Guild Wars 2

Sarnax.8357:

Assuming I go full Condi with D/D and SB, does anyone have a good solo PVE build?

Thanks for the responses thus far!

The build I posted earlier can solo champs pretty well, I’d change it to this if I wanted D/D tho;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZUQNAoYVn8lCFOhlOBOPB0zhFqiaO77+wvLBCgDw7CShtD-T1hHQB0T9n3t/gAV+JO9BB4JAURlgA4UAEAABgZOzycmJEgi1A-w

The basic rotation is to dodge like a loon. Save your ini when on bow, only put down one poison field and dodge through it for the poison stacks. Try to save your signet for when you’re on bow, and remember that weapon swap and steal will both give you back a dodge so don’t use them on full endurance. When on daggers, save your endurance and use 3 more, and remember it’s a whirl finisher like your dodge so it works the same way with poison fields. If you do it properly, you’ll be able to stack condis and dodge pretty much constantly. You can use bandit’s defense instead of caltrops against stun heavy encounters, and take root works better than daggerstorm against bosses.

If money is a problem, full dire also works fine. Runes of the rata sum might be worth a look if you’re not asura, the poison field from that with your whirl finishers will work well and the runes are dirt cheap to boot.

Crinn.7864:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Crinn.7864:

I have a bigger issue with Bandit’s Defense

15sec cd stunbreak that is also a block. 15sec cd stunbreak

Unfortunately it became necessary to have that when warriors got headbutt on top of their normal mace shield stun rotation.

I would have thought that all the evades thieves had now could have handled that.

Not every thief runs acro bound. Yes, there are enough evades to deal with it, but to get them you make yourself basically useless at your role in pvp.

Crinn.7864:

I have a bigger issue with Bandit’s Defense

15sec cd stunbreak that is also a block. 15sec cd stunbreak

Unfortunately it became necessary to have that when warriors got headbutt on top of their normal mace shield stun rotation.

Yeah…. Before complaining about something, you might want to read up on what it actually does first.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZUQNAqYVn8lCtNhlOB+NB0zhFZCTbPNFCAzdwQYK0bLMG+QA-TlyCQBI7IAcQVEQpSwH8AAAwJAoe6Dqoyvwt/gnUvZCHCgAAIAGv4FPxLem5Mn5MnZCBoYNA-w

This is my shortbow P/D condi build, it’s probably my main roaming build atm as it deal with a lot of the cheese on other classes. It’s nothing too fancy, basic idea is to use traps to set up sneak attacks and immob people in caltrops and poison fields. P/D is all about kiting, where sb is more of a chase set here, it provides excellent mobility and it’s amazing to see people die in 4-5 ticks when you get enough poison on them.

Shortbow is still a pretty good swap for power because of infiltrator’s arrow, but honestly the staff D/P acro build is way more potent if you don’t need to worry about being the fastest person in the field.

When trapper runes were introduced, thief traps had a small amount of physical damage and would reveal you when used because of it. Anet specifically changed traps to not reveal you when used to make the runes worth using – they aren’t going to change it back! It’s intended behaviour people!

As many have said, D/P is the reason ghost thief exists. I have a P/D trapper thief build I’m rather fond of, DA Trickery DD, it can’t and doesn’t need to permanently stealth. It just uses the traps for an opportunity to sneak attack, as well as a ranged spike when used with Steal. If I wanted to permastealth, I’d take perplexity runes, D/P and SA, trapper runes aren’t needed nor are they optimal for that build.

By all means nerf ghost thief, just don’t nerf trapper thief into the floor in a way that won’t actually affect ghost thief in the first place. D/P is the problem, so while the op’s suggestion is probably too far he’s at least looking in the right direction.

Poelala.2830:

Cynz.9437:

Poelala.2830:

Thief, on the other hand, has no classes that counter it in the sense that it can kill a thief consistently and in a reasonable time (like Druid countering DH, or DH countering Mesmer)….

You lost me there.

Why are you spreading misinformation?

DH can basically one shot thief, scrapper can kill thief while being semi-afk, war can kill thief with 1 timed stun.

I can tell you why ele dps will never see love: it is support class. Period. You know what happens when you buff dps side of support class? Look at bandwagon of DHs atm or celestial eles from before HoT. It is imbalanced and just broken.

Thief only dies to scrapper or DH because he lets himself die. If you are +1ing a scrapper, run away. If a DH has locked onto you, dodge. Now this is what a true counter is. If you, as a necro, see a ranger, you can’t run. Accept your death. If you as a DH see a ranger, same thing. If you as a Revenant see a mesmer, it’s gg. Thief is the most mobile class in the game, the only time a thief dies is at the fault of himself.

Running away isn’t the same as winning, especially in a conquest game. If the thief has to stay and fight to keep the node, odds are a warrior, engi or DH will decap and force that thief off node, if not kill it outright. Sure, they can’t catch a thief if they decide to run, but it would be stupidly op if any of those classes could outrun a thief. Do you really want a bunker with Thief mobility?

More on topic though, I have no issue with currently non meta builds becoming thief hunters (although I’d argue we have enough already), provided it’s not a meta build that gets this buff and that this new build is still weak against at least one meta build currently in play. Balance, not dominance.

P/P trapper (with might on trap use and possibly trapper runes), bound and earth/strength/frailty sigils could work if you played it right. You’d probably need DA, SA/trickery and DD to make it work though.

Edit: that said, assassin’s reward/pain response and acro with good healing power and a low health pool could be better than SA.

Turk.5460:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

It feels longer than 1s as the cooldown only starts after backstab’s aftercast, which is pretty lengthy. So if you 5>2>3>1 and miss the backstab, a build without SA will likely not be able to recast before stealth expires.

SA would have no bearing on this, as the stealth duration trait Meld With Shadows doesn’t affect smoke field combos. Just FYI to those who may have wondered at some point but never remember to check up on it.

That’s a good point actually. It’s been so long since I’ve played SA in a build, sorry for the misinformation.

It feels longer than 1s as the cooldown only starts after backstab’s aftercast, which is pretty lengthy. So if you 5>2>3>1 and miss the backstab, a build without SA will likely not be able to recast before stealth expires.

Rizigmar.2681:

If you really want to cut down and balance thief appropriately, we can keep Shadowstep where it is but what really needs to happen are these changes.

Agility Signet – Raise the CD from 30s to 45 seconds (Utility)

Endurance Thief – Only grants 25 Endurance instead of 50.(Daredevil)

Hard to Catch – Reduce endurance restored from 100% to 50% (Acrobatics)

Channeled Vigor – Reduce the pulses from 3 to 2. Increase the Healing for full endurance to 9320, and not full endurance to 7520.

Dash – Buff the damage reduction to 25% for both direct damage and condition damage, increase the duration from 4 to 5 seconds. Add a ICD of 3s to impairment removal trait.

Pulmonary Impact – Add a 3s ICD to this trait.

Driven Fortitude – Buff base healing from 456 to 856.

I would be fine with most of this tbh, although it would make channeled vigor far and away the best heal for thief. This is assuming that other classes (and particularly the random AoE spam) continue to get slight nerfs as well, so everything comes down at pretty much the same speed.

Sigmoid.7082:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Also, define too much. Necro shroud when traited can corrupt boons, apply condis, give boons to yourself, prevent downed allies bleeding out and stunbreak while shielding your health from further damage and giving access to powerful CC, should I say that does too much for a single skill and demand a nerf too?

Just going to chime on the inaccuracies in bold. That trait is not shroud specific. Also you are comparing shroud, a class mechanic, to a utility skill. Everything you mentioned is better compared to traited steal. You have steal specific traits in deadly arts, shadow arts, acrobatics and then the whole trickery line , being a class mechanic line, is steal centric. Same as necro has shroud specific traits in most traitlines.

Ah, fair play. It’s been a while since I logged on necro, so sorry for the inaccuracies. I guess that my general point was that just because a skill/mechanic does many things doesn’t mean it needs to be nerfed, is all. Considering only one thing in a vacuum, you could make almost anything sound OP.

Daishi.6027:

The utility skill Shadow Step is fine.

IMO. Infiltrator’s signet, Infiltrators Strike, Steal, Judge’s Intervention, Symbol of Blades, and I’d even argue Illusionary Leap (which at least has a tell) should all require Line of sight.

Pretty sure that most of these skills do require line of sight, but that may not be true in sPvP, I know porting onto mid at clocktower was intentionally left this way when the no valid path check was introduced and ports as a whole were looked at. At least, the amount of times I’ve not been able to steal to an enemy because they/I was behind a pillar would suggest that. Might be wrong though.

Lordrosicky.5813:

It is strong because it does too much. This isnt up for debate.

Also stun breaking is strong in itself. To stun break and teleport 1200 gets you out of any follow up, it is totally broken

Well, it is up for debate evidently. You have your opinion that it does too much, other players have theirs that it does what the class needs to survive. Both viewpoints are valid.

Also, define too much. Necro shroud when traited can corrupt boons, apply condis, give boons to yourself, prevent downed allies bleeding out and stunbreak while shielding your health from further damage and giving access to powerful CC, should I say that does too much for a single skill and demand a nerf too?

Power thief is meant to counter necro, just like guardian is meant to counter thief. Best just to get used to these things.

I have a similar issue with S/D 3 going off multiple times from a single press if the hit was avoided. There’s a couple of things you can do;

Record your play, see if you’re double tapping. If you have overwolf installed, there’s a mod that let’s you play back and record the last 30 seconds complete with key presses highlighted. It might not be random muscle memory making you double tap, but it never hurts to rule this out first.

The second thing to do is to bind the stow weapons function to something easily reachable (mine is on a mouse button). Get in the habit of pressing it after a skill has gone off.

I also found that double tap issues on shroud and rev facets etc were better when I got a mechanical keyboard and replaced my mouse. It might be your hardware needs a clean or replacing.

Hope that helps

I tend to run S/P with draining and absorption sigils as an offhand to staff in WvW; S/P works well with Acro/bound builds anyways, and between the sigils and bountiful theft I then have a reliable way to strip protection off of druid and ele roamers which greatly aids in killing them. It also extends your engage capabilities to 3k units (shadowstep>sword 2>steal) and gives you stealth access with bound for defense and the staff knockdown.

Sure, D/P probably does better, but I find most stuff that avoids staff is usually vulnerable to a stunlock chain if you strip protection and stab first.

Well, the no1 EU in that picture has won 345 games and lost 68 so that’s 413 games played total. Assuming 8-9 minute matches, that’s 3304 to 3717 minutes which is 55.06 to 61.95 hours total over the season.

The season has been open for 39 days, so assuming he plays every single day that’s 1.41 to 1.58 hours in pvp per day, not counting queues and ready up time. I’d hardly call that afk.

OriOri.8724:

Cynz.9437:

Sigmoid.7082:

Cynz.9437:

Sigmoid.7082:

Just want to chime in again to those combating those who say PI does not do a lot of damage, namely in a reply to this:

Cynz.9437:

Unholey.3264:

Cynz.9437:

- 3 Pi for 12k ? It is 4k PI per proc, it usually hits for 3k on a good day, please post screenshot of that death log.

Just happened to see you say this while skimming over this thread. This was back during season 3. Not saying anything one way or the other, just providing some evidence.

I see mesmer and ele helping him. He probably also runs executioner. I am assuming you had crapload of vulnerability on you and thief had might stacks thank to mes/ele’s overload. PI is OP because ele and mes are helping the thief? Good joke.

According to the wiki PI has an approx coefficient of 3.28. Though it cannot crit its still amongst one of the highest ( around eviserate and killshot rank 3). Because of damage modifiers from thief traits in the meta build it goes to a range of 3.25~4.44 without vulnerability.

With a base of 2225 power, e.g. no might, and no extra toughness from amulets or runes and no protection you are looking at 3753~5127 on a scholar class or 3176~4339 on a solider. These numbers increase with might , vulnerability and if they take executioner over improvisation. They also go down with higher armour and protection but even on a solider class with a 560 toughness amulet, 2727 armour, you are still looking at just over 2.3k with protection to around 3.5k damage without.

Skill has a theoretical max of around 11k but the build for that is yolo and unviable.

So on average it is 3k, not 5k as some claim here. Thanks for proving my point.

I forgot to edit my post as i didnt factor in that runes of the scholar is another 10%. You need to add another 10% to those damage ranges. So its more like 4.1k~5.6k on scholars and 3.5k~4.8k on soliders.

Actually its average is closer to 4k+ which is what people have been saying. Armour wise a scholar class with 560 toughness is very close to a solider class without any at all.

So I have proved their not yours.

Do you know how often thief is above 90% in fights when he comes to the point of using hs lol?

More so, you are implying IP is broken because thief invests into damage instead of picking more survival? Should i remind you on things like DH traps, that deal more than IP damage to EVERYONE, not a single target like IP. Same goes for necro marks etc. Sry but in grand picture 3k single target damage dealt by glass canon is hardly broken.

Oh look, a thief main desperately trying to deflect again. This is a thread about thieves, not about DH and their traps

Yes, the thread is about thieves. But considering you’re arguing thief (or part of it’s kit) is OP, you need to consider and argue the balance across all classes and the skills each have. Or were you saying thief is OP compared to llamas?

Otherwise, what you’re saying is you’re fine being beaten by X class with Y skill, but not by a thief. In which case the argument is over because you have no point.

This isn’t far off my duelling build, only I run absorption and draining sigils for WvW. You trade the easier burst of D/P for more survivability but opponents with stab will counter you far easier, especially when you give up bountiful theft.

It’s got the same downsides as the acro staff build tho: better duelling capacity at the cost of less mobility than dash, and still gets eaten alive by a meta D/P thief of equal skill due to the longer casts on sword giving more interrupt chances.

It’s a fun build, but I’d say it would fare better in WvW duelling than in sPvP.

I have a mix of marauder and valkyrie for power, with dire and trailblazer for condi. In either case I’d consider 17-18k health a minimum, I have 21k on both builds because I pretty much don’t lose anything by doing so.

I love the idea of viper thief, and it had some potential with carrion trinkets to round out the health, but it had lower condi damage than I’d like due to not having high vit/toughness to scale the food & crystals with, and while the power damage was something it wasn’t significant enough imo (2k on a sneak attack with P/D, dependant on crits). Maybe if a new weapon is introduced with better physical damage but still using condis it would work better, but right now you’re gimping yourself by not taking dire with trailblazer thrown in for duration, it’s that good.

I assumed it was intentional as it’s way easier to get than normal ascended. It’s taken me around 70 games to get 4-5 pieces, which considering I was gonna do that anyways is pretty good value.

Some confirmation would be nice tho.

Zintrothen.1056:

My problem with Thief isn’t so much that they can nearly spam a ranged daze (not to say that that isn’t OP as hell against professions with little stability), but it’s their OP AA damage (which can be dropped now for PvP’s sake and kept up for PvE’s sake, now that they’re splitting skills) and Shadow shot’s damage. Shadows hot is one of those skills that does a lot for one skill. It teleports, it’s ranged, it’s cheap, and it hits insanely hard when combined with a quick AA burst.

My suggestions for D/P nerfs are:

- Lower AA damage in PvP only.
- Slash Shadow shot damage significantly
- Increase Headshot initiative by 1.

While I don’t have a problem with most of this, the issue is that doing this will nerf core thief for the sake of a HoT trait, which isn’t on. The majority of thieves at the time thought the AA buffs were over the top, and honestly yes, shadow shot does a lot, but compared to some of the other classes’ HoT power creep it’s pretty tame tbh. Nerf sustain and damage across the board and then we can talk about nerfs to thief.

Zintrothen.1056:

And now, to help make up for the drop in damage:

- Make extra initiative gain from Trickery baseline. Move initiative spent damage increase to replace it. Lead Attacks does too much for a minor trait.

So you want to swap lead attacks, a minor trait, with either preparedness or kleptomaniac (depending on your definition of initiative gain), also minor traits? OK then.

Zintrothen.1056:

- Move boon steal with Steal to a GM other than Sleight of Hand.

Not being able to interrupt through stab destroys the point of taking the boon steal. This is a flat out nerf, not a buff.

Zintrothen.1056:

- Make 20% Steal CD reduction from Sleight of Hand baseline. Keep Trickery based Steal reduction.

There has been no Trickery based Steal reduction since the spec patch. So this change is rather pointless on its own.

Zintrothen.1056:

- Make some changes to improve Critical Strikes line.

Good in theory, but honestly, what can you add to a line this specialised? No sarcasm, I just don’t know how to improve it personally. Give us some examples.

Zintrothen.1056:

- Add a Stealth Attack damage bonus to Shadow Arts. Why is there no trait that boosts Stealth Attack damage? Critical Strikes has a critical strike increase for those attacks, but that’s a plain damage boost.

Shadow Arts use to grant might while in stealth, and while a damage boost to sneak attacks would not promote passive play in the same way as that trait did, it’s still contrary to the design of the spec and to your intention of forcing thieves to have to trait for more damage over Trickery.

Besides, do you really want one shot thieves to have the utility of Shadow Arts? I didn’t think so.

Zintrothen.1056:

With a damage reduction to weapon skills, Thieves will need to get that damage back through traits and sacrificing the Trickery line, which is impossible to sacrifice right now because it’s far too powerful.

Or, instead of boosting damage, they could boost some other utilities or change some weapon skills to be more defensive and allow Thieves to work better in team fights and be able to do a different role. Who knows if that’s at all possible though at this point.

You just straight up nerfed the Trickery line into the floor to try to promote either critical strikes, which you have made no suggestions on how to improve, or shadow arts, a line that should be taken at the cost of damage. On top of that, your suggestions make it clear you don’t fully understand thief mechanics. This sort of clueless balancing is why were in the state we are, so no thank you.

I’m in gold so can only speak for that tbh, and for context, I take shortbow as a secondary whatever my main hand.

Staff works wonders in lower ranks, (silver specifically) especially when the other team is stacked with Reapers and DH and has no thief. It’s carried me back up in rank a couple of times after a loss streak. If your team can’t quite hold the teamfight to give you chance to decap and +1, being able to take out these classes on mid then decap when you have the numbers advantage works really well.

That said, a good meta D/P thief can achieve the same and more just simply because it has good stealth access and mobility. If you take staff you sacrifice one of those for your teamfight potential. If the enemy team has a D/P thief and a mesmer, odds are you’ll find yourself outrotated regardless and your teamfight would have been better covered by a scrapper bunkering a point than a staff thief.

NuhDah.9812:

rennlc.7346:

If you shadow return while dodging, you’ll activate the marks/traps and make them miss.

Nice tip, thanks.

This works offensively as well, so if you’re stealing onto a DH that you know is running traps.

Alternatively, you can move out of the 1200 range of shadow return before activating the return part. This will mean you’ll move 1200 back towards the return point but not actually be there, so you won’t trigger the marks etc. This works better in WvW where you have space and open areas.

Do you really need daredevil runes when your crit chance is 80% on staff and 90% on D/P anyway?

This sort of post is why I made a sentinel thief build. If I kill you, it is entirely a L2P issue.

Most thieves have egos, which I guess is why they play the class in the first place. That’s why I love linking my sentinel gear when I kill someone on my troll thief, and just watch them rage at it. Nothing makes people rage like being killed by a fat norn staff thief lol

Urejt.5648:

cool concept for unranked games. I dont thinks its good to waste healing skill on procing the trap.

You don’t have to waste your heal actually. Having plex or torment runes with geomancy sigils on both sets means you can use the DD heal, immediately steal then swap weapons then dodge for caltrops for one heck of a condi burst.

If you’re quick enough, the heal goes on a 4s cooldown only and you get confusion, poison and weakness from steal, more confusion or torment from the heal proc, bleed from the geomancy sigil plus a needle trap that’s practically guaranteed to hit with caltrops on top. Spam a few poison fields or pistol autos and you’ve got a 4-5k tick easy. I use trapper runes atm as I’m P/D with shortbow on my condi build but even without the extra confusion it’s a nasty spike.

Grebcol.5984:

Question: Wouldn’t be a keybind on mousepad named “M1,M2,M3 so on” ?

The guild wars client allows the same hotkey ti be bound to multiple buttons, I have my F2 bound to both a mouse thumb button and the c key as depending on the class I play and whether I have my mmo mouse handy I use different keys etc.

In this case, my F2 shows up as c in game as that’s the key in the first bind slot. My mouse allows my thumb button to he bound to keys such as / ( and : and it just looks prettier to have a letter than a random piece of punctuation on the toolbar.

I’ve been playing the standard power build, been doing OK with it thus far. I duo que’d with a friend for a bit, we both play thief, I play rev and he plays mesmer and ele, so between those classes we can deal with most comps. Rev I’m finding generally more useful than thief atm, but many of my matches have had anything up to 5 DH across the teams so I pressure the DH in the teamfights and contest points while he decaps and ganks. I’m only in gold though, so I’m not exactly pro haha

Condi warrior can be a pain, but most other things are going to go down to a rev and a thief/mesmer +1’ing. My main issues have been with idiot teammates really, we had one match where a druid rushed far and died almost immediately, with a staff ele and DH standing off point to pew pew at mid leaving me on rev and my friend on thief to contest the point. Not much is going to help there lol.

Shortbow already hits for 1.5-2k depending on glassy targets, and I don’t play super glassy at that. Increasing the damage by 100% would mean hits up to 6k hits against glass targets when adding air/fire sigils, which would be crazy OP for a 900 range weapon’s auto attack.

Similar logic, my pistol whip can hit 12-14k with an interrupt, is a stun, and a thief can easily build for 15s of quickness. If you can’t see how that would be ludicrously OP with 30 ini then we can pretty much end the thread right there.

Yup, it’s always been last on first out. If you want condi cleanse you should really be running some combination of traited withdraw, pain response, agility signet and shadowstep anyways, and that’s ignoring Shadows embrace, escapist’s absolution, the food that cleanses on heal and generosity/purity sigils. Thief isn’t lacking in cleanses these days.

I still hope they introduce more unique weapons instead of increasing access to stuff already in the game. I’d love to play a whip spec that uses skills to pull the enemy and throw them around, that with traps would be a lot of fun if done right. Anything really, as long as it feels different to what’s already here or fills a role we don’t already have.

Anything that doesn’t just clone something we already have like feline grace/daredevil and sword dagger/staff clone spec will do.

I pretty much went full zerk because why not haha, this is my stuff for comparison.

I haven’t been playing rev long, but that build looks pretty solid numbers wise. My only concerns would be, do you really need that much boon duration and toughness, and is your ferocity a bit low which would offset the greater might stacks you’d get?

Most of your boons don’t stack in magnitude remember, only might does (you can take a strength sigil instead of energy if you want more might), and on my build with 35% boon duration it’s not difficult to keep fury, swiftness and protection permanently on your party. You gain fury when you swap legend thanks to invocation and you’ll be swapping frequently to proc equilibrium and for energy management (legend swap feels more like ele attunements than thief offhand weapons, you’ll almost never want to camp a legend), so if you save your F2 for when you’re in shiro you’ll never have to worry about boons in combat really.

You also don’t need an energy sigil on both weapon sets, as swapping legend can proc the sigils of the currently equipped weapon set, and energy sigils have a 9s ICD. So waiting 1s after your swap is ready, then swapping legend half a second before swapping weapon will proc the energy sigil (and any other on swap sigils) regardless of which weapon set you have it on, and having two won’t proc it twice because of the ICD. So you’re better off having 4 different on swap sigils across your weapons. Also remember that shiro’s stunbreak will regen 25% endurance per use, and that both sets have build in evades and blocks, so while an energy sigil is very nice, if you’re going for tanky stats you might not need it as much as you think.

This might be a more middle of the road build: between the strength sigil, the might from unrelenting assault and the food you’ll be on high might stacks constantly, if not max stacks, and you have more ferocity so your attacks hit harder. You’d also have 45% boon duration base, 33% after swapping weapons and 25% from the F2 = 103% total, and you’d still have 214% crit damage so your damage wouldn’t suffer.

Hope that helps somewhat ^^

As Ario said, the issue is more with lag than high ping, so as long as your ping is somewhat stead you should be able to find something you can play.

That said, thief is a glass cannon at heart, so don’t expect it to be a picnic if you have some ping issues.

Thief is like marmite: great in the places it should be, beyond terrible in places it shouldn’t. If you don’t like the flavour, stop trying to put marmite in your corn flakes.

I’ll just list the few random things that helped me most, since I learned rev recently as a thief main myself. Some of it might be obvious, but it was all important:

*Avoid condi like the plague, or play with an ele friend or something else heal/cleanse specced. In particular, condi mesmer will have a field day with you unless you block literally everything and dodge both moas, and confusion will rip you a new one if you use unrelenting assault with 5+ stacks on you.

*Land equilibrium. It’s so, so important for your damage to land this.

*Swapping legend at the same time as weapon makes it much easier to manage energy and cooldowns while landing swap damage in the beginning. Try to run short with sword/x and herald with staff, then one you’re comfortable with that you can stagger the swaps to get access to the alternate combo if needed.

*If you run 4 on swap sigils (I run cleansing, energy on sword/shield, hydromancy and leeching on staff) you can press the swap legend a fraction of a second before swap weapon to proc all 4 effects every 10 seconds.

*You’re gonna get killed a lot more solo than a thief would, but in a small group you’re much more resilient. Get used to this haha

Coronit.9432:

Rome.3192:

I don’t see what the point of this whole argument is. Sind has always said staff will work in ranked and 5v5s, just not at the highest level. That’s his opinion. If you want to play staff, play staff. If you can play staff at WTS level, that’s awesome. Bring more diversity to thief. More power to you. But for now, the way it stands, nobody at the top tier plays staff. Go ahead and prove Sind wrong. I’m sure he won’t hate you for it.
Staff thief plays a completely different role and offers nothing that can’t be done by other classes, and that’s my personal opinion. You could disagree, stick with it, and maybe someday represent all staff thieves at the WTS.

Yup, right now it looks like D/P is best, maybe someone can make great use of stuff at high level play, but I doubt it. Everyone is welcome to teach me wrong.

To add to my other post, I even forgot the S/P meta. But I think most people forget that easily :P

I main S/P and even I forgot it was meta until you mentioned it haha

BlaqueFyre.5678:

It needs to die in Hellfire

Still no reasons from Devs for why it was nerfed, but conveniently follows Helseth stomping Devs repeatedly in Pvp.

Nothing about this surprises me haha xD

It was either introduced to balance rending shade (but putting a 3s cooldown on the trait would have made far more sense than nerfing stealth attacks in general, unless I’m missing something), or to balance something else that’s about to come out (ala feline grace nerf shortly before the release of daredevil). Either way, it’s made thief more clunky than before.

It’s intentional, all stealth attacks were given a 1s ICD in the 26th July patch and despite people questioning this it’s still here, so might as well get used to it I’m afraid.

Cool, glad to hear it’s doable, if difficult (which is to be expected tbh). I’m generally impressed with rev atm, it’s a much more chilled out experience than thief since it has ways to deal with stuff other than just dodging better haha xD

I don’t have any issues playing at the level I’m at but just wanted to check really, I don’t want to get to higher levels then find out people won’t party with me or something dumb like that.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Fun duels, but What will thievs do IF pi gets gutted? Seems that nearly all d/p thives do no is keep range and head shot.

Unfortunately, yeah, that seems to be the playstyle now. Don’t get me wrong, good skills shown by both players here, it’s just not amazingly interesting to watch someone stay at range and pepper headshots and stolen items, especially when I don’t think I saw a single backstab attempt (correct me if I’m wrong there).

I mean, I play for interrupts as well, but I play S/P so it’s kinda my build concept, not just something I can do as well as my usual stuff. Makes me wonder if it would be so even if rev had a heal skill that’s viable vs thief on it’s meta build.

Sir Mad.1092:

Weak damage? Maybe you want to question your build…

^ This. Thief doesn’t have light armor, or weak damage, in fact damage is one of the few things we excel at. And OP, if you honestly can’t see why more instant cast skills would be terrible for balance, then it’s rather pointless to carry on the thread tbh.

Tbh, using jump to change the cast time of skills is pretty dodgy in and of itself, so given they fixed the sword 2 jump thing they were bound to fix this eventually.

Pretty much the title. I’ve swapped from thief to rev for fractals as not having to dodge every little thing a boss throws at me is nice, is it still gonna be useful in the higher tiers or should I stick to thief? I like the utility that rev brings, but thief is more damage as I understand it.

Edit: I’m at fractal scale 42 atm, but I’ve done up to 70 on thief.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Some of the posters here are either tunnel visioned or short sighted to look past the narrow minded Glint/Shiro only mindset. I’m not specifically saying this to you Buran, but to this forum in general. No offense.

To the OP, if you’re having survival problems, try using Jalis/Malyx combo, and use the staff for one of your weapons. Jalis and Malys both have heals that do not depend on further action from you or your target. Also, using Jalis’s hammers in combination with Devastation Assassins Annhiliation and Focused Siphoning trait gives you some nice healing and damage reduction. Malyx you’ll want to just use the Heal and Embrace the Darkness. The staff gives you healing from auto, if you pick up the orbs, a block, and a condi cleanse/heal.

Just watch your energy management with Jalis. He’s very energy hungry.

For traits, look at Devastation, Retribution, and Invocation. Stats, you can’t go wrong with Marauders or Zerks, or a combo of them.

I’ve run into a couple revs in WvW running mallyx/jalis when on my thief, it didn’t do uber damage like shiro/glint can but it did take a while to kill, so for open world PvE it should work well enough.

D/P, shadowstep, and shortbow are pretty much mandatory for scouting when you start off. SA can be used over DA for better stealth, but it is a pretty big drop in damage, and honestly it’s only worth using if you use shadow Refuge or blinding powder as the second minor trait won’t add time to stealth gained from leap finishers. Running acro, Trickery and DD with bound is also an option if you want to go ham on stealth, honestly I’d rather do that than SA as you maintain the damage with bound.

Shadow trap can be really useful for scouting without putting yourself at too much risk: find a chokepoint, stand at a distance but somewhere that will allow the shadowstep. Zerg crosses, you stealth, Port to them and move to the back, stack stealth and follow them. The hills near Anza are a good place to try it out.

I normally run S/P as I’m awkward like that, so if I see a zerg I can blast with shortbow for stealth, shadowstep then infiltrator’s arrow. Sword 2 is also really useful for maintaining distance when scouting. As long as you’re comfortable with what you’re using you can make it work with most things tbh.

Considering Sindrener is one of the few thieves playing at WTS level atm, I’d be hesitant to dismiss what he says about it. Yes, staff might work in ranked, but WTS and ranked are two totally different animals, and he’s one of the few people with experience of both.

Lastly, can people stop referring to viewpoints different to their own as “x’s syndrome” to imply disability or mental illness? It felt like a personal attack when it was done to Jana, and it feels no less personal now. If you disagree with said view that’s fine, no need to be a kitten about it. I’d like to think people are better than that.

Considering when the game came out that used to be us doing that, we probably don’t have much room to complain ^^

No offence, but if I can kill deathblossom thieves with S/P then any meta build should be able to do the same. It’s an incredibly passive build all told, as it’s entirely reliant on two animations that both have punish frames. Make him waste his ini then stun him for a burst, rinse and repeat.

What class are you on? If you tell us what you play, we can offer some more constructive advice than L2P. If it’s a case of just not liking the build conceptually, then suck it up. I hate DH but I don’t want it nerfed into oblivion just because of a build concept.