Guild Wars 2

Hitman.5829

The thief can remove 2 conditions each time he goes in stealth, if and only if at least 10 points are spend in shadow arts.

This means that a thief can remove 2 conditions every 3-4 seconds since they are constantly in stealth.

But that is not the end of the story.

Thieves have access to:

• infiltrator strike on the sword #2 skill, which allows the thief to remove any condition any time he wants.

This costs 5 initiative every time you want to remove 1 condition.

• Hide in shadows (the healing skill) that removes burning poison and bleeding (and 2 more condition because they have shadow embrace treated.)

• Shadow step which removes 3 condition and 3 more condition removed when shadow return is activated.

Shadow Step only removes 3 conditions on activating Shadow Return, not on the initial activation of the skill.

Shadow refuge which can remove up to 6 condition (because they can last in stealth for 15 seconds which means that one condition is removed upon entering stealth + 5 conditions removed in the 15 seconds of stealth.)

While the area is bombarded with AoE or you’re pulled out of it

By just spending 10 points in survival, the thief can have access to an incredible survival build.

Keep in mind the following:

• Shadow step will also break stunts TWICE.
• Infiltrator strike will return to original place confusing the attacker, if you are immobilized, just use infiltrators return so your attacker cannot get to you.
• Shadow refuge 15 seconds of WTF where Is the thief. (the condition removal skills recharging, him gaining initiative/health).

In the red circle with the house over it, AoE the crap out of it, or use a knock back, pull, push, or launch skill.

Now the thief can use the remaining 60 points to make a powerful damage build.

What else do thieves have?

The solution is simple:

If the thief wants to have a survival build, then change the shadow embrace trait to grand master. That will force them to spend 30 points in survival.

I already spend 30 points in Shadow Arts and there is no way one condition removed on stealth then one more after three seconds will be able to compete with Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Definition of Hard Counter:
A strategy that utterly dominates another strategy, leaving no question of the outcome.

Compare to soft counter. In a soft counter, the strategy being countered can still be victorious through skill or luck. There is no chance of this when a hard counter is used.

Yes I had to go look this up, Source here

Stillshade.7634

But that’s my point exactly, if you fight a hammer stun warrior you have at least one stun break slotted to save yourself, if you fight a high damage condition build you have your cleanse to save yourself. These are all things available to every class that hard-counter specific tactics.

I think your definition of “hard counter” needs to change. A stun break will remove one effect but will not affect the next disabling ability hence a soft counter, stability is a hard counter to stuns, it prevents them from happening again.

Condition removal is not a hard counter, it’s a soft counter, it does not prevent the conditions from being re-applied, Berserker Stance is a hard counter to conditions, they cannot be applied to you again, same with Elementalist trait XI in Earth magic Diamond Skin and Engineer trait XII in Alchemy Automated Response. Only three classes of the eight have a hard counter to conditions, the rest is a soft counter and is up to skill when and where to use it.

Stillshade.7634

Guild Wars 2 is a game where using the right ability at the right time can make all the difference, but there has never been a time when the question came up should I use stealth now? and the answer was no.

There are scenarios where the answer is no to using stealth:

1. In the 3 (or 4) second revealed time, should I use stealth? No.
2. This is one of my favorites, what happens when the Thief is bait for a trap? he doesn’t want to use stealth before the trap springs. The answer is not yet, basically a no until the right time.
3. When contesting a point in sPvP or to prevent capping in WvW do you want to stealth? No.

Edited for Grammar.

Stillshade.7634

But what if I don’t see the thief first?
But what if I don’t want to change my whole build to play around 1 class?

The whole game is based on what if’s. You take condition removal based on, what if I run into a condition class? You take invulnerability skills for, what if I find a power class that I need a breather from? You take a stun breaker for, What if i get disabled?

If you don’t build for every What if scenario the ones you don’t build for are your builds counter! Honestly though it’s pretty much impossible to build for every scenario so there will be counters to every build, eventually (warrior is very powerful at the moment).

Why is everyone so fixated on seeing something happen? if you know they’re there, and it’s coming prepare for it. If you see a thief Stealth, you know what’s gonna happen, Back Stab, Sneak Attack, or Tactical Strike depending on the weapon they use. Stealth lasts 3-4 seconds at any one application, you can make it longer by chaining a stealth utility, leap through a smoke field or blast a smoke field. Those Skills have a visual representation and are fairly easy to tell apart if you know thief skills at all.

There is a tell that a thief is going to use a stealth attack he only has 3-4 seconds to do it, count to Two in your head, start a defensive skill that lasts 2-3 seconds, unless you see a little red black powder circle, you’ll have the thief drop out of stealth since your defensive skill lasts long enough for the 3-4 seconds to be up. At this point you need to remember to dodge the CnD, if you do the thief has almost no initiative left. and he’ll use a utility stealth, great you used one of your CD skills and a dodge. The thief has used a CD skill and lost the advantage of surprise.

Now on to what happens if you see a little red black powder circle:

• stand in the black powder while the Thief tries to Leap through it (not the best choice but it works, you will have to kill the blind with an auto attack)
• keep moving, make it so your character turns around so it’s very hard for a thief to actually hit your back. Strafing and about face bound on your keyboard works well and frustrates many thieves.
• DO NOT start running away unless you have a teleport or something similar to a warrior GS 5.

ArmageddonAsh.6430

2) Like what? Again, this is something only FEW classes have and even then, again limited in duration Some classes have blocks, Mesmer has Scepter #2 and a sword block, Engi has shield that stuns, Ele has shield that can stun dunno about warrior, guardian or Ranger – Necro has NONE of these.

Warriors have: Shield 5, Endure Pain active and at 25% health, off-hand Sword 5 block, Great sword 5 or sword 2 away from the combat area to gain some distance, count to two and hit hammer 4 generally will knock away a thief.

Guardians have: Shelter, Aegis passive, hit F3 to get Aegis again, multiple ways of getting protection, Renewed Focus, Shelter, Focus 5, Hammer 5 and staff 5 running over the cc lines, count to Two and a half use shield 5, Mace 3, Judges Intervention away.

Rangers have: Great sword 4 it works really well against a thief, Traited Signet of Stone, protection on dodge will mitigate a huge burst into a small one.

Necromancers have: Staff 5 and stand in it, or any mark. Most thieves worth their salt will dodge through the mark, your que to dodge too or hit Death Shroud with IV (Weakening Shroud) in Curses. have you tried standing on or continually running through a Spectral Wall? the protection buff works very well and has a chance to fear the thief away from you. Well of darkness is very good at stopping the melee Stealth attacks several times if you stand in it.

does this counter a thief well enough for you?

Black Scoutsman.5830

can someone post a good sPVP version of the d/p build please?

I assume you’re talking about P/D not D/P here’s an sPvP version of my build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAqY4YlUmiO3eS0E9JFB3Dnm0m6f4r6C6UcVrC-TwAgyCrImR5jzHzMSYswMWYtw2jZHA

has 50% bleed duration with runes, honestly see what works for you with the Sigils, these are just the ones I like.

This is the build I like to use while doing P/D condition:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAqY4YlUmiO3eS0E9JFB3Dnm0m6f4r6C6UcVrC-jkCBYNDimWI000AkHQZSFRjtgJI1MRr8JsKZER1qbYyAUNHA-w

might stacking is very useful for condition builds, it also helps deal a bit more physical damage. you gain 2 stacks of might from dodging (Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew and Power of Inertia (II) in acrobatics) and 2 from every time you stealth.

There are a few options with the traits you can change if you want. Quick Recovery (IX) can be changed for Pain Response (VIII), if you change those 2 around it’s good to change Shadows Embrace (IV) with Infusion of shadow (V). You do have the option of just changing the first 2 around though, I like having a lot of initiative.

the Reason for D/D in the other weapon set is quick getaways and when you’re fighting another Thief and s/he inevitably uses Shadow Refuge when hurt, you move to the middle of it swap weapons sets (Geomancy sigil goes off) and you death blossom the field, almost 100% you get a downed enemy thief.

Are you a condition build or burst build? D/P is usually a burst build the doesn’t use a lot of conditions, while P/D is usually a bleed spam build with maybe 1 venom and caltrops that is very “tanky”.

Honestly you sound by the build you want to go more burst, there is a build that uses 3 signets to stack 15 might (with II in critical strikes) that will do some massive back stabs. One thing you should really do is make your build on http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ so we can see the traits you’re using and other things and make recommendations.

Here is what i think the signet build is:
Thief 3 Signet build

There is a down side to this style of build you can’t take many hits so you have to dodge and use stealth exceedingly well.

Now there is a P/D condition build that works well too and here it is:
P/D Thief tanky condition build

These are just some samples of things to try, please experiment with builds to find what you like.

here’s the build I’ve come up with for my guardian

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNAR8dlYgiDXFyNEfIFhNDASwqCxDXw1DHCxGC-jAyAYLBZCCMZBiKAk8LiGbVsIasqaioadNmQAjGDA-e

power 1754 (2004 with full bloodlust stacks)
crit chance 48% (53% with food buffs)
crit damage 92% (102% with food)

Armor 2783
Health 14865
healing power 406
Cond dmg 606

to the Borlis Pass Acadamia de Combate Avancado [AcA] campers in the jumping puzzle, really you’re camping in the jumping puzzle for easy badges when PvE’ers are trying to get an achievement. That’s low, the rest of Borlis Pass, I hold you guys in high regard these guys just dropped my opinion of BP as an upright respectful server to something worse. Yes I know there were only 7 of them but still you can’t complete the Aetherblade cache without doing that JP.

before the razzing about “oh you’re just a PvE’er that’s kittened off because _________” I do a lot of roaming and havoc squad WvW and don’t expect much ganking in the JP since both servers are generally very friendly in there, but this is out right disrespectful. (curse you Anet for PvE achievement in WvW) Anyway figured I’d share so they can reflect on how their server’s image gets trashed just by a few people.

I’ve had the same issue three times in a row, while one person goes up the jumping puzzle the rest stay with Kiel and the person comes back down. The only time it worked for me is when everyone went up the jumping puzzle and Kiel died in the fight, we resurrected her and she moved with us.

the extra pistol range helps me hit people on top of walls. I run pretty much the exact same skills as you but run med-kit instead of elixir H for the perma swiftness and higher fury up-time, makes running to places much faster and more crits of incendiary powder. The downside is I have no access to protection.

I play the engie very up on your face while roaming but it lacks the Aoe’s twitch must Aoe the thief’s shadow refuge twitch, unless you’re running grenade kit, sometimes swap it in for a siege but that’s about it.

yep, it was you. you kicked my kitten on my engie but I learned some awesome things to do, thanks for helping me improve my engie skills! (I paid attention to guild tags after I died lol). You sir are one awesome engie!

btw my build is 10/20/0/30/10, spec’d for more swiftness and vigor, was thinking about taking 10 out of firearms for 10 in inventions for Cloaking device rather than 1050 range.

were you that engie that was running a squad of 3 capping the northern camps in SBI borderlands over and over last week?

RuBarBz.4972:

Lyrsen.6702:

P/P or P/S build is:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0|a.1b.h16.a.1b.h5|0.0.0.0.0.0|1b.0.1h.0.1b.0.1h.0.1b.0.1h.0|1b.62.1b.62.1b.62.1b.62.1b.62.8b.62|a5.k46.0.u1ab.a6|0.0|2d.2j.2i.2x.30|e

I’m not too familiar with condition pistol engineer but I’d think you’d want either coated bullets for some AOE and/or grenade kit because they’re pretty good with conditions? Obviously I don’t know what your goal is with this build so that makes it hard to give good advice but I certainly do not understand the use of tool kit in there.

Lyrsen.6702:

Rifle build is:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0|4.1c.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.8c.9c|u4ab.0.a5.0.u46c|0.0|2d.2j.2f.2x.30|e

This is not a rifle build :p
It seems a bit counter intuitive, you invest into power and condition duration a lot, assuming you’ll be in grenade kit most of the time it’s weird that you don’t take the explosive traits. Now you use +30% crit damage which most people would use when they have a high crit chance, it would make more sense to go stack might with elixirs to up your condition damage and power in this case.

Personally I recommend 10/30/0/0/30 with static discharge over this build. You can even use grenade kit with it if that’s what you want and just leave tool kit for the short cooldown tool belt skill and add in rifle turret for belt shot.

Basically you have to choose what you want from this build, be a rifle engineer relying on crits chucking grenades, be a grenadier relying on power and conditions or whatever you envision your character to be.

Yea AoE is what I’m missing in the p/p build and I don’t know what to switch out.

Toolkit is in the p/p build for:
Box of Nails, to bleed and cripple this makes kiting easier (AoE)
Pry Bar, 5 stacks of confusion who’d say no
Gear Shield, when you’re low on health and are running away (WvW mostly)
Magnet, pulling people off walls, stopping a stomp, pulling into the Box of Nails

the rifle build I know is a bit counter intuitive. I could put 10 into alchemy for vigor on kit swap rather than the 30 in tools so it’d be 30/0/10/10/20. Static discharge auto gives the revealed debuff, when you get stealth, with Toss Elixir S so stomping with it or trying to get away is almost pointless. You get might stacking from Enhanced Performance (6 with the c/d) not bad for no HGH. Explosive Power works with grenades? haven’t tested it yet, I will try it later maybe swap Enhanced Performance out for it.

What i really want is a character that can survive quite well and dish it back out, I’ll revise the builds later today after work. Thanks for the input, it helps having someone analyze the build you’re working with.

edited for grammar

Dang I forgot to mention that, I mostly play PvE dungeons and WvW.

hey fellow engies, I’ve been testing out 2 builds and I’m not sure what one to go with, they both work quite well from my experience testing but there are 2 of them. I would very much appreciate some feedback on both builds, one being p/p or easily p/s and the other a rifle build.

P/P or P/S build is:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0|a.1b.h16.a.1b.h5|0.0.0.0.0.0|1b.0.1h.0.1b.0.1h.0.1b.0.1h.0|1b.62.1b.62.1b.62.1b.62.1b.62.8b.62|a5.k46.0.u1ab.a6|0.0|2d.2j.2i.2x.30|e

Rifle build is:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/engineer/?2.0|4.1c.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c|1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.1c.9c.8c.9c|u4ab.0.a5.0.u46c|0.0|2d.2j.2f.2x.30|e

let me know what one you think is better and if there are any suggestions.

Cyfyr Dios.3875:

Snip

oh i know.. at least they were decent enough to turn their guild tag off. as you can see we have a way point.. we had hills well over 12 hours with no breaches whatsoever. plus the only way to get to that spot is by exploiting anyways. I know this is just a bad egg in the bunch.

As long as you’ve reported said exploiter, they didn’t take the keep, and they eventually get banned we’re all good. If this person did take the keep, I’m very sorry on behalf of the SBI server. Though I do not represent everyone I’ll take a wager that we hate to see this kind of conduct from anyone, ever. I will report anyone doing any sort of cheating even on my server!

Sincerely,
Ayalen Turia
From SBI server.

Edited for me being wrong.

Yareon is correct the Arcana line speeds up the recharge time by 60% not reducing the cooldown by 60%.

Thanks for correcting me Yareon and Clark Skinner.

here is a build I’m thinking about for you;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImkbox5gjEAkHmcCLhCKIKURRxM7A;TsAA1CtoqxUjoGbNuak1ME58xUEA
(copy + paste URL into a window, doesn’t work otherwise)

10/10/0/30/20

you still can take blasting staff, the glyphs I find are a bit underpowered but there are 3 of them for you.
Another build might be;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImkbox5gjEAkHmcCLjChIKURRxM7A;TsAA1CtoqxUjoGbNuak1ME58xUEA
(copy + paste URL into a window, doesn’t work otherwise)

0/10/10/30/20

for a bit more tankyness and condition damage but you loose a bunch of might stacking.

Both have some defensive, offensive and support ability just depends on where you want to focus more.

This is happening on Stormbluff Isle as well, I’ve yet to see it work since 1 pm server time Nov. 8th, 2012. exactly the same issue ‘Razen The Rider’ does not do his speech to call the flame legion to battle.

Very good P/D player (Slic.2406 on forums) you can learn alot from watching the video

Ever since I rolled a thief on BWE2 made it my preferred class. Thief has been my main since 3 day head start.

Hey Bahaness,

Thanks for the well though out post, your English is great by the way! I haven’t played with any one from WM yet but I have heard some stories about WM and it’s awesomeness. Just that you took the time to post this makes me feel truly honored to be part of the SBI server. If I ever see you in WvW I’ll run with you or where we need it.

Thanks you again,

Ayalen Turia 80 Thief
Guild: Oh Bleep Its Them [Run]

I’ve been waiting for some thieves to band together.

In WvW steal from a warrior use the whirling axe then Dagger Storm in a zerg if they haven’t focus fired you down by then gets a good bunch of them down on a solo thief, now we just need 3-5 of us doing that. stealth back stab builds for the people running away, 2 venom share builds and 3 trap builds to contain the whole mess would be fun.

So all in 10 thieves would be as most say OP

I’m on Stormbluff Isle if you end up there give me a pm

Weapon sets:
Dagger/Dagger
Pistol/Pistol (PvE)
Short bow (WvW)

Heal Skill:
Signet of Malice
Passive: Gains health when you attack. (100 with 0 healing power.)
Active: Healing 3,275 (15 second cool down, 12 with Signet Use trait.)

Utility Skills:
Roll for Initiative (Evade backward to regenerate initiative and recover from crippled, chilled, and immobile.) (Breaks Stun, Initiative gain 6)
Signet of Shadows (Passive: +25% increase in movement speed. Active: Blind foes near your target.)
Blinding Powder (Blind foes in target area and grant stealth to nearby allies)

Elite Skill:
Dagger Storm (Spin around reflecting projectiles and throwing daggers that cripple and bleed nearby foes. You can move while spinning.)

Trait points:
Deadly Arts 10 points
Critical Strikes 25 points
Shadow Arts 0 points
Acrobatics 20 points
Trickery 15 points

Major Traits:
Sundering Strikes (40% chance to inflict vulnerability on critical, 1 second cool down)
Practiced Tolerance (5% of precision is converted to vitality)
Signet Use (gain 2 initiative when activating a signet. reduces signet recharge by 20%)
Power of Inertia (gain might whenever you dodge)
Assassin’s Reward (heal yourself when ever you use a skill that uses initiative. heal yourself for each point of initiative used)
Flanking Strikes (deal 5% extra damage when attacking a foe from behind or the side)

As for play style in PvE I usually find myself acting like a cat playing with their food before eating it. Try to use Death Blossom as a dodge when you’re against multiple foes. A good use of Dancing Dagger is to make them group up so you can mow them down. Cloak and Dagger then Backstab for the champions you’re gonna fight. Blinding Powder is for getting away or setting up a Backstab when low on initiative. Don’t worry about using all of your initiative you have 15 instead of 12 from Preparedness and a ton of initiative gain.

Initiative gain: any signet 2, roll for initiative 6, stealing (Kleptomaniac) 3, and Opportunist (20% chance on critical) 1.