Guild Wars 2

The weapon-set I recommend for all PvE Dungeon content is S/P due to the sets ability to blind, immobilize, daze, stun, and do a bunch of damage. As a Thief, keeping up or exceeding zerker Warriors has never really been much of a problem for me. I usually find myself doing more damage over the course of the fight. S/P allows you to have a ridiculous amount of sustain while still being useful to your party.

I normally run Hide in Shadows, Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Ambush Trap (this slot changes often. Signet of Shadows, Smoke Screen, Assassin’s Signet, Haste. Even Scorpion Wire makes the cut at times.)
I find it VERY important to have both Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge, especially for CoF P1 farming. Being able to Stealth your party for 15+ seconds is ideal and can benefit your group by not having to deal with certain mobs and areas.

Edit: Forgot to mention that Hide in Shadows can EASILY be replaced by Signet of Malice. Combined with Pistol Whip, SoM is probably the best healing skill in the game.

Teamkiller.4315:

Yeah, my bad about that. I was arguing against the people and not the arguments.

Although removing revealed would be quite overpowered.

I agree you on that point. Back when Revealed wasn’t in the game, it felt almost too easy to pull off certain stealth combos. With the knowledge and practice we have with the Thief class now, there’s no telling how much QQ we’ll bring up if Revealed is taken out.

Teamkiller.4315:

Daecollo.9578:

With the new traps coming into play, revealed should be completely removed, its not needed anymore if you can trap a stealthed foe.

Known for continually introducing thief changes that would be OP, including suggesting that thieves get all deceptions skills on f2 3 and 4 leaving them to choose other utilities for free and suggesting that a thief be able to steal an entire other profession’s utility bar and use all utilities twice in a row with improvisation.

Travlane.5948:

interesting idea. i have to 2nd this.

Someone who is also constantly on the outlook for how thief is worse than other classes and ignores how thief outperforms others in the same way.

Please, wait until the change is instituted before you suggest anything waaay overboard like…this…holy mother of god

I feel like, while you have a good point in saying that we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, you go against your own wisdom in going overboard with anti-Daecollo and Travlane preachings.
I do not agree with EVERYTHING these two individuals have to say regarding the Thief class (everyone has their own point of view) but they do a good job at starting conversation over things that should be conversed about. The fact that they do this does not make it okay for you to bash on them and portray them in such a negative light.

Edit: I’m sorry if this comment seemed a little one-sided, but I feel very strongly that you, Teamkiller, are the one that started a pseudo-argument over something as trivial as this. People will post what they will in the forums. That’s what forums are for. A place where people will discuss what matters to them or what could matter to others. Singling out people as “whiners” or anything along those lines is not cool and shouldn’t be tolerated. If their posts don’t coincide with your beliefs about the Thief class, don’t read their posts.

Wow, I think I got one-sided again. Woops xD

wookie.8934:

I want Moa Morph to be a condition so I can get a team of necros to epidemic an entire enemy zerg into Moas.

A man can dream…

If we could all play nice for a moment, we could have the team of necros perform this sacred ritual… then the 200 Moas can all hit 5 to recreate the migration of penguins!

Zappa.9064:

I’ve just started a thief alt and its a great change of pace from my guardian. However, I’m hearing from some of my thief buddies that the class is pretty difficult to play at end level, if not the most difficult from a “twitch” perspective. How true is that and are there viable builds that are a little easier than others?

The real “difficulty” of the Thief class is learning how each skill can positively affect your positioning. Due to the fact that we are pretty squishy, we won’t be sitting in front of our targets for very long. Every one of our weapon sets (except P/P) has some form of manoeuvrability that can keep us from taking damage while allowing us to position to increase our own.

That being said, another key point is Initiative management. If you’re a new thief, I suggest not investing any points into the Trickery trait line. At 15 points into this tree you get a minor trait that grants +3 to maximum initiative. If you get used to having this bonus (trust me, you will consider it quite the bonus later on) you might get sloppy in terms of skill rotations and managing initiative.
In my eyes, one of the signs of a good thief is his ability to make a build that does not hog initiative.

Here’s a build that I use a lot due to its versatility.
Steal to rip 2 boons. Flanking/Larcenous to rip another 2. Stealth to cure conditions. Over half your attacks will crit (without fury).
Just an overall good build from my experience.

Edit: forgot the link xD
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmiP3ey5E95Ey2jKUn4JOFFlT5pAsGLA-TsAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MKYVwsAA

Kirei.1792:

Thieves are one trick ponies, u don’t know what the combo is? u fail. u do know what the combo is but you fail it? ur nothing…

I feel like you are one of those people that picked up a Thief because of how well they do in 1v1 WvW situations, then put them down again after realizing that it takes skill to use.
Thieves are definitely not one trick ponies. A very high number of players use variations of the Backstab build, but saying the Thief class is nothing but that is like saying a PvE Guardian is nothing but a healer. It’s simply not true. I myself play a S/P PvE Thief that hits like a truck and has decent survivability. In sPvP and WvW I switch to S/D, which is a very versatile and SITUATIONAL weapon set.

Flanking Strike never removed boons like Defiant. Larcenous Strike only strips boons that you, as a player, can attain. For example, you can strip Might, Fury, Aegis, Swiftness, etc.

Another quick note: Most bosses will show boons that look similar to ones that you see on yourself or other characters (boons that have the same picture as Might, for example) but if you hover over them, they may say a different name (Crystal Might). These boons cannot be stripped as they apply a different percentage of additional power to that specific mob.

Parisalchuk.9230:

If I had to take a guess it would be the same cost as ~30 days worth of tokens (Since you get 1 month of active time for buying). That in mind I would place it at 3000 gems.

We know daily tokens will be at or under 200 because of the bug that added the 2 items to the gem store. Both were placed up there for 200 gems. After being removed Anet released a statement saying that tokens could be less and arenas will most likely be more.

My guess. Tokens – 100 and Arenas – 3000.

Since 2800 Gems = $35, would you say that Custom Arenas are appropriately priced? (this is, of course, assuming that your projections are what they go with)

Parisalchuk.9230:

Arena tokens are going to be in the area of 100-200 gems. That is around 10 gold max. Play PvE all you want, when you want to PvP you buy gems, buy your token reactivate your arena and enjoy. Tokens make it so you can only have it active when you want it active and not waste money paying to keep it up on days you dont want it.

I would also like a source for your “they will delete unactive arenas” as I have never seen any indication of that.

What is the projection for the original cost of a Custom Arena?

The way I see it, Anet has a great way to kill 2 birds with 1 stone: Glory.
If Glory was the currency used to buy Time Tokens (the price of each token would have to be appropriately balanced) then people who have loads of it with nothing to do (the people who have been loyally playing this game’s sPvP for awhile) can finally get rid of it. Once theirs is all gone and the Glory market starts to balance out, then people will be “forced” to play hotjoin or tPvP in order to get these tokens, making a healthy circle of forever lasting goodness.

What if the Pistol #2 (Bodyshot) had a component that evaded in whichever direction you were moving at the time of its activation? It could function somewhat like the dodge mechanic in that way.

Kincaidia.3192:

As a thief in full valkerie and the 5% of precision into vitality, I’m right around 19.5k, so yeah, that’s about right.

Anywho, I almost bought mesmer runes yesterday – thinking of trying a stun-lock build based on sword main hand, but I’m just not quite feeling adventurous enough.

Does the +33% from the 6th mesmer rune stack with the +15% from the sigil?

It seems like it should make our 2 second stuns tick for 3 seconds most of the time.

It does, that’s really the only thing keeping me in Mesmer Runes… Ability to stunlock silver mobs in dungeons is kinda great

If you like the S/* weapon sets, I suggest trying Mesmer Runes.

I don’t understand…
Perma Stealth never left. You could have always traited specifically to be invisible 99% of the time. The 3s un-nerf didn’t really change anything in terms of Stealth duration.

Thanks for the heads up.
This should be on the Game Bugs section though…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs

I see your idea and raise you this one:

Mug does damage based off how many points of initiative are burnt when Steal is activated.

That way, they can balance it so that there is more of a reward for the thief to use it as a re-engage rather than an opener.

Hmm… interesting idea.
Let’s see what we can do with this…

If we make it 20% (like Executioner) extra damage to a foe with no boons, that would entice thieves to actually pay attention to the amount of stripped boons. Of course, you can’t really SPAM Flanking Strike, so anyone with major boon potential is safe from a sPvP or WvW perspective. However, when you look at it from a PvE perspective, this may actually help Thief dps in boss fights (where we kind of lag behind the other classes in terms of raw damage output. Let’s face it, a full zerker Thief is not gonna out-dps a full zerker warrior at a boss fight.)

Just a quick PSA for anybody planning on running a trap build, or a build running traps:
If you hit Escape, go to Options – at the bottom of the list is a checkbox called “Melee Assist”. Uncheck that box.
Basically (as the tooltip says if you hover over it), Melee Assist prevents your character from moving through enemy characters unless you are extremely adamant about doing it. And by extremely adamant, I mean it’s a real pain in the kitten. You have to consistently move into the enemy unit for it to register that you wish to walk past them.
Anyways, unchecking this box makes it waaaaay easier to run into someone and quickly place a Tripwire for a 3sec knockdown.

Cheers!

Issues.5789:

@Pentalic.5409 – I lost so many pictures when I formatted; but I’m sure I managed a 19k backstab on a level 80 ranger lol.

Back when I ran around WvW in full zerker, 25 stacks of Bloodlust and food I managed a 26k crit on an upleveled player. I know there’s a huge difference in WvW and sPvP just like there’s a difference between upleveled players and lvl 80’s, but that’s the highest single hit on a player that I’ve ever seen xD
I still remember it like it was yesterday…. /driftsoff

Gotta love how people will do anything to argue a moot point xD
OP, I like your 14k backstab. Nice job pulling that one off

Master of Timespace.2548:

p/d is fairly good bunker build: when you aren’t in stealth, you are evading.

I might have to give it a go considering the potential Condition Damage mixed with manoeuvrability. I’m hesitant though because it seems (speaking from when I used to play d/p) that the weapon set focuses on CnD a little too much… I guess I could try just avoiding it like I do on the d/d but it’s just so darn tempting xD

Void.4239:

glad people still making other builds on the concept of the endurance regain. That was why i posted the build at first.
you deserve full credits for making your build , looks really interesting . Havent try’ed a full trapper yet but will do now

Let me know how you like it
I’m gonna be toying around with the idea for a bit, possibly making some changes in the near future. I was thinking of going with a Sigil of Geomancy in one of the daggers, it might add some killing power…

Don’t know if you watch SoTG when it comes out every month, but this month’s came with an announcement that Mug will no longer be able to crit. Also, there will be a lifesteal component added to it. The devs said it would heal you for about 2k + some minor Healing Power multiplier.

Say bye to 13k Mug crits.

Edit: I now realize why you wrote “was” in the title… don’t I feel like a child xP

I’ve been a little obsessed with bunker builds lately. Thief bunker builds to be more precise…
They don’t work, at least that’s what people have been trying to tell me.

Void.4239 came out with a build and posted it not long ago (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/PVP-bunker-dodger-build-New-Vids-Part3)

I looked at that build and instantly felt the need to thank him. He had found a way for a thief to hold a point without stealthing. The following is my take on his build. I changed a few things but the bare essentials are what really define it, and I toss all credit to the original build-maker.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlYmiNXbS3E95Einivas0UwgtU3jtSrqKA-TsAgyCtI0SplTLjWStsaN8Y9x8DA

Warcry.1596:

Your skills are meant for the fight at hand, if someone shows up before you can recover, that’s one thing. If your skills are on recharge after facing someone, and someone else shows up, that’s bad luck. Recharges even as low as 1 second are still, in a way, passive Initiative management. Since if you can’t expend it, it can only build.

While I understand your point of view, I respectfully disagree with your opinion that applying a 1 second cd on thief skills constitutes Initiative Management.
Not only do thieves not need help managing initiative (if you haven’t figured it out and are wasting your whole pool, you need to keep practising and learn rotations and skill costs) but it would severely hinder some skills ability to perform.
Infiltrator’s Strike comes to mind, although this may be an exception to your rule since it is a chain skill.
Before the new information we learned about Flanking Strike in this week’s SoTG, S/D #3 was one of our only boon hate skills. If your target has stability and might, a quick double hit of Flanking Strike is one of your only options.

Warcry.1596:

PhelanDisturbed.1650:

Same goes the other way. A thief kills an ele but had to blow all its initiative. Guardian comes up and slaps him around while the thief is defenseless. Same thing…

Here is where your argument has a hole though. If a thief runs out of initiative, he’s doing something wrong =/

And here is where the opposite argument has a hole in it…
If all your skills are on cd, you’re doing something wrong.

Tested the build extensively tonight. Very please with what it brings to the table in 1v1’s. Had a 10 minute session with another good thief, neither of us could get the kill. Also held a capture point for a good 5 minutes while a necro and warrior tried to cap it.

Rayya.2591:

Travlane.5948:

the ONLY thing worth stealing is whirl from warriors. the rest are kinda neat….or kinda tricky…or kinda fun…..i mean the ice stab COULD be usefull but its SOOOO slow and SOOO small range i think i hit like 10% or less of those :P

and the water field from ranger is bad, specialy when you got an shortbow to area heal 5 ally’s for 1400 x5 blastsx 5 targets -you actualy can heal in 3 seconds 35000 hp with 1 steal and 15 initiative
also the area fear from necro is bad /the daze from guardian /all buffs from mesmer… etc

I felt the sarcasm oozing from every word. Love it xD

Bumping this because of my selfish desire to gather knowledge.

Edit: Woops, forgot to mention that this build was made in SPvP.
2nd Edit: Also forgot to mention that I was using the Soldier’s Amulet, with a Solder’s Jewel.

Daecollo.9578:

Thieves can’t really choose which opponents they fight though.

What?

Edit: Sorry for the one word answer.
If I was playing a 4v4 against a mesmer and 3 elementalists, I would ALWAYS target the mesmer before Stealing.
All the buffs. All the time.

Hello all,

With the information gathered from this week’s SoTG, I think it’s safe to assume that us thieves are going to have to change up our game to become viable in a competitive PvP environment. I do not believe that the bunker meta is going to disappear completely because of the addition of some boon hate on a few professions. This is why I decided to have a go at making a Thief bunker build.
It has been tested in a few matches and has performed well, but I am in no way claiming this is a good build or even viable.
Please leave constructive criticism below, and hopefully we as a community can come up with something that truly stands out among the rest.

The Build

Traits: 0/0/30/30/10
Shadow Arts – Shadow Protector (III), Hidden Thief (VIII), Shadow’s Rejuvenation (XI)
Acrobatics – Fleet Shadow (VI), Assassin’s Reward (X), Quick Pockets (XII)
Trickery – Flanking Strikes (IV)

Weapon Sets: Sword/Dagger, Dagger/Dagger
Sigils: Force in all weapons (prone to change)
Armor Runes: 6 x Superior Rune of the Warrior

Slot Skills:
6 – Hide in Shadows
7 – Blinding Powder
8 – Shadow Refuge
9 – Shadowstep
Elite – Thieves Guild

The focus of this build is to be tanky enough to stand toe to toe for a few hits without worry, using Infiltrator’s Strike and Tactical Strike to keep your target locked down. As you can see the build has a high amount of stealth skills, allowing you to quickly gain health off of Shadow Protector and Shadow Rejuvenation at a moment’s notice. The choice of going with no ranged weapon set was a tough one to make, but necessary as I see it. Quick Pockets in combination with Runes of the Warrior allows you CnD then switch to D/D for a backstab and a Heartseeker on a weakened opponent. Even though you have literally 0% extra crit damage and 4% crit chance, you’ll still be hitting harder than a feather with right around 3k attack power. Originally, I had spent 10 points into Deadly Arts instead of Trickery and Mug was in the build. However, I honestly believe that the reduction in overall Attack and damage from Mug (negligible in this build) is less than the increase in damage from Flanking Strikes. Kleptomaniac also helps regain your footing if Steal is up.

Anyways, that’s enough rambling for me.
Leave your thoughts below.

P.S. What is the colour of night?

When the game first came out I felt the same way about Steal. I never really used it… never remembered to.
Then I found out that Steal can be used in mid-animation for any skill.
Now I use it all the time. Running a S/P Pistol Whip build in PvE and a boss knocks you back? As soon as you stand up, hit 3 then F1 and watch as you tele to the boss just as the sword slash combo starts. Things like that get really fun in PvP too when you match it with Steal-based traits.

Look, we thieves know you hate us. To be completely honest, we like it. We want you to hate us. We want you to scream and pound your keyboard in eternal frustration after we stealth-stomp you into the ground. We cherish every moment before we stab you in the back for a ridiculous crit.
Does this make us bad people? Maybe.
Does it give every Tom, kitten and Harry the right to come to the Thief sub-forum SPECIFICALLY and QQ endlessly over it? Maybe.
SHOULD you come to the Thief sub-forum to QQ? No, go away.

I recently took a moment and checked out the sub-forums for other professions (I had never done this before as I have and always will be a thief player. Learning other classes to counter them comes from in-game knowledge and trying them out.) and I was stupefied by the variety of threads. There are threads about almost anything related to the class.
I then came back to the Thief sub-forum and almost cried.

Hello all,
I’m not quite sure if this is a known issue, I could not find it anywhere although I admit my searches were lazy.
When using the “Practiced Tolerance” trait from the Critical Strikes tree, any added Precision taken from the “Signet of Agility” utility skill will not be converted into Vitality.
Try it out if you haven’t already and let me know your findings.

I went on some dungeon runs tonight to test the aggro changes and found that the change hasn’t affected aggro all that much. I deal a ton of damage and when I pulled aggro and stealthed, I found that the rest of my party generated enough to compensate me coming out of stealth to wail on the big baddy again. I stealth quite a bit during combat and have found that the boss only b-lines for you if you exit stealth an instant after entering (not very smart anyway).

Dairuin.5602:

Facts:

#3: You’d have to modify the 1.5s duration of tac strike to be >2seconds in order to see any sort of return, since it already acts as a 2s daze. In other words, you need 34% increase in stun duration to make it a 3s daze. Not sure this is even possible with the equipment provided in the mists.

Something in here seems off. I am using Runes of the Mesmer AND a Superior Sigil of Paralyzation, yet the duration of the daze from Tac Strike looks and feels the same as is did when I used only the runes. I’m starting to think there may be a cap on the amount of daze or stun duration one might have. If so, and if it is 33%, then Tac Strike needs a 0.1s buff. (imo)

Dual.8953:

Using stealth no longer resets NPC aggression tables.

I’ve been testing this out and it seems to be exactly as they state. When you gain the Stealth buff you are safe from being attacked just like before. Exiting stealth, however, you will have the same amount of aggro as before you gained Stealth.
It’s a good implementation without completely destroying Thief PvE.

I am currently using Runes of the Mesmer on my PvE Dungeon build. I can potentially buy a Sigil of Impact tonight to test this out.
Bought the runes thinking they’d up Tac Strike to 3 seconds, wasn’t aware you needed a 34% increase -.-

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet – The ‘Expeditious Dodger’ trait says "Gain 2 seconds of swiftness on _evade_’ . Why does it not activate when evading an attack as a result of using a skill? Flanking Strike, for example.

Just realized I never made a distinction between PvP and PvE after all xP

Boy, this is quite a tough one to answer...
First off, will the build you are looking to make be for PvP or PvE purposes? Here are a few notes for each.

If PvP:
- If you want to build the quintessential glass cannon Thief, Mug combined with Bountiful Theft from the Acrobatics tree is a good way of dealing damage while ensuring that your next attacks get through any defenses they had.
- D/P thieves have access to infinite stealth through the use of the Heartseeker + Black Powder combo. If paired with Infusion of Shadow HS only costs 1 initiative to cast, making it possible to stack somewhere around 15 seconds of stealth on yourself. It’s kinda perfect for a pure backstab build (there’s a ridiculous FREE high damage skill in Backstab, a commando lunging powerhouse in HS, a gap closing blind in Shadow Shot, an expensive but life-saving daze in Headshot, and an aoe blind in Black Powder)
- I do agree with you that S/P is the king of dungeon thief builds, but I can also understand how it wouldn’t click with everyone. If you liked the aoe damage, try S/D. There’s still plenty of utility and damage, minus the PW spam. By the way, I don’t mean PW spam as in mash 33333333333333... I mean that it’s your only damage source. Some people have taken on the thought that S/P thieves do nothing but spam 3 all day.

There’s plenty more but I’m on the train and can see my stop xP

I can’t speak for him, but one that I can think of is if a large AoE effect is placed in front of you (you are already standing somewhat inside it), it would probably be faster to back out than turn out.
Even then, though, a dodge automatically brings you back and a side dodge would most definitely bring you out of it…

Karolis.4261:

Pentalic.5409:

I’ve always been one to stand by the “Play your own way” motto. Hence, I play with:
W: move forward
A: Strafe left
S: Move back
D: Strafe right
Q: Turn camera left
E: Turn camera right

I usually use the mouse to turn the camera, but dungeons and PvE content sometimes makes me go keyboard crazy

And you lose Q and E buttons which could ( and should) be used for skills/utilities.

I have a friend who plays SOLELY with the keyboard and he is one of the best Guardians I’ve met, so I don’t think any keys SHOULD be used for certain things. I also know of many people using the keyboard number pad for their weapon skills and they switch back and forth between the mouse and keyboard very fast.

I’ve always been one to stand by the “Play your own way” motto. Hence, I play with:
W: move forward
A: Strafe left
S: Move back
D: Strafe right
Q: Turn camera left
E: Turn camera right

I usually use the mouse to turn the camera, but dungeons and PvE content sometimes makes me go keyboard crazy

After countless hours/days/weeks spent messing about and creating builds, I have come to the conclusion that the S/P setup is king among thief dungeon/PvE builds.

That being said, here is a link to the build I am currently running:
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#2|10|2642|3361|8743|3997|4485|0|0|0|0|30|1731|1193|1728|30|2383|746|751|0|0|0|0|10|786|0|0|0|0|0|28038|28016|49975|49975|49975|49975|49975|0|0|0|0|0|0|

If you’re looking for aoe damage on a thief, I strongly suggest S/P since all sword attacks deal aoe damage. If timed right, Infiltrator’s strike can immobilize multiple targets when they are standing next to each other. The same skill can be reused as an escape and condition removal. Pistol Whip is your bread and butter, dealing heavy aoe damage with a built in interrupt. Black Powder is a nice aoe blind for those sticky situations where multiple mobs are after your group (I use it mostly for solo farming) but be careful as to when you use it, the initiative cost is a little bit ridiculous.
As good as a ranged daze is, you will find yourself avoiding the use of Headshot in favor of Steal-ing in for a PW.

The build I provided is in no way a competitive PvP build and should not be treated as such. As a matter of fact, there are way better runes than Infiltration to be running, but they are dirt cheap and do their job quite nicely.
One thing to note is that PW also has a built in evade, so if you get decently good at timing it, it is possible to avoid ALL boss attacks in a dungeon. I recently went through the final boss of CoF exp path 1 without ever being hit, all the while dealing my massive damage.
The build I provided comes with around 14-15k HP, but is survivable if you know how to time your stealths. With Shadow’s Rejuvination, a single Blinding Powder can heal you up to 3/4 from almost dead.
Another quick note (I know, it’s getting pretty bad…)
The build is made to be somewhat support-ish, using Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge when your PARTY needs it most. They provide safe rez’s and aswesome drop-aggro’s.

Enjoy

Hello,

It’s been a long time since I’ve had any sense of community about an MMO, but GW2 has recently awakened my inner MMOer and I’ve decided to stop playing solo and try to find some comrades. You can imagine my disbelief when I found out how hard it is to find an active, medium-sized guild on the Blackgate server.
I am not willing to transfer to a different server, but I also am no longer willing to play alone.

Anyone have some advice?

Hello everyone,
As the topic states, my comrade and myself are looking for a serious guild, however it must be on the Blackgate server. While we do not really have any preference, it would be nice to join a guild with heavy focus on PvE content.
We are both experienced players and know our classes well (he is a Guardian and I am a Thief).
Thanks for your consideration,
Pentalic The Silent and Rotgar The Brute