Guild Wars 2

evilapprentice.6379:

Incurafy.6329:

The x/30/30/x/x D/D builds still work perfectly fine, and I would argue that they were touched a lot less by the nerf than people think (talking as though D/P is mandatory).

But why choose “works fine” over “works great”? Unless your going for some weird Direct damage/Conditon damage hybrid (which OP didn’t mention), D/D is poorly designed when compared to D/P. On demand daze, stealth on demand with no requirements, BP for extra damage evasion, and a solid, blinding 900 gap closer blows away anything D/D offers as far as I’m concerned.

I occasionally wish I had access to dancing dagger, but then I remember for the same amount of initiative I can just teleport to my target (while blinding him) and hit for solid damage…or interrupt what he’s doing with HS.

… because that’s the particular word that I used for the context of my sentence? The set does work great and is just as good as it was pre-patch in th exact same way that D/P has barely changed post-patch. Which set is superior is really a matter of personal preference, experience, and opinion, all three of which are completely irrelevant to the subject.

I really shouldn’t have to explain the advantages and disadvantages of the D/D set to you because I assume that you’re already aware of them. Pre-patch D/D was very popular and so was D/P, both have their positives and negatives and to pretend that D/P is now mandatory post-patch is just ignorant, that’s what I just said.

The OP wanted to try D/D so I gave him a build that still works perfectly fine (as opposed to popular opinion which pretends that D/D got nerfed into the ground).

Seriously, it wasn’t hard to understand.

swinsk.6410:

I second this. Why settle for “Just OK” when you can get “The Best”.

D/P is now our best weapon set for what type of play was described in the original post.

D/D still has the best burst but survivability is non-existent compared to D/P.

See above.

As for your second “point”, are you kidding me? The survivability of D/D is almost the same as it has always been (just like D/P is almost the same as pre-patch) and CnD offers excellent survivability.

Not to mention the fact that you just pointed out one of the positives of D/D for someone who refers a more bursty playstyle, but that’s irrelevant as pointed out above.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dasorine.1964:

Its only flailing wildly if you forgot where the thief was when he stealthed and his condition on stealthing, which if your not keeping track of then your not really pvping very well.

Okay then, so you swing once, hit him. Swing again, you hit him again. Is he in the same spot? Is he moving around to your right, your left, running away, what? It tells you jackall. Or: swing again, miss. Where did he go? Which direction? Did he just dodge your attack and is in fact still near you? You guess, hope you were right. Sure, experience helps make you right more often, but it’s still guessing.
Being forced to guess, not because of player action, but because of the game not giving you the information you need to not guess, is a terrible design choice.

Obviously that’s what you do, but it’s not what I, or any other experienced Thief will do. When another Thief goes into stealth we can usually estimate exactly where they are at any given moment.

How?

Because we were paying attention and we know that a Thief going into stealth is doing so for one of two reasons:

1. To do a small fight reset in order to gain back some health and reposition themselves.
2. To move in for a Backstab/Tactical Strike if a D/x or S/x Thief or to let off a Sneak Attack if a P/D Thief.

In scenario #1, all you need to do is follow the Thief in the direction they went and 9 times out of 10 you will get at least one full auto-attack chain into them before you lose them, and considering that most auto-attack chains go for around ~3 seconds, the Thief will be out of stealth at this point and you can continue to CC them/etc.

In scenario #2, we do practically the exact same thing, but we pay attention to the distance we keep between ourselves and the Thief, after approximately 2-3 seconds you dodge to avoid their Backstab/Tactical Strike while making sure to be denying them your back for the extra damage/daze.

Alternatively, in scenario #2, you can laydown as much AoE around you as possible in addition to the movement + dodge.

It’s really not that difficult, and it’s a buttload more effective than you make out. There’s a reason that Thieves take so much kittening damage while in stealth (hint: it’s not because we’re hard to find with an auto-attack).

As for the problem of weapon sets without auto-attack chains, the combat log still works nicely for this, although I admit that this is a little bit of a problem, it’s more of a game design flaw than something to do with the Thief class.

8/10, good effort.

Taril.8619:

I’d go for something more defensive to be honest; Vigor on stealth, Protection on revealed, Protection on stealth etc. Something to actually make going stealth a defensive move (Vigor = More dodges to actually be able to dodge the hits thrown at you when stealthed. Also reduces the need to go 15 Acro to be able to actually get additional defence). Due to the inherent problems with using Stealth vs a good player (In that the good player will continue to attack the thief, thus rendering their only defence being dodging, which other classes can often do more of via high uptime of Vigor)

While I agree with you that some sort of boon would be nice, protection on/after stealth would be ridiculously OP in any stealth build. Protection while revealed because of a protection after stealth trait would make stealth thieves too difficult to kill even with a landed CC.

If you want more survivability then go for wurm runes (higher HP) but you won’t lose any power or crit damage if you go for valk orbs and you only lose ~800hp over wurm runes for going for them instead. Overall, valk orbs are superior in my opinion.

I should really have this in a notepad so that I don’t have to type it up again every time, lol…

I’ve leveled two Thieves, to 80 and I can gladly argue without a doubt that the easiest, fastest, and most effective way to level a Thief is through D/D death blossom spamming and SB trickshot/poison gas/clusterbomb kiting.

1. Get Dagger/Dagger and Shortbow, any stats are fine, but condition damage is ideal 100% of the time if you can.
2. Get Signet of Malice + Caltrops + Roll for Initiative + Signet of Shadows (25% speed increase passive) OR Infiltrator’s Signet for 1 extra initiative every 10 seconds (I prefer SoS for speed to level quicker) + Thieves Guild OR Daggerstorm ASAP in the whatever order they become available in (I think that’s the right order anyway.
3. Go for 15 in Trickery for Uncatchable (caltrops on dodge), the 5 point trait that gives you 3 initiative on stealing, and 3 extra maximum initiative.
4. Next get 10 in Deadly Arts for Mug which will make your steal do damage.
5. Next get 20 in Trickery for Trickster (reduced Caltrops and RfI recharge time).
6. Next get 20 in Acrobatics for extra health, swiftness on dodge, might on dodge (might adds to condition damage), and 2 extra initiative regenerated every second.
7. The rest of your trait points are 100% up to you, but the above is ideal for the most part.

Here’s a build link for that amount of unlock (copy/paste):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcm6OXey5E+5EhniviWtC0sTxVtKA

Feel free to mess around with different traits, but they all have perfect synergy with the rotation below. I usually go 30 Acro + 30 Trickery for Quick Pockets and Sleight of Hand after that.

Now for the easy part, your rotation is as follows (with everything unlocked, obviously adjust as necessary for your level):

Caltrops > DB > DB > DB > Steal > DB > DB > RfI > DB > DB

If the entire group of enemies isn’t dead by the end of that rotation then they’re all champions or you’re doing something wrong. If they are alive for some reason, then switch to SB while your initiative and/or RfI recharge to max and just kite with trickshot/poison cloud for more healing via SoM ticks OR use Daggerstorm to kill whatever is left.

Remember to dodge as often as possible through the enemy to apply even more bleed ticks through dodgetrops and to gain might for even higher condition damage.

As for gear, I wouldn’t even bother getting anything until you hit level 80 and get your exotics. I’ve never done that and haven’t had a single problem with it; some people like to buy gear every 10 or so levels but I personally think it’s a waste of money and time.

If you have any more questions then ask away.

Griswold.2054:

ZenonSeth.5739:

You mean like the nerf they already gave it by changing Revealed to be 4s?
Have you ever played a thief? Do you know how difficult keeping up invisibility can be?

in most cases its not that difficult

So you get angry cause of one guy has learned his profession and can use it really well – and now, of course, you want to not just punish that player, but also punish everyone else who plays thief.

learned his profession? thieves are easy to play as it is, easier than most classes (not that they are that hard either), but thief is probably one of the easiest at least in world vs world
right now i feel, allmost all classes are punished for not playing thief (or mesmer) in wvw (zergfest excluded), the effort you have to take to kill a thief is much more than for him to kill other classes

ZenonSeth.5739:

You sir, are a hateful man, and need to learn to accept that some people just play better than you. (not me though, last I went into WvW with a thief I was killed in four hits)

i believe a lot of people have problems with thieves that even when they “outplay” the thief they gain nothing, besides as a thief you can compete with players above your skill level at least in wvw

You really have no idea what you’re talking about if that’s what you think. Thieves have one of the highest skill ceilings when it comes to being played at top levels. There’s a reason that they’re so poorly rated in tPvP, and it’s not because they’re stupidly OP.

Go ahead, level a Thief to 80, kit yourself out in exotics and then come back and tell us just how easy it is to play a Thief and 1v1/X in WvW or sPvP.

We’ll be waiting.

Sorry for the late reply, hopefully you still see this…

As you can see, I used Divinity runes in the link above, but you can take your pick between Zerker/Valk obrs, Wurm runes, or anything else if they’re too expensive. Valk orbs/Wurm will maintain high HP and crit dmg, while Zerker orbs will maintain the same crit dmg as the Valk but sacrifice HP for more crit chance.

Up to you, I personally run Valk orbs because I can’t afford Divinity.

Lmfao, that sounds 100% identical to what happened to me in WvW recently, I can’t believe that you guys spent so long chasing me instead of capping a point or two…

Thanks for the thread about me, my ego and desire to troll on my Thief both got a little bigger. <3 xx

From memory, they both work, but I’m not sure about the mesmer runes… I know for certain that the sigil of paralysation works.

As far as I’m aware, they don’t stack together, and if they do, they don’t add any further duration by having both equipped. I’d recommend just using the Sigil and using some better runes/orbs to replace of the mesmer runes.

Also remember that they only work in PvE/WvW so don’t expect to be able to use them in sPvP.

The x/30/30/x/x D/D builds still work perfectly fine, and I would argue that they were touched a lot less by the nerf than people think (talking as though D/P is mandatory).

The following build is pretty standard and still works wonderfully for 1v1 and 1vX encounters (where X is whatever you can comfortably fight at your skill level).

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h2.8.1g.h14|5.1g.h17|1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j.1p.71j|1p.61.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.0.0|a3.u36c.u45b.0.0|0.0|57.5b.5c.5h.5u|e

For a little less burst you can swap Mug for 10 points in Acro for Fleet Shadow or Descent of Shadows, and you can also change Dagger Storm to Basilisk Venom for a guaranteed BV > CnD > Mug > BS combo with the 10 points in DA. Even with only 10 points in DA it’s still powerful enough to do some excellent burst.

It’s up to you what you chose, really. Either way, both builds rely on the same gear so really all you need is 2 Berserker daggers and a pistol to try out both the D/D builds and the D/P builds.

Alternatively you can always try them out in sPvP.

#rant {

I am so sick and kittening tired of reading about cheese this and cheese that; they’re just playstyles and no amount of “lol cheese play” is going to change the fact that these valid playstyles and/or builds are exactly that: valid.

Anybody who has a huge problem countering the CnD > Mug > BS combo needs to carry a stunbreaker and practice their reaction time until they improve (blasphemy!); and anybody who believes that CnD chaining is actually a problem needs to learn how to kittening dodge.

Honestly, the only thing that needs to happen to Thieves is reducing the revealed debuff back to 3 seconds now that culling no longer exists and Thieves can be properly seen in WvW where 99% of the complaints came from.

Thieves have never been a problem in sPvP where culling didn’t exist and all the change did was nerf the crap out of us in PvE and reduce our PvP dps too.

Quit trying to change our class for the worse and acting as though CnD chaining is “LOLCHEESEUSOBADNERFITLOL” and a kittening problem when it’s absolutely not a problem at all and never was.

ARGH!

}

Linlana.8573:

I think it depends on the tree it’s in. If D/P thieves found it conveniently placed they could abuse it for even more permastealth and black powder spamming; having an even more endless initiative pool.

1. There’s no such thing as permastealth.
2. No Thief has an endless initiative pool, least of all D/P Thieves.

Seriously.

If you still want to go the D/D route (by far the most effective no matter the level imo) then go for 10 DA for Mug, 20 Acro for initiative every 10 seconds and might on dodge and 20 Trickery for Uncatchable and Trickster for the reduced caltrops cooldown. The reason you want might stacks is that they increase your condition damage.

Everything after that is up to you, but those traits will enhance your build dramatically, assuming that you have the right rotation down so that you get off a maximum amount of DB’s.

Jathra.9327:

Can’t speak for SPvP but as far as WvW goes it did basically nothing. Breaking Hidden Killer on the other hand..

You can still permastealth, you just get punished more for attacking from it, if you know what you are doing this shouldn’t really effect you that much in PvP, just like decent permastealth thieves could backstab and buy a few sec of time before going back to permastealth to heal pre patch.

I still don’t understand why people refer to chaining CnD as permastealth when it’s no where near permanent and requires constantly hitting a target every 4 seconds without fail and without running out of initiative to achieve… not to mention this won’t actually kill anyone who is slightly competent.

I haven’t had the chance to test my builds with the added second to revealed yet, but I’ve speculated that the change will barely affect me besides taking a little more damage before landing another CnD/using another BP + HS combo and requiring me to add another few attacks to my rotation.

While speculating I tried to think about and understand just how exactly this change affects actual balance in PvP. Half-decent to highly skilled players could already deal with Thieves perfectly well and the build that actually gets the most complaints from newer and less skilled players (25/30/0/0/15, D/D BS or some variant of) wasn’t even slightly affected.

So considering these two things, my question is, how exactly did the stealth change actually “balance” PvP? The only things that I can see so far is that it severely nerfed a lot of PvE builds and added a few attacks to rotations in both PvE/PvP. Neither of these things appear to me to have made the Thief any more “balanced”; and the Thief wasn’t even imbalanced before the patch.

Could this nerf have been just another way for Anet to temporarily appease the masses?

NOTE: I don’t want this discussion to devolve into a cesspool of Thief-hate. Any posts that attempt to do so will just be reported. Thank you for not being “that guy”.

Raine Akrune.8416:

I didn’t have to change a single thing since I don’t utilize stealth as a combat skill. I personally love the changes and think it will help with balance when all the little glass cannon noobs need to find a new cookie cutter trick to try and win. <3

What’s hilarious is that the “little glass cannon noobs” you talk about weren’t affected by the patch in the slightest.

Get off your pedestal, not using stealth doesn’t make you superior to those of us who do.

This was posted back in September…

StugLyfe.2134:

All you stealth abusers brought this on yourselves. What the 1,000 topics on this problem were all just community QQ in your minds lol ….. funny stuff here today.

ANET DEVS this was a long long time coming thank you very much!

For every bad thief that leaves today 10 players will return for this patch.

You know what’s absolutely kittening hilarious Mr QQueen? This change does absolutely nothing to the so-called “stealth abusers” that make you cry every time you log in.

I can’t wait to keep making people like you mad and sad at their inability to counter a simple mechanic.

Serjical.9613:

I just know the same thief was hitting my glass cannon mes with no +tough in trait or gear for 10k and I logged into thief with 1700 toughness which is 2800AR and I was getting popped by the same thief for 10k as well. There didn’t seem to be any sort of mitigation on the damage from backstab. Even the mug which was hitting for 4.5k lol which hopefully gets nerfed as per the SoG video.

In the politest way possible:

That’s not what happened, you’re mistaken. Toughness mitigates any and all physical damage but does not affect condition damage. That’s how the game’s defence mechanics work, that’s how it always has worked and probably always will work.

Repeating yourself again after being told how it works isn’t going to make it so that you’re correct and you didn’t mistakenly see something else over what actually occurred.

Noe.8230:

So all u leave is zerker. GG.

This. ^

I really don’t know what the hell you expect to be told when you basically said that you want to be a full DPS dealer without any party support or toughness/vitality.

So, here’s your answer: Either roll a full Zerker GS Warrior or get full Zerker equipment on your Thief and use whatever weaponset you prefer out of P/W, D/D, or P/P.

For traits go 20 (or 25)/30/x/x/x depending on your preference.

/thread

It’s definitely something that I would be interested in, but I don’t think that it’s possible for you to really gauge the level of interest and traffic that you would receive based on 5-20 “go for it” posts on here.

The best thing you could probably do is a full website plan including costs/etc and weigh that up against the estimated size of the Thief forum communities on various websites and forums (including this one).

Good luck is all I can say, I hope it works out.

The closest other Thieves > Light/Medium/Heavy upleveled players > Light/Medium/Heavy 80’s (in that order).

If somebody is posing a serious threat (eg, an 80 staff ele AoEing the crap out of the zerg) and has exposed themselves then I’ll target them over anything else, but generally it’s just weakest to strongest.

Usually people mix Valk and Knight armour with Zerker trinkets/weapons, but I see no reason why you couldn’t replace some of those trinkets with Cavalier.

You just need to weigh up the loss of precision against the gaining of toughness.

Here’s a great PvE calculator: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/

Let us know how it works out.

Here’s a pretty good discussion thread on the subject over at Guild Wars 2 Guru:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/26857-lore-based-question-on-guardians/

They’re essentially good/strong-willed people who are dedicated to fighting evil and protecting their allies. Pretty simple stuff, and similar to the Paladin archetype but without the devotion to a particular deity or philosophy.

Why does it feel as though the people saying that the Thief traits aren’t lacklustre are the same people who hate the class and want it to be nerfed into oblivion?

Honestly, you’re traiting all over the place and its going to greatly affect your actual combat efficiency.

The following build is the standard P/D build that has been tried and tested a billion times over:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAqY4YlUmaPHdy8E95EB3Dnm0m6p4rotTxVjPA;TwAgyCuogx4jwH7MOYkzsCYEw2j5CA

It utilises 30 in SA for the extra toughness to soak up a burst and for constant health regeneration, condition removal, and AoE blind while stealthed, 20 points in Acro for the extra health and dodge synergy, followed by 20 points in Trickery for the condition damage, reduced caltrops cooldown (use it to create a kiting barrier between you and your enemies, it’s much more useful than mentioned above), and more dodge synergy.

The runes and sigil give you a combined 55% bleed duration which (somebody correct me if I’m mistaken) gives you an extra two bleed ticks for every stack of bleed that you apply (you gain an extra tick every 25% bleed duration/condition duration); while the amulet gives you huge condition damage, great vitality, and a decent amount of vitality so our attacks aren’t hitting absolute crap.

The rotation is incredibly simple, start off with a few auto-attacks followed by a standard CnD -> Steal combo followed by a Sneak Attack, shoot twice with auto-attack and then hit CnD again, rinse and repeat.

If you feel like you need to apply some AoE bleeds or need to catch up to somebody, use caltrops + death blossom (3) on the daggers or heartseeker respectively.

If you want to utilise venoms then the following build is almost identical but more suited to the task of including venoms:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQRAqY4YlUmaPHdS0E95EB3Dnm0mqp4m2sTxVjPA;TwAgyCuogx4jwHLMOYkws8YEwOg5CA

The combat strategy is the exact same + a venom or two – caltrops. The key differences being a lowered condition damage compensated for by the Carrion amulet + different runes.

Hope I helped.

Amins.3710:

Hopefully…

I mean, heaven forbid the thief class actually have to spec for something… you know… give and take…

Hmm, Glass Cannon + best Escapability/Survivability (ie Stealth, heals ons stealth, condition removal on stealth, might on stealth, regen on stealth, stun break on stealth)…

You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. A Thief who has all of those traits has to go 30 deep into Shadow Arts which is the TOUGHNESS traitline, I’d hardly call that a glass cannon build, and there is no such thing as stunbreak on stealth, lmao…

Not to mention the fact that Thieves don’t have the best mobility (Ele’s have that) and stealth is useless in PvP point defence.

Next time roll a Thief before exagetating the crap out of the classes lackluster abilities.

vespers.1759:

i fail to see how being able to do 12k dmg over 10 hits compares top being able to do 7k in 1 hit and be able to do that move repeatedly as a thief can with heartseeker.

a simple stun 2, 2 combo for 14k dmg will kill most players easily.

Lmfao, are you actually serious? Go roll a Thief and test your “combo” out by chaining Devourers Venom and two Heartseekers on a target at full health and then come back and post your results.

I think you’ll find that your so-called combo is 100% A-Grade BULLCRAP.

Lmao @ all of the QQ players cheering because Thieves are receiving a pseudo-nerf followed by a bunch of awesome buffs. You guys have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and it’s absolutely hilarious.

As somebody maining a Thief since BWE1, I can tell you now that besides a few traits that will need to be looked at, I welcome the upcoming changes.

Stick that in your QQ pipes and smoke it.

LethalConcept.4593

That does sound like a killer build, a strong offensive, however im just too used to atleast 15 in acrobatics and Quick Recovery gotta get dem dodges!
How are you finding S/D set? It does seem pretty control/defensive oriented. Last i remember wasnt Flanking Strike a bit clunky to use?

I always miss 15 in Acrobatics, but it’s just not necessary enough to take it over other points that are available. This build provides consistent highish DPS along with a half-decent amount of toughness, so you could say that it’s a balanced build. As long as you manage your initiative properly, getting into stealth for a Backstab or Tactical Strike is never an issue.

As for FS, yeah, it’s clunky as all hell so I never use it, instead I compensate with Sigil of Nullification (see below) and use the initiative on a CnD for a Backstab crit.

Battou.7832:

Can you link your build?

Sure, make sure to copy/paste it into your URL bar if it doesn’t work:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoa8YlYmaPHdy5E/5Ex+hdy9wpGtp6MoZLB;TwAg0Cno4ywloGLXOukctEZUwmkJHA

The Sigil of Intelligence is for a 100% crit backstab after using CnD on S/D and swapping back, so make sure you use it. Also, Sigil of Nullification is to compensate for how dodgy Flanking Strike is. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory.

Alternatively you can also swap out Dagger Training for Quick Venoms and then swap Signet of Shadows for Devourer Venom for the extra control, but it’s up to how you’re feeling at the time, lol.

I use D/P with 25/15/30/0/0 with Mug, Dagger Training, Side Strikes, Infusion of Shadow, Shadow’s Embrace and Shadow Rejuvenation.

My second set is either SB, S/P or S/D depending on my mood, although I like S/D the most.

• Trick Shot now ricochets against the enemy and into the Thief doing 100x damage with every hit against the Thief alone.
• Body Shot now gives the Thief a 10 second stun and 15 stacks of vulnerability.
• Backstab now gives the Thief a 30 second revealed debuff along with a 30 second chill. If the target is another Thief who has used Backstab at any point since August 2012 in PvE, sPvP, or WvWvW, both Thieves are permanently banned.
• Thieves Guild has been renamed “A Traitor’s Death” and summons 12 Thieves with 10x HP and damage who target the summoning Thief for being a Thief player.
• Hide in Shadows now heals the Thief to full health, grants them 30 seconds of stealth, but also gives them an un-removable stun for the remaining duration of the year.
• Infiltrator’s Arrow now summons a hostile Legendary Defender at the target location who can see through any and all stealth.

Anything else we should touch on, OP, or do you get the idea?

I don’t know why you haven’t gotten any replies yet, maybe I’m just one of the only people to watch it on this forum or something…

It wasn’t the best video, the editing was average and the fights weren’t overly interesting, but I enjoyed it overall and I can only assume that you’ll get better the more videos you do. I especially enjoyed the attempt to tell a story in the beginning.

Well done.

[quote=1473443;DanH.5879:
are you guys even playing the thief or just trolling ? we get 1 ini every 1.33 sec
so for 4 ini regen = 4×1.33=5.32 sec ?
before was 1 ini every 1.66 sec, guess it changed, while lowered skill dmg…
[/quote]

My mistake, I thought the initiative regeneration was 1 per second.

Other than that, I have no idea how you could question whether or not I play a Thief… clearly my knowledge of the class shows that enough… not to mention the fact I’m defending it rather than QQing about crap.

This thread was created for posts like these so that our forum can remain as QQ-free as possible.

Please go and post your feedback about the Thief profession there instead.

PS: Thanks for the giggle.

xiv.7136:

backstab:

- done by someone who is invisible
- no build up time or pre-combat requirement
- 100% crit chance
- no cooldown
- no initiative cost

While I agree with your brief analysis of killshot, I completely disagree with you about backstab, and here’s why…

• Thieves can’t stealth for more than 4 seconds (traited) unless using Shadow Refuge, so a Thief is almost always visible before using stealth to prepare for a backstab.
• Backstab itself does not have 100% crit chance at all unless traited, and 99% of the time a Thief will take Executioner over Hidden Killer since their crit chance is already over 50-60%.
• The cooldown on Backstab is actually 3 seconds thanks to the revealed debuff and as long as it takes to get into stealth again via Cloak and Dagger or a utility. Cloak and Dagger uses 6 initiative (4 if traited) which regenerates at a rate of 1 per second (unless traited/using the correct utility) so each CnD uses 6 seconds (untraited) of initiative. Furthermore, if the Thief uses a utility to stealth then they have a minimum of a 40 second cooldown (Blinding Powder) before they can stealth again, slightly less if traited.
• The skill itself doesn’t have an initiative cost, but see above for the cost of Cloak and Dagger.

Try not to spread misinformation on the forums, there’s enough of that going around already.

Thanks.

ATTENTION NECROMANCERS:

Your forum can be found here.

Thank you.

I’m pretty sure you guys are in the wrong forum… try this one:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer

I’m confused… since when do people not know that a Thief with BV up is obviously about to burst them? Additionally, who the hell doesn’t just break out of it?

You answered your own question.

If those are the best two options then go for the vit/tough/cond gear, all three of them will benefit you.

Berserker/ruby everything (weapons, armour, trinkets, orbs in armour).

That’s it.

I’m sorry, OP, but unless the Thief was a hacker who has managed to give himself a 0-CD stealth keybind, he was using P/D and used Cloak and Dagger to stealth himself repeatedly. The “Unload” that you saw was Sneak Attack whether you like to think so or not, and it’s perfectly understandable that you were mistaken with the state of WvW culling/short CnD animation/etc.

It’s not a “fade out render issue”, and that’s something that doesn’t even exist.

bhagwad.4281:

Incurafy.6329:

So… not only did OP lie about his stats, but he’s also completely ignorant of how the Backstab combo actually works (“100% stealth, you can’t even see them, they aren’t even required to be out of stealth to do the combo”)…

FAIL.

Here’s a tip, OP, next time ask for help on the Thief forum and you’ll get a buttload of responses giving you detailed help on how to counter the Thief BS combo with a Mesmer. If you’re still having trouble after that and you’ve spent a month at it, come and complain, and we’ll be happy to hear it.

Until then, L2P.

“L2P” is probably the laziest response one can give, and completely undeserving of any serious response. The assumption that you’re superior in skill to a person whom you’ve never faced and you don’t know anything about just comes across as poorly concealed insecurity.

The exact mechanics of going down in 0.5 seconds from 100% health are irrelevant. The fact that it happened is all you need to know.

Congratulations on only reading one line out of my entire post and then making up a bunch of bullcrap to turn my post against you.

Do me a favour and read it again; go on, take your time, I understand that it was a pretty complex post and comprehending it is going to be pretty hard.

Reply when you’ve figured it out.

So… not only did OP lie about his stats, but he’s also completely ignorant of how the Backstab combo actually works (“100% stealth, you can’t even see them, they aren’t even required to be out of stealth to do the combo”)…

FAIL.

Here’s a tip, OP, next time ask for help on the Thief forum and you’ll get a buttload of responses giving you detailed help on how to counter the Thief BS combo with a Mesmer. If you’re still having trouble after that and you’ve spent a month at it, come and complain, and we’ll be happy to hear it.

Until then, L2P.

As long as the character that you want to transfer it to wears medium armour, yup, and it’s very easy, all you need is an empty character slot and you can do it in less than 10 minutes!

1. Create a new Thief, make sure that you chose “Anonymity” for the hood.
2. Transmute the Anonymity Hood into a WHITE or BLUE item (IMPORTANT).
3. Put the new “Account Bound” Anonymity Hood into your bank.
4. Take it out on your other character and equip it (if it asks to soulbind, hit yes).
5. Enjoy your new hood!

Asum.4960:

runeblade.7514:

I never played a thief. Before this patch, I was scared of thieves and their daggerstorm due to their OPness. Cripple, Strong damage, reflect.

Lately, I notice I don’t fear them anymore. I just go up to them and smack them with my axe till they die.

No.

People just finally, at least to some extend, learned how to counter thieves, which makes them falling off rapidly in power, since statistically they are probably the weakest profession of all.

Daggerstorm reflects projectiles, and when a 30 man zerg decided to attack the daggerstorm Thief with projectiles… well, it didn’t went well.

Thieves were always about exploiting bad play, while being at a huge disadvantage against good players of other professions.

^ This.

Basically, Thieves aren’t OP, never will be. The problem is that bad players get killed a lot easier by Thieves than most other classes which leads to those bads spreading the belief that Thieves are OP.

As we can see by your post and assumption that Daggerstorm is/was totally OP, you’ve been suckered in by the anti-Thief hype just like everybody else.

Karolis.4261:

Incurafy.6329:

Karolis.4261:

Incurafy.6329:

Karolis.4261:

OK I didnt read this to the end, but you allso didnt think at all about this problem you have with mobs reseting. When u stealth, mob resets becouse there is noone around to kill and noone is killing him, why shouldnt he then ? Drop some caltrops or use spider venom to keep dots ticking when u stealthed. So yes its working as fking intended. Mobs reset when there is noone to fight with.

Lofat.2406:

Just keep damage going. Bleeds, poisons, etc… The minute there isn’t anyone targeted and they aren’t taking any damage, they reset. An easy way to do that is to switch to SB while your in stealth and drop a poison (#4) on them. You will stay in stealth, they will keep taking damage, and they won’t reset.

Just because there’s a workaround for it doesn’t mean that it’s not an issue that should just be addressed… seriously… I’m really getting tired of seeing these kinds of replies.

To the OP: I’ve never seen this myself (and played a Thief for 450+ hours), have you noticed it on multiple champs or just the Lich?

No theres no issue. And why wouldnt you want to use these “workarounds” if it adds additional dps to boss ?

No, you’re wrong, there is an issue if the OP is correct and if that’s the case then it needs to be addressed.

As for your “question”, someone who is using a Power/Crit build isn’t likely to bring near-useless venom utilities for some minor damage increase/stun on a long cooldown or Caltrops for an AoE bleed + cripple when their bleeds aren’t going to tick for much damage at all.

Statements like yours are just plain ignorant, and I’m sorry if you think otherwise, but being required to do something that you shouldn’t in order to get around what is a potentially unintended/bugged mechanic isn’t a legitimate solution.

And thats exactly what i did when leveling my thief with power/crit gear, I took some DoT utilities before engaging skill challanges. Its not so hard to swap utilities on the go. Speaking of caltrops its a huge damage, no matter 50 damage ticks or 100.
And what stun do you speak about… ? Dont answer this…

Is it hard to swap utilities? No, but should you be required to do so? Definitely not

You’re missing the point entirely. If you’re trying to solo a Champion then you generally want to have the best utilities you can for your build and your combat approach. Being required to apply DoT just so that a mob won’t reset when you use a huge part of your classes ability is, in fact, an issue.

As for your snide remark about a stun, I assume you’ve heard of Devourer and Basilisk venoms, considering it’s quite obvious that I was talking about them. :$

Please, do reply, I can’t wait for your next excuse

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Incurafy.6329:

1. Thieves can stomp while stealthed because stealth is a class mechanic. This is different to a Necromancers Death Shroud mechanic because…
2. Stealth does not equal invulnerability, Thieves still take 100% damage while in stealth and AoEing or even just auto-attacking a stomping Thief (or using ANY form of CC) will kill them very quickly.

Seriously, please do some research before posting ignorant garbage on our forum; there’s enough of it already.

So are you claiming that DS is not a class mechanic, AND that it makes you invulnerable?

Uhhh, no? Learn to read.

Karolis.4261:

Incurafy.6329:

Karolis.4261:

OK I didnt read this to the end, but you allso didnt think at all about this problem you have with mobs reseting. When u stealth, mob resets becouse there is noone around to kill and noone is killing him, why shouldnt he then ? Drop some caltrops or use spider venom to keep dots ticking when u stealthed. So yes its working as fking intended. Mobs reset when there is noone to fight with.

Lofat.2406:

Just keep damage going. Bleeds, poisons, etc… The minute there isn’t anyone targeted and they aren’t taking any damage, they reset. An easy way to do that is to switch to SB while your in stealth and drop a poison (#4) on them. You will stay in stealth, they will keep taking damage, and they won’t reset.

Just because there’s a workaround for it doesn’t mean that it’s not an issue that should just be addressed… seriously… I’m really getting tired of seeing these kinds of replies.

To the OP: I’ve never seen this myself (and played a Thief for 450+ hours), have you noticed it on multiple champs or just the Lich?

No theres no issue. And why wouldnt you want to use these “workarounds” if it adds additional dps to boss ?

No, you’re wrong, there is an issue if the OP is correct and if that’s the case then it needs to be addressed.

As for your “question”, someone who is using a Power/Crit build isn’t likely to bring near-useless venom utilities for some minor damage increase/stun on a long cooldown or Caltrops for an AoE bleed + cripple when their bleeds aren’t going to tick for much damage at all.

Statements like yours are just plain ignorant, and I’m sorry if you think otherwise, but being required to do something that you shouldn’t in order to get around what is a potentially unintended/bugged mechanic isn’t a legitimate solution.