Guild Wars 2

Bottom line is, mobility doesn’t put points on the board

I tried to stay out of this, but this is not as easy as that.

Mobility decaps points. Decapped points aren’t generating points for the opposing team. Also, mobility can cap points unattended, provided response isn’t quick enough – and even if it’s only 2-5 points before it’s backcapped, that’s a few more than you had.

Also this isn’t about burst.

And I don’t know why it bothered me so much…

sorry, carry on…

Pew Pew Magoo
/15charsinaharem

Mobility is good enough shadows is awful except on downed guardians while stomping as not x/p, and bv+steal from other thieves. Mesmer greatsword if in refuge is another great one but I’ve only accidentally done it once.

I can’t live without sleight of hand anymore. 6 trickery is required in all of my builds now. I personally run dd with 30056. Weakness on poison, 10% damage when endurance isn’t full(when’s that?), I take vigor on heal and might on dodge sometimes change it for quick recovery.
Between withdraw steal inf signet and step I’m all over the place. It sustains well enough and the damage is nice as long as you land your cnds and pace yourself.

I like it more than shadow arts, and I used to run x66x0. Shadow arts is a much slower gameplay, I prefer how much more alive trickery builds feel.

Sorry on formatting – phone and quickness for shame!

Don’t rush engi or guardian. Most of those will take time to crack. Figure out your short bow spots ebg has more than the others and step can reach others.
Oh and stealth all you want. Other factions LOVE that.

I learned the game on thief. It wasn’t that bad (but was before npe). Now I could imagine it sucking. Anywho above has a point about conquest mode. Stealth is detrimental. I am married to dd, though occasionally swap a sword or pistol here and there. Pve and wvw there are no ‘drawbacks’ per SE for dd setup.

And as someone who loves dd: dp is infinitely more useful.

(It just doesn’t feel as awesome)

Thief probably has a smaller margin for error than most classes.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to:

-Learn the other classes so you know what to dodge and when.
-Peruse our wonderful forums. We thieves have many resources put together to help our young padawans in situations like this. Many of the useful ones are on page 1/2 now!
-Don’t get frustrated. We’re squishy no matter what.
-Don’t panic. Playing a rogue in other mmos you know our cool head and intelligence prevail over brute force and jamming square pegs in round holes.
-watch some better d/d thieves and learn through watching.
-Check your build.
-Don’t get bloodthirsty. Cool head. Remember?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYlk0Mt0pJcKCuC8udNu7uJA-TlSDgAMnAgelfTHCA29HOeAAvq/AqPAw8niSQpjAAA-w

Give it a shot. Runes can be more of preference, same on sigils.
open slots are open for you to choose preference. I normally run
utilities
Inf signet/blinding powder, shadowstep, refuge/scorp wire/sig of agility(rarely)

Works with d/p but when you do well with it as d/d it feels better

can drop the 2 in SA for 2 in DA if you prefer mug over condi clearing, but the more defensive condi clear I find more valuable in WvW.

I still use Lyssa runes with it for condi clear too, and have another set with altruism on it that’s fun to run with it as well.

edit: also planning to get a more precision based runeset for another gear set, as the crit chance is lacking somewhat for my tastes usually.

Since the beginning.

Lyssa before was remove all conditions gain all boons. Now it’s just 5 and uses the corrupt boon table.

I have an altruism set for perma fury and swiftness. I almost always run dd but have used it with sd 20066 26006 and 50036 to great effect. The healing is a waste but with steal and withdraw swiftness and fury are covered.

I can’t engineer worth beans. Thief is my main. Far distant second is ele. Then mesmer somewhere 6 miles down. I’m having great fun playing regardless. I’m just curious about that one scenario I described… Anet can do as they will. Unless they make thief unplayable (removed) I’ll still be one, and here

I get that. I was stating I still got use out of them. And they dropped a LOT cost wise. Is everyone running strength now or something? Hell still using travellers on my other thief due to QoL.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Selver.1307:

I would not condone or agree with any of the above…

I sure would. I’de be playing my thief again.

Okay Okay… I agree bv shouldn’t be called an elite and that we’ve been nerfed almost every patch. I also agree they should update and revise our (and all classes) traits/utilities, but I don’t agree with replacing steal, changing step, or fundamentally altering the thief. It plays great. It needs some QoL improvements as all classes do, and a reevaluation of past nerfs..

Do you really expect any of anything in the thread though? Oh except more nerfs. I mean with 6mo balance passes and small tweaks mostly… We’re in for a long ride. I like road trips though. I’ll black out when I’m bored enough

It was my fault for not dodging the magnet (half a sec to a sec after visible lines, I know) which I saw.
As soon as I landed at their feet I was downed. Basic rifle and toolkit combo, but combat log also showed static discharge(? Would have been downed without sd but still wondering how it was there, I know they improved combat log but it’s still really wonky or was dealing with dem hacks, I’m open for explanations, please) in between jump shot and blunderbus, which baffles me. Note we were the only 2 in the area. My reactions are usually competent, I dummied on the magnet though.
I accepted death because I had 13k, and it was zerker vs zerker, but gee. I’m curious about the timeframe of the combo because it was seriously instant after I landed. That and the static discharge in the combat log really threw me for a loop trying to break down what happened to me.

Once you get better at playing it and learning nuances I would drop the sa line down to 2 or 0 and fill in on trickery or deadly arts. Could also drop cs line to 0 and up trickery. Basically once you get decent with dp you can afford more offense in your traits. 06620 is an awesome wvw build for roaming, lockdown and slower ttk are it’s only downfalls.

I use lyssa on one of my thieves… prices did plummet all to crap though.

It’s still a nice Condi clear If you don’t have a bunch of covers up.

Lol. 50% in one second? Try downed instantly From 100% after a magnet pull from a power engi. When I can do that from stealth or in the first seconds of a fight, let me know.

I would not condone or agree with any of the above…

Lol we asked for new skills and traits. Next time we should specify “good” skills and traits…

Everyone’s opinion here is General consensus. Skelk venom, even with a venom build, is awful.

And I enjoy reflecting it and watching you leap away. I wouldn’t say no, but I operate okay without mesmer hp.

If he exits Sr prematurely for any reason it’s insta reveal no matter what.

Edit: most of us have the timing and size of it down to a science. We can riverdance inside of it and exit as it fades to appear we’re out of it beforehand.

When I play anything other than dd and 6 in trickery I still and+steal like I do…

Steal and! …trick shot?
Steal and! …black powder? I’ll roll with it…

“We’ve heard some great feedback about the commander featutes, but presently we’re all tied up with improving the NPE. We have some ideas we think you’ll really like on the horizon though so stay tuned and we’ll get you details as they become available.”

(6 months later)

“We’re pleased to announce all those great ideas you guys had for the commander update have been incorporated into the base functionality for ALL commanders, in Guild Wars 3, slated for 2017. Thanks for your support and feedback!”

Well… At least you tried.

I fed a troll once. It grew shrub out of it’s head… oh wait. Chia pet at it again!

incoming acrobatics wvwvw meta in
3…
2…
1…

NERF!

Terrorsquad.2349:

The Shatter mesmer part is a bit.. incomplete.

Hey yeah I know it was incomplete and that is my fault trying to be quick and cover a wide array of things. Thanks for picking up my slack. I tried to be as concise as I could starting out (like the dd ele section) but then time started getting to me hehe. I also obviously played ele more than mesmer

Keep those counters coming! Like I said I am no spvp person really so I was trying to be as general as I could!

Great work team thief!

Most things that port you has to have a walkable path to get there. Some terrain things (keep stairs wvw) isn’t possible to use it on, and some terrain (that rock you could step on and not notice) will screw it up. The revealed thing is odd, unless you were in autoattack range, activated the trap return, it was in an improper place, you stayed in spot and it was still swinging your arms as the stealth activated…

You’re either really good or really bad at thief. Very little in between with it. It does fine for any game mode provided you build it right. I’m not a great thief but I’m not awful either, it’s mostly people who can’t adapt to them(playing as or against) complaining.

^ it’s a roaming build. If you ever fought one for 8 minutes you’d see it’s great. We even had time to bow to each other.

i use space for jump and v for dodge, tapping both at the same times works 100% of the time for me.

wasd – forward/back/strafe
middle mouse – heal
c – 180
b – camera rear view
1-5 1-5 weapons
q,e,r – utilities
shift+v – elite
shift1 – steal
` – swap

I normally run 2/6/0/0/6 or 0/6/0/2/6.
Main points are either mug/vigor on heal, and crit from stealth (though exe is viable if you build glassy enough), daze on steal, and bountiful.
I use daggerx2. Traveler’s runes still baby. I keep withdraw and shadowstep, other 2 are really interchangeable based on preference. I normally keep BP and Scorpion Wire.

Offhand either goes to shortbow or p/d. fun stuff.

It’s always been usable.

0/6/0/2/6
2/6/0/0/6
2/0/0/6/6

probably a few others I am forgetting.

2 thieves as well, one only has zerker equipment.

my first, the other. Well… Let’s just say I had to delete some at one point.

Zerker full set, soldier full set, dire full set, rabid full set, valkyrie full set, apothecary full set, cleric – weapons and a few pieces, carrion full set, knight full set… I think that was it. I could put my stats anywhere if need be.

I had so many to test stuff. I got rid of miscellaneous pieces of: carrion, knight, cleric(all), rabid, valkyrie, and apothecary.

kept the rest for a while and have tried to slim down even more.

scratched knights, apothecary, and most of rest of rabid.

I still mainly run around in zerker, or zerker+a few soldier.

I feel very disheartened after knowing I had 240-250% crit damage to now see it at 197-201% depending on what I am switching out. The sigils I doubt will make up for it. The less burst we receive will not make up for it (IMO). I could break a hard backstab and turn it around sometime even against the glassiest of thieves(as an almost as glassy as I could be), other times no – but hell, I wasn’t fast enough or good enough in those times.

I almost don’t even want to load into WvWvW on my power set. I keep pulling my dire/plex set out of the bank and putting it back in… I hate cheesing it out so bad (we’re cheese no matter what anyway, I suppose).

Cntrl+Shift+H. There you have it the one and simplest answer to making the game harder (and 100000x more beautiful).

win-win. if it still isn’t hard you aren’t killing enough at once.
edit: I put alt+Z, bad other mmo!

yanoch.7051:

Karolis.4261:

Sithaco.4673:

Ah this thread :’)

OP, how is this any different to an Elementalist mist form stomping or a Warrior endure pain + stability stomping or any other class invulnerability stomping?

/thread

Actually its very different. Mist form and Endure pain+stability makes user invulnerable to everything. Stealth only makes thief invisible.
For OP… And what will you do if thief is stomping your friend without stealth? Well do the same when hes stealthed = same results.

Endure pain is not invulnerable. Conditions/CC goes through it.

Stealth is not invulnerable. Conditions/CC/DIRECT DAMAGE goes through it.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Personal favorite – Find a moose in game.

If you have someone in game to do The Dead End in Divinity’s Reach, as painful as it is, when Taimi enters the scene kitten gets real!

Funny as hell.

use it for a day, you’ll love it just for what it offers.

edit: the shortbow

Alright, hear me out, it is generally a bunker, but it doesn’t use dire.

full soldier’s. everywhere. I have exquisite carrion upgrades in the trinkets, dolyak runes in the armor. Sigil of corruption, and battle – yes corruption.
Condition damage crystals, either mango pie, condi cleanse on heal, might on heal, or one of the condi duration foods (+/-)

0/0/30/10/30

earth: rock solid, written in stone, armor of earth
water: soothing wave
arcane: vigor on crit, elemental attunement

Signet of Restoration, signet of water, lightning flash, signet of air, whatever elite you want.

You can really throw out the signets on the bar aside from the heal, and do whatever with them. I keep water slotted for the passive condi cleanse albeit unreliable adds up overtime, and who doesn’t like chilling people on demand? i keep air for the 25% speed and stunbreak, and lightning flash is just too useful to give up regardless.

With written in stone, you can use the heal, as well as have great sustain from armor/water/the passive. You also always maintain that juicy +25% without rune investment (boon/swift duration, traveler’s/speed).

Once I found EA I couldn’t play without it, I have tried. The finisher, the heal, it’s just too much in one package.

I aim for the condition damage sigil (this will all be in the air once rebalance comes in) because once I have it stacked, and I have the food and such up, condition damage is respectable, as is my power. i have no crit, and no crit damage, but I don’t even care. I am keeping burns very consistently, bleeds fairly consistently, and can normally land my bigger skills, and can stack might and maintain without trying 9-12.

I have only been playing with it for like a day, but it seems effective unless just overwhelmed by multiple bursters (as is our weakness anyway), always frontline ready with the setup anyway, but solo roaming is amusing.

I also occasionally switch out signet of water (and/or air – yes I use the GM trait for earth for one signet sometimes, sue me) for cleansing fire/mist form/armor of earth/ice bow/a random arcane/signet of earth depending on what I am seeing in the distance sometimes.

Something to do when bored.

practice yes, but you can get some general outlines, if you are there to help your team and don’t just see it as a dueling ground where you have to actively seek out the duels.

-Yaks – if it’s red it’s dead. You as a thief have a unique ability to drop the yak even with people all around it, it will just take more guile.
-supply camps – if no Righteous Indignation, take it. You can solo them. Even the fully upgraded ones and ones with the hyleks or whatever there helping. Those just are tricky in comparison. only time this may not be of import is if you are trying to avoid any swords going up anywhere in there area (after a moment a supply camp will gain white swords behind it indicating someone or something(NPCS) are there causing trouble), but your commanders would hopefully let that be known in map as well as their voicecomm.
-You can take some shortcuts with the shortbow in quite a few places in the borderlands. I can’t list them all, and I doubt I know them all, but there are ones that shadowstep can reach that the arrow will not.

what zero day said sums it up best though, just dive in and it will all become clear within a month for the most part. Only you will know if you wanna dive into those two necros and a guardian, or 5 upleveled rangers (amusing and terribly frightening).

Ruby orbs/scholar/ogre/(am I missing any anyone else?)
Force/dungeon specific/energy/battle/leeching/preference..

Food: life steal on Crit/precision. Keep a weapon to build stacks of bloodlust. This will change 15th though(swapping your stack weapon after you get them).

no no, it’s probably a thief so it doesn’t count.

let’s cheer the mesmers up too?

(IMHO)

only thing hs needs is damage reduction above 50%, maybe above 25% to keep the spam factor down.

only thing x/d #4 needs is “obstructed”/“out of range” bug fixes.

d/d#3 would be nice if power was a main stat to scale with power better and reduce bleed duration, if condi increase duration and reduce direct damage; maybe increase evade frame 1/2s.

but i agree, d/d is in a red headed spot in the mists atm. and permastealthing with 5 there makes you even more useless than every other game mode so no biggy even if you have a target not outsustaining(or mitigating) a cnd every kitten . damage revert on cnd would be nice.

using teleports: set location, appear there, walk 2 steps, back where you selected to land teleport.

activation of skills not ‘1’: using 2-10 results in a huge delay, even using nothing but that skill for upwards of 20 seconds, or more. The heal is sometimes much faster to respond, other times not. Maybe Elite too, but haven’t came across it enough on that front.

and not thinking it’s related to skill lag, but perhaps:

leaps, flat ground (relatively, it seems), use it to gain distance from targets, after first one will immediately rotate me 45*-180*(degrees), and using the skill queue to use my leap again back into the targets I was trying to escape (no I had no target).

keep all weapon swaps available.
25/30/0/15/0
25/30/0/0/15
30/30/0/0/10
zerker gear all the way.

useful utilities:
refuge.
signet of agility
smokescreen
blinding powder
smokescreen and refuge are the big ones though.
s/p for trash
d/d for bosses

use discretion. dead thief = useless thief.
refuge for field medic if people don’t reveal themselves.
ele’s around? improv and get that hammer/FGS spare.

don’t dodge around like an idiot.

the end.

I’ve done the dire/plex p/d/p/p cheese. I hate that runeset with a passion, with builds I use that can counter it, the fights are long and painful, and usually interrupted anyway. Some of my other builds just can’t counter them.

And I am not going to really get into the new traits because I feel any feedback we may give will be completely irrelevant to what the actually implement. I love this game, feedback is great, and you know as well as I do that our community (thief) has tried to give positive and detailed feedback (and still does). It’s the feedback from the other side that I am concerned about. It isn’t there really. At all. You know?

About the new traits in particular, they’ve announced their functionality. I don’t see any feedback about them from now – the 15th to be anything more than something they might tweak a year from now once they get their data collection down pat. I will wait to have them in game to play with before I speculate on new builds, giving up sleight, or HK, or executioner, is really a tough call regardless, and with sigils and runes being up in the air, I want to have the dust settle before I go diving into the concrete pool.

I spent a good 10g on obscure runes a month ago just hoping they’d be useful after they changed them.

Faux.1937:

DatPieGuy.6540:

ionix.9054:

OK I’m confused. Is d/d not cool any more?

still seems like it is by popular consensus judging by all the thieves I see running it. I’m just confused as to why people praise its playstyle being so compelling when it’s mostly just CnD + BS + rinse and repeat.

I love d/d d/p for wvw roamingr, it is alot of CnD + BS, but its the type of play style that I love, I love the sneaky hidden killer type of play. Glass cannon and all.

It is just more than CnD and BS tho, thats just the main dps of the build, timed steal, blind, cripple, stealths is all about skill and thats is what I think players like about it.

I agree here, unless it is a wam bam thank you mam fight I end up using all 5 skills on the DD bar. Admittedly 3 and 4 considerably less, especially 3, but nothing like jumping over earthshaker or the teleport>CE. any of those telegraphed attacks like that are super easy to time blossom with and you don’t have to worry about their reprisal during the crappy evade frame/aftercast because they are in aftercast as well. beats burning the dodge sometimes.
4 however, though still my favorite thrown projectile in the game, lost a lot of it’s oomph with the damage nerf long ago, I guess it was warranted. It is still usefull as all hell barring warriors with cleansing ire/melandru/-%condi food, etc. the cripple is nice anyway, with any sort of decent condi duration for yourself it’s dandy!

DatPieGuy.6540:

Bazzoong.7145:

Ok, since you asked for opinions here is mine.

I belive that D/D actually was originally designed for a different playstyle than most people associate it with. I was in my opinion designed as a hybrid weapon set that complements high crit chance and low power with condition damage and on crit effects.
Unfortunately people did not get that and turned the set into a one trick pony, this is understandable to a degree since to make the original design work you would need more vitality than you can usually get (especially with the rampager gear you would want to use for that kind of playstyle).
Also the power creep with ascended gear has blown the efficacy of the one trick way out of proportion, the stat budget at the moment is way to high across the board but especially when it comes to crit damage.

So what people usally call D/D playstyle is more of an accident than intended by the original design.

That’s an interesting perspective, and would explain why d/d has a random bleed stacking skill in its kit. It’s a shame that hybrid builds aren’t very prominent in the meta; it would allow for some nice build diversities.

some time ago (after sleight of hand)I ran a 20/20/0/0/30 build that was a hybrid. It was effective in the sense that not everyone knew how to crush a thief at the time, and especially ones that were perma evading. With Improv, and the interrupts available to us (wire, sleight for the build I was using), and hybrid stats (think I was around 6-700condition damage, 60% duration, 2500 power, 16khp and 2300ish armor, 50% crit damage with a 30-40% crit chance), I would have to rebuild it in an editor, but was amusing as hell. Kinda trolly, people weren’t expecting a thief with daggers to use all 5 skills on their bar, and then swap to shortbow and kite around purposely drawing fights out. All it was was surviving trying to bait out utilities and heal (to interrupt, for most classes), and then initiative dumps into backstab>stack bleeds twice>try for another BS… it was much easier playing full condition or full power. But the trolls were strong in this one if that was your aim.

I trade out the 10 in acro for mug when I roam and use long reach; use it for the purpose of the thread too, when I forget to run by retrainer. the 21s cd on mug is sexy and solo roaming the vigor from bountiful is more than enough normally.
For this one however, I am usually within 900 of my target, rendering long reach useless, and I’ve explained my reasoning for my open utilities. unload, unload, steal, roll, wire, BP, unload. generally target is down (remember, you are with 1-4 others, and this target is injured already. i also don’t run any toughness aside from a little on the backpiece because if I am in the wrong place I am dead anyway to hammertrain if I am not fast enough on steps.
It really isn’t something you leave the garrison with hoping to pull off some crazy outnumbered fights, and it isn’t something you even win any 1v1’s with unless you really just caught someone off guard (“what the kitten? pistol pistol? No way I just died to unload spam…” [goes to GW2 forums to create a thread about nerfing thieves; pp in particular]).

Regardless, I am just wanting to share things that hopefully don’t devolve into woe and lamentation the end is near bullkitten. We do need some good healthy feedbacks on the forums – especially our side of the tracks.

I am waiting with baited breath to see how these new traits roll out before I even utter a word about them.