Guild Wars 2

sorrow.2364:

Someone said that thieves are squishy.
lol

Considering that if you use all of this healing ability at once you’d be hitting with rubber knives and shooting water pistols.

I’m pretty sure it’s just a bug.

Ziddy.2583:

replace it with a 2second poison, and it’ll be pretty balanced.

Seriously? That would be the most useless stolen ability ever, not to mention the third strike in the Thief D/D auto-attack chain already does that.. how ridiculous that you would even suggest that.

Yup, exploring and doing your personal story should pretty much keep you equipped to your level.

As for weapon sets, don’t be afraid to experiment with different combinations and strategies. One of the easiest combinations to level with is Sword/Pistol and Shortbow with Signet of Malice; I couldn’t recommend them enough.

In addition to my previous post, if you keep up to date with your personal story and persist with exploring areas then you shouldn’t ever have to buy anoher piece of armour or weaponry from any vendor or the Trading Post. Any item you get will almost always be bwtter than one you got from a drop.

nldixon.8514:

nerva.7940:

youre stealing a fear that doesnt exist. there is no 4 second fear on the necro. this could be a misnomer of the ability. should be called “steal and buff”. or we could just reduce the fear’s length. thieves just dont need it.

So? Thieves can steal other abilities too that don’t have a direct counterpart for the profession the ability was stolen from.

Ice Shard Stab gives a 10 second chill. No other ability that I know of can do that. Consume Ectoplasm provides all boons for 10 seconds. Mace Head Crack gives a four second daze. As far as I know Guardians can’t daze at all outside of their elite skill. Engineers would probably love to be able to throw down an ethereal field a la Throw Gunk.

This whole thread reeks of “a Thief killed me and I’m mad!”

^^^ THIS, so kittening much THIS! ^^^

The Thief professions defining mechanic is Steal, that’s why the abilities are strong. If they were kitten then Steal wouldn’t ever be used. Also, anyone who has even bothered to spend 10 seconds learning about the Thief would know that the Steal ability doesn’t literally steal something from the enemy, it just gives them ability related to it, as explained above by someone who spent a maximum of 10 seconds reading about the Thief profession.

Honestly, the ignorance in this thread is astounding… But then again, it’s no different to 99.99% of Thief QQ threads.

It sounds great on paper, but it would be totally OP.

You’ll generally get different weapons from monster drops as you level up. By level 15ish you should pretty much have 2 daggers, 2 pistols, a sword and shortbow. At level 7 you get the ability to have a second weapon set and weapon swap so be sure to use dual pistols or a shortbow in your second weapon set for range.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but couldn’t you just gdt one of the bajillion low-level daggers with that skin and transmute it to hsve better stats?

First of all, are you guys talking about s/tPvP or WvW? Because the issue of culling doesn’t exist in s/tPvP, it only exists in WvW. Anet have already said that they are working hard to fix cullling but it’s a vast underlying problem with the mechanics of bandwidth usage in WvW.

As for Thieves being OP, Jonwar, that’s not even slightly correct.

I’m sorry if this is being rude or something… but wtf was the point of this? There are far more important things killing PvP right now and ugly dyes certai.ly wasn’t one of them!

Woohoo!!!

Any idea if the +15% stun duration sigil is working with it again? Because I’m pretty sure it was unintentional that it did, lol.

I’m sorry, OP, but what on earth are you talking about? I seriously think that you have no idea because the only skill that even slightly matches your vague description is the utility skill Caltrops.

Just fyi guys, he’s not talking about Unicorn spam.

Here’s a perfect example of a P/D condition Thief that combines persistent stealth from Cloak & Dagger to use Sneak Attack and stack up an extra 5 bleeds. The Pistol #1 ability Vital Shot also applies 1 bleed every time it hits.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqYVlUmaPXeS6E+5EB3ji60m6p4rdtTxVlPA;TwAgyCuogxMjYGrPOYk+sAZEw+j5CA

Here’s the same build, but slightly different for use with D/D – D/D. It combines 2 Sigils of Energy for constant dodging with Quick Pockets for constant Death Blossom spam.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4YlUmSOXey7E+5EBnCj6UPFfFtdPuqVrKA;TwAg2Croay0koJbTumkNtCYEw+j5HA

The basic premise with P/D is that you want to stack as many high damage bleeds as quickly as you can with C&D → Sneak Attack while maintaining that stack with reapplication and bleed duration. In the case of the D/D build, it’s more focussed on extreme survivability combined with bleed damage.

Hope I helped.

RevelHalcyon.9516:

Ah yes, the duelist chest is the only one I’ve found so far that’s not a coat. Unfortunately on a female it’s rather.. shall we say befitting of a “lady of the night.”

It took me a good minute of scratching my head at your sickly looking human character before I realised that it was a Sylvari… and I play one, lol.

Luke.4562:

Ah, now I am the one under inquisition, nice.

The fact i didn’t wrote or quote something about you doesn’t mean I ignored you.
And I write it again: “I’m not dumb”, I can read informations from your posts, from my screenshots and understand them clearly.
If I wrote “Oneshotted” it was to make you understand the quickness of the fight; it lasted just few seconds, during which i was wasting my defensive cooldowns to avoid being killed, obviously.
Yeah I agree it’s hard to understand the situation, that’s why i’m here to ask Thieves’ opinion, next time ’m gonna check the Combat Log if possible or hope to have Fraps up.

You are “under inquisition” because you provided sweet stuff all amount of information in your opening post. You were given a response, weren’t satisfied, and then kept on going without acknowledging or attempting to understand the reply. In addition, you’ve acted rude and ignorant the entire thread, so it’s no wonder that you’re now getting a taste of your own medicine in return.

I was running around in a “glass” cannon powerbuild, with around 900+ thoughness, full Divinity set, 22k-24k hps.

Well there’s the complete answer to your question. You had no toughness at all (900 tougness is the base toughness at level 80) and were hit by a burst Thief who put every trait, rune, sigil and utility at their disposal into getting the maximum amount of damage they could on you in just a few hits. Since you were unable to counter them by outplaying them in the nearly 10 seconds that you had, you should have been able to rely on your defence to help mitigate the damage; instead you were running a glass cannon build and therefore took the full brunt of his burst.

What on earth did you expect when you’re running a glass cannon build? Do you understand that the “glass” part of that comes from the fact that you’re extremely squishy and can die in an instant? Or did that escape you completely?

I’m not a newbye, as i wrote i met more skilled thieves and since now i hadn’t seen that kind of damage; even if i’m a glass cannon necro, i still can’t be bursted down that fast by most of the players i usually met (i wouldn’t be here asking if i knew those kinda damage were often to be found in pvp).

I’m sorry, but if you were running a glass cannon build, got killed by another glass cannon build, and then have the nerve to come onto the forums to complain about it, then yes, you are a newbie. If this is your first time encountering the Backstab build in the 2+ months that it has been around then it just goes to show how little you really do PvP. Also, to say that you’ve never met another class that can do that kind of damage is just laughable… Warriors, Engineers and Mesmers all have burst builds that can do just as much damage in just as short a time (and to be honest with you, the Thief who killed you did it in twice the time that it should have taken).

Varonth.5830:

I always love this how much toughness did you have counter question.

Like the kitten (I actually wrote kitten) system, the Thief subsection should scan for ‘how much toughness do you you have’ kind of lines, and add another one like: ‘thiefs are the only class allowed to run zerger amulett, you must have toughness’.

That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. The reason that “how much toughness did you have?” is the most commonly asked question on any QQ thread is because it’s the most relevant question that will counter almost everything the OP has usually said.

Toughness is the direct damage reduction stat in the game. If you don’t want to take high direct damage hits, then you need to have some sort of Toughness to counter direct damage and burst builds.

As for the “only Thieves can wear berzerker gear” thing, LOL. I wear a Berserker amulet on my balanced Sword/Dagger build with 20 in the Toughness trait line, so don’t act like we’re saying only glass cannon Thieves are allowed to wear it.

Luke.4562:

Yeah, considering i had a Protection Buff (-33% incoming damage) after the DeathShroud makes more sense with it.
We were alone, far from the big fight, so i’d not consider the Warrior or Guardian situation.
By the way, i appreciate the positive feedback.

You still haven’t said how much Toughness you had. The fact that you had 24k HP on a Necro doesn’t mean much, and just makes me think you have absolutely no Toughness on your build.

Also, you practically ignored my previous post. You weren’t one shotted, you were killed after 5 hits that would have taken 6-10 seconds to dish out at the very least; what were you doing during those 6-10 seconds?

I’m sorry if I don’t sound like I’m taking you seriously, but it’s pretty hard to when there’s a complete lack of information and you haven’t even told us about your build.

Luke.4562:

Just esplain the damage, i usally don’t get oneshotted by other classes, even warriors can’t shot me like that.

I already explained the damage to you, so unless you’re completely unaware of what a glass cannon is and don’t know how Toughness works, I really can’t explain it much better.

EDIT: Also, you weren’t oneshotted, you took 2 backstabs, a Heartseeker, and 2 hits from the auto-attack chain. This all means that the fight went on for at LEAST 6-10 seconds.

I’m honestly not sure what this topic is supposed to be discussing, because it’s already well established that condition Thieves (D/D death blossom spamming and P/D Vital/Sneak attack spam) are incredibly viable and survivable as hell. In fact, D/D death blossom is one of, if not the best builds for PvE leveling up until Orr.

For example, a 0/0/30/20/20 P/D build will keep you constantly stealthed and allow you to stack up an insane amount of bleeds while doing so. A D/D build with similar options allows for the same thing.

How high is your Toughness/Vitality? Because by the looks of the screenshot, you’re a glass cannon with no defence who was hit by a glass cannon Backstab Thief.

It’s your own fault for having absolutely no Toughness.

EDIT: Oh, and you’re a Necro, so you’re a light armour user with no Toughness… that’s even worse.

“Thief’s the most OP class”

No, it’s not, so please do us a favour and stop filling our forums with your incessant whining. Think that’s just me asking? You’d be wrong, even Arena Net has made a special topic just for all of you little bads to complain in.

Here you go: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback

How many times do you whiners need to be told that WvW doesn’t count because Anet only balances in s/tPvP because that’s where everything is on a level playing field?

It’s impossible to balance WvW because it’s not designed to be a small combat zone. It’s WORLD versus WORLD versus WORLD; the name alone implies hundreds of people, not 2.

How about instead of suggesting changes to an already potentially amazing skill Anet just fixes it so that it works as intended? It’s obvious that it’s broken so suggesting changes other than “fix it” is just counterproductive.

If you’re going to be mostly in PvE and WvW then I’d say that Carrion would be the best for you, actually. Power for the Unload, Condition Damage for the Vital Shot + Sneak Attack bleeds and Vitality for survivability.

As for traits, you could go something like 0/30/20/0/15 for the extra toughness while giving yourself more vitality via jewellery.

Actually, you don’t have to go burst, condition, or a balance between both. What ever happened to pure damage based DPS builds like the one’s that many people run with S/D? For example, I run a 0/30/20/20/0 build which has no “burst” to speak of, and no condition damage either. It’s a balanced DPS build which, quite frankly, would be ridiculouslyly OP with “Assassin Training”.

Daecollo.9578:

Ok people will just never use 4/5 pistol and not use pistols, good idea, and love the feedback.

They are designed to be damage dealers, otherwise they wouldn’t do damage or have names like: “Head Shot.”

A 1/4 (0.25 second daze.) and 84 damage for 4 initative is pretty awesome.

Meanwhile, Pistol Whip is 1026 damage, costs 1 more initative and gives evasion and stuns for twice as long.

Actually, Headshot was clearly designed as a ranged interrupt and that’s exactly what it does. The name doesn’t mean anything, but if you want to go down that path, then it’s called Headshot because you shoot a non-lethal round at their head to disorient them. As for Black Powder, nothing in its name even remotely suggests that it’s supposed to be a damage skill.

Isn’t it funny how the two skills you think were designed for damage are very, very clearly not designed that way in the slightest?

Also, where on earth do you get your facts on the number of Thieves who use them, eh? I know of plenty of Thieves who use them in both PvE and PvP, including myself. Speak for yourself if you must, but don’t act as though you represent everybody else as well.

epicsmooth.7825:

Separate sPvP and WvW problem solved.

They’re already two completely different things… what are you talking about?

Zunhar.4079:

Dropping 10 points in Acro and putting them in CS would allow you to gain 100 more precision, 10% more crit damage, and the godly trait that is Executioner.
Sigil of Paralyzation actually acts as a 33% daze increase, not 15% that is stated on the sigil. It, unfortunately, does not stack with Runes of the Mesmer.
Also, Shadow’s Embrace is most likely the best condition removal a Thief has. It removes 1 condition on entering stealth and 1 condition every three seconds after that. Combined with Meld with Shadows, and you have an amazing condi removal tool.
These were just my tips/advice, as I too have come to love S/D.

Thanks for the feedback, it’s much appreciated!

I’ll play around with Executioner for a bit, but I was going for a more balanced build and the points in Acrobatics help to keep the HP higher and the Might stacks to last longer. I’ll also play around with your condition removal suggestions.

Thanks!

Considering that perma-stealth during a fight is almost impossible (actually doing it is stupidly impractical and easily interrupted), it’s clear that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Have fun with that.

I’ve been running S/D for just over a week now and I’ve found that I’m consistently able to land TS from behind as long as I’ve traited Fleet Shadow for the 33% speed increase. In fact, I very rarely see a blind icon pop up, even when I’ve hit them from the side. The amount of room you get for a back attack is huge.

Heal, Utilities, & Elite

• Hide in Shadows: A great heal which also cures burning, poison, and bleeding; it can also be used for repositioning or escape depending on the situation.

• Blinding Powder: An AoE blind/stealth which acts as a panic button, tactical repositioner and escape tool all rolled into one.

• Shadow Refuge: This is basically the same as BP with the exception of the blind (untraited in this build) and 3x the stealth duration. It can also be used as a minor secondary heal thanks to +300 healing power and Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

• Shadowstep: Long distance gap closer/escape tool, stun breaker, and condition remover. Can be used to great effect when chasing down fleeing enemies and you lack the initiative to use Infiltrator’s Strike, or they’re out of range.

• Dagger Storm: Projectile reflection, AoE cripple/bleeds, and 9.5 seconds of stability on a 90-second cool-down make this Elite perfect for almost any build. Thieves’ guild may offer better damage, but its cool-down is just too long.

After a lot of testing I feel that my build is ready for criticism. All feedback is welcome, but please keep in mind that this thread is for constructive criticism. I’m happy to hear suggestions on changes and ways to optimise this build for sPvP.

Build link

Play Style

• Use of Cloak and Dagger followed by Tactical Strike keeps the opponent interrupted and under control when attempting to heal/use important skills.

• The hard-hitting nature of the sword makes up for the lack of power and the cripple on the third hit in the auto-attack chain combined with Dancing Dagger helps keep opponents in melee range.

• Infiltrator’s Strike can be used as a cheap gap closer, stun, stun breaker, and condition removal all in one. Heavy use of this ability means that very few targets will be able to escape you and your allies.

• The use of Flanking Strike when properly positioned is excellent for ripping boons such as might and swiftness from opponents, particularly profession builds that rely heavily on boons to increase their damage output and/or survivability.

Heal, Utilities, & Elite

See third post.

Trait Explanation

Standard: 0/20/30/20/0

Critical Strikes

• VI Practised Tolerance: Choosing this trait is a great way to decrease the amount of HP lost by choosing the Berserker’s amulet.

• X Critical Haste: This trait triggers often enough to warrant taking it over another.
  
  Shadow Arts

• I Master of Deception: Self-explanatory.

• V Infusion of Shadow: Self-explanatory for the most part; it’s used to reduce the initiative cost of CnD to 4 from 6 as a form of Initiative management.

• XI Shadow’s Rejuvenation: When combined with Shadow Refuge, 300 healing power, and frequent stealthing, this trait helps add up to a lot of health regeneration during a fight. It also helps to counter bleeding/etc.
  +*Acrobatics*

• II Power of Inertia: Another great way to artificially increase the amount of power in the build via constant might stacking. When used in combination with Feline Grace and Hidden Assassin it’s very easy to have consistent 5-8 stacks of might during a fight.

• VI Fleet Shadow: Also rather self-explanatory, but it makes repositioning for a Tactical much easier.

Armour Runes

• Superior Runes of the Mesmer: These have turned out to be the most effective for this build, specifically for the sixth rune which increases the Daze duration by 33%. The addition of 165 Power and 50 Precision is an excellent bonus that helps with the lack of power in the trait selection.

Weapon Sigils

• The Sigil of Superior Force (+5% damage) on the Sword is quite self-explanatory, but I chose this over other things in order to help compensate for the lack of power.

• The Sigil of Superior Fire on the Dagger triggers ridiculously often thanks to the 43% crit chance and is great for adding 1-1.2k damage in an AoE while attacking or defending a point. This could be swapped for the Sigil of Superior Air for the additional ~500 damage, but the fact that it’s single target reduces its effectiveness drastically.

• The Sigil of Superior Hobbling (+10% cripple duration) is also quite self-explanatory, but this helps to increase the duration of the Shortbow’s cripple on Disabling Shot which, thanks to the recent buff, is great for escaping sticky situations. I’m more than open to suggestions on a better sigil for this, but the shortbow is almost always used as an escape tool anyway.

Jewellery

• Berserker’s Amulet: I took this over the Knight’s amulet to make up for the lack of power. The only drawback to this is the loss of 5,000 HP, but I feel that this is made up for by the +300 toughness and healing power from the 30 points in the Shadow Arts trait line. I also swapped out the jewel for a Soldier’s jewel in order to add some additional Power, Vitality and Toughness to the build.

Thanks for reading!

As much as I hate to say it, you’re right. In fact, I’d even go so far as to agree with you on the masochist comment. Thieves are probably the hardest and potentially most boring class to PvE with, and that’s saying something. My main is a level 48 Thief with 260 hours put into it, but most of that is sPvP simply because I find PvE too unrewarding.

LOL.

Seriously man, seriously? You’re going to QQ about the Thief class because YOU need to learn to play, then ragequit and think that we’re all going to give a flying kitten?

Good riddance to bad players, makes PvP more enjoyable for those of us who find it boring to constantly faceroll you scrubs.

@Fritz:

Hundred Blades is a perfect example because when combined with Bulls Charge and Frenzy, it’s unavoidable if you miss the dodge for BC or your stunbreaker is on CD. Also, Backstab is NOT an instant ability. Quit with the bullkitten and stop exaggerating.

Since when does anyone use Haste in a backstab build? A simple dodge is 10x better at repositioning yourself in a short time and landing the crit. I’ve never even heard of using Haste before…

As for the comments about removing QUICKNESS from the game, I disagree. Quickness alone isn’t the issue, the speed at which it improves your attacks is. The speed increase should be reduced to 25-33%, much like the (usually) well balanced abilities in GW1 were.

Haha, that was awesome! Well done!

MasterDeere.3417:

Asum.4960:

MasterDeere.3417:

Call it Haste then, or Quickness!

And still is Warrior the class with the highest dmg output (then engeneer, and then, maybe Thief, together with Elementalist and Mesmer).

Frenzy + Hundred Blades + CC = GG.

The only compareable thing the Thief has to that combo is Quickness + Pistol Whip, which does way less dmg than hundred blades, even before is was nerfed.

Kinda funny, isn’t it.

You place thief dammage output on same rank as elementalist…

I’ll apologise on his behalf, you’re right, Elementalist should actually be above Thief.

Thanks for pointing that out.

OT:

Quickness on a Thief is no more OP than Quickness on the Warrior, Engineer, Ranger, and Mesmer (not sure if other classes have one). If you’re going to complain about Haste, go to the sPvP forum and complain about Quickness on all classes instead.

/thread

@Ensign:

While it’s still possible to C&D repeatedly, it’s no longer possible to do it just as the timer runs out. There was a slight change to stealth which stops this from occurring. However, you can still do it about a second later.

Uhhhh I can’t see anything in this thread, not even the OP. Is this happening to anyone else?

Holy kitten, that’s awesome man!

What armour pieces are they?

It does sound like the Thief is right for you. Go ahead, roll one, head to sPvP, and start messing around with builds you find on the forums. If you don’t like it, consider creating your own build. If you still don’t like it, it may not be.

Good luck, and just remember to have fun.

I’ve just tested it and it’s even better than I had hoped… you can now leave the refuge with all 10 seconds of your stealth* without breaking stealth* or getting the revealed debuff. This is a seriously powerful buff considering that I just ran from Henge to Keep completely stealthed.

In my opinion, Rampager is useless for a condition build because you’re not relying on critical hits in any way. Go for Carrion across the board, maybe throw some Knight’s or Soldier’s in their for the toughness/vit boost.

My vote for a server is something in one of the lower brackets with lesser queue times. Unfortunately for SoR, the queue times are getting a lot longer (usually 1-2 hours) ever since they’ve been consistently winning their WvWvW matches by long margins.

Also, if the guild is going to be called “Assassin” then it should be called “The Assassin’s Guild [TAG]” or something like that. Assassin on its own just sounds silly.

Oh, and I’m in, regardless of what server you end up on or the name of it.

I’m still updating my client so I haven’t been able to test it yet, but could it be talking about the AoE ring that indicates the barrier of Shadow Refuge?

I couldn’t agree more, thank you Anet!

Rizzy.8293:

How come the range on my dagger attack is now 130 like CnD wasn’t it higher before?

Unless all of the major build calculators have already updated their stats, no, it hasn’t changed.

Stiv.1820:

Yep it won’t change anything. People will still QQ about thieves killing them in 1.5 seconds. They just won’t have the one 22,000 hit to show everyone in the screenshot.

A reduction in the damage buff to 15% is significant. If people continue to QQ then we will just continue to tell them to L2P.

Why on earth do you need to use four auto-attacks after your first attack? Do your other keys not function properly?

What’s there to discuss? You’re completely wrong; you can still DPS them down because they’re not invulnerable while stealthed.

/thread

All Thief patch notes:

Thief

• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.
• Basilisk Venom: This skill’s buff now applies for the appropriate duration of 30 seconds.
• Disabling Shot: This skill can now be fired continuously at targets behind the player without the ability jumping them back toward the target. This skill now also has a cost when firing at targets behind the player.
• Flanking Strike: This skill’s first attack is now unblockable.
• Ink Shot: This skill no longer allows players to shadowstep out of water.
• Nine-Tailed Strike: This skill has been fixed to properly provide the intended amount of initiative.
• Shadow Refuge: This skill’s stealth removal tripwire has been updated to properly match the skill’s effects.
• Whirling Axe: This skill has had evasion removed from the ability and has a missile-reflection effect applied to the whirl effect.

So, the initial reaction of a lot of people has been surprisingly negative, which is disappointing considering that the overall change to Assasin’s Signet is more of a buff than anything else.

To begin with, the previous ability of the Signet was to give the user a bonus of 150% damage on their next attack (that’s 50% extra damage for those of you who are a little slow in the maths department like me) over just one attack. With the new change…

• Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack.

… the damage has been reduced significantly, but the trade-off for this is that it works over five different attacks, instead of just one. What this obviously means is that we now have the ability to buff a series of attacks in a chain as opposed to just one attack.

For example, the P/P dual skill “Unload” unleashes a volley of projectiles. When combined with a Power/Crit based build this has decent ranged damage, but not as much as people would like. With the balanced Assasin’s Signet, almost the entire volley can be buffed with 15% extra damage. Combine this with the Tier 1 trait Signets of Power which gives 5 stacks of might when activating a signet, this could be a very hefty amount of ranged damage.

Overall, I’m very happy with the changes to the Assasin’s Signet utility and look forward very much to seeing just what new builds will come out of it.

What do you think?