Guild Wars 2

Interceptor.2653:

He might have implied it; I did not. This thread has always been about condition removal options for an S/D Lyssa Thief in a post-4/15 world. While RFI vs. SS may take other forms with different specs, in this particular situation you will have both, and RFI is almost always going to be your first-option stunbreaker because of what it brings to the table (and what it does not).

This is an absurdly straight-forward concept, and every S/D Thief in the post-12/10 universe knows exactly what sort of pressures that conditions pose, so it’s not entirely clear to me why there’s any confusion about the order of operations here.

He implied it, and you debated with him on the same premise, otherwise you’d have simply dismissed him by stating “both are being used” much earlier. If you want to try and get into it with me after essentially agreeing with the same line of reasoning you among others were expressing, it won’t look very good.

I must admit I do favour 30 Acrobatics with S/D. For D/P however, I take 25 Deadly Arts, and 15 Shadow Arts for the extra 1 sec stealth and condition removal for those poxy blinds and poison. In fact, I’d sooner take 30 Shadow Arts than 30 Trickery. The reason for not taking Acrobatics for me is the blinds on demand with D/P, not so much the evades on shortbow which I actually rarely use. I spend much more time using D/P than shortbow, unless it’s against a bunker-heavy group in which case it’ll probably be 50-50.

Edit: In anticipation of stealth-trolls; that 1 sec of extra stealth is BECAUSE I don’t take stealth utilities. Not because I can’t get enough of them.

30 in either line is viable, it’s been proven by plenty of thieves. The difference is Acrobatics is more defensive while Trickery is more offensive (of course not as much as Deadly Arts though). 30 in acrobatics provides about 30% more endurance return than 30 in trickery, some condition removal, a possibly more consistent damage multiplier, and something else of your choosing, also likely to be defensive. Trickery provides 3 extra initiative in the pool, access to 47.6% up-time on fury and swiftness, and extra boon steal and a daze every 21 seconds. As for stats, is steal recharge rate vs 3k health. Condition damage and boon duration aren’t important enough to have any weight on the decision.

Interceptor.2653:

Impact.2780:

Shadow step and Roll for initiative are both useful but when it comes to picking a utility it comes down to how you intend to play, how your build is designed to react to a scenario.

Or you just take them both, like the OP does.

Alas, I was adding to the feud between you and caveman, the nature of which implied taking both was out of the question and that a choice had to be made between the two.

Shadow step and Roll for initiative are both useful but when it comes to picking a utility it comes down to how you intend to play, how your build is designed to react to a scenario.

If it’s escape or disengage and re-engage after some recovery, take shadow step. It moves you 1.2k units away, breaks a stun and provides a return point. If you’re fighting in a particular area which requires high mobility or precision mobility, it’s shadow step hands down because you can better control where you end up, and you can also scale terrain with it.

If, however, you mean to quickly get back up and get back in there, it’s roll for initiative by far, because it cures mobility impairments and restores some initiative enabling you to quickly re-engage and with resources to execute initiative-costing abilities to keep up the pressure. It’s at least twice as fast to execute than shadow step, and while it doesn’t put you way out of harm’s way, it does move you off a good distance, and you’re evading while moving so little risk of getting damaged during the process. It can be aimed while moving and you can use it to essentially roll forward if you use about-face before casting. Plus, in the middle of a fight, roll for initiative looks cooler.

When you break it down like that, all the main points for taking shadow step are if you intend to have greater mobility, while roll for initiative is for quick recovery and getting back to business. So while I disagree that someone would be wrong to use shadow step as a stun break, and that it is primarily a condition cleanse and for mobility, I have to agree that shadow step is best suited when paying concern to mobility, and that roll for initiative is better when all you intend is to get rid of that stun so you can keep at it.

Don’t over-use that 3, know when to use CnD and don’t miss! I favour having additional doges to ease up on the dependency on flanking strike - dodging is also time spent not taking damage while regaining initiative. Look for boons to steal, and save evades for when they are really needed, for example engi bombs, ranger traps, necro marks, stealthed burst thief etc.

S/D gives you the advantage of always having an exit, unlike other sets. By exit, I don’t mean stealth and run (although you could). Chaining utilities/steal with infiltrator’s strike will often surprise a target who believes they are safe at that distance, and leave your infiltrator’s return spot a nice distance away to safely escape to buy some time or if more of the enemy shows up. You can simply return to it, or stealth and return to buy even more time.

Know the environment - infiltrator’s strike, like infiltrator’s arrow, will let you shadow step up and down places that would otherwise require a more significant time to run between. It also, again, leaves a return spot that’s out of reach of your target.

Mostly it comes down to experience with a thief. The point is to not have a rotation, but to know your abilities and be able to use them to react to your opponent.

S/D excels at evades, mobility, constant pressuring and simply overwhelming an opponent. Stats to focus on are as usual, mostly offensive.

The Kurt.2518:

Even if you have experience it can be problematic if you’re in a great need of running away while in a place where the trap doesn’t work :P

Aye, same with steal and shadow step often placing you inside a rock or tree. I meant with experience it becomes viable.

I use this skill quite often in PvP. It’s a nice ambush and teleport between nodes, just takes some experience in where you need to place it and where you need to be for it to work. What it does need though, is an indicator of how much time you have left before "Destroy Shadow Trap" times out. "Shadow Pursuit" could also do with a longer window to respond when someone triggers it.. what’s the point in marking someone if you only have a few seconds to respond? So many times I need as little as five more seconds to finish helping a team mate before I pursue the marked player, and don’t get to use it.

RedSpectrum.1975:

I may be wrong but I believe it is a stun break only when someone is marked

Destroy Shadow Trap and Shadow Pursuit are both stun breakers, but Destroy Shadow Trap has a cast time. You break your stun, and start the long cast animation which is identical to hide in shadows, which screams "interrupt me!" and you not only get instantly disabled again, but when you do, you lose your teleport because it’s now on full cool down.

A number of reasons…

The QQ reasons:

• Much easier to reset a fight
• High health regeneration outside of a healing skill, which other classes can also get but because it’s thief, it’s cheesy
• Seen as a crutch because thieves are expected to be assassins and it’s a defensive line: toughness, healing power, regeneration, condition removal
• Used to be recognised as the trait line for permanent stealth

The justified reasons:

• While investing into shadow arts will allow the easy kill of a squishy player, it makes killing a more tanky player more difficult because your damage is less than if those 30 points (or 25 of them) were in deadly arts
• Entering stealth to heal means not pressing the attack, and your opponent can heal and cooldown while you do, losing you the advantage you had, and any you gain through shadow’s rejuvination
• Can very often result in a stale-mate against good players, where you can’t kill them and they can’t kill you because you vanish and hide for a few seconds when they get close
• In PvP, it doesn’t benefit your team at all like trickery for buffs or deadly arts for faster killing. Your team would rather you back-stabbed for 7-9k and put someone on the defensive before finishing them off, than back-stabbed for 4.5k, got ht back and went into hiding.

It will be interesting to test in some builds! I have a feeling the reward will be quite poor though, especially when taken with other defensive/healing traits since it depends on your offensive capability. It looks like the idea behind this trait is to give some sustain when building up offense, but for that to work it needs to be a significant heal, otherwise it won’t be worth taking due to low armour. I’d rather it be a chance to gain aegis on crit, obviously with an ICD. Block some incoming attacks while fighing better fits the assassin theme than some vampirism.

Zero Day.2594:

Funny... write "Isnt it a" but with a ’ between the n and t... it will be censored...
Isn’kitten

They probably generate a pattern for each censored word and use it to search the post, for example if "pie" was censored, it might produce "(?(?=.)(\W)p|.p)\W?i\W?e(?(?=.)(\W)|)" which would be replaced with "\1kitten\2" so that something like P!I!E wouldn’t bypass the censor. (\W means non-word-character). That’s how I’d do it anyway.

scabrous.7835:

Put me right if I’m wrong but somebody did the maths of old ini+traits vs new ini+traits and it came out that we actually have lower rate of overall recharge.

They calculated for opportunist being a constant, when in reality you’re not always attacking. Certainly in PvP, time spent evading or in stealth is time in which you’d gain more initiative from the increased regeneration rate and gain no benefit from opportunist.

I think that was the point of the change, and it’s still quite easy to avoid. Initiative is in a good place right now, in my opinion. But then, I never used the extra 2 initiative every 10 seconds trait or quick pockets, so I can’t speak to every aspect of it.

It’s viable for a condition build, using poison field and detonate cluster bomb for bleeds. I’ve used it like that for a few matches before, and it was fun, but got old quickly. I didn’t find it as effective as direct damaging builds.

I think it was something like 20/15/0/15/20 Rampager’s amulet, alternate weapon D/P. Important traits are vigorous recovery and bountiful theft for dodges, uncatchable for additional bleeds and cripple for kiting, and sundering strikes for an extra condition added to the mix for the chance of condition removal removing vulnerability instead of a damaging condition, not to mention the little help with direct damage.

I think the skills were Withdraw, Caltrops, Skale Venom, and Thieves Guild. I forgot the 3rd utility skill. Use D/P to stealth and sneak up, swap to SB, Skale Venom, drop Caltrops, auto attack for immobilise in Caltrops AoE, steal for poison and weakness or drop a poison field, dodge back to drop another small caltrops, then detonate cluster bombs. Cleansing isn’t easy since they’d have poison, bleeding, cripple, torment, vulnerability and weakness, so the damaging conditions may stick. The bleeds stack fast and high, easily 20 stacks if not cleansed, and the high poison up time hits passive healing hard and can make active healing difficult. Almost perm cripple with caltrops, caltrops on dodge, and SB #3, good endurance regen for dodges and SB #3 evade, a low CD heal, and the ability to zip up and down places with infiltrator’s arrow was good survivability.

I answered a similar question here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/some-help-with-thief-please/first#post3588953

More builds and information about them in the links listed in the guide sticky in this forum: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Guide-to-Thief-Guides/first

Infiltrator’s Return is good for managing conditions. It’s not fantastic and you don’t want to spam it to clear conditions, but if you need to heal and have only poison or have just had a bunch of bleeds applied, you’ll appreciate the cleanse.

Pain Response is fantastic defense against condition burst if you’re quickly brought below that 75% threshold by conditions. It’s also good removal if the timing is right, capable of removing a bunch of damaging conditions while you’re fighting.

Shadows Embrace is good, but requires being able to enter stealth reliably, and while you’re sitting in stealth to remove conditions, you’re not attacking. This method of cleansing gives your opponent breathing room too.

Alternatives outside traits and skills are runes and sigils. Lyssa is very popular providing a full condition cleanse every 45 seconds with Basilisk Venom, but the downside is you lose a damage modifier bonus you could get with another rune set, and you might want to use Basilisk Venom for its effect when you have no conditions on you.

Superior Sigil of Purity, and Superior Sigil or Generosity are both good, especially alongside Infiltrator’s Return. Generosity especially since it sends the condition back to your opponent.

The other way is to go for reduced condition duration through runes and food.

So this does concern WvW, and not PVE? Otherwise you’ve just ignored everything I’ve said in response to the original post, minus a discussion around a rather obvious typo.

Don’t use warriors. It’s no secret they are unblanaced right now. Elementalist has plenty of defenses and counters of their own. A knock down and knock back allow the opportunity to take down a squishy build such that a thief, ranger, elementalist or guardian might be running. The fact they are on 40-45sec CDs doesn’t hinder the counter. Of course, this requires that you have sufficient offensive capability to make using them offensively worth while.

Tempest defense is a good defense against stuns. Protection when using auras is quite strong and has nice synergy with D/D and tempest defense.

The ability to kite melee builds. Elementalists can have good damage with dagger, with 300 range allowing them to dance just out of reach of meleers, and their ability to cripple makes this easier. You refer to thief and mesmer teleporting, but a thief doesn’t have as much in-combat healing capability, so they can kite with infiltrator’s strike/return. This of course has a counter - fighting over the return point. Mesmers try to hide amongst clones or range when they are squishy. Keeping track of the real mesmer is just practice, and AoE will hit them and their clones. Once you have that distance closed your good AoE capability allows you to hit any stealthed opponent near you. Again, this requires offensive capability to be effective.

You must see where this is going. What use are the tool available for winning, if you don’t build the stats to use them? The best defense is not to be a punching bag. As a punching bag you’re dead when you enter a fight. You can only put it off for a time. The best defense is a balance of offense and defense. Defense to survive and offense to make going all out too dangerous for your opponent. You speak of sacrificing damage for defense, well now you need to sacrifice defense for damage.

I can also argue that for those other classes, when going full berserker, different weapons are better suited to the build and different situations. This has to be the same for ele. If you want specific capabilities, you have to build for them. That includes selecting the right weapons. One weapon combination shouldn’t be able to do everything. For ele, weapon combinations can do a lot of different things because of attunements, but still not everything. So when discussing elementalist’s ability to build offensively and maintain defensive capabilities, you musn’t restrict yourself to D/D. There are some good examples of offensive S/D builds for WvW roaming. S/D maintains the knock down/back, has the defense of ranged, has some strong burst, and can reach a high amount of toughness even in berserker gear.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

110% crit chance is a waste, you know that right, if you run with Zephyrs boon and Arcane Fury than you are wasting A LOT of precision. How much Crit Damage do you have?

The point is we are FORCED into getting defensive gear, the amount depends on the player and the build but EVERY build takes some defensive stats - why? because without them and running with 11k health and the lowest armor in the game simply would mean death in most cases.

In most cases, its not even the damage that is the main issue, its the serious lack of sustain which when added with the rather poor auto attacks and the very long cool downs of some skills means we just can’t do that much damage unless you go full zerker with 11k health and one missed skill in a rotation would get punished and you would die in most cases.

Just curious, in WvW how much does your D/D auto attacks hit for, seeing as you have like 200extra power, though no mention of your crit damage, toughness or Vitality

Sorry typo. I meant 110% and 90% critical damage.

I’ve never felt in the least bit forced to get defensive gear. It’s ideal to have some as an alternate set though, and for every class - not just ele - in case it turns out more survivability is needed when already inside an instance. If you must know, my gear is full exotic berserker with ascended berserker back, and berserker/valkryrie trinkets. By berserker/valkyrie, I mean the ones that offer power, crit chance, crit damage, and a small amount of vitality. I haven’t played ele in PVE for quite some time, but that’s the gear I was using in all content including level 48 fractals (before the reset to 30). On occassion when I do run dungeons on my ele now, I use the same gear and an even squishier trait set up. The only time I used defensive gear was when I was new to this game, and PVT was a good starter set while I got used to the class. Then I moved to knights, and then to berserker. My traits also changed, giving up less survival potential as survival skill increased in order to deal more damage.

I can’t tell you my exact vitality and toughness now, but I can say health is less than 14k, and toughness is base, or 100-200 above base if I decide to use the cavalier rings.

I can’t tell you how much my D/D auto attacks hit in WvW, since I can’t remember the last time I used D/D in WvW. I was under the impression you were talking about PVE though. Of course in WvW you’re going to have to build for some defense... that is true of all classes.

Block projectiles, relfect projectiles, retaliation, dodge, and any other damage mitigation and gap closing skills you have, to get to the thief, who will have low armour, low health, and only black powder and head shot for defense (no stealth or evade abilities except what they might have for utility).

Head shot drains their initiative, meaning less unloads, meaning they lose their only useful attack ability with that weapon set, rendering them extremely vulnerable. Black powder is a small AoE, easily countered by attacking from outside the AoE, ranged attacks, or AoE of your own. While the thief can move back while in black powder, moving around the outside will keep you within melee range, and certainly with two of you against the one thief, you should be able to hit him, and being squishy, it will hurt him. Reflection will melt the thief instead, and retaliation is also an effective defense against unload.

Insane burst does not make one over powered, especially when there are many counters to it. It makes them squishy, and only useful while they have access to their burst abilities. When focus fired, they have to run or die. Starting a fight at range to gain some time to deal damage before receiving any is more of a necessity for such a build, and is an advantage available to all classes, so it doesn’t make P/P thief any more overpowered than other ranged glass cannons.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Impact.2780:

If you want more damage you need to build for it. Ele can hit much, much higher crits than 1.2k in a single attack, I assure you.

I would prefer to not die in seconds though. Even so, with 73% crit damage, nearly 1,800power and still the damage is rather poor.

Like I said, if you want more damage you need to build for it. Similarly, if you want to survive with less toughness and healing, you need to practice playing with less toughness and healing. My build has defenses and healing, and I have ~2050 power and 110% crit chance with it. If I need more survival a change of armour still leaves me over 1950 power and over 90% crit chance. My response above was from experience - you really can’t claim it’s incorrect to me because it’s tried and proven. This too, is from experience. ANet won’t buff ele damage because someone wants to build defensively.

If you want more damage you need to build for it. Ele can hit much, much higher crits than 1.2k in a single attack, I assure you.

With the right group and build, an ele can crit close to 50k with Fire Grab, 9k per lightning whip hit (so 18k per cast) and something like 20k+20k+30k with lightning hammer auto attack. You don’t see engineers doing that, and unlike for thief, an ele’s top DPS will be hitting 3-5 targets, not 1.

Windows® Minimum System Requirements

Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better
Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3 OR AMD Athlon 64 X2, or better
2 GB RAM
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI X1800, Intel HD 3000, or better (256 MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)
25 GB available HDD space
Broadband Internet connection
Keyboard and mouse

I would say no. While most of the specifications on that product exceed the minimum requirements, the graphics card may not.

Graphics card: Nvidia geforce 9400m
Here’s a problem, because you can’t compare PC graphics cards with Laptop/Netbook graphics cards. They have different architectures. If you put two cards with the same memory and speed together, the one designed for a PC will always be better. Netbook/Laptop graphics cards perform fewer operations per second and have a narrower memory bandwidth to generate less heat and allow for longer battery life.
A quick Google search suggests this processor is at best, equal to the Intel HD 3000 which is a minimum requirement model. I would say this graphics card isn’t good enough.

And you’re right, this isn’t the right forum =P. Post at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech for this sort of thing in future. You’ll likely get faster and more informative responses.

Similar to burning speed, the flame trail deals direct damage to foes in its AoE. Off the top of my head I can’t remember whether it does burning damage as well. An easy way to tell is: if it can crit, it’s direct damage.

Oh kitten you didn’t mislead me, it was a reading fail. I saw what I expected to see lol.

Zero Day.2594:

(ugh, btw trying to get a list of "what’s not OP" on the balance forums... should be fun)

Off the top of my head based on threads over the last couple of months...
* Stealth
* Black poweder + Heartseeker combo
* Stealth attack
* Heartseeker
* Shortbow #3
* Stealth
* Shadow step
* Thief dagger auto attack
* Heartseeker
* Black poweder + Heartseeker combo
* Black poweder + Heartseeker combo
* Thief mobility
* Thief movement
* Stealth
* Thief vigor
* Thief evades
* Thief
* Shortbow #3
* Thief
* Stealth
* Black poweder + Heartseeker combo
* Poison field
* Thief
* Infiltrator’s Strike/Return

Each time a non-thief encounters for the first time, one of the skills available to the thief, they do their part for the community by informing ANet of its much needed round with the nerf bat. Basically, if you press a button, and your character - a thief - reacts to the command, it’s over powered.

EDIT: We could test the theory! Get a bunch of thieves to head to WvW and PvP and actually take Hard to Catch. Within the hour there’ll be half a dozen threads explaining why it should be nerfed.

Mathematically correct yes, as was my method. The word I used was accuracy. Rather than calculate or estimate the up time of attunements, using the actual up time by considering each skill and the current status individually is more accurate. It’s also more accurate regarding coefficients and modifiers since they are the actual values rather than an average, i.e they’ve been through less manipulation and thereby less chance of lost information.

You can’t argue that the damage of all hits divided by the total time doesn’t equal damage over time - that calculation is the very meaning of the term. Yet, it produces different results to yours, the difference of which increase in significance over time. You could put it down to rounding, but remove those rounding functions and the results will still be different.

I gathered you were more concerned with viability and builds which are suited to more than just running around dungeons with a glassy group simply by the fact that you’re talking about the use of focus. And I agree, I’m not one for running specifically running in a manner so organised and dictated that it no longer feels like a game. However, given the nature of this thread I had to assume you were comparing its strength against the builds here in the same light, i.e maximum DPS for the given build, which would mean there’d be at least one other source of fire fields every 25 seconds (is that the cool down for Comet?). I know you suggested moving to another thread, but the discussion started here so from the start, I was under that impression.

This would make sense why you picked to compare against 30/10/10/20/0 instead of the higher damaging build like I did... You were comparing your more durable, defensive and potentially versatile build against one that is designed to have the highest possible DPS while providing various benefits that yours can provide in order to prove that lightning hammer isn’t the best at everything. That if you need to be able to provide buffs for your group, other builds have higher DPS despite not being specifically designed for it. I.E lightning hammer builds are only better in a very, very specific group composition and style. I think everyone knew that already =P!

And as I said, it is technically doable. It’s no more difficult than might stacking. I assumed - since you are talking in terms of maximizing DPS - that you would have used every attunement for each rotation to capitalize on electric discharge. So when I edited the column, I missed adding earth to the second rotation. That doesn’t mean the rotation is impossible, merely that it was written down incorrectly. You don’t honestly believe someone could think water’s attunement cool down is 6 seconds now, do you? That would be like you not noticing it was still on a 7 second cool down when you were trying to complete the second rotation.

Plus, as I’ve said, I don’t use D/F. I quickly altered it to drop */D skills and add */F skills, which I wouldn’t have had to do if the rotation was well timed around the skill with the highest DPS (burning speed).

I stand by the implication that the initial rotations I saw in your spreadsheet can be improved upon, and that calculating DPS by summing the damage calculated for each individual skill and modifier yields a more accurate result.

I just tried it in HoTM. It needs an extra lightning whip after the swap from fire to account for the lack of Ring of Fire, the extra second will have Earth and Fresh Air ready on time. It worked fine.
....Then I looked back at it in Excel. When editing yours, I clearly missed the absence of Earth the second time around. While I inserted Water after Earth->Air, I forgot to insert an Earth after Fire->Air on the second go around. There’s also one lightning whip missing in Air before the second swap to Water. 3 whips is the minimum. Sorry about that. But you said you found it difficult to do? I’m impressed if you managed to swap to Water twice in 6 seconds LOL.

EDIT: You probably thought of it already, but when testing in HoTM, take as low power as possible and use a steady weapon so the golem lives longer, and take as low precision as possible and use sigil of intelligence for a more accurate comparison against a theoretical rotation regarding when fresh air triggers. Plus, it’s easier to grab one sigil than get high precision amulet, runes, accuracy, fury etc. Although that only works for testing segments I guess. Anyway, it’s good to verify in pieces before trying over and over to get it down as a whole =P.

I had it working for D/D, which used Ring of Fire each rotation, RTL every 2, Fire Grab every 3, Earthquake every 4, and no Comet. I wouldn’t have tried a full offensive rotation with focus, but I assume it would still work effectively with an extra lightning whip here and there to make up for the skills the focus can’t use as often as dagger can.

Zelyhn.8069:

Let’s not generalize about LH: it is really this utility that can achieve the highest DPS possible. I was really just comparing DF (30/30/10) and SFLH (30/10/10/20) to show that DF comes on top, but this does not mean the LH is not good.

About the rotation: technically it is not possible to realise it as you inputted it in my calculator because of fresh air cooldown. I am interested in what you have to say about it, but this is off topic here. Could we discuss this in the DF thread?

It doesn’t require a discussion, I think you’re just missing the link with what I said earlier about arranging the modifiers to account for when you would swap attunements during a lightning whip allowing you to swap back to Air after casting the skill in the other attunement so that the lower coefficient loses the Air Training modifier, and the higher coefficient gains it. Or in the case of water where the coefficients (or DPS of a skill) is lower, you’d not want to cast any water skills, only use the attunement swap to trigger electric discharge.

In the rotations on the spreadsheet, where it shows lightning whip, water, air, if you check the modifiers for each you’d see it isn’t set out to hit with lightning whip, swap to water, then back to air. Examining the modifiers shows it’s meant to be start lightning whip, swap to water, hit with lightning whip (hence the lower modifier), then back into Air. In practice, with a high enough crit chance you can improve on it a little by swapping after the first lightning whip hit, so only the 0.7 loses 10% as opposed to the whole 1.4.

I remember testing timings in heart of the mists to find the number of lightning whips required to pull off a quick swap as mentioned above, and to get back to burning speed when it’s off CD.

XPGAMER.7324:

Either way, d/p can outstealth both giving you a huge advantage in 1v1 situations.

You realise you opened with “I’d probably disagree” and then supported what I was saying, right? That D/P would be a hard match i.e because it has the advantage VS. most thief builds, P/D included.

Rokusho.4950:

your build lacks a stun breaker. Unless you can dodge every single cc that comes at you, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble the minute you get hit with one

Infiltrator’s Signet and Shadow Step are both stun breakers. In fact, Shadow Step is two stun breakers in one.

It doesn’t really matter how you fight, being a thief you’ll be hated for it anyway! Using any mechanic the thief has to counter a particular element - whether it be something as common as, and as necessary to counter as conditions - will subject you to trash talk.

So use every trick you can think of lol.

Skull.8253:

Any ideas what kind of traits and weapons that guy might have been running and what kind of gear would work well with a pistol + sword or dagger?

Might have been D/P, stacked up some might and gained fury via steal or furious retaliation, and just taken you down with auto attack + heartseeker. If you lost target for a second it would have been a back stab – an effective opening against.
Might have been P/D, in which case a few venoms and stealth attack would have had a bunch of conditions rip through your health ignoring your armour. With low health, you die to condition burst quickly.
Might have been S/P in which case you’d have been stunned and burst down with a lot of quick strikes (pistol whip).

Skull.8253:

Is there a good site where I can get more in-depth info on current builds like that?

I can’t tell you what they’d be using exactly, there are a lot of different builds for the different weapon combinations. These are the types of build you’ll encounter, but each one will likely be slightly different from the next. For example, one might have 30 tricks while another has 30 acrobatics.

• D/D: Back stab burst
• D/D: Bleeding
• D/P: Back stab burst possibly with high sustain
• P/P: Rare to see but there are builds based on using unload
• P/D: Condition burst, usually with venoms
• S/P: Usually focus on bursting down with pistol whip and evading with pistol whip
• S/D: Evade, boon theft, constant pressure, can kite
• SB: Usually used for a defensive weapon swap, but you can make a good condition build out of it as a main weapon.

For deeper explanations into specific builds, there are some guides listed here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Guide-to-Thief-Guides/first

You need to really play a build that uses back stab for a while to get to know where the opposing thief is likely to be going while in stealth. It doesn’t matter whether you use D/D or D/P for the experience.

There are ways to counter it, just like there are ways to counter basilisk venom. The trick is to see it coming. You can sit in a black powder field while they are stealthed and heartseeker out at the last second. You can use evades while they are stealthed (works best with S/D and at least 15 in acrobatics), and if you see "Evaded!" you can risk turning and trying to cloak and dagger them.

I wouldn’t waste shadow step or the initiative for infiltrator’s arrow to get some distance. They will still be able to close that gap at less cost that it was for you to make it, and you’d have lost valuable survival resource(s). If you put a 900 unit gap between you and an attacking thief, D/P can shadow shot to you still dealing significant damage, and S/D can infiltrator’s strike to you.

Generally speaking though, D/P counters all other thief builds, especially with shadow’s embrace vs condition builds. P/D would probably have the hardest job fighting D/P. For D/D it would come down to who lands their skill first - their cloak and dagger or your shadow strike.

Oh and you can more reliably land cloak and dagger if you hit it, then half a second later hit steal or infiltrator’s signet. With a trickery build and reduced signet recharge, you can do it every ~12 seconds.

Zelyhn.8069:

* You used the coefficients listed in the "coeff" column. Those are the coefficients for *one hit* of each skill. In my calculation I multiply this coefficient by the number of hits for each skill. You should have used the "total coeff" column instead, like you did for SFLH.
This obviously destroys the resulting DPS.

Yes and no! I used the same column for SFLH too, it just wasn’t as noticeable. Fixing it there too increased the DPS by 300. But yeah that was a bad mistake. The DF result looks much more plausible now, I have to admit I was surprised to see it that low.

My purpose wasn’t to show anything specific lol. The results I came to as the result of using the incorrect coefficient column just happened to put SFLH ahead. I didn’t know which one would come out ahead, since I’ve never calculated for the use of focus, but remember I agreed a while back that I don’t believe lightning hammer builds have the highest possible DPS =P.

That rotation should work, yes. It’s what I used with D/D with an extra Lightning Whip to replace Fire Grab and minus RTL.

In my opinion, thief in PvP is best (and most fun) to play as a high damaging build for that assassin play style. There is a learning curve to it though. Playing any sort of squishy build requires getting to know other classes and builds, how they fight, and experience at reading opponents. This is only achieved by playing a lot of matches. As a squishy thief, a very important element is entering a fight on your terms. This means being able to react quickly, escape quickly, engage quickly, and disengage/re-engage multiple times during a fight.

You’re not going to be learning if you’re busy dying all the time, or unable to recover after managing to escape or disengage which can be a problem for a new thief. So while there are a lot of different and diverse builds out there, such as back stab, classic d/p, s/d flanking evasion, s/p pistol whip, p/d venoms, shortbow condition, d/d bleed etc. I would advise starting with the D/P shadow arts build. That isn’t to say it’s not a good build - it is - but it sacrifices damage to allow you to easily recover, get your bearings, and try again. Fights will last longer, but that’s more time you have to learn. Eventually you can swap to higher damage less survival for greater risk/reward, or change to a different play style focusing on healing during combat rather than requiring stealth.

10/30/30/0/0, D/P and berserker amulet, of course. In Deadly Arts grab Mug for a heal and a bit of extra damage. In Critical Strikes take Furious Retaliation, Critical Haste and Executioner. In Shadow Arts take Shadow’s Embrace, Shadow Protector and Shadow’s Rejuvenation. If you find you need to stealth a lot at first, take Infusion of Shadow instead of Shadow Protector. Utilities vary but a good combination to take when starting out would be Signet of Shadows, Shadow Step and Shadow Refuge. Signet of Shadows for increased movement speed - very helpful when chasing a target (which is necessary most of the time even when they aren’t running away). Shadow Step for pursuing runners and it’s a 2x stun breaker with condition removal. Shadow Refuge is one you’ll want to get rid of once you have escape and disengaging down. It’s an easy escape method also providing you with healing, condition removal, but mainly it’s a safety net. It can be used to revive allies, but for the most part it’s a safety net.

The play style of the above build is similar to the classic 25/30/0/0/15 D/P, but fights toe to toe a bit more, has more toughness, regeneration, and when you think you need to, enter stealth to heal with Shadow’s Rejuvenation. Entering stealth periodically during a fight for back stabs can help sustain you by giving you 1-2 ticks of health, and removing conditions. Try not to spam heartseeker. If your opponent is up close, use black powder, heartseeker out of it before 4 seconds to gain stealth for a back stab. Shadow shot is great for quick blinds without interrupting your DPS, for pursuing runners, and for starting a fight when not sneaking up in stealth.

Gah I should have seen the 50% included. I see it now. Although, I did the same for D/F as well so the relative difference will be very small (due to difference in precision).

I still can’t see where you include the lightning hammer bonuses for Swing though. As I said, I included those myself as a result, and my thinking was ignore the precision you marked as wasted, and work with the additional 0.0057% chance from (180/21). It was faster to type, and a very small inaccuracy which is irrelevant in terms of "which has higher DPS" given the difference between the two DPS values. Yes, the figures may have lost accuracy, but it was a quick test merely to reveal which was higher. Were they closer, I would have been forced to adjust it to consider the wasted value. As I already said, I had no intention of re-uploading it since it’s not my work, I just added a little to it to get the DPS following a different method, so I’m allowed to be lazy so long as the answer to the question isn’t changed =P.

The rounding down I wouldn’t call abusive. I’ve never seen damage with a floating point, so I round down on the calculated damage. I’ve already mentioned how I calculate for lightning hammer. Using 969 for its weapon strength has always produced reliable results for me in the past, but how you take it in your calculator is your choice. It doesn’t undermine the D/F side though, which will plummet when changing that +1.5 to +1.

Zelyhn.8069:

@Impact
Right, so you were not using coefficient but damage, that’s quite different.
969 is the higher boundary for LH weapon strength, but we do not know its lower boundary. In my calculator I simply normalised it to one-handed weapon strength and the result is mathematically correct.
The result of my modifiers is also mathematically correct. Same goes for the way I include LH attributes. As a matter of fact I just checked again doing it manually and I am right. I guess you have done a mistake while adding columns, that is why I am asking for a spreadsheet.

No, I was still using the coefficient, just one I had come to and found worked for my purposes, since I couldn’t find any documentation on it. If there’s an error with the figures I get as a result of the way I’ve been calculating lightning hammer damage, I haven’t seen it. It does make sense that 969 would be the upper bound, since equipping a weapon adds the upper bound to the attack stat, but as I said, I couldn’t find any documentation and this way seemed to be working fine.

Sorry, I didn’t notice you had included lightning hammer attributes. I didn’t mean to imply you did it wrong, I just didn’t see it anywhere. I’ve sent you the link via forum PM.

Why not? It saved me having to log in game and un-equip everything to see the tool tip damage, which is the same value that wiki lists.

Zelyhn.8069:

@Impact
I would like to see all that into an excel sheet. Could you make one for me please?
Also, since the wiki does not give the coefficients for the LH chain, how did you calculate its weapon power?
You are right about one thing: I was not exactly using the proper SFLH rotation, therefore I changed that. I also changed the DF rotation to better reflect attunements at the time the spells hit.
So the end result is +6% DPS for DF. And that is excluding burn.

I reverse engineered it from the wiki. The first two in chain are 358, and the last is 586. When you equip lightning hammer you gain +969 to your attack stat indicating something about its weapon strength. The damage shown on tool tip are versus a target with 2600 armour.
(358*2600)/916/969 = 1.0486658464810884133014272130364 = 1.0487
(586*2600)/916/969 = 1.7165312459159715368565261084898 = 1.7165
Then using the 1.0487 as the coefficient, reverse engineered some hits against a target golem to get a range of 918-1016, which has a 967 average - very close to the 969. I was happy enough with that to use it in my own odd spreadsheet.

I included the formulas in the post for you because I didn’t make a spreadsheet. I downloaded your spreadsheet to take a look, and simply added 3 columns to the end of your ’rotation calculator’ table so that I’d be using the same coefficients and cast times for consistency, then put my DPS result a couple of cells below yours for comparison. I didn’t think it would be right to upload your work with my own less-than-tidy modifications for a simple, curious comparison, given the nature of those modifications.

Zelyhn.8069:

...

There are a few things. You’re not using her exact rotation in the LH sheet. Changing it increases the DPS a little (still excluding the arcane skills). I also modified the D/F rotation a tad to fit the cool down of burning speed to squeeze out a bit more DPS.

From what I can tell you’re using an average modifier rather than applying the modifier to each individual skill in order to jump straight to the DPS. Calculating the damage of each skill individually and dividing that by the elapsed time is more accurate. I added three additional columns to do this (modifier, damage (non-crit), average damage (incl. crits)):

...cut... Excel formulas don’t appear very nicely on the forums lol.
Edit again: Formulas here http://pastebin.com/NLJNAtA1

I summed the average damage for each skill and divided it by the summed elapsed time. In these columns I manually set the different modifiers based on the attunement, set the weapon strength to 969 for lightning hammer attacks (roughly the average - I believe the range is about 918-1020, however while I’ve calculated for 918, I’ve only calculated for as high as 1016 using the coefficients provided by the wiki), and included the 180 precision and 5% crit damage buffs while lightning hammer is equipped. I was also mindful about the modifiers column for D/F, and was sure to account for when you might swap during lightning whip, crit, hit a skill and then change back to air to get the 10% modifier on the stronger coefficient.

I changed D/F’s burning precision to internal fire for a fair comparison, and factored that in to the modifiers column too. I left out bolt to the heart for both. The DPS results I got were:
* SFLH: 13,915
* DF: 10,071

Counter Suggestion: Swap Weapons in Combat

What if up time on player-summoned NPCs was reduced for other classes rather than increased for those with less up time so that PvP could become less of a wannabee PvE zone as opposed to the current map composition of 75% NPCs and 25% players, and the future composition of 90% NPCs and 10% players should player-summoned NPCs be made more permanent.

It would be nice in the sense that it could be used as a reliable weapon swap... but as stated, some would be too OP if without a cool down (in PvP for sure). The point about others not being able to pick them up is a minor issue, and might be seen as a benefit by someone, since conjure elementalists (mainly lightning hammer) forbid anyone from taking their conjured weapon, and sometimes it is taken by accident when someone is looting.

lakdav.3694:

Thats pretty much a reference to the skills from GW1, where elementalists mostly used "conjure" skills to imbue and empower the main weapons of their allies, and never their own

I was hoping at some point, if/when elementalists get a new weapon, that it would focus more around melee and imbuing that weapon with elemental power in a different way for each attack. I never played GW1... hearing that they had more emphasis on conjuring and they were never able to empower their own weapons isn’t good news =\.

I would put 10 in earth instead of water, taking Stone Splinters for a more reliable 10% modifier. You also get increased toughness while attuned to earth and 5 seconds after now that it’s fixed for Lingering Elements.

If you wanted more damage and still keep some survivability, you could drop Arcana - which you can do without as a DPS build using Fresh Air - and put another 10 in earth for Obsidian Focus, granting to another 290 toughness while channeling your Air 1 and Earth 1 skills. The other 20 can go to Fire for increased power and condition duration. In fire, you can take cleansing fire for some condition removal, and you can pick up burning on crits which has nice synergy with your critical chance, and makes use of some of that condition damage you got from the earth trait line. It will also help your sustained damage through auto attacks. That being said, you could if you wanted, drop 5 from earth (Obsidian Focus) into fire for another 10% boost against burning foes, which has good synergy with the burning on crit trait for S/*.

For utilities, as already mentioned, I would swap Arcane Shield for Lightning Flash. The theory for Arcane Shield is sound, but the 900 unit teleport can still act somewhat like a stun breaker, and it gives you mobility. It’s much better for survival in practice. Mist form is only beneficial really for healing builds, since it helps by holding out for those few seconds of water attunement CD. I would swap it for cleansing fire for some condition counter. The last slot can be anything, really. For roaming though, personally, I wouldn’t take arcane blast.

Healing skill shouldn’t be signet of restoration. Scepter attacks are slow, especially if you’re using channels. Take ether renewal for condition counter, even though it can easily be interrupted - because so can the glyph against a skilled player.

Zelyhn.8069:

For those who do not have excel or can not open my calculator, here is what it says:

Damage comparison between S/F+LH (30/10/10/20/0) and D/F (30/30/10/0/0) for human-sized single targets => D/F wins by at least 7%.

This means that even if you had 6 might stacks less (two blasts) then D/F would still be superior in DPS.
D/F is even more superior if you take into account:

• Bosses are often against walls. This allows for Burning Speed trail stacking. It is the equivalent of adding a burning Fire Grab to the effect of Burning Speed blast (so every 13s).
• One more utility slot available. You can use it for Ice Bow or Glyph of Storms to deal a lot of additional damage.
• Stronger defensive capabilities. Allowing you to deal damage instead of dodging

Your calculator looks nice. Very detailed, although the length put me off wanting to read it lol. Mine are much shorter and to the point, but then I don’t post what I make =P.

Don’t get me wrong, not only do I not like using lightning hammer, I know that if you can assume the same might stacks (or even if you take two eles to reach 25 stacks combined), that other builds will have more DPS. I know my D/D speed build when I used to run PVE with my ele often (also 30/30/10/0/0, probably the same traits as your D/F) has more DPS than SF+LH 25/10/10/25/0. That’s for AoE and single target both. I told Anie this too, actually, but she acts like the very mention of D/D for speed runs is a crime! It wouldn’t be the first time she’s denied something I’ve said, then realised it was right some weeks later though >:D.

I also agree about the survivability. I’ve also used focus off hand sometimes for the projectile protection, although it’s never been my… ‘main’ offhand weapon. Using dagger main hand is in itself additional survivability because of that 300 range. Ele was my first class and I never really appreciated that range until I played thief lol.

As for an extra utility slot.. true, or you could still take lightning hammer but discard it after casting, and let someone like a mesmer use the one on the ground. That way you’d still benefit from the blast finishers in fire fields and blinds. I say mesmer because I know they can stack at least about a 31% damage modifier through traits for mantras and phantasms, which is more than most classes, but their auto attacks have low skill coefficients to make up for the phantasm damage. By using the lightning hammer, which has higher coefficients than most of their abilities, they would boost their own damage and in so doing, boost the group’s overall damage. That is, in theory – I don’t play mesmer nor am I interested in the class, so there could be something important I’m overlooking =P.

The point in EP here is comparison between builds of the same type. From what I’ve seen, each high damaging build presented uses the highest possible EP for that build - making it the standard representation, I suppose. This is fine if each of the builds have similar enough rotations, are measuring EP in the same way and will be spending most of their time with that referenced EP. It’s far from the most accurate DPS comparison, but it’s what everyone does, so it’s not a mistake. Her numbers are fine for their purpose.

That being said, if you want to compare completely different builds, such as a lightning hammer build with one without lightning hammer, then even factoring in all the changes to damage modifiers, stats (conjured weapon bonuses), vulnerability fluctuation etc. to find a more average EP wouldn’t be enough. Completely different builds will have different weapon strengths, skill coefficients, max targets etc. You’d need to work out the damage for a full rotation with each build in a given scenario, then divide it by the time taken to execute it to find the DPS, and compare those figures. I do agree that a more accurate standard would be useful, though.

Yeah.. while I agree having better access to stealth underwater would be nice - mainly for PVE - the only underwater skills you -need- are what you have, and even then you’ll probably only use your heal and roll for initiative. The weapon skills are that good.

I’d like to see more skills like that for thief while on land. We need an off hand sword.

Not to sound rude, but it would be much faster and easier for you to simply Google fractals for the wiki link http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists and necromancer condition builds - conditions being damage over time - which will lead you to a variety of different condition damage builds. You can also search the forums for necromancer builds, there are a lot of people who have shared their builds, discussed ideas and written guides. Asking in a new thread will only mean other people will search for you and return those same results.

That being said, you sound new to GW2, and I would advise any new player to get to level 80 without using guides in order to get to know your class and experience a variety of different traits. Then, when you’re close to 80 you should have a few build ideas you can expand upon. At this point, looking at guides for more ideas might help, it’ll be more fun to find that a build you came up with on your own is already being used and is effective and popular, and most importantly you’ll be able to better understand the purpose and play style of the build just by looking at the traits and stats.