoy the D/D burst play style, so run a S/D duelist type build (linked below). Hoping to get tips on improving build as well as general tips for thief roamer/duelist playstyle. Hopefully this helps to build conversation that provides something of what the OP was looking for as well.

Thanks in advance,

Ice.

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlcmaPHdy5E95Ey2jKUn4JuHOlR1UaFoJA;TsAg0CooQygkAJLSOkkItwYgxECA

honestly, sword/dagger is my area of least expertise, but the build looks fairly solid. I am curious as to how well SoM works in tPvP from your experience, as I have always preferred hide in shadows for small scale fights myself. have you tried taking 10 out of power and putting it into trickery though? the fury/swiftness from thrill of the crime would help proc quickness earlier for initial burst and help to keep you mobile. and it affects allies too. though I am admittedly very attached to that trait.

I don’t really know of any guides for end game thief builds sadly. I would be more than willing to help you out with builds if you let me know what weapons/play style you prefer though.

full carrion with chrysocola jewelery will probably be the easiest to use. there is no diminishing return on condition damage. you could also try 3 krait 3 afflicted runes, you lose a bit of condition damage, but will gain 2 extra ticks from DB bleeds. what is your build? if you go the full 30 into shadow arts, toughness/condition damge/healing gear for your jewelery would be beneficial for the extra toughness and healing.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

But Signet of Malice active skill gives more than hide in the shadows does >>
signet of malice heals for 3,275 ( x2 as its recharge is half hide in the shadows ones ) , while hide in the shadows heals for 5,240 + 520 ( from Regeneration ).
So the total healing from each of them is >>
signet of malice > 6550
hide in the shadows > 5760

without traits yes, but if your build happens to go 30 points into shadow arts, you can heal yourself, remove a condition every 3 seconds, and gain initiative while in stealth, on top of it removing bleed/poison/burning. thus moving the advantage to hide in shadows. also, never count out the stealth making someone drop target, potentially stopping some of their more damaging attacks. it depends on your build.

signet of malice is usually situational. with D/D I am assuming you backstab, so with it you can’t follow a heal into a backstab like you could with hide in shadows, on the other hand, it is a great healing skill to combine with AoE. a pistol whip hitting max targets, or any other AoE/rapid attack can stack a good amount of healing, and using its on use heal is viable because of the low CD. in small fights it tends to be less useful though. Personally, I use hide in shadows in small fights, and malice in big ones. malice+caltrops+dagger storm is great for zerg busting and keeping people off siege when you have malice equipped. also, malice+haste+ pistol whip or unload spam can pump out some healing as well.

honestly though, it is best to remember you don’t have to go to a trainer to re-slot skills, and switch between the three you have based on the situation. small roaming? hide in shadows, large group or supply camp? malice up. everything has it’s place.

Same.4687:

I honestly feel that the “Move 33% faster in stealth” trait doesn’t work. It’s a complete waste imo… Vigor and boon ripping feels empty for me.

those two combined with might on dodge and caltrops on dodge are great for condition builds, you can kite people all day long while buffing your bleeds. together with a food I cant remember the name of at the moment you can dodge all day, while dropping caltrops, and gaining 2 stacks of might per dodge, but yeah, by themselves they are lackluster.

well, I would recommend not using pistol 3 under regular circumstances. If you use too much initiative, then someone dodges your CnD you end up in a tough spot where you have to pop a utility to stealth or wait till you regen initiative. not to mention you have to close again to re-stealth. can be useful to get out of a lot of PBAoE abilities though.

as for the 10 points into power for mug/steal poison, mot worth it for condition builds, it wont hit for more than 1.4k unless you get a crit, which shouldn’t be all to likely unless you already have fury up. and you lose out on assassin’s reward/power of inertia if you still want to keep stealth speed. and either of those two are very powerful abilities. not to mention without the endurance regen on dodge you lose the ability to get 3 dodges in a row. the 10% bleed duration also really isn’t worth it compared to the 1k hp and the 10% boon duration.

where runes are concerned, 3 krait and 3 afflicted work great. the bleed duration more than makes up for the lost cond damage, as pistol bleeds only get an extra tick every 25% duration and combined with an agony sigil and superior and rare veggie pizza you end up with 3 extra ticks on pistol bleeds.

you also may want to carry around a pair of daggers for camps/group play. not always the best option, but when combined with signet of malice and assassins reward you can solo supply camps fairly quickly with low risk, and death blossom is a fearsome AoE bleed that gets an extra tick every 10% duration.

edit: maybe give this a shot:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cR3V-FCRwFb0J5BOVd06E;0k0-N5;8TJJ;434A51-26-8NH6;2fgm9dZH9u

well, the human elite, I think it is avatar of Grenth or something to that effect (the one that chills/poisons nearby enemies), has some uses for some classes. I have seen guardians use it to great effect. but yeah the Norn elites are mostly worthless for any kind of pvp and everyone knows it. you will occasionally see snow leopard because it can attack on the move and can stealth, but that is about it. their cool downs are too long for their sub par effects. racial abilities aren’t intended to be great, though it would be nice if all the forms could attack while moving at least.

Loading.4503:

Rukia.4802:

Blacksarevok.8104:

I’d be okay with this, since it would also make SoM even more valuable. Not to mention, as you said, it would make sense.

What would be also cool is if it fired 8 shots, then fired both guns at the same time for the final shot for extra damage, similar to 100 Blades. I’m kinda disappointed ANET hasn’t used any simultaneous shooting animations for dual pistols.

All in favor for a Barret power shot from FF7?

Owait, warriors already got it

If I can have his final limit break, that’s all I need, take away my stealth and everything

if you get that then warriors will get omni sla….. oh wait they have it.

yeah, thieves can rapidly stack bleeds without sigil of earth or on crit bleeds from talents. the thing is our pistol’s sneak attack and dagger/dagger’s death blossom stack bleeds quickly, combined with things like caltrops, and our mobility means we kite while things bleed out. a D/D cond thief can death blossom 3 times, steal DB again and there are 12 10 second bleeds in about 5-6 seconds. before cond duration, and before switching to pistol/dagger for auto attack bleeds and sneak attack., in pve you can stack 25 bleeds on a target in under 10 seconds with just death blossom and caltrops. we dont need precision for our condition builds. it is why most run coarrion or healing power/toughness/cond damage. we can stack defense without hurting our ability to bleed, instead of relying on crit to help stack them.

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

shows most armor sets in the game for every race/gender

Zizanzi.4678:

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

so [KAIN] is burnt out, and [NoQQ] is out of the fight for the most part for this week. I hope Kaineng still puts up a good fight this week, last week was the most fun I have had yet.

We aren’t out per se, we are just going to be concentrating on the dreaded PVE content for PVP gear. ( Whoever thought farming pvp gear in pve dungeon up should be shot then brought back to life to be stabbed, fricking hate pve). Plus we are only 4 – 7 people @ night and I’m sure we have no impact on WvWvW.

Stylii Elementalist (Staff)
Shoulda Rolled Kaineng (NoQQ) Leader

maybe, but I know how hard you guys hit. fights against y’all are almost always fun. Also, the fact that WvW only carries one type of gear reward that is easier to get elsewhere is annoying.

so [KAIN] is burnt out, and [NoQQ] is out of the fight for the most part for this week. I hope Kaineng still puts up a good fight this week, last week was the most fun I have had yet.

as far as leveling I would suggest using sword/pistol or condition damage dagger/dagger and pistol/dagger

the sword/pistol method revolves around the aoe damage from auto attack/pistol whip, and control such as the PW stun, and blinds from black powder and smoke screen.

as far as a condition damage build, dagger/dagger and dagger/pistol would be the preferred weapon sets combined with the caltrops utility skill. you jump in with dagger/dagger and death blossom to stack bleeds, drop caltrops and kite while the enemies die. or using pistol/dagger run in, drop caltrops, cloak and dagger, then use sneak attack to stack bleeds, run back in to cloak and dagger after a couple auto attacks, and repeat while keeping enemies in caltrops. Generally D/D is better for groups, and P/D is better for single target.

another few things to take into account are that at lower levels the stats from traits are very significant, but gets less important compared to traits as you level, and learning when to dodge can make many group encounters (and encounters in general) much easier, as you aren’t supposed to take many hits in this game.

most anything is viable in pve at higher levels, but in the mid level range it can get kinda difficult for thieves that try direct damage with dagger/dagger. we are quite a fragile class, so even though we can drop a single enemy quickly with that spec, hoards are hard to fight without kiting,blinding or other defensive measure, which are more lacking until you get access to more traits/skills than you do now. it will get easier though.

the sigil wont activate when you go into stealth, it will proc off the CnD crit almost at the same time the hit’s damage is applied, but before the stealth happens. just realized that my explanation may have been misleading, as I was thinking about it being proced after gaining stealth, which would require a direct attack from stealth, not from an attack that triggers stealth. my bad running on a couple hours sleep at the moment

since you have to crit to proc it, you would have to hit an enemy with an attack, so it would knock the user out of stealth. a good rule of thumb is only damage you deal directly will break stealth on you. things like siege equipment and any indirect damage, such as caltrops, you may have wont put you out of stealth.

pistol pistol isn’t that great for condition builds, pistol/dagger and dagger/dagger work far better. other than that, pistol bleeds require 25% bleed duration for an extra tick, and dagger/dagger’s death blossom require 10% for an extra tick. personally, I use 3 krait runes, and 3 affliction runes for armor, and one agony rune for 10% bleed, and one corruption rune for increased condition damage every kill on my weapons. combine that with superior/rare pizza, and you are set for damage.

as for survivability, carrion armor gives you more than enough survivability in PvE, while giving you the most condition damage of the different armor types, and enough power to make your attacks inflict at least some damage.

well, not exactly what you asked for, but if you feel like switching to mouse movement, you could bind your abilities to two rows of your keyboard keys, and dodge and interact to two others. wish I could help more, but I use a keypad combined with mouse movement, so I don’t have a setup like you’re looking for I can give you that I know works.

hmmm, you could try power/vitality gear to take a few hits or power/precision for more damage go into crit strikes 20 points and put 20 points into trickery. pick up might, fury, and swiftness to party for 10 seconds on steal, and then vigor and boon rip on steal. that way you can at least give the occasional buff to your party, and the points in crit work well with a sword/pistol combo for daze interrupts on demand, pistol whip stun. have smoke screen and shadow refuge on your bars. and caltrops when that would help, since the bleeds hurt, plus cripple can help kite a lot of bosses.

basically drop caltrops into groups/on boss, steal to buff group, pistol whip/auto attack/interrupt with your weapons, and when someone goes down, drop shadow refuge or smoke screen on them to cover the rez. probably about a support like a thief can get until you get access to venom share when you get grandmaster traits.

BlackDeath.8106:

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

Jefzor.7145:

I don’t agree 100% with your elite choices. Daggerstorm is by far the best elite to use vs a zerg.

daggerstorm+signet of malice into 4+ people, watch as they flail about, dying while trying to hurt you, since most people in WvW wont strip stability and interrupt it.

Man… Just do that in a good group. You will die in seconds (if you render, most of the time you survive because you do not render which is why you think that it is awesome good). Daggerstorm is good against the newbies zerg though especially those range attackers who just attack you and not change to melee or just dodge away.

I know you will die in seconds, if they strip stability and knock you down, scatter and drop AoE from range, or use another counter to it. the problem is, in WvW when people group up they tend to lose a lot of their common sense, making it actually work more than it fails. but yeah, if I see a group mostly from 1 guild, or that seems organized, I will switch to thieves guild, or be a lot smarter with dagger storm use. and I will not use signet of malice.

edit: lets not get horribly off topic arguing this. something tells me we can go back and forth on this forever.

TheAmpca.1753:

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

if you’re killing stragglers, any dagger/dagger burst build workED wonders

Dancing Daggers:
Now does less damage than the auto attack on the shortbow, hits one more time, cripples, and costs 4 init.

I’m assuming backstab and other melee ranged techniques will be used, most stragglers don’t have swiftness up, and aren’t heavily grouped. dancing daggers isn’t the only burst damage that was/is worth using on people taking into account a thieves ability to close/immobilize

edamber.1549:

Tulisin.6945:

Vile.5678:

- Deadly Arts increases Power and Condition Duration, specializing in Venoms in particular.

I actually prefer Acrobatics over Deadly Arts for a lot of situations. Acrobatics lends itself to Might stacking, which can be a potent way to boost your conditons and, IMO, has better traits as well. You’ll miss out on the awesomeness that is Trickery’s Utility Steal + Deadly Art’s Damage Steal.

Hmm, doesn’t might give +power which is useless for condition? Only condition damage boosts your damage? Or am I wrong?

might gives power and condition damage

honestly, masterwork and rare gear from the trading post is a cheap and easy way to get started, if you can’t make your own. and with a build that glassy, you may as well go full berserkers.

if you’re killing stragglers, any dagger/dagger burst build works wonders, though the CnD/mug/backstab build kills the fastest. it will also more than likely get you killed if you hit a bunker built 80 with it. and in dungeons, survivability is really important.

you could use valkyrie armor and weapons, with berserker accessories and hidden killer from 30 critical strikes for automatic back stab crits and some extra survivability, or go 0/30/30/10/0 and get knights gear. low health but high toughness and good crit chance as well as every stealth having a significant heal. low crit damage though so use ruby orbs, or berserker accessories if you want to increase the build’s damage, or valkyrie to gain some health at the expense of crit chance.

if you decide to go full glass cannon for picking people off, I would recomend having a different build/gear set for dungeons. most bosses can drop a thief in 1 shot if he/she doesn’t have much toughness/vitality

there is no “best” build, sword/pistol works great as a brawler or as a glass cannon. dagger/dagger can be used for durable damage dealer or full glass cannon crit builds, as well as the durable condition builds along side pistol/dagger.

What weapons/style do you like to play?

are you sure the enemies aren’t attacking right as you apply it? once they miss they lose the debuff, so it shouldn’t stay on long

dank.3680:

TRx had a great first day of play being on Ferg. (we transferred over last night). We really had an amazing time in many many battles on DR borderlands. Thanks for all the great fights to everyone who stood against us! And we really appreciate the overwhelmingly warm welcome we have gotten from the players of Ferguson.

I thought I saw Chris mention you guys, welcome to the server. the fighting in the DR borderlands tonight was amazing, wish we could have gotten the garrison though.

double daggers are used with both condition damage and crit based builds. mainly because thieves have no CD on weapon skills, death blossom from double daggers stacks bleeds quickly, and where burst is concerned you can chain cloak and dagger with back stab every 3 seconds, with heartseeker to finish off an enemy.

for leveling I would recomend a condition damage build with dagger/dagger and/or pistol/dagger and picking up caltrops as a utility skill, to bleed and kite things all day long in pve.

end game for condition a good starting point would be http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY6YlUmaPXeS+E+5EB3Djy0m6p4rjtTxVjPA

end game D/D direct damage builds come in a few different flavors. one that uses hidden killer for auto crit backstabs, then traits for survivability and gears with mostly valkyrie gear. then there is the glassier crit based builds. you still go 30 into crit strikes, but you take the +20% damage on foes below 50% health trait. then there are several ways to go, from stacking points in power for mug and might on signet use and trickery for steal range to get the the full glass, super backstab combo build, to putting points into acrobatics/shadow arts, while mixing valkyrie or knights gear in with your berserkers for more survivability.

that said, there are also some mean sword/pistol users out there, if you think that combo may be enjoyable for you.

when you are leveling, dagger/dagger condition damage works really well, you can AoE bleed and kite for days, especially once you get caltrops and signet of shadows. you just jump in and out of melee with death blossom. sword/pistol also works really well, just combine it with smoke screen, and you will blind everything and you combine stun and AoE with pistol whip. it also has a strong auto attack chain. Shadow Refuge is universally useful, for both gathering/skill challenges and getting out of sticky situations.

SpaceCowboy.1398:

I was wondering this as well. I’ve just dinged 80 and I am trying to get my gear sorted out. As a P/P Thief 0/30/0/20/20 I’m wondering what are ideal amounts of Vitality and Toughness for WvW and PvE?

Don’t know if I should go Knight, Valkyrie, or a mixture of the two?

in PvE, survivability is king, especially in dungeons where bosses and some mobs can put you on the ground nigh instantly if you only have the base 10k thief hp. honestly the power/vitality/toughness gear from wvw/dungeon explorer mode token rewards with ruby orbs works great with pistol/pistol, as even with a relatively small crit chance, you can boost it with fury, and keep enough initiative through crits to get several unloads off.

pvp on the other hand, you can go more glass cannon and still survive, but how much survivability you have as a GC is highly skill based. assuming you know when to dodge/stealth/snare, and keep some kitting tools on your bars, you may be able to last quite a while even in full berserker.

you could use the same vit/tough/power gear mentioned above, and make a hard to kill pistol brawler, time your main burst with fury from steal/fury when an opponent drops below 50% health.(ever feel like a broken record?) or you could mix in valkyrie or knights with berzerker, for less survivability, but more damage. any of the three ways you go with it, I recommend a short bow as a backup weapon if you dont have one.

Jefzor.7145:

I don’t agree 100% with your elite choices. Daggerstorm is by far the best elite to use vs a zerg.

daggerstorm+signet of malice into 4+ people, watch as they flail about, dying while trying to hurt you, since most people in WvW wont strip stability and interrupt it.

well, it depends what you fight, toughness wont do a thing against condition damage, though for a burst build that wont take many hits you are probably right. the game is dead set against having both high burst and high survivability at the same time though.

well, if you think you can kill someone in 10-20 seconds or so, take the fury, might, and swiftness on steal trait from trickery, and the 10 seconds of fury when an opponent drops below 50% from crit strikes, and switch some gear from berserker to valkyrie, you could potentially keep the same crit chance for quick burst, but in a prolonged fight you would lose some damage in return for the extra health.

well, you could try valkyrie gear with the 100% crit from stealth from the critical strikes tree. toss in ruby orbs, and maybe a few traits that give fury.

don’t think there is a power vitality precision set though.

Raehvyn.4530:

Still? They reduced the damage by 15% I heard. Good to hear Engineers aren’t useless! I’ve got one parked at level 40-something.

I think the damage reduction was sPvP only

well, for non GC, not necessarily. if you take the auto crit from stealth your BS is unaffected by crit chance, then you get 20% crit from fury for 10 seconds from both steal, and the enemy below 50%(if off 45 second CD) traits if you take them. so 47% base, but 67% with fury up, and auto crit back stabs. as long as you dance in and out of stealth, you should get more than enough damage out to drop someone

what race/gender? some races cultural looks good, but yeah, a lot of bland pants out there

edit: know what? try this http://www.gw2armor.com/

a word of advice about full glass cannon thieves, run if you see a bunker guardian/warrior. you’ll just kinda bounce off their armor, then get hammer slammed to death since you have super low hp/armor.

with superior skill you can kill them of course, but they are a kind of hard counter, so equal skill they will usually end up on top

just curious, since my bunker/bleed thief has around 19k hp, do bunker eles really have that little hp?

at any rate, yes thief burst from the uber back stab build could use some toning down. making the 33% nerf to cloak and dagger in pvp apply to WvW would help some, and rendering REALLY needs to be fixed. making teleports interrupt cloak and dagger would also help against that build. though I think that would hurt eles and a few other classes too. and yeah, warriors/thieves seem to be on top where damage is concerned.

on the other hand, he can only do this about once every 45 seconds, and it does work better on light armored classes, on bunker warriors/guardians/thieves and even engineers/necros that build often just fails to kill and then gets stomped in the face.

those tend to be the two sides of the coin. at any rate, it is out of my hands since it isn’t like thieves have an inside line to Anet. (I lied, we totally do)

it is useful, but weapon skills train much faster at higher levels, eventualy training a skill a fight. so you can just use what you like, and the others will train super quick when you want to use them later on, or at 80 just so you have them.

3 underwater weapons speargun spear and trident, thieves only use speargun and spear.

Darxio.5672:

It’ll only grant Regen if you don’t have the Regen boon already.

It may be bugged, or it may be working properly. If it worked how you want it to work, it’d grant regen with every tick of Shadow Refuge, and we’d get 25 seconds of Regen(Since it stealths you once a second for 5 seconds).

well, as far as I know, infusion of shadow in shadow arts works with each tick of shadow refuge. either way one is bugged, or maybe they just don’t want you stacking 25s of AoE regen with a stealth that already has a heal component (traited shadow refuge can get ridiculous). so something is likely to be changed eventually

well, you could try going 30 into crit strikes and 10 into trickery, take 100% crit from stealth from crit strikes and might, fury and swiftness on steal from trickery, with valkyrie armor and berserker accessories.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPHfS6E+JFy2jKsnIKOFGFT5Vgs0KQTA

think this with the valk/zerker armor/accessory mix might work for you?

edit: the point of the idea being rely on fury and auto crit to make up for your lowered crit chance

jayderyu.3751:

I’ve had at times thieves trying to hold camps, but they are usually taken out in less than 2 minutes. The game provides excellent method of figuring out NEW tactics to cope with situations.

Saying that however, I’ve always felt that any take over of a point should be based around supperior numbers in the circle rather than ONLY team in the circle.

If there are 5 Team X, and 4 Team Y, then it should still tick towards team X, but very slowly. If there are 2 team X and no Team y. then it ticks cleanly towards team x. It should worl more like a tug of war rather than a conquered meter.

Really like this idea, but more than likely, they will just make stealthed players not count towards capture, like in sPvP if they ever do anything

I prefer to troll with 6 superior runes of the mad king, dagger storm, caltrops and signet of malice, right into a group trying to bring down a tower gate. between the hits from all the abilities healing you can down a good 5-8 people solo if they don’t run out of it. which is more often than my faith in humanity would like.

thief damage output is lower than most at low levels, but with a condition damage build, you can just use death blossom from dagger dagger, and dagger pistols sneak attack/auto attack to kite everything to death, with competitive dps. another way is sword/pistol. still has decent damage, and can stand there and beat things to death with AoE blinds from black powder and utility and pistol whip stuns, among other things.

or at least let you re-dye hair accessories in the dye menu. I have the same issue with my thief. my tea-jeans bandana looks bad with most other colors so I am stuck with a dark blue color scheme. partly bad future planing on my part though.

EpicSuperFail.9518:

So if every 10% gets me an extra tick, would a sigil of agony be better than a sigil of geomancy for my dagger?

that depends on a few things, for pve, it is quite possible, for pvp on the other hand Geomancy can be used for a quick 3 stack bleed AoE to get bleeds rolling faster, which can have more of an impact on people who cleanse them often. most people tend to use 1 agony and 1 corruption sigil. so assuming you don’t end up on your back a lot, you get a nice boost to both damage and duration

It may just be my WvW bracket, or me not paying much attention, but it seems to me a lot of thieves tend to not make creative use of their utilities in WvW. to solve this, I want to use this thread for that purpose. I’ll start off with some of my Ideas, but I would love for everyone to join in.

Shadow Refuge-not just for running away

I rarely see anyone using the group stealth aspect of shadow refuge, but it can prove amazingly useful, during keep/tower defense, ranged enemy siege such as catapults/arrow carts/ballista and even trebs are placed right behind the enemy line, often grouped up. with proper use of shadow refuge, you can stealth a group from inside your keep/near the enemy lines and sneak up on the siege equipment and its defenders. with 5 people, you can create an AoE storm that can kill the siege and its operators/ some defenders, and even possibly run away without dieing. of course, this also works to get in the middle of an enemy group and attack with the element of surprise.

your mobility-use it.

with the mobility/invisibility we have, we can easily run supply to besieged locations. combine shadow refuge, blinding powder and shadow step as utilities with a shorbow, and you can stealth/teleport out of a location, pick up supply at a camp, and bring it back in without getting caught, allowing you to draw in supplies from nearby locations, assuming they aren’t all captured. you can also keep in sight of an enemy zerg and make sure your side knows what it is doing, with little fear of getting yourself killed.

These two are all I can think off at the moment, so please add your own, and hopefully we will see a rise in thieves making creative use of their abilities, making people hate us even more.