Guild Wars 2

naphack.9346:

Did I ever say, SoM was good?
I am a withdraw guy through and through(at least for moderae builds… If your build is built around utilizing stealth for sneak attacks, it becomes a matter of taste.

The reply you responded to that began our discussion was a reply to SoM being the ticket out of emergency situation.

Unless you neglect to acknowledge the topic of that reply, then you are implying to support SoM until you specifically mention which one you are supporting.

But to reiterate my point;

Making HiS look bad doesn’t necessarily makes <Withdraw> look better.

Does that work for you?

Here’s a scenario to make Withdraw look bad;

You have 10 stacks of Confusion and dying slowly from DoTs — should you Withdraw?

naphack.9346:

Unless he is a ranger/necro/mesmer and you can CnD off the pets, already those CnDs might be impossible to achieve tho.
I mean, you try to CnD, warrior pulls a block on you, you try to HiS and eat his shield. Swap to GS, 100blades!

You can always make up a scenario to make a skill look bad. I can do the same to make Withdraw and SoM look bad, but that doesn’t help in discussing which healing skill is useless. Making HiS look bad doesn’t necessarily makes SoM look better, in fact, you are making it look even worst.

SoM has worst casting time than HiS — if HiS can be interrupted, so much more SoM can be interrupted.

naphack.9346:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nevertheless, a 6K heal + DoT removal + untargetability (stealth) is your ticket out of any emergency situation.

Try that against a decent player and you get a daze to the face and kiss the floor half a second later.
Withdraw > HiS, already because of cast time.

Regardless whether the player you are against with is decent or not, you should know better. If you are a decent player, you would CnD before HiS…unless of course you are speaking from experience.

Dasorine.1964:

3.3k is ample enough to take me out of the danger zone, but yeah they all have their own uses.

HiS is definitely the best heal in terms of pure healing and damage mitigation but the others are both just as good depending on playstyle and circumstances.

And of course theory crafting is all well and good but in reality you really shouldnt be needing heals on cooldown and such either so…

Yeah back to the original point, HiS is fine, not crippled does its job well, the other 2 also do their job well as well.

I cannot agree that SoM is doing its job well, because it isn’t. It needs to do a better job.

There shouldn’t be a blackout time, where you’re not getting any heal at all. The passive should continue to work while the activated ability is on recharge.

There are other suggestions in this forum to make it a life steal.

As for the topic, the uselessness of the healing skill that should be in question is not HiS, but should be SoM.

Dasorine.1964:

Its my primary healing skill, I rarely ever click it, the idea is the passive healing should keep you up and the clickie (which for me is a 12s cooldown with the 1.25s cast) is an emergency omg im nearly dead and they are aoe’ing move for those times when I can’t be in the fight anyway.

Granted its much weaker in PvP where burst is everything, but even then I’ve managed to get good use out of it on zergs and such.

If you’re only using the Active effect in case of an emergency, then cooldown time is of none issue. So why you questioned it; I have no idea.

But if you think that a 3.3K heal can save you in case of an emergency, then you’re just fooling yourself believing that. If you’re popping this every 16.25s, then you’re not really benefitting from the Passive heal because it is in constant recharge. You’re better off with Withdraw if you want to heal yourself that often.

Nevertheless, a 6K heal + DoT removal + untargetability (stealth) is your ticket out of any emergency situation.

Dasorine.1964:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I, personally, never like this skill especially now that Quickness was nerfed. The heal-per-attack is miniscule and almost laughable. If you compare this to Warrior’s Healing Signet, Warriors receives more healing by doing nothing.

Since it requires the thief to be doing something and it has a very long cooldown, the cost for the healing effect from this signet is too high in comparison to HiS.

SoM has a long cooldown? Since when? 15s down to 12s if traited…

SoM has 1.25s cast time and 15s recharge time, thus the total cooldown between heals is 16.25s.

In a 30s span, comparing it to HiS recharge time, HiS heals for total of 6k, Withdraw heals for 8.8k and SoM heals for 6.6k, give or take few 100s per hit in 28s (you’re not hitting anything while casting SoM).

Effective healing of HiS is greater because you became untargetable preventing further damage, plus removing all DoTs.

Effective healing on Withdraw is based on the damage it evaded.

SoM effective healing is lacking. On top of that, you are not receiving heals from hits while SoM is recharging.

It’s a horrible healing skill.

qynvee.4157:

Later on Vigil soldiers are advancing on Orr with the Iron Legion’s armored units,

These armored units were introduced early in the game in one of the Norn storyline.

you get to play with a state-of-the-art Asuran battlesuit,

Another technology introduced at the early levels in one of the Asura storyline.

and Zhaitan himself falls to a giant laser

You can find this laser take out TeaKettle in one or the later level areas.

I understand they are pooling the resources of three major world orders but how could they possibly have this level of cooperation, funding, and support from their racial governments when there is otherwise so much conniving and bureaucracy.

Each character represents the nation of their race and thus was comissioned and well funded by that nation. For example, Humans has the backing of the Queen, which explains the abundant supply. If bureaucracy is at play, it is ever more apparent that other nations will attempt to surpass the effort of the other nations. In the end, the Pact is very happy.

I thought uniting Destiny’s Edge was to be the allegory for the unification of the races against the dragons, but instead of that concept taking center stage, it seems like just uniting the orders got us everything we need.

Destiny’s Edge has so much problem that they did nothing to help out in the war effort. All the time that we are preparing to take on Zhaitan, they are doing speed runs in the dungeons. :/

Hello Yumä.

I hope this might help.

1) What is your age? Gender?

34 M

2) How important is a game’s story to you? Why?

MMORPGs these days are equivalent to a fantasy book we can pick up from a book store or library. By reading books, we immerse ourselves into a world that we can only experience in our mind, often times we fill in the blanks in the story, mostly what the environment looks like.

In an MMORPG, we can see the environment and the surroundings that will take an author probably a whole chapter of the book to describe. Also in a book, we often follow the protagonist doing all the stuff and sometimes we disagree with the decision they make. In GW2, I am in control of my own story making my own decisions.

Just to give an example, in one of my Personal Story, I can either stop the barge supplying the mouth of zhaitan or confront the mouth directly. If I am following a pre-scripted protagonist, I will be disappointed if they choose to intercept the barge. So having the option to take the fight to zhaitan’s mouth, my experience of this story is personal, not just something I can relate to.

3) Within a game’s story, are you more interested in individual characters, or in bigger events and groups?

I would have to say both.

4) In regards to your own character, do you identify with them? In other words, do you view your character as yourself? Or do you view your character as a separate entity which you created?

I have several characters under my account. In every game I play, I often pick my main character and the rest is just my entourage. In GW1, they have introduced a feature where my main character can party with my alternate characters in addition to heroes and henchmen. Ever since I treated all the chracters in my account as such. So I have a main character (male human thief) and an entourage of female champions — one for each profession.

5) Do you view your character’s progression as something you create/determine, or something the game itself creates/determines?

The personal story has a lot of forking paths and I have to determine which path to take. But there are other aspect of the game that I simply did not have a choice like choosing who’s going to lead the Pact and who represents the orders. But—-

I don’t have to join an Order, nor I have to join the Pact. I can simply go around helping people in different areas.

6) What do you view as your character’s ultimate goal? Is it different from the goal of defeating the final dungeon or raid boss?

The goal of my main character is simple. We eliminate whatever threatens our existence. Since there is more than one dragon that threatens us, so my character will go where ever he is needed.

7) How effective do you find personal story in MMORPGs (usually done through personal instances/quests)? Do you find it disjointed from the rest of the game, or do you feel it fits well with the rest of the game?

The final chapter of the story about Orr and Zhaitan is a bit disjointed since after completing it, it doesn’t makes sense to see Orr still infested by the undead. So it feels like I never really did anything.

8) How do you view the idea that many other players are also playing through the same personal story?

Eventhough it is the “same” personal story, the story is not the “same.” The choices we make through selecting the paths makes the personal story unique and — personal. The only thing that would probably won’t make any sense is the Pact chapter since every character is the Commander.

9) How do you view your character’s personal story in relation to the larger stories in the game, or the lore of the game? Do you see a difference between individual story and group story in the game?

I do not agree on the decision Anet made by dissolving the Orders of Tyria into a Pact and make every character the Commander. IMO, they should have kept the characters in their own order as a Council member of the Pact representing the order they have chosen to join. This way, it would have made more sense that each Council members joined forces to end Zhaitan’s threat.

My main character in GW1 is Sir Vincent III and my GW2 human character is the direct descendant, Sir Vincent X.

Sir Vincent X is born in to a noble family, thus he had his own entourage — all female.

Ahleksia – Human Guardian
De Leiney – Human Ele
Vina – Human Mesmer

He went to his adventures to different place and cities where he met;

Ahmelia, a Norn Eng in Hoelbrak
De Lorelai, a Sylvari Ranger in the Pale Tree
De Lauren, an Asura Warrior in Rata Sum

Then he met his last female companion, a Sylvari Necromancer named Leir Dalag. She claims that while in the Pale Tree, she dreamt of Sir Vincent III.

And that is why I am a Human.

I don’t really care much about the effects, but I love the unlimited idea because often times, I hate running out of picks in a middle of a hard to get places.

Yes more unlimited uses please.

The numbers of OP is misleading since you need to also take into account the value of those that you mine.

1) How much Oricalcum can you purchase for 24g (est. val. of 800 gems)?
2) Calculate how much per Oricalcum sells for.
3) Calculate how many Oricalcum will it take to sell for 24g worth.
4) After selling all Oricalcum to pay off 24g, the rest are 100% profit.

In my experience mining just Mythril and Oricalcum, I can get 24g at a rate of 1g/day or 24days.

Therefore I will not see profit after 8yrs, lol, maybe just after a month at the latest.

Well worth it for me at least.

The one I used to find the missing items is Dulfy.

Just ype “dulfy lost and found” in the google search bar and you’ll get a comprehensive guide of all possbile locations.

Sir Charles Drake.2174:

I don’t know if it depends by the same things but i lost 800 gems when i bought the alliance molten pick.

and i WANT a refund.

Your mail box is probably full. You need to delete all mail that is no longer relevant.

This happened to me before and as soon as I emptied my mailbox, BLT gem store sent my purchased item.

Those training sessions will not educate the new players since counter to those skills/combo are not limited to dodges and interrupt. Depending on their prefered profession, the counter differs.

For example, I would not be dodging if I am using my Guardian or Warrior because eventhough Backstab hurts, I got the Thief for 4s.

@Dasorine

QFT!

ShoeMoney.5249:

If someone asked you to define a thief what would you say in 144 chars or less? Now I know its a fantasy game and not meant to be real life but play a long.

My definition – A Criminal, someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve their goal. No morals or ethics. A bad guy. A outlaw.

My thief is a hero not a criminal. He is born into nobility and recognized as honorable. He’s a good guy and part of society.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t dress in black at night and hunts bad guys.

Jack of Tears.9458:

With the recent debuff that prevents stealth from dropping aggro, what is the point of “Hide in Shadows” as a healing skill? It casts slowly, can be interrupted, and doesn’t grant you any benefit from being invisible – the monsters keep attacking you.

I mainly use S/D as my main weapon set, and to deal with the slow casting time and vulnerability to interrupts, I use CnD first then HiS. With skill timing, you can extend your stealth to give you enough time to reposition yourself.

“Withdraw” heals half as much but the cool off is twice as fast and it also removes some conditions and gives you an extra evade.

Withdraw actually heals for more than HiS in a span of 30s (HiS’s CD). However, Withdraw doesn’t prevent further damage except the one it evaded and there are also situations, like having a good stack of Confusion, when healing often is actually going to get you killed.

“Signet of Malice” heals you when you attack and, when used with something like Caltrops and Dagger Storm, can manage to heal you very quickly. And if you exhaust it, the Signet heals you as well – and its cooldown is only slightly longer than “Hide in Shadows”.

I, personally, never like this skill especially now that Quickness was nerfed. The heal-per-attack is miniscule and almost laughable. If you compare this to Warrior’s Healing Signet, Warriors receives more healing by doing nothing.

Since it requires the thief to be doing something and it has a very long cooldown, the cost for the healing effect from this signet is too high in comparison to HiS.

So … Withdraw and Signet both bring some pretty compelling reasons to use them to the table … Why should I go into combat with my now crippled Hide in Shadows?

That is a misconception that is NOT shared by the Thief community. It seems that you are the only one who perceives that HiS is crippled.

- The changes in the mob aggro did not cripple HiS, in fact, seeing the mob stops and stare is actually a good thing since it allows me to reposition myself for a surprise attack.

- The changes in Revealed did not affect HiS at all since Revealed only takes into effect if you attack from stealth. The +1s Revealed is negligible compare to HiS’s cooldown.

- If dropping aggro is the main issue against HiS, using either SoM or Withdraw will still have this aggro issue. But the big difference is, even if aggro was not dropped, stealth prevents further damage because it makes the thief untargettable.

- If the main issue is healing, HiS has a better effective healing because it stops DoTs from causing further damage — where SoM and Withdraw cannot simply do. Plus, SoM and Withdraw are very vulnerable against Confusion.

The 4s change on Revealed did nothing to accomplish what needs to be change, thus it is justifiable that it should be reverted back to its orginal state.

Implementing different Revealed timers are unnecessary and trying to make changes consistently across the board is, not only unnecessary but also, create new set of problems.

Whether the Dev. admits it or not, the reason for the debate is that they expect a profession to behave differently in each format, but they are simply being stubborn to make changes to balance the profession.

What is balanced in PvP doesn’t necessarily means that it will stay balanced in PvE and WvW.

1) when shattering there is a checker board like patter where the illusion shattered.
(this usually happens when 2 or 3 illusions shatter very close to each other)

This one is still happening even with the new NVidia Driver (version 314.22).

I just upgraded to this driver to fix my lag issue in WvW, but now I see the checkers when shattering illusions.

If you want raw Crit/Crit Damage without relying on stealth, you should try S/D – 25/30/0/15/0 build. You can switch up the 15 pts to which ever traits you need, but the bulk of the damage will come from DA and CS.

Let me get this straight, Dev. Robert said that he can handle a GC thief gaining the knowledge and experience about the thief — yet — Rangers needs a buff?

Doesn’t this prove that even if a thief build GC that a Ranger can beat them reagrdless? Wouldn’t suppose to be a clear indication that Thieves are nerfed to uselessness that GC cannot beat a mere Ranger?

I sense a lot of “thief hate” there coming from the balance team.

If the balance team don’t want to listen to us, at least listen to Dev. Robert before making uncessary Thief nerfs.

Hmm…I don’t like the fine print under “Back Stab” clause. :/

ChesterWing.5321:

oh my god if you do not run sb as a thief on a offhand you have no idea what you’re doing

I’d like to have an SB in my offhand. :P

Alex.6940:

TheGuy.3568:

Snip

You’re still missing the point. You have again explained how toughness can be superior to vitality, which i have already said i agree with and made similar points myself, but failed to explain why it is a better option for most people playing thieves.

This was already explained in several posts and I can symphatize with TheGuy losing patience when you don’t even bother reading what was posted, not just by him, but by others.

Let me try to sum is up for you. If you have 15k health, but can only heal for 500-600 per sec, you would want to reduce the incoming damage as much as possible so that your healing does not lose effectiveness. Since Thieves cannot heal as well as other profession, toughness is necessary to accomplish this. Because having a large pool of health due to high vitality only means that you have a larger bucket to fill up.

The idea that vitality allows us to handle condition damage better or that so we can handle a burst is false. We can handle condition damage without toughness and vitality since we have a lot of utility skills for that. As for burst, you would want to reduce that damage by having toughness instead of vitality because, again, the reason I have already stated, toughness allows your healing be more effective.

There are benefits and drawbacks with both, i’m just saying that there are builds and situations where vitality is significantly more effective than toughness. You can keep saying toughness is better ‘overall’ and it is for some builds, but i think people should understand how these work and look at their own character to make a decision.

Overall means that whether the damage comes in a large burst or sustained, toughness reduces them each time they are applied.

Keep in mind that the damage displayed in the tool tip is based on a target with 2600 armor, in other words 1980 Defense and 620 toughness for medium armor wearer. So if you have toughness lower than 620, those skills will hit you for a lot more.

There isn’t one clear answer imo, but with most of the thief community seemingly playing glass cannon builds, I think additional vitality would be the most beneficial in general.

Neither vitality nor toughness benefits a glass cannon build, that’s why it’s a glass cannon.

IMO, having less health pool but with high toughness makes it easier to keep myself alive than the other way around.

Yeah the pathing of the skill is buggy, but this is not just this skill but other skills also that displaced your thief like Disabling Shot (SB) or Shadowstrike (P/D#3).

Alex.6940:

Yes, you’re quite right that i tend to use armor and toughness interchangeably, but my overall points are all still correct and my examples are sound. I’m still not sure you understand what i mean though lol. If you assume defence = 0 then toughness and armour are effectively the same thing and what i’ve written will be accurate if that helps.

When i say 500 additional toughness will reduce the damage you take by 20%, i’m speaking about it relative to having 2000 armor. So if you get hit for 10k damage with 2000 armor you only take 8k damage with 2500 armor i.e. 20% less damage.

I’ll explain my example again (and make an effort to use armour and toughness correctly lol) Lets assume you have 10k hp and 2000 armour. A thief attacks you and hits you for 13k damage, instantly killing you as you only have 10k hp. Lets look at this situation again, but this time we can choose between an extra 500 vitality or 500 toughness.

If you have 500 extra toughness, you now have 2500 armour. Therefore you get hit for (13000*2000)/2500 = 10400 damage instead. As you only have 10k hp you still die however.

If you have 500 extra vitality you now have 15k hp. You get hit again for 13k damage but you have 15k hp, so you survive with 2k hp left. In this situation, vitality is the more effective defence.

In general i think vitality is more useful in dealing with short duration fights or burst damage. Toughness will eventually beat vitality as fights go on and you heal through damage, but as most thieves generally try to burst people down, and the fights don’t last very long, I would generally advise taking more vitality over toughness.

Of course your build, play style and the situation at hand can mean that more toughness is more effective.

As I said, I understand the calculation, but I have a problem with your base numbers.

In your example, you assume that 500 Vit is 20% increase, when it is actually a 50% increase based on a 10k HP. So it is an unfair comparison that you increased Vit by 50% and only increased Toughness by 20% — of course, Vitality is obviously going to look better.

If we properly use 20% increase in Vitality, that’s only 50 Vitality which equates to 500 more HP, not 5k. In this scenario, 20% increase in Toughness (500) will reduce the damage by 2600 dealing 10400 instead of 13k. With 500 Toughness, our effective health is 12600. Adding 20% Vitality will only give us an effective health of 10500.

If the damage is 11K instead of 13K, having +20% Toughness gives us an effective health of 12200 and 20% Vitality is still 10500. In this scenario, the vitality dies and the toughness survives.

This is using your 20% premise and it’s obviously not a fair comparison since 50 Vitality is not equal to 500 Toughness.

AikijinX.6258:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

AikijinX.6258:

My apologies i was at work, but would you like me to give you a summary of what you should get, or go in depth?

The requests details and I’m curious about your build also so it’s upto you how deep you want to go.

You’re from TC, How about you and I party up in game right now and I can show you. I’m from Kaineng.

IGN:Aikijinx

Sorry bro, can’t right now since I’m at work. I’ll add you to my friend’s list and hit you up when I get the chance.

Taril.8619:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

By removing its attachment to Blinding Powder, the trigger will not act as an attack, thus it will not trigger the Revealed status.

The trigger has never acted as an attack.

The insta-revealed is caused due to the Stealth proccing mid-attack so that the attack you intend to land (Often it’s a CnD just to be ironic) gives you Revealed without you anticipating it (Since it’s pretty difficult to anticipate dropping to below 25% health, especially with the low base health of Thieves making it so that a lot of hits can do 50% > 25% in one go)

Ah thanks, it’s hard to see which happens first, but either way, it needs to be detached so that they can tweak it without affecting the actual Blinding Powder skill.

Taril.8619:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You think that you need 2000 Toughness to mitigate 20% damage when in fact you only need 20 Toughness because Thieves have a base Defense of 1980.

The baseline for incoming damage calculations tends to use 1836 armour base, as it’s the base of what Light Armour classes will have. At level 80, every light armour class will have a base of 1836, every medium armour class will have a base of 1980 and every heavy armour class will have a base of 2127.

So using 1836 as a base point for calculating damage reduction and 1980 as a base for the class for working out gaining a % reduction gained from stats you can work out:

Base damage reduction from medium armour = 7.27%
To gain 20% damage reduction (27.27% damage reduction total) you’d need ~544 Toughness (Total of 1460 Toughness or 2524 Armour)

So to use that in a basic scenario:

10805 health + 544 Toughness = 14854 Effective Health
10805 health + 544 Vitality = 17519 Effective Health (Due to inherent damage reduction from medium armour)
10805 health + 272 Toughness + 272 Vitality = 16589 Effective health

Going the whole hog and getting 1400 of each stat would end up with:
10805 health + 1400 Toughness = 19892 Effective Health (45.68% damage reduction)
10805 health + 1400 Vitality = 26750 Effective Health (Due to inherent damage reduction from Medium Armour)
10805 health + 700 Toughness + 700 Vitality = 25990 Effective Health

So for a pure “Effective health” standpoint, Thieves with their small health pool and inherent damage reduction from medium armour (Relative to Light armour) pure Vitality comes out as superior.

But this doesn’t account for things such as Conditions, nor ability to heal up the health pool it’s purely a “How long can I live against being punched in the face”

I understand the calculation, he just got me all confused with his mixed terminologies.

That calculation still doesn’t explain why we are scaled down when side kicking, because if it is true that the damage reduction is percentage based, then there’s no need to be scaled down since 20% is 20% right?

They need to remove the link between Last Refuge and Blinding Powder, because anything done to this trait will affect Blinding Powder. That’s the first step.

Second, the idea behind this trait is to put us in stealth and we could careless about blinding at this point since we already drop to 25% health. So if that is the case, then they should simplify this trait like this;

“Remove Revealed status and vanish in stealth when your health reaches 25% (90-second cooldown). "

By removing its attachment to Blinding Powder, the trigger will not act as an attack, thus it will not trigger the Revealed status.

By having it remove the Revealed status, it will always serve as the “last refuge” of the Thief as intended it to be.

Alex.6940:

I still don’t think you understand what i’m trying to say.

Let me use an example. So Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

I’ll just refer to (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) as ‘base damage’. So, if we rearrange, base damage = damage done * target’s armour.

If you have 2k armour and you take 13k damage then the base damage is 13000*2000 = 26000000. Now lets assume you get hit again by the same guy with the same base damage but you have 2500 armour. As damage done = base damage/ armour, you take 26000000/2500 = 10400 damage.

Therefore 10400/13000 * 100 = 80%. So having 2500 toughness means you take 20% less damage compared to having 2000 toughness. i.e. you see a 20% reduction in damage with the extra toughness compared to not having the extra toughness.

I see your problem. You are mixed up. You think Armor = Toughness, when Armor = Defense + Toughness.

You think that you need 2000 Toughness to mitigate 20% damage when in fact you only need 20 Toughness because Thieves have a base Defense of 1980.

Your calculation may be correct, but your base numbers are all wrong.

So if you take 5k damage when you have 2000 armor, you would have taken only 4k with 2500 toughness, saving you 1k hp. If you take 25k damage with 2000 armor, you would only have taken 20k damage with 2500 toughness, saving you 5k hp.

You need to work on your consistency when trying to communicate your points, because mixing up armor and toughness leads to so much misunderstandings.

By the way, in your example, whether you value vitality more than toughness, you’d still be dead since Thieves do not have that much HP.

@Viking

There’s no way in the world I can convince you to use my S/D build since it is based on one’s experience and playstyle. Even if I come up with a very convincing argument, you will not choose it because it is not your cup of tea. Also given the information you’ve provided, you pretty much wrote off every viable build out there.

So the question remains, what playstyle you want to play and where you want to play it (PvE, WvW, PvP, etc.)?

Mileinnor.7125:

I have over 600 hours playing as a guardian, and I’m trying to play my lvl 80 thief. My main issue is that I’ve played an AH guardian for so long, that I’m simply not used to the fact that I cannot heal at anytime I want with a thief. Condition removal is also something I have to actively think about (As a guardian, conditions are auto removed every 10 seconds and at every shout). I run a mixture of Valkyrie/Knight armor with berserker accessories on my thief, and yet I feel so squishy. Do you guys have any advice or builds that can make my transition easier? What traits should I go with? Should I go with a more tanky spec?

That is a very good observation of the difference between the two professions. Unlike the Guardian, for which you get Aegis to mitigate damages and a lot of ways to block incoming attacks, Thieves relies solely on dodges, evasions, shadowsteps and blind to avoid damage.

Thieves will always be squishy that is why you need to learn how to use your damage prevention skills and to learn that you cannot handle large group any more like you would with your Guardian. You need to eat and breath Thief before you can overcome this limitation since it requires a lot of experience and technic training to pull off a very effective playstyle.

But first, to learn the Thief profession, you need to remove all bias that you have about the Guardian and about the Thief. It seems that your trouble starts because you expect the Thief to function like the Guardian, but once you set the Guardian in you aside, there will be nothing in the way for you to learn how to become a Thief.

There are times that when you go in stealth, you get out of combat, so you may not trigger this trait.

Asomal.6453:

It is good with P/D build, when you can pull fleeing peepz into your Caltrops. Maybe, not so much nowdays, since they nerfed Caltrops :/
And it’s really fun to use on that elementalist trying to rtl away

I pull people to my Ambush trap plus Thieve’s Guild for an easy kill.

AikijinX.6258:

My apologies i was at work, but would you like me to give you a summary of what you should get, or go in depth?

The requests details and I’m curious about your build also so it’s upto you how deep you want to go.

AikijinX.6258:

10/30/20/0/10

Builds are more than just traits, you need to also provide the items, runes, sigils, etc and how to play such build.

Please add more information to make it beneficial to the OP.

I like spotting for the siege engines most of the time. Some other times I scout for the zerg and I never engage in a zerg v zerg, instead I watch of incomings and take out stragglers.

Welcome to the Thieves forum.

And this time with the Norn Thief i really want to adapt to the game with this class (i always wanted a rogue/thief and i prefer them in GW2 than WoW), but i am afraid to comit errors, so i wanted to ask someone here if you can give me advise to this follow concerns:

First of all, you would want to make mistakes since this is the only way to learn skill timing, positioning, and especially patience.

1- I’m aiming for damage build (don’t know if i can mix damage with a bit of survival) so wich Stats i should focus on?

You can mix them but like other hybrid build, you will not going to be at the top of DPS or survival.

Shadow Arts is the best trait to focus on for survival. But once you’re starting to get familiar with the profession, you can start allocating points to Acrobatics.

Damage can come directly, for which you would want to put points in Critical Strikes, or from conditions (bleed, poison), for which you would want to put points in Deadly Arts.

One way to test drive the Thief profession is to go to the Mist (PvP area) where you are bumped to level 80 with all the points to play around with builds.

2- Anyone knows a really good web site where i can see good damage builds? At the begining for pve and later pvp, or a mix of both?
I found this site http://www.noxxic.com/ but i don’t know if it’s any good.

There are plenty of builds floating around here in the forum. I think this is the best place to find a wide veriety of builds.

I use it with my S/D build as an interrupt and only at point blank range.

If you play a warrior and you use Bull’s Charge, you’ll know how to use Scorpion Wire.

Alex.6940:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Alex.6940:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Ensign.2189:

As a general rule, you want to have enough vitality to survive and react to an incoming burst of damage; after that, toughness and healing power are preferable. For a thief, toughness is generally preferable to healing power because thieves themselves scale very poorly with healing power, while toughness amplifies healing from other sources as well.

Wouldn’t it be the other way around that toughness should be enough to survive a burst?

My healing skill cannot heal that much, thus it is important to mitigate the damage thru toughness so it will be easy from me to top my HP off.

Healing a large max HP often stumbles from the long healing CD. :/

Vitality offers more bang for your buck if you take relatively little damage. Taking burst damage offers a lot of front end damage, but compared to a fight that may last for several minutes, the damage you take is relatively small.

Lets say you can choose between 20% damage reduction through toughness or 5k hp through vitality, you need to take over 25k damage before toughness reduces the damage you take by 5k or more.

Your math is wrong.

19k incoming damage only deals 10 damage against 1980 armor (base level 80 Theif armor).
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

I’m not entirely sure what you mean, but i assume you mean base damage/armor rating = damage done? When i say 20% damage reduction i simply mean 20% reduction relative to the damage you’d take without the additional toughness.

The point is. If my armor reduces a 25K damage by 20%, it is even better against damage lower than 25k. You got it backwards. The lower the damage, the better my armor.

If my armor can prevent 5K of 25K (20%), then I can prevent 5K(100%) damage against 5K damage.

This is the reason why we are scaled down when we side kick.

If you look at the link I posted, the damage is directly divided by your armor. It’s not by percentage like you think it is.

Alex.6940:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Ensign.2189:

As a general rule, you want to have enough vitality to survive and react to an incoming burst of damage; after that, toughness and healing power are preferable. For a thief, toughness is generally preferable to healing power because thieves themselves scale very poorly with healing power, while toughness amplifies healing from other sources as well.

Wouldn’t it be the other way around that toughness should be enough to survive a burst?

My healing skill cannot heal that much, thus it is important to mitigate the damage thru toughness so it will be easy from me to top my HP off.

Healing a large max HP often stumbles from the long healing CD. :/

Vitality offers more bang for your buck if you take relatively little damage. Taking burst damage offers a lot of front end damage, but compared to a fight that may last for several minutes, the damage you take is relatively small.

Lets say you can choose between 20% damage reduction through toughness or 5k hp through vitality, you need to take over 25k damage before toughness reduces the damage you take by 5k or more.

Your math is wrong.

19k incoming damage only deals 10 damage against 1980 armor (base level 80 Theif armor).
Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

I never engage anyone who’s not 50% HP or less. I pew pew with P/P to gauge their HP, Armor, and healing capability and use up their cooldowns, then I finish them off.

Yes, I play with my food.

But once I engage, I will stay until my target falls or I fall, whichever comes first. Besides, I always have 3 thief minions with me for easy cleanup.

Ensign.2189:

As a general rule, you want to have enough vitality to survive and react to an incoming burst of damage; after that, toughness and healing power are preferable. For a thief, toughness is generally preferable to healing power because thieves themselves scale very poorly with healing power, while toughness amplifies healing from other sources as well.

Wouldn’t it be the other way around that toughness should be enough to survive a burst?

My healing skill cannot heal that much, thus it is important to mitigate the damage thru toughness so it will be easy from me to top my HP off.

Healing a large max HP often stumbles from the long healing CD. :/

randomfightfan.4091

JonathanSharp.7094:

Mif.3471:

JonathanSharp.7094:

A couple things:

• For PvE/PvP/WvW, we know that those are 3 different playstyles, we don’t just lump PvE and WvW together.

Considering WvW and PVE use the same skill values, yes you do.

We’re starting to split PvE/WvW in the upcoming patch.

But we want them to be things that keep consistency across the game types as much as possible.

If what I think you’re saying is true then sir, you have a e-hug coming your way

Surprisingly enough that they’re just realizing this given the HUGE outcry in GW1 when they were nerfing skills left and right to balance PvP while ignoring the quality of life in PvE.

Whether they acknowledge it or not, WvWvW is PvP, thus needs to be addressed as such.

Vargs.6234:

From a PvE perspective, I prefer vitality solely because high toughness attracts more attention from mobs.

Ah, good point. I completely forgot about that.

swinsk.6410:

I wish I could stream. My computer can’t handle it and my internet connection isn’t as good as it used to be.

Even if your backstab doesn’t do great damage you can out last your opponent with skilled played and mobility and down/stomp them by constantly being able to keep in their dpsing them and stealthing for regen/condi removal.

Keep in mind that there are many other professions that does this way way better than a Thief.

If your most damage weapon skill did didly squat to your target, every other inferior damaging skill you have will not work.

You’re just wasting your time and his, but if that’s the idea, to waste time, then you’re doing a good job.

Guardians were honestly a huge problem for me no matter what build I was because if I didn’t instantly kill them I they would invuln/knockback/heal to full and I wasn’t going to dps them down for another 45s.

S/S warriors will bleed you to death every time you pop out of stealth. M/Sh warrior will chain stun/daze you every time you pop out of stealth.

See if you can last against those builds.

With this build I can beat them but it requires playing well and is usually a longer fight than shorter. No other build I have found kills guardians 1v1 outside of condi builds because they just negate your burst with 1 button and are able to outlast your dps with no problem.

This is why you need to choose your battles. The longer you stay, the less likely you are to come out on top.

When stealth was 3s, sure I will dance with any professions because I can backstab faster than they can heal off my damage.

This build is not about burst. It’s about being in combat constantly and never having to pull out unless you are stun breaking/getting better positioning in a team battle.

1v1 you can stand toe to toe with any class without having to reset or feel like “one trick pony” relying only on backstab.

That’s fine, if that’s your goal, but don’t say that you will outlast your target because that’s simply far-fetched.

And backstab is not a “one trick pony”, it’s a staple for any D/x build because that’s where the bulk of the damage is going to come from.

EDIT: Sword/shield warriors are different than GS? I run S/S + GS on my warrior, most GS run S/S for the adrenaline root. Blind field usually stops this attack and even if they land it you just have to hit bp and hs when you can so you stealth. Condi removal will remove the root+bleeds and you can move. Blind field will negate most of the attacks as well. Even if he uses shield bash on you it’s not going to land if you are standing on a blind field.

S/S is Sword/Sword, not Sword/SHield.

I thought that was apparent since I spelled out shield for clarification.

“even if they land it you just have to hit bp and hs when you can so you stealth”

Not if you’re Revealed you can’t. That S/S warrior have you on the chopping block for 4s.

Have you been in the receiving end of Flurry (sword F1) -> 100blades (GS) combo while crippled and bleeding the whole time?

How about a high level skill combo of Pummel Bash (mace) -> 100blades -> Bull Charge -> Shield Bash -> Crushing Blow(mace) -> Skull Crack (mace F1) -> 100 blades?

You think you can stay and fight and out last those warrior builds?

All that time, you are an easy target due to revealed debuff. Even if you use BP, you think the warrior will just keep attacking you? They’ll wait because it buys them time to get their skills off CD.

You see, the scenario you are painting is not realistic.

swinsk.6410:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Fair enough

I guess it’s because I don’t play like a warrior that when I see that my first 4s attacks did not affect my target that I simply disengage rather than stay trying to survive the whole time when my damage is simply negligible.

You’re right, I completely miread that.

Warriors with this build are actually going to be one of your easier fights. I don’t think I have lost to a warrior in 1v1 yet. The reason being is because you can negate a lot of their damage with the blind field and blind shot if they try to run. It doesn’t really matter if you do 10% damage or 50% in the first 4 hits with this build because you will always be at high health and almost immune to melee damage.

Then you have not fought an S/S warior. GS warrior build is easy mode for them because of 100blades and typically easy to take down also. But S/S warrior and M/Shield warriors are PITA.

You can also be very “cheesy” with this build as well. Remember how people would chain CnD to stay stealthed and kill people?

Well this build, you can chain bp+hs, wait 4s, do it again. Black powder shoots for about 700-1k damage, heart seeker can hit pretty hard depending on their health/crit.

You can actually whittle people down while regen and removing conditions. This can really mess with your opponent.

I already know all these and the scenario you’re trying to paint is somewhat superficial.

The point is to stay alive no matter what the odds while dishing out the best dps possible with a full defensive build.

These runes allow you to do that. I have 64% crit chance with fury up in spvp. 71% crit chance from side or behind.

That’s where the dps comes from, consistently attacking and critting.

I have to disagree because the bulk of your damage comes from backstab. You can easily gauge the turnout of a fight with that first backstab. If your backstab didn’t faze your target, no point in staying since you’re already at a disadvantage.

Silver.4798:

The vitality (anti-toughness) argument
Mainly, condition damage. If you have 13k HP and maxed out armor it’s not going to stop condi damage to kill you within seconds. High vitality makes you more resistant to condi damage.

The toughness (anti-vitality) argument
What use is having 20k vitality when you will take ~3k damage per normal hits and massive burst damage from the larger attacks from bosses and players?

Where do people stand on this?

I actually value both of these arguments since they are true. However, vitality does nothing special other than giving us more health pool which is inferior to what SA have to offer — toughness + healing power.

Just by spec-ing SA alone, you can have enough “effective” health due to the increase in healing power. Also damaging condition is trivial since we can easily handle those, on the other hand, a large health pool will not be enough to absorb a big damage.

Acrobatics gives both vitality + endurance but those are active defenses that you have to be manually perform.

With that in mind, the choice becomes more clearer.

Are you a passive player or an active player?

Passive players prefers SA because with toughness, it’s one aspect that they don’t have to worry about and they can focus on what’s more important — that is taking down your target.

Active players prefers Acro because they have the dexterity to evade/dodge anything you can throw at them and with a big health pool, they can laugh at the condition damage.

I personally falls on neither camp since I don’t even allocate a single point in those traits. But when it comes to armor and weapon, I am in favor of toughness over vitality.

swinsk.6410:

~snip~
The only viable choices for this trait is stealth speed, might on dodge, falling damage, vigor on heal. I feel that feline grace+black powder give me enough defenses. I don’t have a moment where I wish had I more endurance with this build due to skill rotation. Might on dodge is great but this is not a burst build and I get plenty of extra dps from bloodlust stacks and might from stealthing.

Fair enough

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If your DPS stretches for 30s, you’d already be dead. The window in most cases is 4s since you cannot stealth for that amount of time after hitting a back-stab, so you should be doing as much damage as possible before going to stealth again.

Completely untrue. If there is a zerg, sure I die in 2s. In spvp I can fight 2-3v1 and down/stomp people if they are bad. If they are good usually stalemate. The point of this build is not to be the guy who just instantly downs people in seconds. The point is to maximize survivability while keeping as much DPS as possible. You hit back stab and then depending on the reaction you either continue to do more dps with auto-attack or you drop a black powder to blind them and set your stealth up.

I guess it’s because I don’t play like a warrior that when I see that my first 4s attacks did not affect my target that I simply disengage rather than stay trying to survive the whole time when my damage is simply negligible.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

But I agree that I wouldn’t take Sigil of Rage either, since after the quickness nerf, 3s of quickness is just one more auto-attack.

You misunderstood. I don’t use Sigil of Rage and never have. I use Superior Runes of Rage. These give you 30s of fury on hit. 60s CD. 20% increased fury duration. 10% crit damage and 5% damage when fury is active. These runes are what give you some more DPS with this build.

Like I said this is a highly mobile/defensive build and requires some skill to play effectively.

You’re right, I completely miread that.

Mirta.5029:

I have a thief and being revealed for 4 seconds instead of 3 did nothing to me. I still can fight just as well as I did before. I did go for less op pistol pistol setup though.
When I go to wvw and see all the backstabbing thieves… Thieves do need balancing and 1 extra second of revealed is not a major nerf.

Being Revealed for 4s v 3s is not a good thing.

Playing a Thief for a long time allows the player to find and fine tune their playstyle and set their rhythm. Before I have to check the status bar to see if I can stealth or not, or if I have enough initiatives or not, etc. After a while, those information becomes second nature that we, the real Thief players, can reliably expect that when we use a weapon skill that it will activate or a stealth skill that it will put us in stealth mode.

However, after the recent updates, these internal, second hand information needs to be re-learned and the timing and the rhythm was all messed up that also needs to be re-tuned. Nowadays, it becomes really frustrating when I mis-timed my stealth because Revealed is no longer 3s long and everytime it happens it leaves something bitter in my mouth. Cloak and Dagger not activating the stealth puts us in a very bad, often fatal, situation.

In your case, since your playstyle doesn’t revolve around stealth and that you are satisfied with however low your damage output is, the issue about stealth and revelead doesn’t become null just because it doesn’t affect your directly.

We’re glad to see that you are having fun with your build but you have to acknowledge that every player plays differently and you just have to respect that even a slight change in the rhythm makes a really bad playing experience.

From the Disney movie Mulan, the emperor said something with a lot of wisdom;

“A single grain can tip a scale”

So please, try not to belittle the 4s Revelead because that’s exactly what had happened, it tipped the scale against the Thief and the Thief profession is currently out of balance.