Guild Wars 2

EpicSuperFail.9518:

Ok, cool. Then what about runes for my armor. I was going to go with a full set of undead for apothecary’s, would you recommend something else for carrion or would undead work well enough for carrion as well?

Undead works, but I would highly recommend keeping a stock of condition duration food with you if you use it. I use 3 krait 3 affliction for the bleed duration of 30%, with death blossom every 10% bleed duration you get an extra tick of bleed, and if you use a pistol/dagger set as well, 25% increments get you an extra tick, so with most of the rare veggie pizza line of food, you can get 2-3 extra pistol ticks depending on your weapon sigils, and a lot more out of DB. that said, since bleeds are easy for players to cleanse if they are aware, so for pvp pistol gets more out of the duration boost than D/D.

as for Tulisin’s rampager idea, mixing it in doesn’t net you much of an increase in damage, and one of the main draws of condition builds is their durability, while you could go full GC with rampager and have one devastating dagger storm/DB, you come to the problem of being made of glass, and taking longer to kill someone than a full burst build.

any other questions?

for a condition build, carrion is pretty much king. its highest stat is condition damage, and with the thief’s naturally low hp it helps us take a hit. while the healing power/toughness would help, the 300 toughness/healing power from traits is enough for most situations. though carrion armor and apothecary trinkets would be another way.

ultimately though with the healing from stealth shadow refuge becomes a second heal skill that with the right traits also cures conditions and recharges your initiative. the healing doesn’t scale the best with healing power, and with the power on carrion, your attacks add up for some decent damage mixed in with the bleeds

Shadow’s rejuvenation heals for more, as it isn’t actually a regeneration boon, and ticks every second while in stealth. try it with shadow refuge, it’s fun. it is affected by healing power, but not enough to stack it for just that reason.

Like babel said, mix it, but lean towards valkyrie, you will get decent crit through the crit/crit damage trait line, and some ruby orbs/berzerkers rings/earrings/necklace

we also have next to no base hp, and shadow arts also raises toughness if you put points into it, not a whole lot, but enough to help.

at any rate, I like the vit, tough, power gear from wvw for sword/pistol builds, with ruby orbs. hard to kill, and control the crap out of things while hitting fairly hard. sword pistol has enough control to work ok as a glass cannon, though the lack of damage makes it a harder GC to use than a back stab build, so valkyrie may serve you better than berserkers.

stinkypants.8419:

Is there a difference between the caltrops utility skill and the traited ability in the Trickery line?

the traited ones on dodge are smaller, stack less bleeds, and don’t last as long. on the other hand you can roll 3 times in a row, and any extra cripple and bleed is useful.

shrewd.5319:

Thanks. Also, in pve/wvw what is the procedure for adding different runes to armor and sigils to weapons?

same as always, fit your build, for weapons I would suggest, bleed duration, and sigil of corruption to your weapons, the only difference with armor, is you have the option for standard upgrades that just give flat stats, for carrion it is chrysocala orb, if you want those over rune bonuses.

yeah, shadow step gets addictive, only reason I can keep from putting it on my bar is my greater addiction to signet of shadows for my d/d cond thief. on a side note, ever try dagger storming into a zerg with signet of malice? funny as kitten when you do it to people trying to break a gate in WvW.

shrewd.5319:

I only play PvP and I’m not very familiar with pve/wvw, but I want to get into it. I need help please.

In PvP I’m currently using Carrion Amulet. It gives a good chunk of power/vit/condi.
I notice that in PvE/WvW amulet/earrings/etc give very little of each stat. For PvE/WvW, how can I reproduce something as similar as possible to my PvP specs (carrion amulet)?

Please answer in as much detail as possible, as PvE/WvW is vastly different to PvP.

you should be very simmilar to it with full carrion armor at 80, you just have to keep in mind in non sPvP stats are spread around your full equipment set. also, condition damage isn’t as effective in pve as it is in WvW and non tournament sPvP, since with PvE groups, it is easier to hit the 25 bleed cap.

evilapprentice.6379:

If you’re using Signet of malice as your heal, Caltrops are nigh necessary, its one of your biggest healing sources.

completely forgot about the malice heal, thanks

Ferguson’s Crossing turtles

Ruufio.1496:

As a Necro I enjoy killing this noobiest of builds in the entire game by standing in their caltrops they drop and throwing 20 bleeds back on them.

they must be messing up, the build usually cleanses conditions in stealth. their fault for not cleansing

not realy mandatory, but incredibly useful, they work wonders for kiting in PvE, are great against sieges in WvW, and you can toss them down to defend points in sPvP, their damage combined with cripple on a 30 sec CD is just great. what utilities are you using? I am guessing shadow refuge, and then if you use caltrops the third is still open for a few choices, the CD reduction on blinding powder gives you a 40 sec CD stealth, scorpion wire is a great pull with the buff it got, and signet of shadows is great for the movement bonus, but with your build’s swiftness on dodge roll, not as useful as it is for other builds.

bottom line though, it is just a great skill, which is why it is so widely used by cond thieves, by no means necessary though. many pistol/dagger ones don’t use it at all, since they only need to be in melee range to re-stealth

it is one of our weaknesses, other than our healing skills, we have to rely on traits for condition removal, though if you trait for it through the healing power/toughness tree, shadow refuge and other stealths can cleanse a lot of conditions, heal and recharge initiative.

The giant Devona’s push for DB last night was awesome. I don’t remember any other siege short of stonemist lasting that long, and it was a really fun fight, me and a warrior friend kept using shadow refuge to one of the dev trebs and eventually took it out, unfortunately they had 3 or 4 more. they had us to the second door, and it was almost down when the cavalry arrived. great fight Devona’s and thanks to the players who showed up to save us at the last second.

well, carrion gives a large amount of vitality, and we have a horrible natural HP score. in addition to the con damage and power, that helps us get at least some damage out of our attacks, I mean four db hits and you’ve done over 2k on the main target, before the dots kick in with carrion armor. which is why it is so popular, the other armors have their advantages, but the extra hp buffer and oomph carrion gives makes it the best option, at least from my point of view.

I don’t sPvP a lot, but D/D condition damage works quite well for me, your main damage can be cleansed, and you aren’t going to kill someone as quickly as a burst build, but you are much more survivable, and caltrops in a point that is being contested are deadly if the enemy doesn’t clear out. I have been using 0/0/20/20/30 with runes of the afflicted, and two bleed duration runes for my daggers, and a short bow for my second weapon.

Anet have already said they want to address over the top burst, so just see what tomorrow’s patch brings

tagnut.8621:

Not debuffed in any way and WHAM 15845 kill shot.

Really.

REALLY!

Oh my….

taking a break from the thief forums are we?

as for the killshot damage, I have heard that when it penetrates it gets similar bonuses from berserker’s power as bladetrail does, so that is probably the source of the 30k plus hits, And in WvW my full berserker warrior pal hits 6-11k killshots most of the time, so you aren’t too far off in the damage range for that. also, on a slightly unrelated note, hammers make my thief hate life.

Nautika.5376:

We want unbalanced game play fixed.. You can perma stealth while killing someone 100-0 that is NOT supposed to happen.

It really is not fair when a Thief can 100-0 someone and they can’t even see them to target them, it is like those stupid 100-0 stunlocks in the game that shall not be mentioned.

the only thing that comes close to perma stealth is one build, that can’t do much of anything aside from contest points, and stealth point contesting is something that shouldn’t exist. what there IS, is a rendering bug that makes rogues still invisible for about another 3 seconds when they come out of stealth. it is a bug that need to be fixed desperately, also, with the revealed debuff, if you attack from stealth you can’t re-stealth for 3 seconds, so even if there was a perma stealth, you couldn’t kill someone from it. and you can take damage in stealth on top of that. it is our main defensive ability, but it can be countered like everything else if you know what to do.

the rendering issue is really the biggest problem with thieves right now, and it desperately needs a fix

emanueldst.8049:

im using d/d and s/d but i usualy carry al set of weapons with me… i havent tried this build in wvw yet just dungeons… and yeah i try not to get hit but when i do they chunk more than half my hp…. making armor kinda useless i think im just gonna go full GC balancing the thief so far is useless ¬¬

as far as the dungeons, a shortbow/dual pistols is highly recommended for one of your weapon sets, since thieves suck at taking hits, and with two sets of melee weapons while not focusing on conditions means dancing in and out of melee isn’t as effective, so if you cant control the enemy with blinds/dazes/stuns, especialy if it uses a lot of AoE, try geting some range and shooting it to death

it seems like you have gone a bit too middle of the road, Valkyrie with ruby orbs, or the WvW armors with a sword and pistol can both play with a good mix of offense/defense especially if you go with a brawler build that focuses less on crit, and more on power/control with the weapons’ stuns/dazes. dagger dagger tend to lean more towards GC but don’t have too, but the main thing is mixing armor like that is more likely to hurt than help from my experience. your greatest defense as a thief is usually not getting hit as with full hp gear you barely have more hp than a full GC warrior. What weapons are you using actually?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Since you asked, I typically play a Warrior. Thanks for the feedback so far, it looks to be good stuff and I look forward to trying them out tonight.

anything to help a fellow player.

as a warrior, you are in one of the worse positions to counter a thief 1v1, but hammer or any disruption utilities cause havoc to most rogue builds, like Rayya said, stability is only on dagger storm for us, so you knock us down with, for instance, the hammer burst even after we stealth, then use AA or non targeted AoE and we will die rather quickly if we arent a condition damage build. a lot of rogues don’t expect a strong counter offensive, and trying to run will almost always result in death.

chain daze and rapid swinging more than likely means sword/pistol. the initial attack from stealth can be hard to avoid, but the pistol whip that does a short stun followed by a flurry is highly telegraphed. the first attack that does the stun has a decent cast time, and once they start swinging they are rooted, try to dodge the initial attack then start wailing on them while they cant move. the pistol has a ranged daze, but eats a lot of initiative if you spam it. dazes also work equally well against them, as both parts of pistol whip have either a cast bar/channel that can be interrupted if you dodge the initial stun. Also, they will burn through their initiative eventualy, and then you can press the advantage, assuming you can avoid/negate one or two of their attacks, though the auto attack hits quite hard.

more in depth counters would be easier to provide if I knew your main class, but stunbreaks followed by knockdown/blowout/daze/stuns all work quite well if they do start up pistol whip on you, as it takes a little bit to self interrupt and launch it again.

Lelouch.8452:

Yes, it’s possible. I was in the mist, with a 30/30/10/0/0 warrior build. i stood in front the cluster of heavy golems, and let bladetrail hit themts. I was hitting pretty much 2k increase per targett. My first target got hit my 1k or so, and the last by 12k.
So yes, it’s possible to get hit by that much. I think there is a trait that affects the performance of bladetrail. so, if u are fighting a minion maste, and decide to hit bladetrail and hit several of them, u will see them drop xD

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Bladetrail-huge-damage-BUG-all-info-how-to-replicate-it/first#post677523

so basically chuck it into a zerg and it will hit the last couple targets like a truck? I find that funnier than I probably should.

there is a bladetrail glitch that makes it able to hit for upwards of 20k if it hasn’t been fixed, but from my understanding it is almost impossible for it to be done at will.

you aren’t being dumb running a venom build, do what you like, though they work best with the trait that shares venoms with nearby allies. dagger dagger is always good, but sword pistol works well for that build too, as you can disrupt (PW and the pistol daze) with that combo as well as bring the only real thief support to the field.

Crit builds mostly use dagger dagger for backstab, but sword pistol once again works quite well, with PW disruption and a powerful auto attack. less damage, but more survivable generally.

Condition uses pistol dagger, for CnD/pistol#1 combo to apply ranged bleeds and dance in and out of stealth, or dagger dagger for Death Blossom, which has stronger bleeds, but stacks slower and is easier to dodge. it opens up some fun with signet of malice when disrupting zergs though. almost all use a shortbow as a secondary, though unload from double pistols can hit quite hard in a crit build at the cost of range.