Guild Wars 2

I honestly think so, since necros have more cc’s and aoe’s to deal with, alongside being ranged and have more synergy with minions. A thief with allies is really just there for a minor distraction or to produce some more dps.

I’ve had thoughts of making a build like that as well, but I quickly disregarded it because of how long the cd on thief’s guild is. Not only that, tanky thieves don’t really mean too much in pve because they still die within 1-3 hits. Plus, a necro does this type of job better.

Sounds like we’re about to evolve GW2 into an mmo/rts/action/rpg game.

WvW will always be fun for me solely for one reason: killing.

If i’m killing players, it’s gonna be freaking fun.

I’ll admit, I’ve always did say my friend (warrior) was OP from when I was a lv 1 thief to when I’ve became lv 80 with full gear sets. I kept saying he was OP because of his burst damage, his skill synergy, his durability, and the fact that he can res himself like tryndamere from League of Legends and kill you. Not once have I ever said I could beat him in pvp, until I had some experience fighting warriors. Even so, I honestly think he has no problem killing me if I wasn’t careful.

tough crowd. Going permastealth might be pretty interesting in some situations.

the answer is you don’t go p/p on events. You have a better luck going sword, SB, or throw your daggers around

I don’t understand why people ask for advice on how to beat a thief in a thief forum section. While we may know the potential weaknesses to our class, no thief player can give you an adequate answer in how to defeat us with your class. Seriously, the best advice I’m going to give you is to search for answers on the engineer and elementalist forums.

Make one for me and ill tell you the experience in pvp

No clue, but i’ll pay more attention to see if W.A. can be broken or not

That build seems a bit too greedy to me. You didn’t just went condition build, you went all-out condition build. If you’re trying to reach a destination by going past mobs, it’s going to hurt a lot. Especially in malchor and cursed, the amount of mobs there are no joke. frankly, get some defensive traits and better gear or kill mobs on your way so you’re not overwhelmed.

i normally let it channel and not do much of anything while its channeling

Probably just you then, because I don’t take damage for some reason when I use whirlwind. I can see the enemy desperately trying to kill me, but something’s up when I see 10-12 evade messages pop up consecutively. This not just happens in pvp, it also happens in pve.

I always thought the biggest issue was rendering. I don’t care too much for unbalanced server match-ups and all that, but not being able to fight properly because we can’t see the enemy sort of makes no sense.

when i was leveling my thief at lv 10-20, i actually thought a thief was supposed to know how to dodge well with death blossom in order to fight mobs. Little did I know that going pure glass cannon doesn’t always work in pve.

A thief stealing a warrior’s whirling axe has very high, if not invulnerable, evasive effect. In fact, the stolen skill can sometimes be more effective than our dagger storm since high evasiveness also means rarely any, or all, cc skills land on you as well. Frankly, I’ve thought of whirling axe as an invincible attack since I’ve never taken damage or been cc’d while channeling it.

Since the forum went on an error and my long post got wiped, I’m just gonna say this. Different classes have different purposes. Thieves are meant to kill, and therefore it’ll be easy for thief players with killing. That’s about it.

Grackleflint.4956:

…like a bunch of teenage trolls that don’t care if anyone else has fun in PvP. Math has nothing to do with a players fun and enjoyment, unless that player is the one putting out ridiculous numbers. There are ways to nerf Thief burst and compensate for it with survival buffs, but I know the majority of you don’t want that.

Arena Net wants players to have fun. They are scrambling to retain players. Thief nerfs/balancing will be incoming.

If your concept of “fun” is for ArenaNet to compensate for the majority of players that reached their conclusion purely out of ignorance, then you shouldn’t even be playing this game competitively. If you haven’t realized, a lot of people grieving about just how unbalanced thieves are in the pvp world don’t actually come up with a solution which works, rather than a solution that will fit their needs. You have players complaining about how much damage a thief does, while having no problems with their speed nor their stealth capabilities. On the other hand, other players are complaining on the polar opposite. Out of all these players, none of them can find a rational answer which will put thieves on equal balance with the rest of the classes. The real trolls aren’t thief players defending their classes, it’s the people who make irrational judgements about a class they have very little ideas about and proceed to find any ways of justifying why their own class should stand on the top of class hierarchy with pathetic excuses like “thieves are op”. If thieves were really that powerful in pvp, then everyone would literally reroll to a thief and that would be it. However, people are scared that they will be trying out a new class and ends up failing it, contradicting their statements about such class and end up realizing it’s just player skills which made the difference between them losing and their opponents winning.

To blatantly judge people’s calculation on how much damage a thief can produce ,without giving any reasons to why they’re wrong, proves just how much you’re contributing in the whole “whether thief is op or not” topic. They put some considerable amount of knowledge into figuring out how much damage thieves can do, while you’re running your mouth because you do not like what those numbers represent.

If you haven’t realized already, every class has a major role. A thief is built around damage, a thief’s skills are built around producing damage, and a thief play style is also centered around how to maximize damage. To tell us that we should nerf a thief’s damage and replace survivability as compensation is like telling a guardian we should take their defense away and give them more damage. Not only does that suggestion contradict how our class behaves in combat, it also suggests that everyone should start considering making a warrior, the melee class based around damage and survivability. How should we even consider taking your suggestion seriously, if you yourself never thought it through?

You talk about having fun, while blindly making false accusations toward us as if you have full knowledge of what the major problems regarding thieves are right now. You want to know why ArenaNet scrambles to keep players in? Because most players don’t think about their own flaws and take the blame towards the game or others. ArenaNet is focusing on keeping quitters in the game, just like all other game companies. Think about just how ignorant you’re being when you made this thread, and tell me why others should put up with your selfish statements.

Why teach him the unicorn (or blaze would call it bloodstorm) build? Bad habits

Frankly, hybrid builds aren’t too bad if you have a flexible playstyle. The problem is the initiative cost for having a flexible playstyle.

Knyx.5926:

Lan.1968:

So tell me why you would test mobility in a non-practical situation, despite having actually done the test or not? To tell me an elementalist is fast than a thief without a target literally means a thief loses one, if not two with Sword, abilities to cover more ground. If you want to compare class mobility against one another, you should take into all accounts on what makes them faster and not set limitations. Not to mention an elementalist don’t start off with 25 stacks of passive speed increase as well, so to tell me a thief cannot exceed in terms of speed against an elementalist would mean an elementalist would have no problems running away from a thief. If you’re getting worked up because I’m telling you your statement is invalid, then I’d suggest not posting at all.

That is the point I was making. Without a target. I can’t believe I am the only one who sees it as an issue that the class is not the most mobile WITHOUT having to spend initiative. I was also showing how initiative is actually a curse in terms of mobility compared to a cooldown because since naturally all our weapon abilities require it, Lets say if a thief and an ele were racing to get to the enemy group. The ele will win and have most of his attunement abilities off cooldown even in air. Where as the thief, trying to keep up with the ele will have wasted all of his initiative an will have to wait before being able to engage with anything other then a utility skill/auto attack or elite.

Frankly, I’d have no problem with the mobility/initiative cost trade-off. Lets just say a thief becomes the fastest in and out of combat, while still being able to perform their main skills without any problems; so how do you propose to ever outrun a thief in spvp or pvp in general? If we’re so fast to the point where other classes have no choice but to actually fight us, even when they know they have a high probability of losing, then I don’t see how a thief can be kited or chased.

Dagins.5163:

Lan.1968:

4. The npc thieves have the same stats you have, or relatively close. For example, a defensive thief using thief guild will generate two npcs that are relatively tanky, but lacking in dps.

Can you link a source of this information?

Merely tested them out since there were no information on thief guild in any websites I looked into.

sad but quite true sometimes

you seem like a happy guy. wat server you playing on?

6 might be a bit too much for thieves to handle

shadowstep stopped becoming my panic button when I realized I’ve gotten myself into too many situations where casting shadowstep was too late. My panic button actually became dagger storm

Not sure what class you are, so I can’t even tell you a proper response. However, a thief hitting you that hard might be related to your build.

So tell me why you would test mobility in a non-practical situation, despite having actually done the test or not? To tell me an elementalist is fast than a thief without a target literally means a thief loses one, if not two with Sword, abilities to cover more ground. If you want to compare class mobility against one another, you should take into all accounts on what makes them faster and not set limitations. Not to mention an elementalist don’t start off with 25 stacks of passive speed increase as well, so to tell me a thief cannot exceed in terms of speed against an elementalist would mean an elementalist would have no problems running away from a thief. If you’re getting worked up because I’m telling you your statement is invalid, then I’d suggest not posting at all.

Taking camps and points also contributes to the server. If I want to feel useful during siege moments, then I’ll help out with siege equipments. If I want to kill a lot of people or disrupt the enemy, I’ll go condition. However, I don’t see blind being that effective in a zerg fight when AoE’s become your worst enemy. If I really want to save a downed player, I’ll cast shadow refuge on him or try to finish off enemies near him.

I have tested out the different in mobility between each classes, and thief has the most speed overall. An elementalist cannot keep up with the continuous speed bursts and gap closers as a thief, and that’s not including steal. Air attunement (with stacking speed) and teleport may seem fast, but only for a short while. A thief can keep up with an elementalist in terms of how much distance both classes have to cover, and more.

As for a thief against a warrior, the warrior actually has the initial advantage in terms of mobility, with their buff and their skills. However, a thief can close that gap just as fast with HS alone. Forget using utilities, a thief doesn’t even need to consider using shadowstep, roll, or even haste to catch a warrior.

I don’t know what kind of thief you’ve been playing, but I think you should reroll if you seriously think a thief needs some kind of mobility buff. What a joke.

P/P is simpler in terms of mechanics, so you can pay more attention to your surroundings instead of your rotation. I’d rather not have to deal with thieves who die every 30 seconds because he’s trying to produce more dps while I’m trying to not wipe.

D/P has a major drawback: blind. It’s true that blind is easily cleared, and the stun is more of a short interruption than anything else. I wouldn’t say the dps on d/p is actually good since other weapon sets do a better job in that field. Frankly, d/p feels more like a indecisive build to me, or a hybrid if you’ll call it.

At lv 24, there’s really no effective way to deal with mobs on different locations. If you have smoke screen that would help. If you’re going pure damage, then you just have to kill the mobs in quick succession and use your stealth and dodge effectively.

Knyx.5926:

A. I never said thief was not mobile, I said we are not the most mobile. It is a proven fact. Learn to read.

B. Just because we have a weapon ability we can spam to keep up or use to pass a bunch of classes in mobility does not mean it is right. In terms of having weapon abilities that give you movement, cooldowns ones are FAR more viable and useful then the initiative costing ones we have. We need that initiative to initiate the attack once we reach any sort of battle situation, but since we had to waste it on our movement abilities we have to wait for it to recharge unlike a class that just uses 1-2 weapon cooldowns with the same or more mobility and has all the others they can use to instantly engage in the combat situation whereever it may be.

C. Who ever said anything about an ele staying in air to fight, They should be switching attunements so theyd still be using air but not staying in it. Reading comprehension yet again. They would however be staying in it out of combat. Those few points in air make them faster then thief, especially if they are using X/Dagger. and that is not even counting utility slot. You are 100% incorrect if you think a thief built entirely for mobility is going to catch an ele built a little for mobility, unless you only face afks and bots.

D. Reading comprehension fail #3. I never said they DID stack, I said they SHOULD stack if we were to get a movement increasing trait so we can in fact be what A-net said we were, most mobile class.

A. We are the most mobile in terms of burst mobility, and we’re competitively the most mobile out of combat as well. Overall, a thief is technically the most mobile class, even more mobile than an elementalist. Frankly, there is no excuse for you to fail in catching up to someone.

B. Using initiative skills as gap closers is a preference, not something that is required to chase your opponents. Our utility skills and steal can close most of the distance between us and the opponent. What you are basically implying here is some classes have better skill mechanics in terms of covering more ground, which is probably true but only for a short period. A thief should have no problem in keeping up with another class, whether he uses his initiatives to chase somebody or not. Also, other classes are required to have distance-covering skills in order to chase/kite.

C. A thief doesn’t have to built entirely for mobility, nor does a thief have to focus their traits on mobility at all. A thief is inherently fast with just its weapon kits and its utility skills. If you’re having trouble chasing an elementalist out of combat, then that means there are already some distance between you and the elementalist that you can’t even force the elementalist into combat. During such situations, you not only have to match your speed to the elementalist, but you also have to close the distance gap between you and the elementalist in order to kill him/her. Given that elementalists are quite fast on air attunement, it’s no surprise that you would think you’re having a hard time chasing an elementalist. However, catching an elementalist is not impossible as long as the distance between you and the elementalist isnt extremely far apart.

D. Stacking mobility on a thief will literally mean a thief can never be caught, nor can you shake a thief off. As much as what you desire a thief to be the fastest class in the game, ArenaNet isn’t about to buff a class that will make it overpowered. Frankly, I don’t think you realize what you’re asking for here.

Be careful with Mystic Spike. The animation and texture for the Mystic Spike is bugged, so you get the same type of dagger looks as the inquest dagger on your Mystic Spike.

This is basically asking why should all map completion be done on another character when you’ve already done them on your main. Starting a new character means you’re creating a new progression path. In the worst cases, you should be starting everything brand new. Thank ArenaNet that they combined achievements to account rather than characters themselves.

I thought it was amusing to see another class being called OP apart from my class. Quite refreshing

if he’s spamming it, then he’s making sure his autoattacks are actually attacking and not stopping. It’s a common habit to all players.

Can’t say I have, but people may have that intention when they’re fighting me. I can say the effectiveness of using thief’s guild offensively seems redundant to me. When a thief fails to finish off their opponent with their initial burst, then they either have to take the risk of prolonging the fight and possibly dying or run and try another day. However, using thief’s guild as a finisher means you’re relying on whatever dps your two npc thieves can produce in order to finish off your opponent (Npc thieves are also quite predictable in what they do). The only possible way I can see a thief using thief’s guild offensively is when they need to distract the enemy for a short period of time in order to create an opening for the thief him/herself. Otherwise, npc thieves are neglected most of the times if your opponent knows you’re at an disadvantage. In other words, a good player would not care if you summoned two thieves if he knows your cooldowns are up, and you’ve used everything in your arsenal to try and kill him/her. Like I said, I’ve never had a problem against a thief using thief’s guild. However, this is probably because I’m a thief players myself, so I understand the mechanic of thief’s guild pretty well.

Honestly, i find S/D useful for one purpose: killing mesmer clones. Aside from that, the build seems more hybrid than anything.

In terms of “weaving” around opponents, using a dagger is more effective since it has faster attack animations and theres not much effort in facing your character towards the enemy while running around him.

In terms of power, there’s not much of it.

In terms of defense, cloak and dagger is the only one that really stands out. However, cloak and dagger is also initiative-heavy, so you’re relying solely on autoattacking the person down at this point

In terms of chasing, I’ll admit infiltrator’s strike is quite useful. Yet, a thief has no problem closing the gap with their utility skills and their other weapon set kits.

Never actually faced a thief like this, so I’m quite curious on how effective the build is. However, your primary defense is focused around stealthing and regening while stealth’d, so I don’t see the purpose of using dagger storm and exposing yourself for such a long period of time. If anything, thief guild provides you with more distraction for regen to take full effect and creates openings for you to attack. As for going S/D, you’ll lack damage simply because you’re not relying on quickness, but autoattacks. In 1 v 1’s, it might be useful against certain classes, but cloak and dagger is very initiative-heavy and it provides very little room for chasing capabilities. the build looks good from a defensive perspective, but not as significant from a offensive perspective.

The reason swiftness and signets don’t stack is because a thief doesn’t need to take trait points into being faster, whilst an elementalist actually requires certain traits into their air attunement for the stacking speed, and only while they’re in air attunment. A GS warrior has a lot of gap closer abilities which they can use to cover some ground, but a thief can typically do the same with HS and still be faster than a warrior. In fact, a thief has the most gap closer skills in the game with the least amount of cost since all our skills have no cooldowns apart from our utility skills. You can argue that an elementalist is faster in mobility, but no elementalist stays in air attunement to fight and a thief has no problem catching an elementalist with their gap closers. Signet of shadows is just an added bonus to travel around faster

1. If the thief or their opponent are far enough from each other, the npc thiefs will teleport back to the thief. Yes, they will disappear at a set distance
2. The thief cannot leave combat while his npcs are attacking the opponent. The moment the thief is out of combat, the npc thieves automatically teleport back to the thief.
3. Yes
4. The npc thieves have the same stats you have, or relatively close. For example, a defensive thief using thief guild will generate two npcs that are relatively tanky, but lacking in dps.

I’m quite curious about this question as well, since I’ve never had problems against thieves who use thief guild (despite being thief myself). They seem like minor distractions to me, and only utilized when a thief is trying to recover or run the hell away. :x

Unicorn, bloodstorm, doesn’t matter. I like unicorn more cuz it was funny when lowell referenced it

I use dual pistol in pve because Alpha is an kitten and I don’t feel like melee-ing a boss who aoe’s all day while diverting my attention to actually hitting the boss or not. Also, unload is such a simple skill to use since it’s damage is through channeling that I can watch the ground for boss aoe effects and dodge them in time. Can’t do that on SB. Did I mention Alpha’s an kitten?

First of all, it’s called the unicorn build. Aslo, I’m not certain how you only have 13k hp with the unicorn build unless your equips are wrong.

That aside, the unicorn build has severe drawbacks if you followed the guide step by step.
The unicorn build does not work against a kiting class with condition clears. Despite how much you can stick on a person, there will be a period where you “run dry”, meaning you run out of endurance, initiative, and cooldowns. When that happens, you have to either run or hope your opponent is an complete idiot and haven’t realized you stopped doing anything but kept chasing him.

Second of all, unicorn does not work against players who know the unicorn build. They can anticipate when you will start to spam your death blossom, and keep their distance until they know they can put the pressure on you. Trust me, you will feel very helpless with the unicorn build from the guide.

Third of all, the unicorn build is put to more defensive/disrupt plays than offensive plays. This is basically because your dps output is mediocre at best, and the build only takes maximum effect as your opponent drags the fight out. If your oponent decides to focus on running away, you’ll have a hard time killing him.

Last of all, the unicorn build is too flashy for a thief. When you’re dancing around your opponent, his team will notice you very fast since you’re also doing aoe damage and dropping caltrops. If you don’t anticipate on how the fight goes, then your oponent would chew you up.

Lowell didn’t make the unicorn for high-level fights, or not with the one in his guide. He just knew it was a great pubstomper because most people panic too fast when they see a thief whirling around them and think they must respond quickly or they might be one-shotted. However, the best defensive against the unicorn is to use your defensive skills just as the bleed takes substantial amount of health from you and the unicorn’s effectiveness is reduced greatly.

Sorry I have to agree with the general concensus here. Guardians, especially support guardians, have been my biggest bane in pvp. It’s not because a guardian can kill me, but it’s because I can’t kill a guardian. You’ve done something wrong with your build, and I’d suggest looking into the guardian section of the forum and see how they deal against thieves.

I didn’t finish it, but I’m sure you have a point.

You made a thief for an hour and you think the class is unbeatable? Who are you fighting against?

I think we can all agree that a thief class is very delicate. You change too much to the class and it will fall to the bottom of the class hiearchy.

On one hand, stealth and mobility cannot be touched because that is a thief’s primary defensive kit. Thieves have nothing else which protects them from oncoming damage, unlike other classes. Decreasing the damage on certain thief skills also have dire consequences if such a decision was made too hastily. You don’t want a pure dps class to be outdamaged by burst damage/tank classes, nor do you want a range class outdpsing a melee class. Take too much damage away from a thief, and the role of being a thief is decreased by 50%, since other classes can potentially do the thief’s job better than the thief: damage.

On the other hand, certain pvp structures emphasize on speed and efficiency, and stealth is just an added bonus to said efficiency. In all types of pvp, whether it’d be killing or taking objectives, relies on how fast and how well you perform those tasks. You can argue a thief has both of those traits which enables them to becoming a great pvp class. The matter of how much damage a thief produces basically comes from how easily a thief positions himself through stealth and the quickness buff. Aside from that, everyother class has their own version of producing excellent dps rotations and not just the thief.

Frankly, us thief players are all annoyed by the constant dispute over whether our class is severely unbalanced or not. Some are annoyed by the fact that their favorite playstyle has been ruined while others are annoyed by the fact that they’re not receiving proper merit for playing their class well. However, this talk of a complete rework is a huge gamble to all thief players, and I don’t think anyone has realized that just yet. To suggest a rework on a thief would mean to change how a thief behaves right now, which is through speed and stealth. To actually ask ArenaNet for a rework on thieves would basically mean to change the way a thief should behave in combat. In other words, a rework on thieves could very well potentially change the way thief mobility and stealth works in GW2. Despite how broken people think my class is, I personally am not prepared to take the risk of having to adapt on a stealth or mobility rework on my class. I’m pretty sure the majority of thief players don’t as well.

Be very careful on what you’re asking for, even though ArenaNet has no intention of completely remaking the thief class (As Blaze mentioned). However, you’re giving them ideas, and those ideas can potentially ruin your favorite class.