Guild Wars 2

Yea if they aren’t attacking, there is nothing stopping them from re-entering stealth right away. If they are attacking at all from stealth they have to wait 3 seconds to re-enter stealth. You can time it so you hit right when your debuff drops to make it exactly 3 seconds, maybe latency makes it seem like 2.

Tyaen.5148:

My belief is that it’s not a consumable. I believe it is a specific thief build spec, chaining stealth, WAI. The problem is no class has stealth breakers that I know of. In WvW this has the potential to be game breaking.

It’s not if they aren’t attacking anything at all…

Shadow refuge or Smoke Scoke screen with Exploding arrow spam is the longest possible stealth and both show the area they are in. The latter all you need to do is stand near the screen and they will reveal when they hit you.

Try slotting SR, Haste and Dagger Storm. Steal from a warrior in the middle of a zerg, SR^Haste^DS^Whirl wheeeeeee

Then use Affliction rune set so you explode in poison when you die :P

They removed enemy profession icons last patch so it makes it more difficult to identify warriors. They seem to roll with that gold and red signet looking thing though.

If the 10sec stealth consumable can be munched on with no CD then I guess anyone can stay stealthed forever. The rings for say, a supply camp are pretty huge so it would be easy to avoid AoE in that.

I don’t know of any item or ability that makes you not be able to get hit with AoE or any attack in your direction while in stealth?

I can fire my ranged pistol #1 shot with no target at an area where I think someone is stealthed, and I can tell if it hits or not. I do it all the time vs other thieves. Does anything in this game even require a player target to be used?

Tyaen.5148:

Stiv.1820:

@Koega: if the thief didn’t attack you or the catapult from stealth they won’t have any cooldown on stealth and can chain. You can do C&D, then chain as many stealth abilities as you fit on your bar with no cooldown at all, you just can’t attack from stealth. You can attack after you unstealth and re-stealth instantly, maybe that’s what he was dong? Like Cloak and Dagger, unstealth, cloak and dagger unstelath on and on. If he was just doing that over and over on the catapult then it fits exactly what you describe.

The problem with that in WvW is it prevents a point from flipping, with no way to break the stealther. That is what is broken to me.

They still need to attack someone or something. If it’s you, you can try time their stealth running out and roll or start dropping AoE’s. Even just auto attacking around will still hit them. It’s annoying but hardly that functional in the grand scheme of things.

Easy fix is majority or (whatever % you want) of whatever team is in the ring gets the color/cap.

@Koega: if the thief didn’t attack you or the catapult from stealth they won’t have any cooldown on stealth and can chain. You can do C&D, then chain as many stealth abilities as you fit on your bar with no cooldown at all, you just can’t attack from stealth. You can attack after you unstealth and re-stealth instantly, maybe that’s what he was dong? Like Cloak and Dagger, unstealth, cloak and dagger unstelath on and on. If he was just doing that over and over on the catapult then it fits exactly what you describe.

@Monsoon: There very well could be a hack out there but there are Rune sets that allow any classes to stealth, probably other things as well. Couple other classes have invisible/stealth effects aside from thieves as well. You can also log out instantly and I read it’s becoming more of a problem, especially when downed.

@Aeden haha yea exactly. People aren’t taking the time to learn about other classes. You can’t PvP effectively against what you don’t understand and there is a ton of stuff each class can do!

@OP and others, Cloak and Dagger has a fairly long animation, it can be actively dodged. Any thief that attacks from stealth gets a “revealed” debuff that prevents them from sheathing fora few seconds. After that drops they will be coming toward you to hit you with C&D to get back into stealth. Snare them, kite them. Don’t put pets near them. They just need to attack anything to get back in stealth. If you deprive them of this you will force them to use a cooldown to stealth. Once you get them to blow those it’s just a matter of snare/kiting.

One tip, don’t “pre-roll” when a Pistol thief stealths (not true for Dagger though). If you dodge their opener, it’s initiative free and won’t unstealth them if it does zero dmg. Let the first couple hit then roll, or eat it and save endo for later.

Each class can do so much and be built in so many different ways it’s going to take a long time to learn the counters for every setup that you have to identify on the fly as they are fighting you!

This is like asking “what is that class that makes copies of itself over and over, then when you down them, they go invisible and make more copies then get back up? Exploit?”

No it’s the entire point of the profession!

It was a Thief with P/D build. The entire build is about slow condition damage and being in stealth as much as possible. You are just exaggerating how short they were out of stealth after attacking. To counter this, put pets on passive and attack from range, don’t let him get near you. Though with a catapult sitting there.. he can stealth by attacking that so.. just that situation.

I consider it a good thing that I have zero interest in legendary weapons in this game. I can’t imagine wanting to do even one component of that craft (or even get 1 craft to 400 let alone 2)

I don’t like P/P but if I were going to make a build it would be based around “on crit” stuff. Like Sigils, runes, traits whatever you get for critting and stacking a bunch of precision. The only thing it’s got going for it is high attack speed.

@OP thieves are pretty gear dependent. Buy full crafted greens off the Broker for your level and repeat as necessary. It’s worth the few silver.

@Asilion: Not sure, I’ve been interrupted while using it. Must be class dependent. I know as a thief as soon as I am down I can teleport to avoid quick stomps but I can’t stealth in time.

@Singularity: that’s how quickness work with all channeled skills. Does the same thing with my Dagger Storm, it completes the full storm when the bar is only half done.

@Nimm yea Aion/Lumiel. Really loved that game for a while until they did the gear treadmill thing.

Carrion does look nice for the extra condition dmg and vit but I’m not convinced Vit is all that useful. It’s only good vs burst so you just need enough to survive that, otherwise you are hardly ever topped off at all times. With all the healing in the build toughness seems a bit better if anything. I also have ~30% crit rate (with rares) which isn’t terrible. It’s good enough to use a earth sigil and get very close to 1 extra bleed on each stealth “mini unload” and there are lots of pistol shots that crit. Also crits on C%D and throw dagger actually hit pretty hard as well as Mug so I like having the other dmg stats.

Turns out my Adventurer runes still give 100% end so I will stick with them until they nerf it. Not sure if I read the notes wrong or they just screwed up the nerf.

Pirhana, no power advantage because that cuts against the core of what Guild wars is about. It’s about skill. There is not suppose to be a grind for anything that isn’t cosmetic. If you have a power gain no matter how slight, no matter how long it’s distributed over, it will be called a grind.

Giving us stats, titles ranks and cool looking stuff based on rank should give you what you need to keep playing no?

I am a DAOC vet and I’ve said this in every one of these threads and I hope it gets picked up. They need to just add a way to track all of our stats. Every PvP stat you can think of (kill/death ratio, i remain standing, solo kills, largest crit blah blah) daily, weekly, monthly, all time. Let us log into a website and see what we cap most, what invaders we kill most, what class does the most damage to us etc etc.

Add a point system that is tied to titles and ranks only. Let a higher level of points buy cosmetic gear unique to that point system/rank. Let other WvW enemies see your rank over your head. You gain points by participating in WvW and player kills. This system would be designed for individual, so it should weigh player kills more than capping but let everything count. Allow the points to work with groups, figure out a way to give points to popel who “support” others making a kill such as throwing a combo down or adding regeneration.

Now you have a system where people can look at stats over time, have cool cosmetics and enemies can see your rank and know you have killed a lot of people before them. But you have ZERO advantage over them.

I use Haste specifically to stomp out players 2x as fast. I don’t get why it would be a bug, it’s a utility of quickness. Without it, it’s impossible to stomp people in outnumbered fights as they just get brought right back up.

I had to give up surviveability just to be able to stomp people 1v3+. Haste adds a visual and audible effect so if you see it, or see the animation going fast it can be countered by interrupting sooner.

You just have to think about one more thing which isn’t a bad thing.

That doesn’t explain my 9 ticks on 2x 4.5 second bleed shots though if they are all independent. It must also follow the dmg schedule above no?

I guess with my +14% bleed it’s 5.13 sec bleeds which maybe overlaps in some strange way to give 1 extra tick like explained above.

None of this really matters in my case.. I need 23% bleed dur to get my 4.5 sec bleed to 5.5 but I’ll still need 15% from runes and 10% from sigil so 25% it is..

So the damage happens on a fixed schedule (next second from first applied bleed) but the duration is not tied to the dmg schedule?

So the extra tick is from the 4.7 duration of the 2nd shot overlapping the 5th second. I get that thanks!

Still something seems off. The tooltip on vital shot says 4.5 second bleed. If I have 24% it should be a 5.58 second bleed (or 4.96 if 4 is base). Even if it only takes my 15% beed it would still be over 5 (4.56 if 4 is base) seconds and I would expect a 5th tick on a single shot but I’m not getting that.

Or does the tooltip update with % duration? In that case Vital shot is 4 seconds and it’s only taking my 14% bleed putting me at 4.56sec bleed and the tooltop just rounds down to nearest .0? I did remove one weapon and the tip didn’t’ change but maybe it doesn’t update instantly, not sure.

That seems to be the likely answer. Condition and Bleed % do not add, it takes the highest and updates the tooltip, then follows the dmg schedule you posted?

Doesn’t player culling only happen in zergs? Not with 10 people? I use P/D as well but go with Stealth+acro and Rampager’s instead of Carrion. Love this playstyle!

Does %condition duration and % bleed duration stack or only take the highest?

Are there breakpoints to get extra ticks or does it tick based on stack# only?

Only thing I know for sure is with 10% condition duration and 14% bleed duration my 4 second bleed ticks 4 times (standard) with 1 stack and 9 times with 2 stacks. So it seems there are breakpoints for individual bleeds but stacking them can overcome it somehow?

thanks!

Channeled thing is hopefully a bug, agree there. If you dodge, you will avoid even if they track you for their swing. I’ve never had a mob attack more than once after stealth though.

You are basically complaining the AI is too intelligent. No player will just stop what they are doing because you enter stealth. They at least finish whatever move they are doing and will likely spam that area. If you stand still in stealth while a 100 blades warrior instagibs you well then……

So risen with huge clubs will continue their huge swing when you stealth, big deal. Dodge it!

It would seem my rune set just got nerfed:

“Updated Rune of the Adventurer and Sigil of Energy to each grant 25% endurance when activated.” There goes 1.5gold :/

I didn’t even notice it last night after update but I guess that opens up some other rune options.

Here is a descritpoin of my P/D build I use that I posted elsewhere. The sole focus is WvW:

Full rare Rampager’s armor set. it gives all 3 dmg stats. I have a couple of the WvW accessories because I had the karma and wanted to save some money. They have some vit/tough. My weapons/rings/ammy are all Rampager’s as well with % bleed duration sigils.

The reason I went Rampager’s is because of the Traits I use which add to Vit/Tough and +Healing which is 10/0/30/30/0. I can’t link to a builder from where I am but I use Mug in Deadly arts, Shadow Protector, Patience and Shadow’s Rejuvenation in Shadow Arts and Descent of Shadows, Pain Response and Hard to Catch in Acrobatics.

The playstyle is to use Cloak and Dagger all the time for the mini stealth unload and let bleeds tick while you heal and regen init. Use Steal/Mug as a bit of burst along with Haste after stealth attack if you are 1v1. I also try to fight around hills so take advantage of 50% fall damage. I’ve killed 5 people at once jumping off a cliff then AoEing them when they fall chasing me.

My main weapons are P/D. I use D/D on swap when roaming around. Mostly for un-targeted Heartseeker for very fast in combat movement to chase and run away or the occasional D/D#3 when a Thief uses refuge. Also have Shortbow to swap out for D/D if things are zergy for for keep defense.

I use the Stealth Healing skill, Haste, Shadow Refuge and Sig of Shadows (25% runspeed). Dagger storm for elite. I use the Superior Rune of the Adventurer for + condition damage and the 100% endurance heal effect.

The build has a ton of staying power and is really fun. You just won’t see any of those 20K backstab crits :P

Greyfeld.7104:

Stiv.1820:

Yea it seems that it’s pretty much a requirement to dodge as soon as you stealth. In both PvE (espcally vs risen) and PvP. If you don’t you just get trounced where you stand since nothing really requires a target.

Which, effectively, nullifies the point of stealth to begin with. If I have to dodge to avoid being attacked anyway, I may as well have gone with a different utility skill entirely.

There are still a lot of buffs you get while stealthed and in PvP it’s still really useful. Not to mention the Stealth #1 abilities.

Yea it seems that it’s pretty much a requirement to dodge as soon as you stealth. In both PvE (espcally vs risen) and PvP. If you don’t you just get trounced where you stand since nothing really requires a target.

From what I understand that is a culling issue which is from sheer numbers around your area. When roaming around I’m usually on the opposite side of the map from the commander and there aren’t that many nearby. I’m sure it happens around the zerg though.

I play a mainly P/D condition/healing/stealth/tanky/outlast build in WvW and I love solo roaming and picking off people at the edge of zergs or getting into 1v2+. However I was getting extremely frustrated trying to finish anyone with multiple enemies around who actually rez downed teammates. I could down people all day but with one or two people getting them back up and every class having a stomp interrupt it was just terrible.

I decided to give up one of my utility abilities for Haste solely for killing downed people in groups. I will never be able to go back. I had never used Haste outside of a Pistol Whip build but it actually has decent utility.

The most obvious is what I mentioned, surprising the crap out of a downed person with a double speed curb stomp. Half the time their buddies just sit there in disbelief as you start to shoot them in the face.

It’s also an amazing battle rez for any allies around you. If they are not fully dead, you bring them from almost dead to full in a split second.

For my P/D build I can use it after a stealth opener to stack more bleeds. I can get about 13 on from range using that combo which is pretty devastating if you need some extra burst in 1v1.

It’s also a stun break and makes Dagger Storm pretty ridiculous.

Anyway, I’m sure many of you already knew these things, but it took me using it out of Pistol whip build to really realize it’s full utility. That’s one of my favorite things about this game. Every skill can be used in multiple ways.

Team Deathpope here. P/D & D/D bleeding out and outlasting ftw. Debating trying to get 50% bleed duration for 2x more ticks on Vital for more melting. Best part about it is you can be stealth half the time healing and still doing dmg with bleeds.

Thing is there is a difference between functional speed and what is the fastest possible at least for a thief. Sure, you can slot shadowstep, roll for initiative, use steal and other CD’s that will make you cover the most ground in the fastest time but you have to be able to actually fight at any point along the way.

Merrill.3540:

Notes: Only thieves can chase thieves. If you run from a thief you are going to have a bad time. Heartseeker spam, really? If you think heartseeker is good for mobility, that is the problem. You are comparing noob thieves to good other classes. It would be like comparing a 3 year old swimming to Micheal Phelps.

Race me any time, you will not have a good time.

Edit: If you caught a thief, grats. You got killed! Only time you catch a thief is when they want to get caught.

There is no way inf arrow is faster than Heartseeker for movement. For one, inf arrow for whatever reason seems to put you into combat speed even if you haven’t fought anyone. Heartseeker (for travel) costs less init and also scales with init regn from stealth or whatever. Every time I stealth I get faster regen and more heartseekers which is when you need it most anyway. Inf arrow in no way compares.

If you want spike then it’s either Backstabs (dagger main) or Pistol Whip (S/P). Both 30/30 in power/crit lines. Get the % dmg up as much as you can. Honestly it sucks in WvW imo because you have no staying power. It’s fun for a day or two for sure though.

I’m partial to 10/0/30/30/0. Using Rampager gear. Gives all 3 dmg stats and you get vit/tough from the traits. I use D/P, outlast anyone and am impossible to catch (d/d on swap with heartseeker. With faster init gain in stealth you can stealth + bail with heartseeker like crazy). That’s my idea of fun at least.

I think I figured it out. In case anyone cares. It seems pretty simple. For Vital shot since it’s 4 sec bleed the breakpoints are 25% intervals. 25% and 50%. Can’t hit 75% so no point. Max from runes I found was 15%, 30 from full Deadly arts, 20% from both weapons sigils puts us at 65%. So unless there is food or something to hit 75?

For instance, my build uses 10 in deadly arts (10%) and I can use 1x 10% and 1x 5%+ sigils in each hand to hit the first breakpoint and get one extra tick from every vital shot.

I’m curious if I’m ok at 24% because that puts us at 4.96 seconds of bleed which may just round up to 5?

Is zerg distraction an ability? I’m not a glass cannon spec and unless I do something stupid (which I do all the time because it’s fun) I can consistently get away from 10+ enemies chasing me around the map. It’s really fun for me especially when all but 1 give up and you get to turn around and kill them and they wonder where all their friends went.

Anyone figured this out yet?

It must depend on what the skill is. For instance, I use Vital Shot as my main bleed. It bleeds for 4 seconds. 1 tick per second. I assume you don’t get another tick unless your % bleed gets it up to 5 seconds?

I have two +7% bleed duration sigils on my weapons. So that would bring me up to 4.56 seconds of bleeding. Am I right to assume that these tow sigils are doing exactly nothing for me right now because I’m not getting to 5 seconds?

Or does it tick solely on intensity so during the short time I have an extra couple bleeds on them, they are ticking more?

I loved Darkfall when it first came out. They ruined it to try to attract normal MMO players. This game is like the exact opposite of Darkfall so I can’t imagine it will have many fans here.

Keep the system but remove any and all things that give an advantage to a higher rank player. Keep it to cosmetics (stuff similar to cow finisher too!), titles/ranks and web based statistics and then there is zero reason not to do this. Just make it so that people you are fighting can tell your rank based on your title/skins/rank and it will make your kitten wiggle enough to keep playing.

As a thief I feel un-targeted Heartseeker spam is the fastest. For some reason it feel like Inf Arrow puts me in “combat speed”. Just my observation though. Either way, thief is king of mobility.

I’m hoping that all the stuff about Anet being “shocked at how popular WvW has become” is true and a lot of changes are coming. Mostly in some sort of a PvP point system with titles/ranks and skin rewards (along with lots of stat tracking). This could also be tied to commander in some way.

I don’t understand what is wrong with having many ways to build and use skills? If you are condition and use D/D Deathblossom is amazing and the poison from the 3rd auto hits harder, heartseeker is mostly for movement. If you are power/crit Deathblossom it’s an evade that does some damage but your back-stabs and heartseeker are amazing.

I run condition P/D and use D/D on swap almost only for Heartseeker as movement. There are so many ways to build each weapon type and you want to pidgin hole builds to specific weapons.

Disagree as well.

Shortbow is fine if you want AoE defense. In keep defense I have the 50% fall/stealth and I use it to jump off the wall with haste and finish off downed people then shortbow#5 to the door. Use refuge to rez people in combat. All sorts of crap besides dps to do.

We don’t have good AoE? Find a group of enemies, pick out any warrior. Steal ^ Dagger Storm ^ Whirlwind = best aoe in game?

I run P/D & D/D as well with a condition build (almost all rampager’s). 10/0/30/30/0. Stealth Heal, BlindPowder, Refuge, Sig Shadows, Guild.

It’s really amazing for WvW roaming. I’ve been able to kill people right in the the middle of a zerg. All the popping in and out of stealth/healing and avoidance you are just really hard to kill. I use the runes that give 100% endurance on heal so endo is very plentiful.

I’m thinking of ditching blinding power for haste purely for finishers though because 1v3+ is impossible to stomp people if they all rez them which most do now. Blinding power saves my kitten from burst warriors and thieves when my auto shadow step is down though so it will be a painful change :/

World: Tarnished Coast
Guild: Painfully Obvious (PO)

Many of us can’t access the guild bank. I cannot invite to group from my guild list nor my friends list.

If you bind dodge to a key, whatever way you are moving when you hit that key, you will dodge in that direction. It’s much better than dbbl taping a key.

Go through settings and read each one. I have auto target turned off (for Heartseeker as movement, otherwise you go toward an enemy when you want to maybe run). Lots of default settings aren’t ideal. I can’t remember them right now but defiantly read through them, it’s worth the time.

Try warrior with rifle. I’ve been hit for like 15K in one shot from them. I think if you spec right they do tons of ranged dmg.

Just sort of ask yourself if you want to be the type of thief that kills people really fast but doesn’t have much staying power or a slower killer with a ton of surviveability.

Fast killers are the d/d (backstab) or s/p thief(pistol whip +haste) that go crit/power and all the %dmg/power boosts.

Going condition damage and big into shadow arts and acrobatics and focusing on stealth skills and evasion while using Heartseeker for movement rather than damage would be the latter. d/d and d/p are good for that using stuff like calatrops and shadow refuge.

Main problem is a way to slow people. The bow has it but it also evades back which is a pain if you are chasing. P/P just has no way to slow people aside from a .5 sec daze.

Check out Feline Grace. That along with things like roll for initiative and d/d#3 you can be evading a whole heluvalot.

Make sure you turn dodge on double tap off and bind it to a good key. That way you won’t do it randomly.

Is P/D viable without going far into Trickery? I want to do that build but am going to do shadow/acro instead and get some condition armor. I just don’t really like the trickery abilities that much but I’m sure having 30 points in it gives a nice dmg boost to P/D.