Guild Wars 2

Stiv.1820:

I would love to get rid of SoS but it’s out best stomping ability. The run speed is gravy. Nothing else lets you blind a guardian or someone else on their way to save the person you are stomping.

“Blind on stealth” trait works for that. Since it’s almost always better to stealth before stomping, you’ll stealth him automatically.

Emmet.2943:

lol ya who is denying people having spies on different servers that is just stupid to even think that way as spies are a huge part of enemy intelligence in wars. I just wish the game had an actual spy system(can’t attack/chat/use kits but are seen as a friendly by enemies) so people going to another server wouldn’t be needed and it could be a large part of WvW.

Idd, my guild even thought of creating a system to pay “spies” for their fee for changing servers every week and reward them for their “courage”.. but since our guild never became serious in wvw, we dropped the thought.

Besides dungeons/fractals I never run shadow refuge
And I haven’t used SoS for months now ..

I prefer infiltrator’s signet much more than SoS

Kerishan.8460:

Thie underwater is 2-2-2-2 with gun and 5-5-5-5-5-5 or 3-3-3-3- with spear.

They have to fix our utility underwater.

Melee 2 is a great skill in spvp. Actually, all melee attacks besides 4 is good. Why the heck does the skill 4 makes me unable to fight while my opponent just gets crippled a bit?

PopeUrban.2578:

Karolis.4261:

Stiv.1820:

SB has a huge edge for get away because it will port you while rooted/crippled.. and if you get stunned after it fires off it will still port you. Downside is they emeny can see the swirls of the shadowstep if you are doing it in stealth (if they know), with HS they can only hear your first couple.

Well the real downside of Infiltrators arrow is that it breakes stealth.

It actually doesn’t break stealth. This is a well known bug, but although you’ll appear on your client, and those of your allies, to have broken stealth, you’re actually still stealthed. This has been tested multiple times.

Basically, try the following:

Stealth
IA
Check out your buffs, you’ll see you’re still stealthed.

Heck, IA next to some mobs and watch as they completely ignore you.

Additionally, it you wait, you’ll see another “bamf” when stealth wears off for real.

As best as I can figure it, the “bamf” effect is coded in such a way that the effect itself alters the way the model is rendered to the player/allies, and some designer somewhere took a shortcut and reused the same “bamf” effects script for IA as was already present with stealth.

This bug is as old as release, and confusing to new thieves. Really wish they’d fix that.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that at release IA did break stealth (I’d take agro when I used it after I stealthed). Nowadays it won’t break anymore though.

koroshi.2658:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

No AoE bombing on fallen allies, no retreating when getting hit by vuln from an unknown enemy … Seriously .. I want these fights

A big number of players don’t notice they are being hit until their health is below 70%. As a d/d thief it makes for easy kills.

Too bad I don’t encounter them.

Probably a bump, but still. We from [OATH] are a small guild but run around in WvW often with you guys. Hope that we’ll be able to help the alliance with our guild. Cheers

Karolis.4261:

jwburks.9735:

They were random people I found running around out in the mists, LOL. And learning my class won’t help me fight what I can’t see.

Well learning game might help you fighting what you cant see. There is no possible way for thief to gun down 6 competetant players who dont run around in panick. Learning thief class might help as well. Like it was stated 875456 times, u can hit what u cant see and dont have target off. And in case of a thief, those blind hits hurt him A LOT.

(This is a joke, don’t take offence jwburks)
Well, in case you haven’t read his signature yet karolis
“We heard . . . we listened . . . we ignored.” It’s of no use repeating what has been said for 875456 times

^Attacking up-leveled ppl helps a lot too

No AoE bombing on fallen allies, no retreating when getting hit by vuln from an unknown enemy … Seriously .. I want these fights

First, we need time to pull this off. Second, isn’t this a great tribute to the server when they are outzerged? Small but organized groups have a chance of taking keeps through alternative ways. Also, they don’t have to be all thieves. 1 thief can keep the stealth up for several allies as long as they stick close to him and don’t attack.

Infiltration, assassination and subterfuge. This is war!

Catisa.6507:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

What about: upgrading only possible by the guild that claims them
This makes claiming a tower, even when you don’t have guild buffs (let’s assume you only claimed it with 5 ppl from 2 guilds total, both don’t have buffs) worth the effort.

So spys/trolls go around claiming a bunch of places so they block you from upgrading at all. Sorry bad enough these losers already do it to block people from putting up guild buffs.

Yeah, I just noticed anyone can claim now … Back in beta I thought only the biggest representing guild in the fight could claim …

To the three above me, those weren’t really his questions.. :P

^This .. I just made my quiver because it looks so nice when I equip my bow

1) As a d/d there are two (most used) possible options:
a) condition thief: Just spam deathblossom in general, caltrops is a great utility as well. Use signet of malice for immensive healing
b) Direct damge thief: backstab and heartseeker
You can try and combining them, but it would be a basic burst. You’ll be mixing condition dmg with direct dmg. When I started as a thief, I went either for a or for b, but never at the same time.

2) Why would your heal give the best stealth? Except for shadow refuge, all stealths give 3s stealth (when not traited). C&D is the easiest because it has no cooldown, but it does uses ini. Hide in shadows is your healing skill, wouldn’t be wise to put that on cooldown when you’re still full on health and want to set a backstab up. Then you have 4 utilities that can give stealth. Blinding powder, shadow refuge (don’t leave the area t’till tripwire is gone), smoke screen (combine with a leap or blast finisher) and shadow trap.
Best way to “use” it.. Set up for your stealth attack (backstab), for retreating (use c&d, then your heal and you’ll have 5s stealth, regeneration and gained back health) or while running from A to B to get minimal agro.

3) Depends on what you want to roll. Glasscannon, condition thief, “tank”, … Take your time to read what all major traits and all minor traits do in every tier before choosing a path of your own. (Use guildwiki for this)

Brennus.1435:

I think this is why it’s easier to cheat if you’re a thief. You’re already so slippery that some people can just name out the 50 ways you h ave to cover vast differences and just say you never cheated. But I’ve seen one thief I know had to be cheating, because he wasn’t just covering distance very fast he was teleporting distances very fast. As in +2000 distance or more in less than a second and popping back and forth. I’m not aware of thieves having a teleport with range greater than a longbow can shoot.

Shadowstep + infiltrator’s signet/strike/arrow followed by shadow return (from shadowstep)
gives about 2100 distance, using infiltrator’s signet it’ll be in less than a second because there is no delay.

What about: upgrading only possible by the guild that claims them
This makes claiming a tower, even when you don’t have guild buffs (let’s assume you only claimed it with 5 ppl from 2 guilds total, both don’t have buffs) worth the effort.

zen.6091:

As for legit thieves, main hand sword thieves with shadowstep can close a huge distance in less than a second, 2700 to be exact with shadowstep —> infiltrator’s strike --> steal, then return from infiltrator’s and / or shadowstep in stealth. Being an initiative skill, infiltrator’s strike / shadow return is also repeatable with no cooldown, range 600.

Don’t forget Infiltrator’s signet, I recently learned to love that skill as a gap closer (doesn’t require enemy to be in the range, it’ll just shadowstep to it maximum range in the direction of the target)

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups
There, now just make your team win/lose enough points to get to the rank you want …

Berengar.6951:

Use both!

Using S/D then switching to D/D to finish enemies is awaesomesauce

I actually started doing this .. Though it’s a bit more risky (less surviving based) it’s a lot of fun

@Daendur, yes it works. Combo skills into stealth also gives back initiatives. Heartseeker is actually a free stealth (2 cost, 2 gain), clusterbomb costs netto 1ini

1 utility causes (random number) 5 people to waste at least 1 aoe or knock back skill. I find it to be rather useful. Not that I run it myself though, I never used shadow refuge in pvp or wvw..

Step 1: Use shadow refuge NOT on yourself
Step 2: Use another stealthing skill
Step 3: Run away from SR

Laugh at a bunch of ppl wasting their skills on an empty spot.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do!

RedSpectrum.1975:

Kylar.5127:

Derk.3189:

Some good changes OP, I think you should add some of these too:
Backstab damage increased by 100%
Steal uses 5 initiative instead of being on CD.
Heartseeker will always crit against enemies <25% hp.
Deathblossom cripples.
Revealed reduced to 1second duration

And Basilisk Venom should last 20 secs, and require 5 stunbreakers to get out of

LOL, did they change it sso stealing doesnt activate bas venom now? becuase i dont petrify when i steal with it

You need mug on steal to petrify someone while stealing

Kylar.5127:

Iove.3902:

I just wanted to note that, in your video, you say that you can blind a Warrior, Ranger, and Guardian and their downed state abilities will miss. This is true, but it also works for Engineers and Necromancers. — Additionally, Shadowstep can also be used to stomp pesky Mesmers. [Only recommend doing this when the fight is over or you know you can waste the ability for some sick skill stomps xD]

Overall, this is a good build that I have tested before. I highly recommend it to players who are skilled but only play backstab with 25/30/0/0/15. Though, I prefer a little more toughness.

Yea, i just was giving the base of character classes off the top of my head that can be blinded xD, i sometimes use shadowstep to stomp thieves and mesmers, although thats only if thats the last of the people im fighting, or else its a waste of an amazing utility. I found that you can do more damage over time with more toughness than dps stats, so i really recommend trying this build out.

If you run with infiltrator’s signet, it’s easier to “throw” away the utility for a stomp kill. The passive is just a little bonus anyway, not game changing. I also found that the blind isn’t rly reliable, they can easily get rid of the blindness with a quick attack on someone else. For guardians I use shadowstep to get a stomp kill.

(ps: I prefer getting a stomp kill than reserving my utility when there are 2 of my friends downed who can be revived instantly with just that kill)

^I was just giving an example, since I’m running a supportive thief myself.
SB with stealthing when outnumbered / Daze-locking when fighting a boss with mostly frontal attacks.

PS: I wouldn’t say best class. Imo, a entirely mixed profession team is the best team.

LordByron.8369:

randomfightfan.4091:

I know there are a lot of bad thieves out there .

this is the reason….
they die too much….and its not due to the build…i play a glasscannon too with light armor also.

If you look at classes with worst players, thief is one of the first 2, unfortunately in dungeons, the class seems not so forgiving as other classes.

It is due to the build, at least partially. Unlike other medium/light armoured professions, we are more limited to close® range playing. Only our clusterbomb has a range of 1200, but it moves so slow, it’s only effective when used in a closer range. Combine this with a medium armour, a glasscannon build and there you go: A class that is not forgiving at all.

But agreed on op, thieves are stigmatized. When build right we can bring a lot to the game. Having a supportive thief in the team actually makes the game more forgiving to other classes. Stealth reviving can correct almost any mistake a character makes.

Leo G.4501:

Huh. I’ve played CM countless times and didn’t realize you’d get hit for less if you stopped moving.

You never stopped to read the text beneath the sniper’s name? :P

^300 in shadow arts? You’re a god! …

If ammy = amulet
The sPvP amulet is the sum of the stats from your armour, weapons, amulet, rings, earrings and backpack. So if you want a knight setup, you need to have
Knight armour, 6 pieces
Knight amulet, knight weapons, knight amulet, knight earring (2pieces), knight ring (2 pieces) and knight backpack.

Jericho.4521:

As far as I know, there’s nothing in the game that allows anyone to see “through” stealth. It’s likely since he’s a thief himself he’s just good at guessing where you will go. You can try to be a little more unpredictable with your movement ie: not moving in strait lines, combining stealth with shadowsteps, etc.

Also, channeled attacks will follow you through stealth and still hit if they are cast before you enter. Oh, and if he is using his number 1 skill, it will only complete the full chain if he is actually hitting you. This is a great way to track stealthed thieves if you know they are right by you.

^This
I track an enemy thief with auto attack, then immediately use cloak and dagger to get stealthed myself. Then I spam my stealth auto attack ’till I hit the person (or ’till he is revealed so I can make a more coordinated attack)

Also, if an enemy is running away and you are running a power/precision build. Most of your skills on shortbow won’t do much (besides the cripple). Use infiltrator’s arrow to stay near him so he can’t escape your onslaught of arrows

stof.9341:

jan.9745:

Seems like you dont know what is 1 hit?
Ranger, mesmmer, elem, guardian, engineer, necro they can’t do a 1 hit strike. Lol
Even they are GC build.,

I can’t speak for all the classes here but do you know that the Elementalist Churning Earth spell does more damage than Backstab?

To original post, not the person i’m quoting:
Also, thieves don’t 1 hit anything. Backstab requires a setup skill. Why does everyone keeps forgetting that?

Recently a guild leader from the guild EROS got demoted by his co-leader. This shouldn’t be allowed (since the demoted leader was the original founder) in my honest opinion.

I tested this in my own guild to see if it’s true, and apparently guild leaders are now able to demote and even kick other leaders.. I hope this gets fixed ‘cause certainly this can’t be intended.

Greetings

PS: Hopefully all co-leaders won’t be kicked because of this .. I tried reporting it at support but they wanted me to post it here

I was typing the following post on your original topic magiofdeath .. guess I’ll post it here

First of all, why the censuring? We don’t need your character name to annoy you ingame .. By posting here we have your accountname .. :P

2: Indeed he can be lying
3: What you see, could be a GC killing a GC. The victim can be under-geared, he can be already down 20% health if you just look at them without hovering your mouse over the victim to see his health bar.
4: A backstab build doesn’t kill anyone in 1 or 2 hits, they actually need 3 hits minimum for the combo alone. Most of them also run “Assassin’s signet”, so 3 skills and 1 utility already.
5: Do some homework before posting, a thief stealth for 3 seconds. 4 seconds when traited, 12 seconds when using shadow refuge (which requires them to stay in an area for 4 seconds first, just counted it)
6: I don’t see how you know that the thief doesn’t use a support set for the supply camp? Because you see a thief use a certain set, doesn’t mean he also runs a certain set. We don’t have many weapon options. That thief that soloes a supply camp is traited to be able to do that just like any other profession has to.

These are my observations from your post.

On long term:
3 initiatives every 37-45 sec
against
2i/10s —> 8i/40s
Trait will win.

However, for a quick burst, 3initiatives would win.

Depends on how you want to use it.

Never had this problem, though if you aim it to his back, you’ll be closer to him then when you’re aiming away from him. This might caused you to be too close ..

OR: When facing a thief, he might use shadowstep when you used yours.

Kaon.7192:

bhagwad.4281:

Posting here at moderator’s request: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Remove-stealth-on-miss-evade-block/first#post1356947

There have been times when a thief stealths and I start moving around, dodging etc to avoid a backstab. It works and I see a “Evade” or “Block” or “Miss” or “Invulnerable” message on my screen, but still no thief. This gives them yet another chance to fix the botched attack.

It seems to me that these missed attacks should unstealth the thief. They mucked up. Now pay the price. How do they get to have yet more shots when I lucked out once by dodging at the right time?

As a thief myself, I absolutely agree with this.
If you miss a backstab you shouldn’t be allowed to repeat it every half a second until you land it.

Miss should bring you out of stealth at the very least, so you can’t spam any more stealth attacks. Revealed debuff probably shouldn’t be applied here since there’s no damage being done.

With this changed, those GC BS builds might finally have a high enough skill barrier to match that burst potential.

Agreed and disagreed. “Miss” on itself shouldn’t bring us out of stealth, what if I accidentally pressed attack while my enemy was still on the horizon? (for example my cat tripped on my keyboard). I’m a thief, and I wouldn’t mind being unstealthed when the attack is blocked, blinded or evaded however.

Running away from enemy 1 when suddenly enemy 2 appears in front of you?
Use infiltrator’s arrow on 2, blinding him so his CC won’t hit you, escaping the cruel fate that 1 was hatching for you.

bladie.5084:

Cornholio.1567:

kash.9213:

The swing animation of sword #1 feels slow, but it’s a cleave. Everything else about the sword feels greasy fast for myself. Sword/dagger is the set that brought me to this game, it’s felt about the same since the betas and always I feel like I’m shedding a few layers when I go back to it after trying something else. I still pretty much only see D/D or P/D thieves though, mostly D/D in our matchups or at least the 6pm pacific playtime.

ye gotta love the cleave damage.. in and out of zergs is fun :P
Btw mind if i ask what build your running on yours S/D
Atm I am 10 30 10 20 0.. works pretty great.. but I still dont think I hit the full potential of this spec.. landing the daze is pretty tuff, thinking of specing the the 50 movement speed while in stealth just for it..

Fizzlepip.5218:

b) people have by and large figured it out. Though we still see complainers on the forums, there is a large number or WvW vets that simply laugh at GC Thieves nowadays. After all, they’re the easiest to kill once you hit them… even if you can’t see them.

Just for the lulz how do you counter, Assasin signet + bassilisk venom + haste combination?

always have your infiltrator’s strike already activated. So once u see a lil dmg, u can simply shadow return. a sword main hand will always have the advantage over d/d imo.

Or be quick on the stunbreaker. I like using shadowstep for this: shadowstep away, shadowstep back and attack him

@Topher: Disagreed on sPvP though, amounts of thiefs in sPvp is high :P Agreed in tpvp though

Scorael.8952:

2) Revealed debuff refreshes when attacked by foe. I’m basing this off the assumption that thieves are skilled enough to run away. That being said I am guessing ranged weapons could undo this quite quickly.

How would this be fair in Wv3?

Collin Jones.9781:

1 – No bow, stated that.
2 -

Your saying it costs half your pool like its a big deal

3 -Swinging wildly hoping to hit an invisible person. Good strat. I don’t doubt it’s validity, just rediculous what your resorted to. What I want is a mechanic for people who say, got knocked down while the person is in stealth or maybe they are crippled and are not in immediate melee range to capitalize on your strategy. Some signal to keep an eye open for.

4 -

1) Didn’t read that part sry, what weapon WAS she wielding then? I’d assume either P/D or she has traited “run 50% faster while stealthed”

2) How much dmg did she actually do to you? From what I read, it seems like she is traited into regaining initiatives and into stealthing (when she was downed, she’d throw a smokescreen which lasts a second or 2 again). Traiting into these things means she has to take out her damage output.

But yeah, it is a big deal. We don’t have cooldowns, but all our weapon skills derive from the same pool. If you’re not sparse with it, you’d end up only being able to use your auto-attack for a period of time.

3) Seriously, when in melee range, this is a great strategy and not ridiculous. How often I killed a thief just by guessing where he is. As for ranged locating, guess you have a point there. Although I’d hate being found when I am using my stealth to make ppl BELIEVE I went a certain way, while I just was luring them away from the spot I want to get to …

4) I think I already said what she used in point two, stealth on downed. It’s a trait. Since a recent update you can shadowstep and stay in stealth (wasn’t like this in the early few months). But how she got to 95% before you saw her is still a mystery to me. The stealth on downed doesn’t last long, and the second stealth’s cooldown wouldn’t be up yet.

My current build is 0/30/20/20/0
A little bit less damage (because of the 20 in acrobatics) but I can blind my enemies when I use C&D. Against a strong monster it helps more than more damage imo.

But since our builds aren’t much different, I know from experience that this build works well in dungeons. You have a lot of dodges and the ability to wear down the enemies anti-CC is great. Boon-stripping (FS) is a great skill too. I’d suggest getting a ranged weapon as 2nd set though. I prefer using the bow so I could still regularly immobilize the enemy and stop him from reaching allies.

I use cloaked in stealth, so I stealth myself and blind the enemy at the same time
Another way I beat the hammer is by shadowstepping away, wait for the throw and shadowstep back without interrupting the finish

Trying to kick the habit in Wv3 is a tough call Killafu .. I suggest trying it in dungeons, spvp and pve first .. Once you get accustomed there, try it in wvwvw..
Though ye, without shadowsteps I still feel slow in wv3

How do you get 100% uptime of swiftness on a thief? I can maintain a swiftness for maximum of 10 seconds or something.
On my engineer I can maintain swiftness forever (change kit every 5 seconds = swiftness for 5 seconds, no cooldown) but not on my thief ..

Collin Jones.9781:

Cheesiest class in the game for PvP.
Deminishing returns on stealth, slow their movespeed significantly, nerf the ammount of ways they can aquire it.

Or maybe melees should have a way to see stealth or atleast get a hint at which way shes going briefly. Going invisible in plain sight 2 inches infront of a guy hammering on you is pretty rediculous.

Anyway, once downed guess what she did. She stealthed away again. Didn’t reappear until she was healed about 90-95%, I judges interventioned over, too late, she disapeared. Didn’t catch her the last time, had no idea where she went. I think she WP’d away. This was an issue that they said they would fix back in the freaking Beta. Do you all play Thieves? wtf.

1) Our movespeed IS significantly reduced when stealthed. Only when you trait for it, you move “quickly”, not a lot of ppl actually take this trait (there are better). Also, she probably used infiltrator’s arrow twice and shadowstep, this means she used every single initiative she has and put an utility on 60s cd just to escape from you. If a roamer would encounter her by accident where she appeared, she would die, immediately.

2) There are 3 utilities, 1 healing skill and 3 ways with weapons to acquire stealth. 2 of the known utilities, a trap (which means you have to trigger it first). Cloak and dagger, leap through smoke field or blast on a smokefield. The last one are hard to actually pull off when in combat, so we’re not going to discuss that one. The trap isn’t something thieves rly use for as far as I know (though Imo it should be a quite interesting utility for sPvP). Shadow refuge (the house) and blinding powder are the utilities, they are interesting skills for survival when the enemy is able to make you waste most of your initiatives (block, blind, dodge). Cloak and dagger is the primary way for a x/D to gain stealth, it uses 6 initiatives (which is half our pool) and stealths us for 3 seconds. (And then there is Heartseeker through a smokefield using smoke screen or using black powder). —→ In practice a thief has maximum of 4 ways to achieve stealth in combat. With my build the skills have following cooldown: 6s, 30s, 40s and 50s. So only 3 of the 4 skills are meant to be used before combat (so they can regenerate during combat) or as last resort.

3) Yes there is a way for melee-oriented characters to find stealthed players. You obviously aren’t really experienced in PvP yet in this game. Your auto-attack has a 3-skill-chain. When you hit a thief, the chain will continue. This is how I counter a thief, find him with auto-attack, use cloak and dagger on him.

4) A thief who just got downed has, like every other profession, his third skill on cooldown. Your opponent couldn’t stealth herself when you decided to finish her immediately and even if she did, it would’ve only lasted 2 seconds. What really happened is this:
You tapped on “finish him”, she used shadowstep somewhere behind your back. You didn’t look around, just thinking she stealthed. She probably used stealth before you found her. By the time you FINALLY see her, she has healed herself tremendously.
This is what you should’ve known when you had more experience and didn’t come on this forum to cry immediately after one loss.
a) A thief ALWAYS shadowsteps away just before you finish him .. I mean .. why not? You don’t want to die
b) If timed right, the thief will be able to cast stealth just before you finished him the second time. He is still there! Just slash away, his shadowstep is on cooldown and won’t be back on time. He reappears again, finish him now.

Here is what you can do to hasten up the process. Have him on locked-target. Interrupt your “finisher” before it connects, this wins you 1 or 2 seconds. Use a teleportskill (since he only shadowstepped, you’ll still be locked on him) and immediately follow with finisher.
As a thief there is one much much faster way though. Our shadowstep doesn’t interrupt the finisher (I think the guardians teleport does, the mesmer’s blink doesn’t ..) so we can use our teleportskill while finishing.

Actually, the TP WAS a way to earn money … But that was back in september :P
You could craft things for 10s mat price, and sell them for 20s back then …
But right now it’s not worth it at all. Unless you craft your items from mats you found by looting (just for the title), it’s not worth buying/selling.