Guild Wars 2

Hi, I’ve been running this build in WvW for the last couple of weeks with some success and wanted some feedback on it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmCOncS6E/5Ex2jeKUe69osj1sdF4KA-TsAg0CnImRNjbGzMyZszMQYZxsAA

The idea of the build was to have a combination of high sustained damage and a variety of interrupts, with a lot of positioning ability.

Taking Runes of the Centaur with the minor trait Expeditious Dodger allows permanent swiftness uptime, with an extra 165 power. Because of the wealth of dazes/stuns that you can access with this build I took superior sigil of paralysation to get the most out of their duration. Superior Sigil of Force I took as the second sigil just to compound damage but that is interchangeable depending on preference.

I originally used scorpion wire instead of signet of agility to take advantage of the new 20secs cooldown and 1200 range, but the skill still feels too clunky and unreliable to be used effectively in 1vX fights.

The focus of the damage comes from auto attack, with pistol whip for burst. With the combination of First Strikes (10% extra damage when initiative is over 6), Lead Attacks (increase damage by 1% per initiative) and Executioner (20% extra damage when target is below 50% health), it’s possible to get up to 45% extra damage on your sword auto attacks.

This seems HUGE on paper, but I’ve found with the lack of stealth abilities, it’s tempting to use a lot of abilities in succession and run low on initiative quickly. To help with this I took the Signet Use trait to have both signets restore 2 initiative each on 24 second cool downs.

There is a LOT of dodge uptime, with both steal and withdraw giving vigor, and signet of agility giving the burst endurance return if you’re caught short.

With the recent buff to blindness, Black Powder is now particularly effective at fighting melee characters, and useful for countering D/x thieves trying to backstab you.

Having steal on a 22 second cool down, ripping boons, giving vigor AND stunning enemies at 1500 range is incredibly powerful, especially for opening. Having shadow step, infiltrators signet and infiltrators strike allows you to back off as necessary and reengage quickly, and combining pistol whip with Infilitrators signet, steal or shadow step means that you can effectively CC on demand, and do burst damage at the same time.

Also having essentially the ability to cover 2000-2500 range in 1-2 seconds allows you to really get the jump on someone and lock them down before they can react.

I’ll be putting up a video soon when I get enough footage, would like some discussion as to whether you guys think it sounds effective or if there are things to be chaned/improved.

You should specify whether you want a build for PvE, PvP or WvW as all three will be pretty different. Also sword/dagger and sword/pistol are VERY different play styles so you’d be hard pushed to find one build that maximises the potential of both of them.

Take power as your main stat, Power scales better than the other stats at low levels. Don’t take crit damage until you get to level 80, the increases are very low and wont help you out as much. When you get to wear two stat armor take power and vitality or power and toughness. When you get to 3 stat armor you can think about taking precision. Try and pick up some trinkets when you get to level 15-20 that boost power, as these provide a lot of stats. You can get cheap blue/green ones from the trading post, just make sure they’re the right level for your character.

In terms of traits, there aren’t that many adept trait that would be of much use to you, so I’d suggest either mug in the deadly arts trait line for an extra 100 power and a heal when you steal or thrill of the crime (trickery trait line) for the swiftness and fury.

Try out all your weapon combinations, pistol offhand is great though for the aoe blind field if you’re meleeing groups of mobs, and sword has the strongest auto attack plus it hits up to three enemies at a time.

Short bow is always worth having as your second weapon, if you get in trouble or low health it allows you to kite, evade, and still hit up to three enemies at once with the auto attack.

If you want to use or experiment with dagger offhand, put 10 points into shadow arts traitline for the infusion of shadow adept trait, as this lowers the cost of cloak and dagger from 6 initiative to 4.

Don’t worry about specialised builds too much until you get to level 60 when you can access the grandmaster traits.

Also, as soon as you get enough skill points, purchase the skill shadow refuge. ALWAYS have this on your skill bar when levelling, it’s invaluable for getting out of combat if you’re low on health, getting skill points or vistas without being harassed by enemies, helping you revive allies, or just running past packs of mobs when you can’t be bothered to fight.

Like Forty Seven Ninjas.6982:

Just make it so they appear after any attack during stealth. Boom, problem solved, bad thieves super suck now, good thieves are still good.

I have a thief, I play said thief, I think it’s stupid that I get free chances at my backstabs as even if they are evaded or blocked. Makes 0 sense.

I completely agree with this, what’s super ridiculous is that even if I backstab into a block or an aegis I still don’t break stealth, so i can break a guardian’s aegis and backstab inmediately, or with something like a shield block I can just carry on spamming 1 until the block is down without losing anything. That doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t promote skill.

solarisnox.8521:

I actually want to thank you guys, Craig and Jakare…I still feel that stealth is an insanely overpowered ability…and that larcenous strike is even more insanely overpowered…BUT…I am taking your posts to heart, and will start leveling my thief, and keeping these points in mind the next time I fight one in wvw…assuming I catch one alone…they seem to run in packs now, and then again there is always the Thieves Guild elite ability…actually, how would you suggest one counter that?
I’ve beaten a few thieves in wvw, (less than 1% of the total I’ve fought against), and if they don’t have thieves guild I can sometimes win, assuming they don’t kill me outright with basilisk venom…but if they do have thieves guild, it’s pretty much game over.

so, while I greatly appreciate your posts on how to counter thieves, how would you suggest countering these two aspects? basilisk venom and theives guild?

Basilisk venom was made into a basic ‘stun’, so any stun breaker will break it. You just have to be quick. Thieves will use basilisk venom to either stop you running away or as an opener to make sure their next attacks connects. Usually it’s used as an opener. It takes about 1-2 secs to activate, there’s an animation of raising one hand up, so it should be easy to spot if the thief is running at you. However good thieves will try to activate it in stealth to hide the animation. You should also pay attention to their list of boons, it will show up as a green and black symbol next to their name when it’s activated. It lasts only one hit, but will stay activated for around 30 secs if they haven’t landed a hit on you yet.

Thieves guild spawns two thief NPCs, one will use dual pistol ranged attacks with blinds, and the other will use dagger/dagger melee attacks and has a scorpion wire pull. The pull can be deadly as it will be an interrupt and a knockdown, and you’ll be in range of the players attacks. The best way to deal with this skill is to stay out of range. Outside of 900 range none of their attacks will land. Also the NPC thieves will follow the player around, so it can be useful to pay attention to where they are if the player has stealthed, they will always be next to or close to the player.

If you can’t get out of close combat, try and use any projectile reflect/absorb skills that you have. The skill has a long cool down, something like 240 secs, and the NPC thieves will despawn after about 45-60 seconds, or if you kill them, similar to Mesmer clones. They don’t have much health.

Sarrow.2785:

You know, I’ve been playing S/D for consecutive months now and I didn’t realise until yesterday that the sword stealth attack dazed and blinded on hit, making a S/D stealth blind/daze build particularly strong also.

It does one or the other depending on if you hit from the front (blinds) or the side/back (dazes). If you take the blind on stealth trait though, combined with either a superior sigil of paralysation or mesmer runes to enhance the daze duration, you can pretty much keep up a chain of blind from CnD, daze from tactical strike, auto attack until revealed is finished (while the stun is still in effect on the enemy), CnD again, Tac strike. They won’t have much of a window to counterattack, unless they’re quick on using a stun break.

KTDannyCZ.2910:

Today in WvW… and Introducing the real cinnamon..

You have girlish handwriting.

Here are some things I’ve noticed in 600+ hours as a thief.

This is a long response, apologies but I wanted to be detailed. Skip over if you’re not interested in learning about thief mechanics.

People often think they have to use all their resources avoiding the backstab when facing a d/x thief, as they think this will give them an opening. It won’t. If I miss a backstab I lose nothing. When I come out of stealth without attacking, I get no revealed penalty and can go straight back into stealth immediately. A thief is most vulnerable when they are low on initiative.

I play a d/d thief, so rely on one melee attack to enter stealth. Because of this play style, I often have to use my shadowstep utilities like steal or infiltrators signet to make sure my cloak and dagger will connect. This is a double edged sword, as it forces me to use my defensive utilities offensively, giving me less chance of getting out of danger if I find myself in trouble.

The animation for the cloak and dagger attack takes about 1 second to complete, and can be spotted if you know what it looks like. If I miss my cloak and dagger, whether through someone dodging, having aegis, blinding me, going invulnerable, blocking or whatever, I lose half my initiative. If I miss it a SECOND time, I’m down to almost no initiative. That means I have to now rely on my utilities to stay alive, presuming that I haven’t already used them to initiate an attack on an opponent. If I’m using my utilities to escape/dodge your attacks, I have no way to counterattack. If I have no initiative, I have no on demand stealth. If you can cc me at this point, I have no way of escaping.

I don’t play d/p much anymore, but two things I’ve noticed when fighting them:

1. The best way to stop the thief from stealth stacking (doing repeated heartseekers inside the black powder circle) is to stand inside of their blcak powder (the red circle of smoke that blinds you). Most d/p thieves will use 2-3 heart seekers inside a black powder to get maximum benefit from it (5-6 secs of stealth), and because each time they successfully stealth they regenerate 2 initiative, minimising the cost of heart seeker and maximising the benefit. So if you’re standing inside the black powder field they will either:

- hit you on the second heart seeker and be revealed, stopping them from reapplying stealth for 3 secs and forcing them to restart the combo.

- be forced to not do a second heart seeker. If this is the case they will only have done 1 heartseeker, gained about 2 seconds of stealth, and will be down to about 2-3 initiative. The thief now has to reset the combo. This is expensive in terms of initiative, as black powder costs 6 initiative (half of their total) and heart seeker costs 3. They only regenerate initiative if they successfully stealth, so by standing inside the black powder you are forcing them to either hit you and break stealth, or move away and try and reset the combo.

If the thief is low on initiative and not able to stack stealth, they will try to stay INSIDE of the black powder circle and get you to fight in it. This leads to my second point.

2. you CAN still hit thieves when they’re standing inside their black powder circle, but it takes some positioning. Fast hitting attacks such as a frenzied hundred blades will be hitting faster than the blinds are applied so around half the hits will connect. However because your melee range is actually larger than the radius of the blind field, if you are outside the circle and positioned very close to the edge of it, you will be able to hit them with melee attacks without being blinded at all when they’re standing inside it. Make sure to clear any blinds by auto attacking before attempting a cc move though.

ALSO, any attack that is initiated OUTSIDE of the blind field will not be affected by the blind, even if you enter the blind field during the attack. One example is a leap attack, if you leap into the blind field, with something like a warrior’s bulls rush or guardian’s leap of faith the attack will still connect.

Kaos.9162:

Kudos to BS for chasing me 3/4 of the way around the map going clockwise, then finally 4v1’ing me and jumping on my corpse.

You seem to have perfected the art of running away, kudos to you. I decided to follow you just for the challenge of keeping up with you, not sure why you’d make an entire build focused on running away but whatever you find fun I guess.

I fraps’d the whole chase, the only time you decided to fight was when it was just me on you, then after a couple of mins you ran again.

Agreeing with Xom here.

Arroneous, you for one know how important group structure is to 5man duels, you’ve said before when I’ve asked where you guys have been that you don’t like to roam when you’re down a man, or if your group comp isn’t at 100% strength. Which is fine, but giving us stick for not fighting you guys when one of our team is too tired, and telling us to ‘go pick up a random or something’ is just dumb.

We’ve tried fighting paxa without coordination, first week I came to ET we jumped into some 5man duels with paxa, and we got wiped, a lot. If you want a good fight out of us, let us get our team comp to full strength, otherwise it’s not fun for either of us.

Miller time, your Mesmer hits like a ton of bricks. I ain’t even mad that you wiped the floor with me 3-4 times, they were some of the best duels I’ve had. Your sword phantasms were hitting harder than my backstab!

If you’re primarily in WvW, and you like using withdraw as your heal, I’d recommend centaur runes – AoE swiftness for 10 secs on heal. With the 20% increased swift duration from the runes, 10% boon duration from traits and 2 secs of swift on dodge, it allows you to get perma swiftness, still provides 165 power, and means you don’t have to run signet of shadows for movement speed, freeing up a utility slot.

To the FC thief with double incin’s, brown hair, human female, messy bob hairstyle that 99% of human females have?

I’m sure you felt smug after your basilisk backstab put an end to my zerg surfing, but vomming on my corpse was a bit much

so… any fight night happening? or is that tomorrow?

Sanny.1270:

burst in general needs to be toned down in WvW. every class has the ability to 1 – 3 hit when they go full glass. it doesn’t matter how much toughness you have, if its not being stacked with Protection you are still going to be hit hard.

Lol Sanny, I was about to reply to this post with a link to one of your vids

Agree with what you said. In your most recent vid I think you did 14k-15k damage in 2 hits to a level 80 thief, that’s the equivalent of a glass thief cloak and dagger backstab combo. Almost every class has some equivalent if they spec fully for damage.

Thieves aren’t overpowered in this game, spike damage in general is.

Watch some videos on YouTube of Yishis on blackgate server. He’s one of the most widely renowned WvW thieves at the moment, all his vids are outmanned fights.

atomicjellybean.5389:

Why don’t you get a decent wvw population then? Lol

HURR HURR WHY U NO GET MOAR NUMBERZ??? MOARRR NUMBERZ = MOARRR SKILLZ!!1!1!

Guess what kitten face! You’re in the LOWEST TIER. What skill do you think your WvW population possesses, if it can’t get out of the ditch tier with twice our numbers??

Go clean your arrow carts, there’s some white sticky stuff on them.

KTDannyCZ.2910:

Xom.9264:

You say “our pug zerg lol” as if that’s a handicap when there is clearly VLK and other tags from guilds known to be solid players in the screen shot.

I think hes talking about me I miss cinnamon

Christ man, are you seriously manning an arrow cart a couple of meters from a fight? Do you have literally no shame? You may as well run a botting script to spam 1 and log off, it’d probably do a better job than you.

Seriously this kitten depresses me.

So is the idea of a small man groups tier essentially dead now?

WvW down ‘while matches are being updated’ last I checked. Same with anyone else?

Parktou.4263:

Seriously though folks, if you come across a roamer and you just can’t kill them, so you decide to run into the tower, then that’s fine, but don’t hop on the cannon/AC and start spamming abilities to try and kill them. All it shows is that you don’t belong in a PvP enviornment, just escape and then move on to regroup with your zerg. I especially hate it when I’m fighting someone and his idiot servermate hops on the cannon and starts spamming it on our fight…..have a little decency, some of us prefer roaming and dueling, if you don’t then just move on and go about your business.

You’ve just gotta remember the 5 d’s of WvW. Dodge, dip, duck dive and dodge!

I’ve ran with you a few times man, you’re a good thief, but if you want 1v1 “fair” duels then you’re fresh out of luck. Being on the smallest of the 3 servers just exacerbates the situation.

WvW fights are chaotic, unfair, and rarely if ever going to be in your favour. Luckily, thief is one of the classes that excels at 1v1 combat, and can have a lot of control over engaging and disengaging at will. If you’re in danger of losing a fight, just back off and let them come to you. It’s what everyone else (GoM) does if they’re losing the fight.

The thing that separates the really good players from the average players in WvW is the ability to win despite the circumstances. Think about it, would you rather win a 1v1 under fair conditions, or win when you’re under siege fire, with NPC guards on your ass, and GoM under levelled pugs ready to jump down from their tower at any point to stomp your kitten if you go down? You win with all that kitten going on around you and people know your someone worth their salt.

Just switch out that spider venom you always run for signet of agility, learn the timing and get used to dodging. Think of it like obstacle course training.

Hit me up anytime you want to roam.

Pooka.3420:

BTW.. Dont go to Fight Club here.. KING is downing people w/o reason. BS watches.. so its like a small group of people that are allowed to have fun.. You’d think ET would be more welcoming since there server is so light on people.

I like fight nights, and I hope they continue, but there’s a lot of ego being thrown around when guilds turn up in clusters, and BS isn’t going to try and police people. Not sure who the guardian in white TA armor was that decided to spam laugh at me and knock my sylvari warr off the hill when I’m watching fights, but good going man, you’re clearly a pro.

Also apologies to the ranger that I fought when I was on my thief, my lag started going off the rails so I had to resort to kiting you around with my shortbow as none of my dagger pistol combos were happening. I eventually went back up to the ramp and emoted /sleep as it wasn’t a very interesting fight for either of us.

Real fun trying to make a push against this tonight… with no outmanned buff (??)… in our spawn point. Yeah. And then get our corpses laughed on. Also EB is green. All of it. It’s all green.

Npac.3476:

@ The BS thieves

You guys are like the god kitten wind.

Why won’t you just stay still?!

Great fights men!

Reposting my comment as I’ve just seen your signature of Paxa guild leader.

Hey, I was one of the Basic thieves in the group fights we had earlier. I moved from Tier 1 a couple of days ago and WvW so far has been awesome in comparison. Wanted to give props to Paxa as you guys obviously have great team coordination, would be fun to duel in smaller groups or 1v1 and see how your individual player skills hold up. Maybe on thursday night as I hear that’s fight club night.

Jscull.2514:

@[BS],

Thanks for being best competition weve seen in a couple months. I don’t know if you guys have checked out our thread to get small mans to tier8, but would be awesome to have your support to get some guilds here, so that what we did tonight could happen regularly in all BL’s without setting it up.

Hey, I was one of the Basic thieves in the group fights we had earlier. I moved from Tier 1 a couple of days ago and WvW so far has been awesome in comparison. Wanted to give props to Paxa as you guys obviously have great team coordination, would be fun to duel in smaller groups or 1v1 and see how your individual player skills hold up. Maybe on thursday night as I hear that’s fight club night.

Shemsu.8721:

If it is not broke, do not fix it. works great, IS is not designed to be a spamable gap closer. Its designed for in and out mobility and it serves this purpose wonderfully

This is what I mean, I think it’s TOO effective as of right now, because there’s no other ability aside from maybe a Mesmer’s portal, that can give you such a huge retreat option, especially when combined with stealthing. It’s also a very low initiative cost for what it provides.

I think it would still be effective as a retreat option if it’s range was limited to 900/1200.

I’ve been running my thief with either sword/pistol or sword/dagger as my main weapon set in WvW for a while, and as annoying as it is sometimes to teleport 50metres away instead of teleport to my target because I forgot that I was in the second phase of sword skill 2, it’s nevertheless saved my kitten a number of times.

As far as I know, the distance on the second phase to the skill, shadow’s return, has been broken since release, in that so long as you use it within ten seconds it will teleport you back to the original position regardless of distance.

Will this/should this be changed? Or will it affect sword/x thief gameplay heavily?