I have a ticket sitting in my bag. As an asura thief everything looks meh. The shortbow is the only thing you can see and I dropped that to go full melee.
Guess it’s going to one of my alts that never get any play anymore.
Let me summarize this thread so far those short on time:
I can’t kill thief → nerf thief
Thief hit me hard → nerf thief
Thief hard to find → nerf stealth
Thief hit me hard with dagger → nerf thief dagger not thief sword
yw
After messing around with it in WvW I changed from D/P+SB to D/D+S/D. I can drop smoke screen and heartseek through it like 7 times. Tons of stealth. I dropped shadow refuge from my utility bar and going smoke screen, shadow step, and blinding powder… all deception skills. With trait Master of Deception, all these utilities have reduced cooldown %20. You have longer periods of stealth, with the need to spam heartseekers half the time. Pretty cool.
I do die a lot as a thief in WvW but only because I feel I should be able to take on 4+. You should strongly consider 30 in shadow arts as a d/p thief. Healing in stealth is so strong. I have done 30 in critical strikes and 10 in acrobatics (zerk armor) or 20 cs and 20 acro (vitality) but won’t consider dropping 30 in shadow.
I like the laela blackbird roaming d/p thief on youtube lately. Check it out and you need to play a lot to get proficient but it’s a lot of fun! My 80 mesmer is on the bench right now as well as my 80 warrior, eng, and guardian.
To Sorrow: I wasn’t demanding anything. I was merely making a polite exit, and attempting to say goodbye to a subsection of the Guild Wars 2 community I’ve been with since beta, and who have given me tons of advice and words of encouragement over the last several months. But by your posts I can see the subtleties of tact, diplomacy, and manners are beyond you.
To Kabuki: I’m not quitting the game; just moving to a new profession. Everything that can carry over to other characters is going right to them, everything else is either getting salvaged or tossed on the trading post. So no; you can’t have my stuff.
I have an 80 mesmer, warrior, guardian, engineer, and thief. All of which I played in WvW. Now I just play thief.
So can I have your thief stuff?
Can I have your stuff?
I foolishly chased a necro into the water as he was running like he forgot to bring his weapons. Soon as I submerged, I got facerolled by a zerg of pets and conditions. I high tailed it outa there and barely escaped by the skin of my teeth!
Yeah 1200 clusters were cool for around keeps/towers but I don’t play thief to zerg. I still use sb when I’m taking a supply camp with someone else. Rapid shot aoe. And whenever I see a large group of downed enemies. Again rapid aoe. Not that big a deal for roamers.
Yay! Thieves and their keyboards thank you Anet!
If you want to cluster bomb someone at 1200 range, you just gotta scorpion wire their kitten first lol!
Hey nice video! Your gear looks cool and if you got the money, thanks for supporting anet so the rest of us can play for free.
Cool story bro
Great thread!
I have 4.5 L80 chars although mesmer is my current favorite.
I use a Naga with my thumb on the 1 button and use a few of the surround ones.
Naga 1 = dodge
Naga 2 = F2 confusion
Naga 4 = F4 distortion
W = forward
A = strafe left
D = strafe right
Q = F1 mind w rack
E = util 8
R = util 9
Z = util 7
C = util 6 heal
One of the oddest keybind changes that took a while to adjust to but was worth it:
Shift = jump
Space = 1 (auto attack off)
Space is just so good for spamming and is just wasted on jump that gets hardly used. After accidentally walking off a ton of jumping puzzles, SHIFT is finally ingrained into muscle memory!
BTW, using a daskeyboard.
Step 1: Find the strongest aspects of Engineer
Step 2: Create a build utilizing Step 1
Step 3: Share this build online
Step 4: Anet nerfs the strongest aspects of the Engineer
So if you remove Step 3, this will eliminate Step 4?
Since Step 4 happens after Step 3, Step 4 happens BECAUSE of Step 3?
Ok, a small group of enemies are taking a tower in WvW and you get there just in time to get the lord. As the small group streams through the gate you count X. How high does X have to be for you to run and how many can you hold against before help arrives?
The question could also be asked, how immortal is this mesmer and what are the keys factors in staying alive?
Just went kittens deep into this build and got me back into playing mesmer in WvW. Put my thief on the bench for now.
I was a full exotic berserker gs/s+s build but managed to get a full soldier set for under 500k karma and some badges of honor. @Grenth I got head/chest/feet/accessories/rings/amulet, @tempest wp in malchor got shoulder/hands. For badges I got legs, staff, sword, focus.
I’m starting to get used to the build and already having some fun with it. Hitting cry with 3 clones and got the illusionary leap + swap on the temporal curtain going for retaliation. I’m a little lost on keeping phantasms up for extra retatiliation damage and healing. How close to the phantasms do I need to get for these effects? How important is the timing of cry for fights? I usually hit it right away to get retal up. Am I better off trying to anticipate my opponents burst?
Maybe some simple skill rotations to get a noob started would help. Trying to get better at playing this build although already having a lot of fun.
I just got killed and I see a big group of reds running around my corpse… members of both the opposing servers and they aren’t fighting each other. Even worse, some from different servers have the same guild tags.
Made me lose all desire to play WvW… it’s a sad moment for me.
If you’re a wannabe thief hanging out in zergs and tower fights, then by all means, use a shortbow that fires rainbows.
Roaming solo thieves should prefer the P+P over SB.
I ran S/D+SB, then D/D+SB then back to S/D+SB which I love. Reading this thread I decided to swap out the SB to run S/D+P/P and guess what?
I LOVE IT!
I figured I’d use mainly S/D like before, and that P/P was better than SB for taking down runners… and that turned to be true. But now I find myself favoring the P/P over S/D. I’m just an unloading fool.
Btw I’m running a direct damage build. 10/30/30/0/0. In shadow arts, shadow protector(III), infusion of shadow(V), shadow’s rejuvenation(XI) for tons of self healing. I can chain C&D till I get full health and on top of that, have hide in shadows/blinding powder/refuge on the hotbar.
The problem is when you stealth, the mob instantly starts regenerating health and runs back to spawn point. If you drop out of stealth and resume attack, the mob ignores you. Hence a full reset. Remember this happens the second you enter stealth.
A more elegant solution would be for the mob to commence walking or “jogging” back to his spawn upon your stealth, but if you were to drop out and resume attack, the mob should also resume fighting.
If you have a veteran or champion down to 1/4 health, how is stealthing to remove a condition so overpowered that the appropriate response for the mob is to fully reset?
I appreciate the recommendation of using poison and caltrops utilities. Haven’t tried dotting to keep aggro although I’m a direct damage build.
Not sure if the damage is “normal” but if you stand there nuking enemy siege with your back exposed… bad things may happen.
Apparently it’s one of the ways that distinguish ourselves from our so called clones. It’s probably falling down the list of things to fix since so many new bugs have been introduced for mesmer alone.
Gonna try this.
I actually farmed them fine to get the Monthly using just greatsword. I’d use #2 and #4 and a clone on dodge to have 3 up, then just GS auto attack from max distance while the mob toys with my clones. If it somehow targets me, then I would decoy and continue. Finish with shatter.
But the reflection method does seem quite a bit faster.
Thanks for testing and sharing!
I forgot about desperate decoy and I’ve been using that trait.
Also regarding portal, can an enemy see an opposing portal or does it just look like we vanish from their perspective?
In WvW or even in PvE, when an enemy has somehow picked you out among your clones and is dishing out the damage, forcing him to drop target and hiding again in plain sight among the clones is my primary concern. However, it seems that our ability to do this is severely limited.
Other than decoy and group invis, what skills will force an enemy to drop target on you? Some possibilities:
Blink: Not sure if teleport works. I’m thinking not.
Swap: Sword secondary skill after using Illusionary Leap which swaps your location with your clone. Drops target or not?
Portal: Same as a teleport? Doubt this drops target.
Decoy is on a 32s cooldown and Group invis is 90s. Is this all that we have?
Yeah it’s just a game and it’s cool to be just silly and enjoy yourself. I agree with this sentiment.
However I appreciate the efforts of those that keep tabs on the promises of developers of games and hold them to their word. It’s dirty work but someone has to do it, just like those consumer advocate groups and even civil liberties watchdogs.
It’s funny how personal everyone got when we were being hyped up about how GW2 was the game changer. How the developers were making the kind of game THEY wanted to play. No gear grind etc.
Now that they are doing a 180 on that philosophy, all the fanboys tell us not to make it personal and that it’s only a game. I guess it’s ok to get emotionally hyped up but not feel let down. Let me tell you something. It might be just a living for the devs, but it is a very personal and emotional issue for the players.
Who knows what’s down the line. Coca Cola billboards on the side of keep walls? Linking our daily accomplishments with facebook?
If you don’t think the star matters then you aren’t playing against top notch opponents.
No one is arguing that you can’t beat noobs with a big “Here I am” arrow over your head.
Yeah and please show “respect” when I’m just trying to take a supply camp and grab some supplies even though I will be using those supplies and siege from jumping puzzles to waste you 5 minutes later.
Lol at OP talking about “major issue”, “annoying”, “respect”, and best of all “no life”.
Now that I know there are people who feel entitled to do jumping puzzles in WvW I will make it a point to go camp there as time permits.
I have an 80 warrior that I love for PvE and an 80 thief for WvW. Then I rolled the mesmer and now that’s all I play in WvW.
I mostly solo and roam. The backstab thief gives me the satisfaction of putting a single target on its back within a split second. The mesmer give me the satisfaction of putting down multiple enemies at once, although a lot slower.
Didn’t know about bloodlust stacks and titles. Good to know!
I’ve been doing some testing with clone on dodge trait called [Deceptive Evasion] and it appears that this clone just targets whatever is closest to it. Is this working as intended?
I became suspicious of this strange behavior when I was fighting a ranger with a greatsword, of course at range, and when I dodged, my clone appeared and started firing at a moa that was nearer to me than my opponent. When I shattered, of course it ran to this moa and exploded.
I would think that the clone should behave like this only if I had nothing targeted.
In the case where I have a target that I’m actively attacking, shouldn’t the clone also attack my foe? Otherwise, it becomes pretty useless in providing camouflage for me. Not only that, but it will also attack mobs that are yellow, or non aggressive. When fighting one enemy, the last thing you need is to dodge and end up with two enemies.
Thoughts?
(edited by Kabuki.9103)
Centaur runes. Don’t WvW without it.
10s swiftness + 20% swiftness duration + 15s cd heal = profit
Don’t forget to get a level 60 karma breather from cursed shore vendor and put a 7th centaur rune in it to have swiftness on heal underwater as well!
I strongly considered using divinity runes but unless you are always in the company of someone with swiftness, it’s not worth it imho
If you have tried farming at an Orr DE with a zerg of other level 80’s, you know that mobs die within a fraction of a second of spawning. That doesn’t leave you much time to tag as many mobs as possible. I’m not saying it can’t be done with my mesmer, but it’s so much easier on my warrior.
Mesmer’s really shine in pvp. They have a lot of dps, utility, and misdirection that, with skill, can be used to win 3 vs 1 or more. It requires a combination of technique, strategy, and quick reflexes but fights take a while. In the context of farming with a lot of others where the window to burst your aoe dmg is small, mesmers are way out of their element.
I’ve found that trait Phantasmal Fury in dueling will eliminate that second or two delay.
You spend zero time revealing what’s wrong with the current system. One thing about requiring 100g is that you aren’t going to have a bunch of noob commanders overnight.
In your system, a zerg of Lev 1 can all vote each other commanders overnight.
My first time in Arah explore, a party member has to leave on the grub eating boss but finds us a replacement. He leaves and everyone is popped out of the instance. We lose all progress, and gain zero tokens.
This guy is the last to be invited to the group. How did his leaving reset the entire instance? It took us 3 hours to get to this point and we gained nothing except bags full of trash loot.
Actually we all had a lot of fun, but losing 3 hours of progress and gaining zero tokens is a serious design flaw.
Having same problem when trying to enter Arah in explore mode. Exact same error code. Tried restarting client.
My favorite builds at the moment are glass cannon D+D/SB and S+P/SB
Let me tell ya bout the thief.
I like to play burst damage that can excel with skill. I’ve tried necro, mesmer,
elementalist, thief, ranger, mesmer again, warrior, then stuck with warrior till L71,
but something was missing.. then I tried thief again alternating between every build
under the sun. Thief is it for me. If you want burst that requires skill to excel at,
then thief is it for you.
Keep this in mind: No matter what class you fight in WvW, it makes a huge
difference whether they are L80 with good gear/traits or a lowbie. You will notice
it right away.
Also keep this in mind: Classes like thief, when you fight someone that is skilled
or someone who is mashing buttons and struggling to move around at the same
time, there will be a HUGE difference.
If you want to own the WvW battlefield and not want to mess with intricate 6
combo openers, you want to be a ranger.
If you want the satisfaction of picking off strays in seconds while your openers
aren’t on cooldown, you want to be a thief. Some people get off on putting
a mediocre player flat on his back in milliseconds then running off into the shadows.
Another mode of the glass burst thief that isn’t often talked about is his ability to
hide and lob grenades with his shortbow around keeps/towers. He can single
handedly clear out a huge mob at a gate or tower wall in seconds.
I backstabbed a rabbit for 555k. Just saying.
Wait till you get 400 Leatherworking and craft exotics.
Masterwork armor (green) can be bought on TP for coppers over vendor.
Another tip. Until you’re ready for L80 exotics, you can sometimes grab L78 exotics for a LOT cheaper. They are moving up in price, but when I bought them, they were going for 20% of L80 exotics at 97% stats.
Someone must have a lot of daggers for sale on the trading post.
ofc thieves are not op
all this dmg in less than 2 seconds and run away from 20 ppl
would kill me in less than a sec but i dodge roll 2 times and lighting reflex
You fought a thief. He pulled off 6 moves and you pulled off 7 moves.
Him with dagger:
1) Steal
2) Cloak and Dagger
3) Dancing Dagger
4) Dancing Dagger
4.5) Swapped weapon to shortbow
5) Trick shot (lucky to trigger a lightning sigil for 1,658)
6) Trick shot
Your moves:
1) Dodge (no endurance)
2) Dodge (no endurance)
3) Dodge (no endurance)
4) Dodge (no endurance)
5) Dodge (no endurance, you know you need endurance to dodge right?)
6) Dodge (hope you’re not standing still while you’re still trying to dodge with no endurance)
7) Crossfire
Against someone of your skill level, I can take you down in Moa form. Will you then say that Moa form is op?
EDIT: add original screenshot posted
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/7444/gw021.jpg
(edited by Kabuki.9103)
Some very interesting points:
1) People are too stupid to understand how assassins work
ahuh
2) Heartseeker misses 90% of the time
yep
3) Why this why that why why why
ahuh
4) You hate thief class
yep
5) You are forced to play bursty bullcrap or ranged bs
that’s right
6) Other classes can do everything a thief can but better
ahuh
7) You don’t want to play another class so you are forced to quit
can I have your stuff?
There are quite a bit of instant skills across the professions that do not interrupt your current action or channeled skills.
It’s likely that the range detection was intentionally put in at the end of CnD. Combat is fast paced and involves constant movement. If you can start CnD and run towards a potential target, then shadowstepping should also be fine. Would you say that using steal to escape being hit is also an exploit?
You can say that money is useless in real life after you acquire enough to live out your life. People who reach that point probably put some aside for their kids. So, put some aside for your alts.