Guild Wars 2

FLiP.7680:

What makes the 6 points in Trickery so necessary? IMO Shadow’s Embrace is a much better talent, idk how does anyone replace it. My solo build below.

Depends on what you want to do. But trickery (+mug) will pretty much always give you and your teammates the biggest bang for the buck in any matchup or situation. It gives you boons, a daze, poison and a heal while ripping boons from the target.

In the current gameplay, there is a lot of focus on stacking boons such as might and proctection with eles for example. Guardians have automatic aegis, which gets removed by the steal and allows for the entire burst to be landed (such as a backstab) without having to worry about the block eating any aspect. The interrupt (daze) goes through stability since the boon rip applies prior to the daze and the boon rip prioritizes stability (the only boon rip to apply such a priority). This means it allows for you to interrupt a multitude of abilities/actions that can dramatically change the outcomes of fights (ie banners/stomps/rezzes/heals).

Additionally the poison inflicted by the minor DS traitline is amazing since it allows for excellent poison uptime (a major factor in why thief is a good counter to mesmer along with other aspects like ability to chase but poison uptime destroys mesmers). Poison uptime is huge in the current meta with many classes/builds depending on ability to sustain in fights. An excellent example of this is meditation guardian, while it does provide a tough matchup against thieves, meditation guardian suffers if you have a high poison uptime since it decreases their sustain effectively by 33%.

Now you mention shadows embrace. This is a strong trait, however it lacks the utility that trickery steal has. First its by its nature only useful to yourself, whereas the steal provides a number of benefits to you and your allies. Second, you can’t use this trait while trying to pressure someone. By its nature it requires some passive play to maximize benefit from the trait. Third, in fights against other power users its useless and the minor trait you gain has the biggest troll potential in the game killing you as often as it saves you. Shadows embrace is nice, however I would never take it over trickery. Condi clear options outside of shadows embrace such as HiS, signet of agility, or shadowstep do exist and with a playstyle adjustment and knowing the matchups is usually enough.

That being said, you don’t have to give up shadows embrace to take trickery. Perhaps the most popular build currently is 6 0 2 0 6 d/p sb which gives you both the trickery and the condi clear on stealth.

Ok, so short and to the point, the best runes currently for pvp (either spvp or wvw) are pack.

You can make an argument for strength if you’re having a might source, but the ability to have a good fury uptime is more important imo, especially when you factor in the swiftness uptime and the token might stack you get (and keep in mind your allies also get these bonuses). Other options: Strength (wouldn’t recommend, pack gives more utility for the price), ogre for pure damage, and potentially rage (+5% dmg increase and perma fury) if you don’t care about spreading boons to party and want a little hybrid between pack and ogre.

As far as the swiftness question with pack, I always use 6 points into trickery and with trill of the crime (10s swiftness/might/fury on steal use) I can keep a decent swiftness uptime while out of combat and its technically perma uptime while in combat with pack runes (12s from pack/12s from TotC). This means you have swiftness up when you want it most, when manuvering around in combat without having to waste a utility slot.

As far as allowing for this within your build, you can either take the 2 out of acrobatics and put them into trickery or take six out of either SA or CS and put them into trickery.

There were some threads a while back comparing 2 0 6 0 6 d/d to 2 6 6 0 0 d/d a month or two ago, which might help come to the decision. Personally I despise SA as a traitline and think it makes/promotes passive play so I would take the six out of that line and use pack with 6 0 2 0 6 d/p sb. Others will disagree claiming that SA is a strong traitline (it is) and is necessary for wvw solo roaming (its not).

Overall I think trickery steal (basically 2 x x x 6) is the strongest trait spread foundation that thief has. Having steal on 21s cd that includes a lifesteal/poison component is extremely strong, especially when coupled with a stun, a boonrip that prioritizes stability so the stun always hits, and vigor/swiftness/fury/might.

Links to the runes if you don’t want to lock into game with my recommendation in Bold:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Ogre
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Pack
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Rage

DarkSyze.8627:

I have uneducated opinions and fail to grasp that my failings at being able to defeat the thief class could possibly be my own fault and continue to blame a design that has been in place for over 2 years since launch instead of working to improve my own personal skills.

Its ok guys, I took the time to translate the response.

Yeah thats interesting. Ping is excellent, fps is solid so I’d probably rule those out. And the settings are what I have (besides I believe I think have I have stop auto attacking on target change checked).

I have no idea what the issue is TBH.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I have set my stow to ctrl mouse 5, very easy to access. i guess i should learn to play with AA off in pvp/wvw. thanks for the replys

Honestly I don’t think the AA is the issue, but if the issue is limited to your AA going off that’s your best bet.

Taobella.6597:

it says your not allow to use marco " if a player is unable to do it in the game itself" all marco i test can be done in the game i have done them with out one. but it easier to practice if you know the timing your looking for.

Nah its the one button one action rule for ANET. So if the macro does more than one action from pressing only 1 key you’re technically breaking the rules.

Umm I mean it should work regardless. And it works for me well. Sadly its difficult to figure out the problem unless you had a video of the issue in this case.

I assume you mean stow weapon? Always works for me. Might have to do with the settings you’re using, maybe disable the auto attack (I believe its crtl-right click) and see if you have some other settings on.

cyyrix.6105:

If you want to talk about sloppy game play, look at your new video (https://youtu.be/HXYCQ6QjcK4?t=1m45s) at 1:48. You literally run into a churning earth and CnD against shocking aura. Really? Really?!? And you’re lecturing someone about missing CnD’s? I’d rather miss a CnD than land one like that.

Seriously though, both of your videos have some nice fights.

Eh while I probably would’ve just dodged the churning, I assume Beyond was gonna CnD and then interrupt the churning with the stealth attack. It just happened that the ele used shocking aura when the CnD was around 1/2 cast (1:49 in Beyond’s video). That would give Beyond 1/4 a second to realize the aura was active and stow weapon or dodge. Maybe on a very good day you’re making that play and its easy to see in the video what happens, but its definitely different from missing CnDs against targets who aren’t dodging them or really moving to avoid them either. If the ele did it on purpose then its a fantastic play by the ele and perhaps a slight misplay by Beyond, but its not nearly as bad as you’re making it out to be.

shadowpass.4236:

snip

Basically word for word this. You suffer from the one of the biggest mistakes new/bad players make with regards to dodges. Using dodges right after you’ve been hit with a big attack instead of using the dodge to avoid the attack.

SA carried you. There isn’t any other way to say it. Showing off 1v2s (while you’re in your own camp) while running full SA isn’t really impressive. Or a 1v1 against a mesmer who was at half hp you when you engage and who still manages to almost escape.

In fact 1v1’s in general (when the opponent decides to stick around since thats the only way you can kill anyone) with your spec don’t really demonstrate a high degree of skill, especially with the lack of well timed dodges. Add in the number of missed CnDs (my favorite was the 2 straight missed against the ele who legit was just moving in a circle around you with no dodges or jukes besides the little walls) and its a bad combination.

The most amazing part of the video is that you somehow managed to find players worse than you are, and for this you get some props.

Please do work on dodges and work on hitting skills like CnD.

rabidsmiles.5926:

Oh no…please don’t ‘fix’ this by disabling tonics in combat ANet. I need my cat tonic on my Ranger so I can stop my stupid pet from aggro-ing while we are stealth skipping

You know you can stow pets right?

glogy.1854:

Should i change gear to full zerk? 80% seems pretty high, is that assassin screed to manage that number? Or should i stick with this i have and just change 1 trait? Hidden killer is nice tratit, but one with 20% more dmg seems better in general

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVl0Mp0plPx7J8PNhOBt9tDQB4KFeXlpkFA-TVCEwAEeAAbVCyU5nhTAQu9H6oPAwRA4xhAwl6PECQ3WA-w

Keep executioner put swap scholar runes for pack. Allows for 52% base crit chance and then you should have perma fury so really 72%.

I took 2 points out of SA since the 2 initiative on stealth is kind of meh since they’ve made it only apply once per stealth (before it was +2 per stealth stack so each HS through powder was 2 initiative now its just 2 for the first). I put these points into trickery since the grandmaster is a huge boost to steal. Reduces the cd to 21s, and gives it a daze. Since you gain 2 initiative on steal use as well and you gain damage per initiative I think the 2 points are better spent there.

Swapped out side strikes for practiced tolerance for more hp since crit should be no worries with pretty much constant 70%.

Changed heal from HiS to withdraw. Mainly due to taking shadows embrace, you can get away with the heal with no condi clear attached. This gives an extra evade and a skill that can be used as position. It also removes immobs which are the death of thieves if no shadowstep is up otherwise.

Removed sigil of blood from sb and put on sigil of energy. Sigil of blood is a decent sigil but the ability to gain an extra evade is too good when paired with the sb capabilities.

akaCryptic.2389:

Thanks for the replies. I switched to 06206 and it seems more useful in pvp. I still overextend sometimes and get too aggressive which results in me being focused. Also how do i decide whether to rez an ally or gtfo? Sometimes i get cleaved to death and sometimes i can pull it off.

Learning when to extend and not comes with some practice and knowledge of your teammates/situation. Same goes for the rezzing. Its definitely a feel thing. Dropping an Sr on a teammate whos down can make a huge difference even if you can’t rez immediately as well, since it does heal them and allows them to not be stomped for a while.

Ario.8964:

If thieves are gonna be hate on for using SA why don’t we hate on eles for using water attunement or arcana? Why don’t we hate on warriors for using the defensive line and stances, Those aren’t active defenses. There’s no difference between those and thief shadow arts. All of them are defensive sustain lines for their respective classes and are not as braindead as you people seem to think.

It comes down to what the traitlines offer and how well the traitlines synergize with the team. For eles, using water traitline allows them to provide more group support/healing while also giving them more sustain to allow them to fulfill the role of bruiser/1v1 hero. That is the role of the d/d ele currently, provide some condi cleanse and support while being able to self sustain in fights. Arcana is largely support (besides vigor on crit) with the elemental attunement giving group boons and also allows for more blasts with earth dodge and more sustain with water dodge. For warriors, the stance line allows them to have more self sustain so they don’t have to rely on allies as much, which fits their role as frontline/point holder.

These are fundamentally different than the role of thieves in a fight. SA gives you more sustain and results in a dramatic dropoff in damage. Wonderful, you’ve lost one of the biggest strengths thieves bring for a group. If you’re taking it over trickery you’re losing boon steal, interrupt, and group fury/might/swiftness. Taking DA or CS over SA is just a superior fulfillment of the thieves role within the game.

And if you don’t think that sitting in stealth is brain dead, which is what SA is specifically built to do, I don’t know what to tell you.

The reason I advised going for not using SA is it really covers up for mistakes you make. If you’re new to a class, you’re not going to learn as quickly if you’re attempting to cover up your mistakes from the very start. Its a video game, if you want to improve its better to remove the training wheels and go from there than to keep the wheels on and telling yourself you can ride the bike.

You’re welcome to disagree and continue believing that SA is a good traitline.

Bhagwan.1784:

Helly, I guess it’s more of a philosophical debate on thief play style, I personally like it assassin creed style, for the in your face active playstyle I have a war and medi guard.
And TBH, for now it’s not like I have a choice the 6 in SA saved my life every single time lol

That’s kind of the point I’m making. IMO learning how to perform active defense on any class is better than turning to a traitline to perform that defense for you. Especially when the traitline is inherently selfish. It matters less as a solo roamer, but if you group up it starts to make a difference.

If I wanted resident sleeper style of play, I’d just take a nap instead.

But play how you want, doesn’t impact me at all and hopefully you don’t view the comments as a personal attack.

In Spvp never run SA. It limits your damage amount and you can’t offer as much support to your team as trickery. Its a very selfish traitline.

Probably the best option if you’re having trouble with the other specs would be 6 0 2 0 6 d/p sb. Allows for greater condi cleanse with the removal on stealth and allows for withdraw to be chosen as the heal.

I’ve said it before, but if you’re trying to learn thief don’t take SA. It really is a crutch of a traitline and promotes passive play and bad habits especially if you start grouping and roaming.

Overall don’t get too discouraged if you die a bit while learning thief. Since the amulet for thief is going to be berserker pretty much always, it leaves a little bit less margin for error while learning the class.

As far as people to watch, I’d recommend http://www.twitch.tv/narcarsis/. He’s an excellent thief and is willing to answer any questions you have as long as they’re not just “how do I play thief.” He has also started to save past broadcasts so he doesn’t need to be live for you to watch him anymore.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAsY6YlsMp0pdPx8J0PRBNhwdtVz8LsWB6LJA-TlCEABLqSBBPAgEVXZLlgMp8zgTAQO7P0m+BAOIAPcEAIFg5CtA-w

Basically just put in the food I’d use along with changing the two soldier pieces to zerker. That is of course optional change but just what I would do. Especially if you have the guard stacks hp won’t be a huge issue and stealth + toughness you already have will be good enough for mitigation.

As far as the food, I think the lifesteal food and sharpening stones (don’t need to use the ogre ones just whatever price/level you want to use with clearly the highest level ones being the best) are the best options. However, another option with your build would be http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stew. This gives more dodges and allows for might on dodge (though keep in mind the +40% recharge does NOT stack with vigor).

As a note, I really dislike Shadow Arts traitline past putting 2 points into it. Its a line that emphasizes passive play and sitting in stealth for as long as possible. Now that just simply isn’t how I believe thief should be played and its not how I play thief. I really do think the best way to get better at thief and learn the glassy specs is to just play them from the start and not learn the bad habits of SA.

That being said your build should work well for what you want to do.

I mean its pretty funny to be hit by the quaggan burst tbh. On the scale of exploits its pretty small anyways, probably more along the line of creative use of game mechanics than exploit really.

I believe its perfectly fine to swap classes assuming your disconnected time (aka the time it takes to reload back in) doesn’t exceed the time they allow for disconnects.

Powermancer is potentially a tough matchup for thieves. Part of that depends on the amount of lifeforce they have available at the start of the engagement.

In a 1v1 situation, I’ve found the best way is lots of blinds (kinda a no brainer right?). But it really makes the difference in the fight. Blinding the necro’s dagger 2 (immob) is crucial since if you don’t you gotta burn a cd getting out of it because wells are about to follow.

If you’re on a point against power necro, let it be decapped and be moving around the point using LoS. You can recap once they’re dead no worries.

I typically steal early on in the fight, since this gives me the fear skill to use against them. Generally I save this skill for as soon as they go into DS. In DS they have no stun breaks (besides using doom, but that simply fears you and doesn’t break they stun). Typically this gives me 3s to just lay into the necro without worrying a whole lot. If you lead into the fear with a blind (#3 or #5) they won’t be able to fear you away quickly enough since life blast takes 1s to charge up before releasing and the fear cast is 1/2s for us.

Interrupting the heal is always nice against necros and isn’t terribly difficult to do with their cast time on it. Learn the animation, love the animation, interrupt the animation. Another good interrupt is life siphon, DS #4. Interrupting it deprives damage from the necro and reduces their DS uptime.

Against lich form, I typically steal right to it and apply blinds (if they’re moving I use #3 and if they aren’t #5 it all depends). If you time the steal right, you can get off the fear before the next stab stack comes up. And since the application of stability from lich isn’t a stun break, thats 3s of fear that the lich is forced to endure. Also if I see this up and am being targetted, I sometimes steal to a warrior (if there is one nearby) and use the stolen axe whirl for the reflect. Oftentimes the necro won’t realize it until 1-2 attacks already being reflected since it isn’t often sometime they have to worry about with thieves.

The way I view powermancer fights if they’re 1v1 or focusing me is its a race from 100-0 for them and its 100-50 for us. Eating a spinal shivers proc (which is a trait that needs to be looked at, the skill normally has 1.25s cast time for a reason anet, don’t give it automatically to them. Worse than air and fire procs) can spell a very very bad fight for the thief.

OrangeMint.7980:

Edit: For sigil of blood, mmm, I’m just not that into the whole building stacks kind of thing. I just hate the fact that you lose all of them if you die…and I tend to die a lot lol…which again, I still need to work on xD
But I do see your point though, that extra damage is really nice to have, now if it only dropped half the stacks then maybeeee I might consider it xD once I improve my survivability skills I will definitely check it out.

Just want to clarify sigil of blood =/= sigil of bloodLUST

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Blood

While its not too different than fire/air, sigil of blood is a very viable alternative to those two. In fact, its possibly even superior to the fire when facing tankier players. It gives both damage and slightly higher sustain. Its comparable and not as popular potentially allowing it to dodge the nerf bat that is possibly approaching for fire/air sigils (a nerf bat that I disagree with).

babazhook.6805:

2 points in SA will only cleanse one condi on stealth. In many builds this is not enough. Signet of agility will only clear one condition and this not nearly enough for a condi bomb that you get from a necro OR P/D thief.

There are other sets to play outside d/p . As example Kormir works very well with a p/p build . Withdraw is preffered heal in a p/p set (and I would rather not use heals just to get rid of conditions in any case) and P/P has little use for Blinding powder. Since you fight at range the 1 second activation time is not as big a deal. SR can be easily countered and should one be loaded with conditions and unable to get into SR nothing will save you. SR can be used with Prayer to Kormir. Most builds have one utility slot where the person can slot in a number of different utilities without compromising the build. I have found Kormir works well here and is very often the best option.

As to not being able to deal with a 2v1 with the enemy using conditions. This has not been my own experience. I have won such battles JUST because I had Kormir . Indeed what prompted me to try this was one night running into two Necro’s that kept taking turns loading condis on me. I kept dropping until I loaded up Kormir (along with purity/cleanse on alternate weapon sets) and then they stood no chance. They could not keep conditions on me.

Typically there are better choices and I generally do not have Kormir running but I assure you Kormir does have its uses. Of the racial skills thief it the only one I have yet to use and find effective.

The SA trait removes 1 condition every 3s while in stealth with the first being removed immediately after stealthing. This results in pretty much every stealth application removes 2 conditions minimum. In fact, using your p/p example, having 2 points in SA and using blinding powder and p/p 5 you could remove 3 conditions every 40s while gaining access to stealth along with the only activation needed being the p/p 5 instead of the full 1s activation you get from Kormir.

With SR you gain 15s of stealth, which leads to the removal of 6 conditions, which would couple the effect of Kormir x2 on a 60s cd instead of 80s (40s x2). It does this while also allowing you to mitigate damage coming in through stealth.

Not taking heals to get rid of conditions? That is your decision, but HiS is strong due to its condition removal.

Signet of agility allows for fewer conditions to be applied to you overall due to evades. But if you’re getting condition bursted so hard a simple shadowstep will cleanse 3 and break any stun you were under anyways with no activation (which makes it have more utility than Kormir).

As for your anecdotal account of your 1v2 against the 2 necros, it really does appear that they simply weren’t that good of necros. 2 necros have the potential to keep you feared for 4s straight (master of terror being traited or any condition duration otherwise). If you’re feared you can’t use your 1s activation skill anyways effectively making it useless. Also if the necros were intelligent, they would have noticed the 1s activation and started to chain fears whenever you started to activate it.

This is WAI and a good mechanic. No other way to put it.

As others have mentioned, its fairly easy to find the players in downstate.
1. Game sounds on and hearing the cry for help from the down player.
2. Using AAs to see if the chain activates.
3. Any bouncing skill will still bounce the downed player (mesmer staff AA, thief SB AA)

It is good to have some counterplay to stealth.

Honesty I never use any racial skills on my thief, and don’t see any real situation which would make a racial skill advantageous over any other thief utility.

Babazhook mentions prayer to Kormir, however I don’t really see an advantage to using this skill over the usual thief utilites of Signet of agility, Signet of Infiltration, Shadow Refuge, Shadowstep, or Blinding Powder. If you’re looking for condition clear, signet of agility or Hide in Shadows should work well enough unless you’re being mobbed by +2 in which case no amount of condition clear will save you really. Plus the 1s activation time and 40s cd imo makes it less desireable over signet of agility (1 condi removed plus 2 extra dodges insta activation (allows it to cleanse fears!) and 30s cd).

Basically I don’t see any real advantages for racial skills on thief. Thief actually have some excellent utilities that complement the overall class and synergy fairly well together.

Also “investing heavily in SA” being 2 points into SA is kind of a poor definition. If you want to have really no troubles with conditions while not using SA too much just use 6 0 2 0 6 D/P and you should be pretty much set.

Orcinus Orca.8627:

Hey,

I was told that S/P is the #1 weapon set for leveling (open world) but I’m not sure how I feel about the root of the dual skill. So, there are three alternatives:
- D/D is either a condition set which I don’t like or you have to rely on stealth and backstab which I can’t stand either
- S/D seems to be a great set for PvP but not so much for PvE
- D/P looks very interesting, especially because of Shadow Shot
But how does the damage and survivability of D/P compare to S/P?

In general (and keep in mind I’m no PvE expert) S/P is excellent for larger pulls since you have the advantages of cleave and the blind field. D/D is often viewed as a single target spec, however this was improved with the certain cleave with daggers changes. D/P would probably fall inbetween these two, however you lose damage when compared to D/D and lost survivability/cleave aspect from the S/P.

The single target damage and cleave (up to 3) comparing D/P to S/P might be fairly comparable, however overall I believe S/P will have higher damage and survivability. You gain the evade on the dual skill and still have access to the blind field, while having greater cleave on the mobs themselves with the autoattack with sword and the PW in some cases. Shadowshot (D/P 3) has limited PvE applications, since you won’t need to close the gap as often and most single target bosses have a buff which reduces the effectiveness of blind on them.

In summary, I would stick with S/P if you’re wanting the best overall PvE set for open world (since there are normally more mobs and larger pulls). However, each set should work fine for open world, and D/P is a nice compromise between the survivability and damage of S/P and D/D. If you’re not looking to maximize your capabilities just choose whatever set you’re most comfortable with.

I’m not entirely sure why this thread got to 4 pages. Eating a killshot isn’t something that should happen that often, but if it does happen just accept that either they capitalized on your current situation distracting you or you made a mistake by not dodging or reflecting.

Pretty sure up until a 1v4 I am able to keep track of all the enemies abilities that have a medium → high cast time, and killshot definitely falls under this category. If you can observe the ks/rifle warrior the build is easy to counter by thieves.

Steal gives an excellent reflect on the warrior, which can be timed to really mess up the warrior if they don’t react in time (though they do have I believe signet of might to make their bullets unreflectable). Most thief builds have access to a blind field, which can be comboed with the reflect when the warrior’s zerker stance is down to neuter their damage through the blinding projectile.

If the OP is talking about getting ksed from 1500 range without noticing, then thats part of playing a zerker spec. If another zerker class gets the jump on you as a zerker (pretty much any class) you have to outplay the opponent to a certain extent to come out ahead. That is entirely WAI, and is part of the risk reward of zerker specs. In fact, thieves have a huge advantage in this category due to the access to stealth allowing them to easily get the jump on pretty much every class and use this to their advantage.

Lastly, if you’re complaining about lag messing you up, just don’t play until the lag is fixed or accept the fact you’re playing at a slight disadvantage.

witcher.3197:

We already know the elite, it was datamined a week ago :P Can’t find the link though :/

Elite: Jade Wind

• 90 sec cd
• Instant cast
• PBAoE, turns enemies into Jade for 2 seconds (maximum 5 targets), duration 2 seconds (I guess it’ll be an AoE basilisk benom).

Pretty much exactly what I thought when I saw that elite. A better version of basilisk, AoE and instant. Longer cd, but not terrible. Hopefully basilisk gets some sort of change to make it different due to this. (Maybe give us back unstunbreakable status).

Saiyan.1704:

Lol @ Toker getting rekt twice by a P/P thief! No contest!
Video Time: 003:40

Eh beaten twice. Rekt implies a certain aspect of not even being able to react and just panicking. Also MVP play of the first round, Triggerless stealing the Rock Dog to get the 3s stun stolen ability. Toker def didn’t expect that.

I think Toker is the better player overall, but thats just an opinion and people are welcome to disagree.

Jana.6831:

I’m not the guy in the videos
Problem will be the conditions.

Sad day, for a second thought Dirty still played.

Condition problems depend on the ability for condi cleanse from your allies, if you’re having issues maybe run -duration food. Condi cleanse will always be an issue for thieves. Unless they’re using SA and just sitting in stealth.

Jana.6831:

I used to play like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koOBFf9p94c&pxtry
The ferocity crit nerf destroyed that, there’s no possibility to play like this anymore; you’ll die to conditions with your 14k HP – But: I’d love to be proven wrong.

Haha Dirty, I was gonna link one of your videos from way back then too. Or was gonna dig up one of Baddie playing thief in the melee.

Anyways, why not drop the SA traits, use s/p, which would give you the blinds and put the points into acro for more evades instead?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0Mp6pFOx7J0PRBNRt9w1AVofhhWBQfRBA-ThDBAB8oKwRKD0SJEaKBrUtCFMDAwRAwLlOWqiSeaBSRXQR7HwwhAIgXAQAAEAZ0GNt5RvZkCwclRA-e

That’s more something I’d use instead. Probably drop the accuracy sigils as well due to the fury uptime. You gain an extra evade and vigor on heal use. Food now lifesteals, which assuming you’re in a fight cleaving with sword or sb ends up being better than mango regen. Extra initiative, more dodges, the ability to cleave with pistol whip, more hp to avoid melting to condis.

For team orientated builds in sPvP, d/p (panic strike or CS) and s/d acro pretty much outshine every other spec out there.

But if you’re just looking to be effective and still do well overall, try out zerker (or cele works as well) p/d 6 2 0 0 6 with pack runes (infiltrator signet, SR, and shadowstep as utilities). Using panic strike, improv, and mug, pistol mastery, and usual steal improvement traits.

Recently been using it (though to be fair I mainly wvw solo roam with it, but I’ve run it in sPvP with success in the past) and its relatively successful.

Weaknesses are the inability to provide as much team support as d/p (blinds, interrupts, AoE stealth whatnot) and lacking the ability to sustain in the middle of teamfights that s/d acro has.

Advantages are that it works better against engis and medi guards than most thief builds. You retain the mobility of shortbow since its still the offhand.

Not saying its the best build out there, just a fun other way to play thief.

Now, I took the liberty of changing the traits to acro S/D meta build, since imo it would work much better overall while roaming. However, if you wish to remain using your trait spread, that is your choice, the overall armor recommendations don’t change (maybe add some more valk if you’re having trouble living).

Quick overview, fire/air sigils on sword since honestly they’re extremely strong currently and contribute a huge portion to your damage on s/d. Energy/fire on sb for a little more damage along with an extra dodge (which ends up being a dodge and a half with acro).

Pack runes because they allow for technically perma fury with the use of thrill of the crime (20s fury with ~20s cd overall between the runes and steal). Feel free to use strength runes if you’re using acro s/d since dodges will build up a bit of might.

Additionally I took out roll for initiative and put in infiltrators signet. Its just better overall. Shorter cd stunbreak and instead of getting initiative when you use it, you get initiative passively just by having it on your bar. Also is better for WvW, since you have a bunch of lil critters you can target and teleport to with it to quickly get away.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAsYVl0Mp0pdPxyJ8PNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdfko0XA-ThiDABG8AAWU9nuUCCg5BEOFAOpEbn9HeTfgPKPi4IAQKAzFaB-e

Do you hate d/p 3 or something? I believe at least 4 times in the video, while stealthed, you spammed HS which led to your being revealed. In each situation, you could’ve used d/p 3 to get into range for a backstab, backstab, and blind the opponent. Instead you HS spammed, wasting stealth and initiative. Additionally against pretty much every opponent, there were excellent opportunities to use the skill as a blind (along with the damage associated), but you didn’t use it a single time. Not once.

Also, around 2:20 you’re fighting a thief where you use d/p 5 to lay down a blind field while you’re already stealthed, get revealed, proceed to HS through it a few times not gaining stealth due to revealed wasting a ton of initiative. If you want to be able to not get revealed from stealth by the d/p 5 projectile that gets fired, simply detarget the opponent, use the 5 skill, and the projectile will not hit anything (likely) leaving you to stack stealth to your hearts content. *After I wrote this, I watched the rest of the video and you do the same thing again 2 more times in the video (against the ele and the ranger). Kind of just a new player mistake to make really.

Hate to say it also, but 6.1k backstab isn’t a good backstab especially against a lowbie guardian. Heck that barely even noteworthy against a lvl 80 guardian. At least 3 of your opponents were lowbies and a bunch were running away not even bothering to fight.

Narcarsis.5739:

Improv has been one of the strongest, if not the strongest, traits in PvP for almost 2 years. There’s just not many options to fit it in a build.

Gotta agree with this. While it does come down to a certain amount of luck for resetting the utilities you’re running and are on cd, it can easily swing fights into your favor. While PvE might be different where the straight +5% dmg on daggers increase outweighs cd resetting, in PvP improvisation can be a life saver.

That being said, the best build I’ve found to put it into is 6 2 0 0 6 power p/d build, that isn’t quite a viable SPvP option (you could still have success running it), but which is very good for WvW roaming.

Without logging in I can’t test if its correct, but check to see if melee target assist is on in your settings.

Assuming that HoT adds the specializations for each profession into spvp, its entirely possible there will be a large number of new builds for classes opening up.

Perhaps a little optimistic, but at the very least the first few weeks should be fun.

YuiRS.8129:

Thieves don’t have an access to perma slows and perma swiftness, so no, Thieves don’t stick to targets all that well. It’s hard to apply pressure to a target that is simply running away with Swiftness, even HS will often miss a moving target.
Only the ranged classes have insane CC and escapes. Part of why meta is so bad.

I disagree, and I’m unsure what build you’re playing if this happens. If you truly wanted to you could spam dancing dagger on an opponent, sword auto gives a cripple as well, an immob on sword 2, shadowshot which puts you directly onto your target from 900 range, immob on sb stealth attack, and cripple on sb 3 (very short). Unless the opponent is a Nike Warrior, I’ve never had an issue keeping up with a fleeing opponent.

And if you’re finding it difficult to keep onto enemies, I would strongly recommend pack runes for your thief if you’re playing power (and if you’re playing condi, well that is the weakness of the condi spec, opponents can simply walk away). Near perma swiftness, allows for more or less perma fury, and a pittance of might as well.

Zero Day.2594:

Interesting… You’re, for some odd reason, including LoS as an issue but not that the target can move in melee range (out of range), the target can dodge in both cases (and again move out of melee range), the target might have a dash of some sort… and so on. Only looking at one thing (LoS) for some reason…

I’ll ignore the condescending nature of your post and address why I didn’t and don’t believe the issues you brought up are even close to the issue of LOS for rangers.

Thieves have the best ability to stick to a target in melee range, bar none. S/D thieves have sword 2 (which against rangers can even be used to exploit LOS at the same time), D/P thieves have SS (an amazing ability especially since the blind goes through blocks so the GS ranger knockback will miss despite blocking), and all meta thief builds have steal on a 21s cd and infiltrators signet, and most of the builds also have shadowstep.

This gives most thieves have a minimum of 3 abilities to close the gap, 1 of which is spammable (sword 2 or d/p 3) and most will actually have that forth ability in the shadowstep. Assuming you manage your initiative decently well, you shouldn’t have issues sticking to a target in melee range.

And honestly the dodges comment shouldn’t even need to be addressed. Every class has dodges, heck I ignored a thief being able to dodge behind LOS while a ranger pewpews at him in my original post, my mistake.

Michael.9517:

get off your high horse. That last statement “learn the class” blah blah blah… is so typical kitten of you. Clearly your incapable of reasonable discussion.

I was explaining what the roll of a thief. You basically confirmed everything I said, except the team fight part which I’ll get to in a minute. But your responding to me like I was complaining. I am not complaining. And I’m not asking Thief to be god at anything. I am stating the role of a thief in the current meta which you have confirmed. Then went to say I should learn the class? lol. Your a clown.

I never said they can’t contribute to team fights. Your misquoting me. I said they shouldn’t be in team fights. They should be off to the side, using bow dropping poison and only going in to finish opponents off when low, then getting back out. Of course use SR when needed and interrupting with steal and boon stripping, these things are a given. When I say in the fight, I mean in the meat of the fight, I suppose I should have made that clear. I guess you misunderstood me, but instead of being a gentlemen about it, you have to troll hard.

My advice, show more respect towards people. Until then, you get none from me.

Good day sir.

Taking a forum comment as a personal attack probably isn’t the best strategy.

I never said that a thief of equal skill to an opponent d/d ele shout war or engi will win. However, you have the ability to capitalize on their mistakes and have the potential to win a fight even if it is difficult. And a thief not being able to win 1v1 against a power ranger? A bad ratio for that fight would be 60:40 in the thief’s favor, and with the amount of LOS in spvp you could probably get that to 80:20 without a lot of mechanical improvement.

You claim you aren’t complaining, but using a hyperbolic statement like you use in the first comment (if you want to win 1v1s or be active in a teamfight this isn’t the class for you), it certainly comes across as complaining.

Why would a thief ever want to be in the meat of a fight? If you want to be in the middle, I suppose change the amulet and change the spec? Trying to have the best of both worlds with the high burst of zerker and being in the middle of the team fight. Like I mentioned above, you’re trying to compare apples to oranges with comparing thief to the bruiser team fighters.

As far as you taking offense to my last statement, that is your choice. If you think that was intended as a personal attack on you, or that the comment was a troll, that is your choice. However, I stand by the statement and believe that when one considers what thief is good at and how they do contribute to a teamfight, they will find that thief isn’t nearly as weak as you’re attempting to portray it.

Have a good day too!

Michael.9517:

yes. Rangers have virtually no disengage, so they drop real fast in a 2v1.

thief can easily get away in 2v1 or 3v1 or even 4v1.

that is the trade off.

This is all true. I don’t believe that the statement that rangers outdamage a thief BY FAR is true. Do they do more damage at 1500-800 range? Probably, however, rangers have difficulties if you have LOS available which effectively puts their dps to 0. As a thief you can easily out dps a ranger in melee. Along with the ability to neutralize their dps with blinds.

And if you’re in wvw and not hitting for 3k with autos I’d add some more power. Dagger autos crit for some absurd values (and with newly added cleave!) and technically backstab is an auto attack too. Sword crits can easily reach above 3k as well.

Michael.9517:

Basically don’t play thief if you want to win in 1v1 situations and also be very active in the team fight.

While I agree most teams take a thief due to its ability to use mobility and quickly outrotate the opponents, thief isn’t nearly as weak as you’re portraying it.

With regards to the 1v1, its true that thief has a number of tough matchups, but a large part of that is due to the zerker amulet. You aren’t building for 1v1s as a thief (in Spvp) so why compare yourself to builds that largely are designed around that current 1v1 or 2v2 meta? Your purpose isn’t 1v1, and while top thieves can pull that off, your role is making the 1v1s into 2v1s into a dead opponent before they can react. Thieves aren’t dead meat 1v1 (you mention mesmer, thief also has an advantage imo against rangers (condi or power)).

Your claim that thieves aren’t able to contribute to a team fight is fairly laughable. You’re trying to compare apples to oranges with a comparison of thief to bruiser builds that are designed to sit in the teamfight damage and soak it up (shout war, d/d ele, to a certain extent cele engis).

A thief’s contribution to a team fight can swing the entire fight in your favor with massive swings from; taking out the opponent’s burst class (taking out enemy burst prior to teamfight or early in it can easily translate to won teamfight), every meta thief build runs trickery and BT and therefore gives the thief the ability to interrupt the opponent through stability (interrupting a key rez, stomp, banner, heal, or elite (ie lich) can either secure or swing a teamfight into your favor), AoE pressure and poison (slower rezzes + good damage → dead rezzers or at the very least puts the opponent on the backfoot), and last but not least, shadow refuge, the versatility of this skill provides a large bit to a team fight (putting it onto your allies to secure a rez, get the jump at the start of a fight, or cover your rotations into the teamfight).

In your statement above you’re basically asking for thief to be the god of pvp. Wanting to be able to 1v1 (which is even currently possible against every build, with the closest thing to a hard counter being a medi guardian) and be active in a teamfight (idk what you mean by this, can you sit in aoe? No, but you can almost singlehandedly win fights otherwise for your team), all while still having the mobility that the thief currently has is a silly expectation.

TLDR: Learn the class, know your role, play smarter

Achey.3612:

i have to agree with a lot of you, especially with the one who commented on my panic stealths. i often have off days but sometimes i have those “in the zone” moments like in this video (the last fight where my 1v4 turns into a 2v4)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZRGMDKrt_4

and narkodx, i run signet because i solo stomp camps and moving from camp to camp faster is always a good thing. i actually use scorpion wire when im more in a combative mood.

(nother edit) that first video really doesn’t show off anything special :P and all your guy’s speculations are definately justified. i get sloppy often after roaming all day

That second video doesn’t help your case. In the necro fight alone you miss 4 CnDs. Not from them being smart or dodging, you just kind of miss them. Then you let arguably the slowest class in game get a ton of distance on you before finally taking them down. The end fight showcases once again the build’s strength of killing terrible players.

You have a lb ranger who in all likelihood was using his face on the keyboard, never even getting off a rapid fire or more than 1 or 2 autoattacks before going down (in a span of 30s+). There is a staff ele who is auto attacking in fire the entire time, instead of just throwing on aoes on it’s allies. People didn’t start dropping until the medi guard came in as well, so its hard to claim that was a result of you playing well.

Eh, anyone who records wvw roaming is going to eventually build up a collection of them killing bad players. Didn’t watch the entire thing, but none of the thieves did a good job sticking to the ranger, a bunch simply walked into and stood in traps, and I didn’t see any of them use the stolen ability, which completely destroys condition rangers.

TLDR: Bad players not a bad class.

Maugetarr.6823:

Don’t know if it was intentional or not(Helly switched it out for you) but you have long reach instead of BT, meaning you have no access to vigor, feline grace, or stealth on your skill bar. This is a very burst or die build.

Annnnd another thing I forgot to mention, addition of boonsteal (Guardian aegis ruining the burst is no fun) and vigor should be weighed with the current longer steal. The distance lost can be overcome by using a sb 5 to get into range for the burst prior to combat and in combat you have a multitude of gap closers which allow you to stick to the target without the longer range.

reinforever.8902:

As for the math section of your post, it’s 21 precison per 1% crit chance so it’s actually a little closer to .4761…… I calculated it out and swapping all the armor and weapons to assassins from beserker i only lost out on 85 power to get the full 100% crit chance (which is very very very satisfying to not have to rely on rng). I do want to keep the Sigil of accuracy however because if i go swapping more beserkers pieces to assassins i start to lose too much power to make the crit even worth it.

Should’ve mentioned that my math section was mainly a hypothetical situation. Was talking about the pure prec/power gain/loss from exchanging a piece (the +/- 10 was obtained from glancing at changing gloves from zerker to assassins). It is late so very likely I made a mathematical mistake as well.

I totally agree with the food choice, the cost benefit from the highest tier is a bit out of proportion. Another choice could possibly be life steal food (omnomberry ghost ~10s per 45min). Gives +70 prec (so I suppose around 2.5% crit chance assuming that 21 prec per % crit is right) along with the 66% chance to life steal on crit (1s icd). Would give some more survivability while giving you comparable damage to the highest tier I posted (this claim is completely unsubstantiated btw, but the prec difference is somewhat small, and you gain a 325 hp steal which would probably be proccing on or close to on cd). An added benefit is you get a kind of cool ghost effect from the food on your character as well!

Also I totally forgot to mention an alternative to technobabble, Signet of Agility. 180 precision for the passive gives ~8% crit chance increase when its not used (free swap out of the accuracy sigil maybe?) and has a solid active for 2 additional dodges and a condi cleanse.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZQQNAoYVl0Mp0pVOx0N8PNBNBt9wbQE8OMfpMaFAA-TVDBABgcEAqRfwoqgAxDAQiTAAWKPA4QAArSQcUfgIVIKa/hHMBVmSsAAIAszduzduzkCYURWA-w

Well first off, 100% crit chance really isn’t optimal. However, operating under the assumption that you want a build that has 100% crit chance (or pretty close), a few small changes.

Food Change: If you really want to make the build have as much potential burst as possible, change it to the +prec +fer food I put there. Its crazy expensive, however will help coverup the loss of the accuracy sigil.

Sigil: Changed from accuracy on d/d set to air fire. You’re critting out the kazoo, but you’re only utilizing the air sigil? Nope use either fire (if you want to max burst) or blood (for a little more sustain). On SB, I didn’t make a change, but swapping accuracy for energy will help you rolliepollie out of bad situations.

Traits: Dropped Furious Retaliation and picked up critical haste. Technically your fury uptime is 100% with the runes and TotC, so the +10s fury on 50% hp of target is kind of meh, especially when considering the benefits of being able to burst even faster on the first target with the introduction of haste.

Armor/Jewelery: Made a few changes, I forget really I suppose just cross compare with your previous link? It was all mainly around the assumption you need 100% crit chance with fury, eventually I just said screw it and decided 97% was good enough for me.

After all that, unless you have a great desire for 100% crit chance w/ fury, I highly recommend a value of around 50-60% base crit chance which goes up to 80% with fury. It allows for a larger amount of power, which makes up for the somewhat diminishing returns on crit chance.

Quick math to explain that logic as well, lets say swapping out the gloves from berserker to assassins gives a swing of +/- 10 for the main stat, ie you lose or gain 10 power/precision. If I’m going from assassins to berserker I lose 10 prec (a change of just around 0.41%) and gain 10 power (a change of 0.48%). A small difference based on numbers themselves, however its actually a difference of 15.7% within the rare percentage differences.

Bought the trait and was thinking about trying out combined with the life steal food and sigil of blood on a d/p set.

Ended up not really going to the test. The sustain provided by the trait itself is tough to quantify and compare to the flat +20% under 50% by executioner.

I personally think dagger mainhand doesn’t benefit as much from the trait as other weapon sets would. A PW thief or a power based p/d build (which makes up for the lost executioner damage by taking pistol mastery within the CS traitline along with having the stealth attack that allows for a rapid number of hits).

P/D is a strong build, I don’t think people would deny that. Due to the nature of conditions, you can build very defensively and just whittle someone down and eventually pull off those 1v3s you mention in your post.

That being said, perhaps the reason p/d isn’t discussed on the forums is due to the playstyle that it lends itself to. Steal, 5, 1, 3, wait 3seconds, 5, 1, 3. Its an extremely predictable build imo, especially when played as condi. It also doesn’t have a lot of interesting chances to showcase mechanical skill when compared to d/p (Either PS or Executioner not SA) or S/D. This means you don’t often have people wanting advice or discussion on how to play it properly. By itself it defines a high skill floor low skill cap build for thief. Hence lending itself towards a cheese status and limited discussion on the forums.

As far as the video, I think it reinforces my points about the build itself. You did a decent job playing the build effectively (although you did have 5 others there with you at one point), and showcased perhaps the strongest positive the build has; confusing and distracting players who do not know the proper approach to countering the build.

SobeSoul.6910:

And if you are using churning earth against your opponents you are pretty much saying “you are bad”.

In 1v1s I always call it the disrespect churn. If I’m using it against you, its me saying I don’t think you’ve got a brain in there.