Guild Wars 2

Dakan.9463:

Laika.8795:

That change…it never happened, dude…

Pretty sure I got revealed every time last week and died several times because of the SA 5 point trait proccing wrong. I apologize for not checking again before posting but I am dead sure that’s what happened to me last week…

Usually the Last Refuge trait causes revealed due to it proccing whilst mid-attack thus attacking from stealth, thus causing revealed.

I could never understand why only the Flesh Golem could regen health while out of combat…

Since it shows that it’s not a technical issue with it (Well, Jagged Horrors may cause some issues, having regen and degen…).

Perhaps they wanted to keep the FGolem as the only one to have it to make it actually seem elite compared to the other minions (Aside from the elite cooldown and the high damage active ability)

Just been doing the math on this combo (I don’t like using it, I run with more defence than it can provide at the cost of a huge amount of the damage so ended up just doing the math instead)

But using http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1p.h2.8.1p.h1|0.0.0.0.0.0|1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e|2t.d19.2t.d19.3t.d19.2t.d13.3t.d19.2s.d13|p39.u23c.0.0.f4|39.1|0.0.0.0.0|e

The highest possible damage this combo can cause (Against a light armour class with no toughness and no additional armour and no protection so 1800 armour total) using max hit attack from daggers and assuming they crit and hit from behind while being at >90% health with a condition on the target and above 6 initative whilst using 4 signets and blowing them all before the burst (For the Might stacks):

Cloak and Dagger – 7380
Mug – 11071
Backstab – 17713

Compared to http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.0|4.1g.h2|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e.1g.7e|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67|k35.k57.0.0.u56b|39.1|0.0.0.0.0|e (Only using exotics, not ascended) against the same target

Kill Shot – 24875
Volley – 20028

So the warrior can do more damage, can do it every 10 seconds (Compared to Thieves whom have a 45 second cooldown on this combo), have more health, more armour (Even in just exotics) can do it from 1500/1200 range (So it can be used vs Zergs without being pretty much a death sentence) and it also can pierce into multiple targets.

The only downside to warrior is that people find it easier to dodge the incoming Kill Shot if the warrior doesn’t use awkward positioning/Frenzy that or Thieves inherent access to stealth makes people incapable of noticing the incredibly obvious CnD animation from ~900 range away whilst also having the Basalisk Venom buff on…

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Now to get +75%, according to you, you need all these;

2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts

All that is equal to ONE carrion amulet. Any extra Condition Duration only makes Condition Damage look even better.

But since there’s not a Condition Duration amulet it means you’re going to be using the Carrion Amulet anyway, so that’s a non issue.

You only have to compare the relative damage outputs from the things that share slots so that would be – Runes and Sigils (Traits could be counted but I still have 30 points in Trickery on my P/D PvP build so I’m not losing out on Condition Damage)

Runes – A maximum of 211 Condition damage (5x one kind of rune + 1 of another)
Sigils – A maximum of 250 Condition damage (Via stacking Corruption)

Whilst you can still get 75% duration which with the Carrion Amulet would require 925 condition damage to match the damage output (261 < 925) meaning getting the condition duration is higher.

You also might point out that cleansing would reduce the effectiveness of condition duration, but since you lose out on a minimal amount of damage and also if you account for the speed at which the bleeds are reapplied (Especially via sneak attack) and how often most builds can cleanse, duration still out does damage.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

IMO, Condition Damage > Condition Duration in terms of Bleeding. But in terms of Vulnerability or Cripple on the other hand, Condition Duration please.

Any condition that deals damage should be spec’d Condition Damage and any condition that stacks non-damage debuff (i.e. chill, cripple, vuln) should spec’d Condition Duration.

So if your goal is to stack bleed, then go for intensity instead of duration.

In general, Duration is far superior to Damage for conditions (As long as they’re not cleansed)

Since 1 extra tick often does much more damage than is gained by similar effort into condition damage.

For example:

Bleeds do 42.5 damage per tick base with a scaling of 0.05 * Condition damage. With a 4 second bleed (The duration of P/X bleeds) it will tick 4 times for 4x 42.5 = 170 damage. 25% extra duration will give it an extra 42.5 damage over the duration whilst it would need 212.5 condition damage to be equivilent.

This discrepancy only further increases the more condition damage you already have:

1000 Condition damage – 92.5 damage bleeds.
Would need 462.5 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 25% condition duration. 925 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 50% condition duration.

But as said previously, P/X Bleeds are 4 seconds long so they only benefit from Condition Duration at the 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% marks, anything inbetween gives no benefit.

As far as I can tell, 100% bleed duration is not possible to achieve in PvP (I can get up to 95% but with a pretty bad build) but 75% is (2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts = 75%) which would give 7 second bleeds.

In short, as long as you can get the highest of the plateaus you’re aiming for, any more condition duration is wasted and best served going for extra condition damage.

I liked the part where the thief was spamming Heartseeker for like the first 5 minutes.

Also, when the Elementalist literally just walked away from said thief.

That said, Ele’s are really quite tanky, and when there’s 2 of them constantly splitting up a small underskilled zerg? It’s pretty strong (2x Fire fields/blast finishers for more might when close, 2x Water #2 and #5 for extra healing and condi removal for example)

stof.9341:

one 2s immobilize with that venom.

Which stacks with itself (2 procs minimum) to get up to 4 second immobilize, can be traited to have 3 stacks (6 second immobilize) and can also be traited to share to other players (Up to 6 seconds immobilize per player)

As for stuns and the like, there’s a 1.5s stun with Basilisk Venom, our elite and the pull effect from Scorpion Wire.

There’s also Tripwire, which may not be useful in most builds but if you can leverage it is a 3 second knockdown. (Needle trap is also another 3 second immobilize, but that trap is pretty bad to be honest)

Most classes with a single skill can immobilize someone longer than we can chaining all our skills that do the same together :p

When traited, a thief can chain: 3 seconds (Needle Trap) + 6 seconds (Devourer Venom) + 1 second (Infiltrator’s Strike – Also can be spammed, sort of) giving a total of 10 seconds with no duration increase (They’d be at least 30% if getting the extra venom procs)

stof.9341:

Hmm, but if I remember well, C&D pays it’s initiative cost at the end of the cast only. I’m pretty sure we don’t lose initiative if we interrupt it’s cast. Since you steal before the end of it, the extra initiative is wasted on a full bar and then the price is paid.

If you don’t get the initiative loss/gain until the end of CnD, then there’s still Opportunist – 20% chance to gain 1 initiative on a critical (With 2 attacks critting at the same time, there’s 2 chances at this) allowing you to be a 7 initiative when everything is coming out.

If Mug hits before CnD – You’re at 12 initiative – It gets the effect of First Strikes

When CnD hits – I’m not 100% sure but I think that it get’s benefit from it (If not then going 15 into Trickery might give this 10% extra damage)

When Backstab hits, there’s a good chance that Opportunist procced, also depending on how long it takes to get around to behind the target an initiative could have regenerated (1 per 1.33 seconds)

Then of course, I haven’t done much testing with First Strikes, most things that say “When above X” usually mean “When above or at X”.

A prime example is all the 75% health regen procs, some state “When at 75% health” some say “When hit and below 75% health” and some say “When going below 75% health” whilst they all work in the same way – If hit while at 75% health or below it will proc.

This could mean that First Strikes may in fact be in effect when at or higher than 6 initiative (Causing every part of the combo to be affected by it at all times)

stof.9341:

I don’t think you get the 10% bonus damage from “First Strike” C&D uses 6 initiative out of 12 and I don’t think you’ll often regen it before you backstab. Side Strike is also a huge waste I’d say.

Kleptomaniac – Stealing gives you 3 initiative – 5 point minor trait in Trickery giving 9 initiative total when the combo hits.

Also, Side Strike is to ensure higher critical chance on Mug and Cloak and Dagger, if either of those don’t crit then this combo’s damage is severely reduced.

A better option is either a 25/30/0/0/15 build to get the 3 extra initiative from Trickery. This allows you a guaranteed “First Strike” bonus after C&D. Drop Venomous Strength cause it’s not worth it for just 2 stacks of Might from your elite.

Or you can replace “Side Strike” with the IMHO much more useful trait “Signet Use” which lowers signet CD by 20% and regens initiative when you use them.

When I’m trying to go for the ultimate insta-kill combo rather than a more balanced build with sustain, the additional 50 Power and 2 might stacks (70 power) are noticable.

SwickHobo.5096:

1: Ditch the ruby orbs for scholar runes the 10% dmg is huge presuming your spiking from the shadows your starter combo should always be >90% hp.

Ideally, yes going for some extra runes (165 power + 8% crit damage + 10% damage vs 120 power + 84 precision + 12% crit damage) would increase the damage, it’s just I didn’t want to buy some runes just to test this build out for a few hours (I really don’t like having that little defence, feels like I’d be one-shot when looking for a target in WvW) since most of my other builds use Ruby/Beryl orbs

2: FOOOOOOOD
3: NOURISHMENT

I may not have mentioned it but I always carry around food + nourishment, about 10 different types of food for different situations/builds (Might on dodge, Heal on Crit, Power + Vitality, Precision + Crit damage etc)

4: Bloodlust stacks: get 25 whether via ganking or killing npcs, carry two blue/green weps with the sigils on them to stack twice as fast then switch to exotics after your done killing trash.

This would have increased my damage by somewhat, but I’m lazy and cheap and don’t have a set of weapons with Superior Sigils of Bloodlust so I do miss out on the 250 Power.

5: Dont use so many signets. Assasins sig is the only good one, maybe shadow if u roam solo a lot

I don’t advocate using signets, it’s just for maximum damage getting the additional Might stacks (1 Stack = 35 Power) would help me to see what the highest I could hit would be.

Bassman.9245:

i can’t believe that little dmg with 22 stacks of might, i can burst down anyone like any other decent thief without all that silly stuff you built

Most of my builds can also burst people down, not in a single 3 hit combo like a lot of people complain about but pretty fast (That said, I’ve killed GC Thieves in 2 hits using Shadow Shot + Mug on a glassy D/P build)

Pyroatheist.9031:

The 1shot-bs build isn’t a myth. Just look at the damage numbers he was posting. The thing is, if he chose is targets carefully, which he obviously didn’t, he could easily instagib many many many builds in wvw. As it turns out, a lot of people and builds have some sort of active defense counter to that, of course, which is where his build immediately becomes horrible.

Exactly.

The damage this build puts out is incredibly high, I have no doubt that on GC’s and squishier targets (Such as Ele’s before they’ve got their boons up, other thieves etc) I’d have been able to successfully combo’d them to death.

It’s just that the build and combo is so easy to counter and if the damage is prevented the ability to kill the thief using it is so easy, thus me being unimpressed…

More balanced “burst” builds are still great though, dealing high damage whilst also having sustain to live and mechanisms to escape (One of my D/P glass builds had decent sustain through massive amounts of Blind yet still pulled off 2-2.5k auto attacks and 3-4k Shadow Shots and 6-7k Backstabs)

Pyroatheist.9031:

With your build, if they don’t die in your first burst, you lose unless they’re asleep at the keyboard, and that’s a silly way to play.

I’m aware of that.

I was just wondering what all the fuss is about with the hundreds of threads in which people keep saying “I got one-shot by a thief” and “Thief burst is way too high” where they reference this combo (They also tend to mention thieves having infinite initiative, or at least enough to repeat CnD indefinitely)

So I tried out the maximum possible burst combo that I could think of, which would be a 4 signet build for the 20 stacks of might.

I normally play Zerker builds that do infact run with various survivability traits + utilities (At the cost of about 40% of the numbers I achieved with this build) but people don’t seem to complain about those as much (If at all, it’s always about “Backstab is strongest ability in game!” and “Can’t kill a thief, stealth too strong!” from what I’ve read)

Teraphas.6210:

Ferum Flamebender.5910:

Create new char-> go to your home city-> go to LA -> go to rata sum-> do sunny glades and cahs in the 2 bauble bubbles-> delete char-> create char-> etc.

and enjoy your ban that is sure to follow

I’m not sure if they’d ban you for doing that.

Considering they mentioned that they allow people to repeatedly make new characters to get the Black Lion Keys from the level 10 personal story rewards.

… I’m not impressed by it…

30 III, IV, IX
30 II, III, XII
0
0
10 IV

Full zerker gear + Ruby Orbs

Signet of Malice/Signet of Shadows/Assassin’s Signet/Signet of Agility/Basalisk Venom

Using a combo of:

BV > SoM > SoS > AS > SA > CnD > Steal > BS

Giving 22 stacks of Might, 15% damage from AS, 10% damage from Exposed Weakness, 10% damage from First Strikes, 5% damage from Dagger Training, 5% damage from Flanking Strikes, so a total of 770 extra power and 45% extra damage.

Averaging:
About 3k Cloak and Dagger hits.
About 6-7k Mug hits.
About 9-10k Backstabs.

Which, in a bit of roaming in WvW got me all of 1 kill (Even then, the combo didn’t one shot and I still needed to use Heartseeker about 4 times to secure the kill) – This includes multiple up-leveled characters I tried the combo on (They were Warriors and Guardians so would have naturally higher armour)

All this at the cost of having literally no defence, 10k health, 916 toughness, 1980 armour and no utilities to save my life.

Can people stop complaining about being one shot from Thieves and deal with the fact that if they do get one shot, or killed in a single combo then they obviously need more defence?

sapphyredragon.6437:

Taril, I think you and I have similar play styles with our builds. I wish they’d do something about that useless passive effect on Signet of Fire, but your build seems to utilize the extra crit chance better than mine.

To be honest, I don’t actually use the passive effects on any of the Signets…

I keep them all on cooldown to have high uptime of the Fire Aura and as a result the Fury + Swiftness + Protection gained from gaining an aura.

I believe it started when some people posted a few videos of them playing 0/10/0/30/30 and 1vX in WvW.

This then caused an influx of people playing the spec and it became the go-to spec, thus people got to know how strong it was.

CallousEye.5018:

He said damage over 3 seconds, but the hammer’s tool tip says each attack is .5 seconds, is the tool tip wrong? It doesn’t feel wrong.

Generally speaking, the tooltip is correct about the animation times for each of the attacks but it doesn’t take into account the delay after most skills that increases the time it takes to use multiple attacks.

For example, Dagger on a Thief/Necro #1 chain says 0.25 seconds for it’s 3 part chain (Totalling 0.75 seconds for the full thing) yet it takes a full 2 seconds to complete.

RashanDale.3609:

does it heal for more when traited?

Yes.

When traited you get both the heal from the Life Transfer itself as well as the healing from the trait Transfusion

If you come out of DS whilst channelling Life Transfer (Traited to heal or not) it will heal you.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.1p.h1h.8.1p.h1|0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r.1g.7r|1p.61.1p.61.1p.61.1p.61.1p.61.1g.61|k69.a1.k25.0.k56|15.1|1n.27.26.25.0|e

D/D (Battle + Accuracy)

20 VI, IX
10 I
20 II, V
0
20 V, VI

Valkyrie Weapons + Trinkets, Berserker armour.
Melandru Runes + Lemongrass and Poultry Soup.

Perma-Fury + Perma-swiftness + Perma-Protection + 10 Might

2.2k power base, 25% crit chance base, 2.3k armour, 16k health.

Slot skills:
Signet of Restoration/Signet of Water/Signet of Fire/Signet of Earth/Become the Wolf

Hit and run style play, hop in to do some damage and then jump back out, using Chill (From Water #3 + Signet of Water), Cripple (Earth #2 + Earthen Blast) and Immobilise (Signet of Earth).

Perma-Burning from Signet of Fire and Fire #2 + #3. Can also utilise Signet of Earth to get off a Churning Earth (3.25 cast time SoE provides 3.5 immobilise)

Downsides – Little condition removal (Only Water #5) and no stun breaks, thus the Runes + Food giving 65% lower condition duration and 25% lower stun duration.

Bhawb.7408:

It takes 30 in SR + 10 in Spite, and using an axe. I consider that easy because it takes absolutely no skill to accomplish (press your profession mechanic button twice per 5 seconds, and axe 3 when its up), no gear, no food, and can also synergize with other DS related traits for either solid damage or solid support.

“Better” is your opinion.

Technically an untraited axe 3 can keep 100% Retaliation uptime.

15 second cooldown, provides 3 seconds per target hit, can hit up to 5 targets.

Traited axe (30/x/x/x/x) would only need to hit 4 targets to get 100% uptime (12 second cooldown)

So… Yeah, pretty easy to keep 100% retaliation on a Necro, no food/gear/runes needed.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

You may be able to upkeep retaliation for a long time, but what good does it do you when you can’t actually survive that many hits? The boon itself is worthless unless you’re a guardian.

It’s possible for a Necro who wanted to maximise Retaliation to be very tanky:

• Toughness and Vitality gear can provide 26k health and 2.6k armour before traits + food

• Regeneration from Staff #2 or Focus #4 can provide health

• Life Siphoning from Blood Magic trait line can provide decent healing (If going Minions you can get ~80 health per hit from each minion)

• Death Shroud, easily generatable second health bar

• Various ways to remove conditions

Yes.

Swapping attunements will proc sigils that have effects “On swapping to weapon”

As will using Ride the Lightning

Though keep in mind that those sigils still have a 9 second cooldown so won’t be able to proc every time you change attunements.

I also am getting lag.

Since the last patch, every now and then I get insane lag that delays actions for 6+ seconds.

This, as you might imagine, makes the game unplayable as it’s a death sentence when in combat.

Retaliation doesn’t reflect damage.

What it does is whenever someone hits you it deals (198.45 + (0.075 * Power)) to them.

The power it uses is that of the caster of the Retaliation (So if you cast it on yourself or allies then it’ll use your power)

It doesn’t reduce damage you take, just punishes people who do damage to you.

When I was leveling I personally went for 20 into Death Magic + 20 into Blood Magic.

I primarily used Staff (With Staff traits from Death Magic) + Wells (Suffering + Corruption) + Bone Minions.

I just went around, gathered up 5 mobs, threw down Wells + Marks (2 – 3 – 4 – 2) and exploded the minions, things tended to die very quickly (Also the perma-regen from Staff #2 when traited is very nice for tougher opponents)

I used P/V/T gear, I could have gotten away with more precision/crit damage stuff but I didn’t mind doing slightly lower damage as it meant I could stand my ground at all times.

Other ways to level do exist (Such as Sceptre/Dagger condition builds utilizing Epidemic to get high stacks of AoE Bleeds) but I only tried them out briefly.

It’s annoying…

Sword is a great weapon, it’s #1 chain is amazing – It’s high DPS (I did math comparing it to other weapons/classes and it’s really strong) it has cripple on it that can be kept up permanently and the leap allows you to stick to a target like glue.

Unfortunately the downside is either being screwed over by the #1 chain due to auto-attacking (Preventing evades, limiting mobility etc) or turning auto-attack off and manually pressing 1 thousands of times per hour…

I can’t use the sword as it is at the moment, due to the fact that having to manually press 1 so many times (I’ll not get into how insane it is if you use Quickness as often as possible, though at least the last patch helped with that somewhat) causes my wrist to ache after several minutes.

It’s strange, on my necromancer I manually press 1 with my dagger (Even though it’s on auto-attack, I just do it) and it’s fine, but due to the attack speed of the Sword #1 combined with the situational #2 and #3 abilities it really does cause problems (Lots of spamming of #1 necessary, or if I really wanted to try and annoy myself toggling Auto-attack on and off).

So the thought process I have is either lower the attack speed (Increase the damage dealt proportionately) or to make it so the leap can be cancelled via dodging/moving (Though I don’t see how that’d work) or leave it as it is and just build around not using Sword (Which is what I have done, I’ve gone for Greatsword, even though it does a lot less DPS)

It would be very nice.

I used the Spear skills as inspiration for coming up with a set of skills for Scythes (If they were brought in)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Suggestion-Scythes/first#post1473050

So many useful and fun abilities on underwater weapons, that seems to be lacking in the land based weapons…

Yes and no.

If you have 2 of them then you have twice the chance of having the effect proc, but if one of them procs, the other won’t be able to during the cooldown.

So in essence, having 2 of them just increases the proc chance of the effect, it won’t increase the amount of times it can proc during a set period of time.

The forums usually aren’t too bad.

It’s just, there’s recently been a fairly important patch that has some not entirely positive changes for thieves (Also a few bugs arising aswell) causing forums to be filled with more posts complaining about it (Also people who play other classes posting to just say “HA, SUCK IT OP THIEVES”)

As far as leveling goes at low levels:

Sword/Pistol gets good recommendations (I didn’t like it personally… That and you’re screwed if you ever try using it’s main selling point against dredge (They’re immune to blind)

I personally used Dagger/Dagger using Death Blossom and Caltrops to stack bleeds on things, with the evade on Death Blossom and the high uptime of Cripple from Caltrops I could avoid damage and when I got low on health I could step back long enough to get a heal off (Or run away if really necessary)

The Bleeds also have the advantage of being AoE (Means I could take on 2-3 things without worry) and also don’t become affected by Glancing Blows (Which meant I could take on things 4+ levels higher than me without worry)

PinCushion.7390:

Heals for 1,302 + (1.0*Healing Power). Max frequency of every 9 seconds w/ 30 in Arcane.

Fixed.

Though Deathly Invigoration is pretty disappointing for a Major Master trait…

Lucas.9162:

I am a Rabid build traited fully into Precision. I think my Critical Chance is 43%. Would Earth get me to 25 stacks faster than Geomancy? After taking the advice on Agony, I started running a Geomancy and Geomancy/Corruption combo. Right now I can peak at 25 and maintain 20 stacks of bleed. Sigil of Earth is a 60% chance to stack a bleed, right? Do you know how long it lasts?

Sigil of Earth lasts for 5 seconds base (10 seconds with 100% duration)

It also has an cooldown of 2 seconds (Whilst Geomancy is 3 stacks for 7 seconds base with a 9 second cooldown (If I recall correctly DS will proc “On swap” sigils when leaving it))

Sigil of Earth with 100% Bleed duration = Up to 5 stacks of Bleeding (1 stack per 2 seconds, assuming 100% proc rate)

Sigil of Geomancy with 100% Bleed duration = Up to 6 stacks of Bleeding (3 stacks per 9 seconds duration of 14 seconds, so 5 seconds with 6 and 4 seconds with 3 stacks if maintaining a proc per 9 seconds)

Sigil of Geomancy has the benefit of also providing AoE Bleeds, which synergises better with Epidemic (Along with the higher duration, which also synergises better with Epidemic) allowing the stacking of up to 12 Bleeds in an AoE, which will outstrip what Earth can do.

In the end it depends, for PvP and Single Target encounters Earth would probably be beneficial whilst for Trash + AoE Geomancy would win out.

Lucas.9162:

But does it cap at that number? If it doesn’t then wouldn’t you want to increase Bleeding Duration as much as possible for maximum damage?

100% Condition Duration is the cap, yes.

It’s only possible to go over with the Lingering Curse trait that gives sceptre 33% extra duration (I don’t know why that’s the only thing that allows this, but it is what it is)

So if you can get 100% duration from outside sources (Runes/Food/Spite trait line), then Sigils of Agony will give 0 benefit.

Lucas.9162:

By using Agony instead of it, you lose 246 damage, but you don’t have to ever charge the stacks, so I think you would do more damage in general.

It depends, the 20% duration is amazing for Blood is Power (Due to the small percentage of a large base duration still provides a significant increase in duration, at least enough to provide multiple extra ticks of damage)

But for other, shorter duration abilities it can be less effective (20% on top of a shorter duration bleed such as Barbed Precision will provide no additional ticks of damage unless already at 80% duration)

25 stacks of Corruption (250 Condition Damage) will increase the damage that bleeds do by 12.5 per tick.

20% duration will only provide more damage if the skill gets another tick of damage off (Conditions tick once per second, if the increase doesn’t bump the duration by at least 1 second it provides significantly less benefit)

That said, it’s entirely possible to get 100% (133% with Sceptre) bleed duration without the use of Agony Sigils (20% from Hemophillia trait, 15% from 2 Krait Runes, 15% from 2 Afflicted Runes, 10% from 2 Lyssa runes, 40% from Rare Veggie Pizza) which would vastly increase the effectiveness of Geomancy/Earth + Corruption Sigils and negate the usefulness of Agony sigils.

Dual Agony does stack on weapons allowing for 20% additional Bleed duration.

Dual Corruption will also give 2 stacks per kill and you keep stacks even if you swap weapons (So you can have a couple of weapons with Corruption on, and once reaching 25 stacks swap them out for 2 weapons with Agony on for 20% Bleed duration)

As far as sigils on off-sets go, they don’t work (So you will only get the Agony boost from your staff when you have your staff out)

Sigil of Leeching does work with attunement changing.

I personally run with Geomancy + Accuracy Sigils on my D/D.

I tried out other Sigils (Battle, Doom, Energy, Intelligence etc) and found this set up to fit my build and playstyle better.

I know a lot of Ele’s use Battle due to being able to stack up a lot of might due to going Bunker and getting a bunch of Boon duration stacked up.

I’d be up for a Mug nerf, as it can get quite ridiculous.

For example:-

In my 10/20/20/20/0 D/P init build (Zerker gear)

Was 1v1 with another (Level 80) Thief in WvW, on the outskirts of one of his camps (Just out of aggro range of Scouts) he came at me, stealthed up and tried for an opener I countered with BP > HS and waited for his stealth to wear off and opened. My opening hits (Stealth wore out by the time I got to him) of auto-attacks took about 1/5th of his health off and then used Steal and he was instantly downed with a crit (Don’t recall what the value was due to not paying attention and the Scouts aggroed onto me from doing this).

I just stood there, completely astounded at the stupid amounts of damage I was able to put out with a 10 point trait that tacks on damage to a 900 range shadowstep + utility mechanic.

If they could replace it with something like “Stolen items do X damage” where X could be either a percentage value or a static value (Maybe even a “Steal causes X Life Siphon” (Life Siphon’s can’t crit and don’t always scale with gear but have the advantage of ignoring armour))

If you want to do max damage with P/D, try this:

1) Select target

2) Steal

3) Cloak and Dagger

4) Sneak Attack

5) Vital Shot x4

6) Cloak and Dagger

7) Sneak Attack

8) Vital Shot x4

As it is Body Shot tends to be a waste of initiative (Unless in a group where the damage that other people gains vastly outweighs the DPS loss from using Body Shot) and Shadow Strike should be used as a situational ability (Gain distance as a pseudo evade/kite a melee player/prelude into escape)

Similar to how a D/D Thief will use Heartseeker/Death Blossom/Dancing Dagger as situational abilities or a X/P Thief will use Headshot and Black Powder as situational abilities.

When it comes down to it, a P/D thief isn’t as much a ranged weapon set as it is a melee weapon set that just isn’t completely redundant at range (Though with the lack of a gap closer to help get CnD off, it comes close)

-Sigh-

Well this has gutted my P/P WvW builds that relied on Critical Haste and Signet of Rage to land an Unload on any half-decent player.

But at least they buffed Haste for D/X players!! (Removed negative endurance, meaning you can bottom out your endurance, pop Haste and regen up most of it with Dagger #1 chain. Before you’d be able to go into negative endurance and need to regen up twice as much)

Ohoni.6057:

1) Not really.

While yes, some classes only have it available through Elites, it’s something that can be popped as a last resort to not only prevent knockdowns but also allow the knockdown skill to go on cooldown thus giving ample breathing room for various other ways to avoid knockdowns to occur.

Maintaining anything close to 50% uptime is impossible on any class.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stability

And so it should, Stability really shouldn’t be high uptime due to how powerful it is, combined with other ways to avoid control it’s still a hugely powerful boon that allows specific periods of immunity at crucial times to achieve something big (Breathing room for heals/damage/escape or the ability to stomp someone in PvP thus taking them out of the fight for sure)

2) Very few builds even have the option of CCing opponents fast enough to hit even the minor effects discussed here.

Lots of builds utilise way more than 1 CC ability per 15 seconds -

• Elementalists – The average D/D elementalist will utilise many CC effects from different attunements in order to keep control over targets. Underwater a majority of their available skills are CC effects.

• Thieves – Have various immobilises to use (Shortbow stealth attack – Heck this “Defiant” would stop Devourer and Basalisk Venoms from being useful due to them being based upon multiple applications (Up to 3 per person affected by the venom) not to mention Needle Trap and Tripwire also causing CC)

• Rangers – A stun and knockback on Greatsword, 15 second cooldown on knockback from Longbow ontop of various pet knockdowns/fears/daze etc

Just as examples – The game is very CC intensive (Due to it trying to become an E-sport, meaning skill based CC to prevent everything being a DPS race)

3)Yes, many can be avoided, if you care to do so, but in many cases of chain CCing you can get hit by several of them before you even fully recover from the first, making avoidance impossible if you failed to avoid the first move.

Implies you’ve pulled too many to handle, also popping Stability at the beginning of the fight will often put all the targets knockdowns on cooldown thus making the rest of the fight CC free (I know, as I do that when AoE farming multiple Centaurs + their Dogs even on classes that have limited access to stability)

There are still ways to avoid things like this occurring;

• Pulling targets away from groups – Take them either 1v1 or in smaller groups, vastly reducing the number of available CC effects that can land on you.

• Focusing your CC onto the targets that will do knockdowns – Take them out of the fight while you clear some of the others up/wait for endurance or other cooldowns to recharge.

• Focusing your DPS onto the targets that will do knockdowns – Kill them outright before they get chance to knock you down.

You have to make the trade-off depending on what you’re fighting “Do I want to kill as many as I can live through?” or “Do I want to save myself the annoyance of being chain CCed?”

I personally have thrown out many curse-words whilst trying to AoE farm Centaurs on my Wellomancer (Running with Norn racial Elite so no stability) and getting chain-cc’d and sometimes killed because of it, yet I know there are many ways to avoid it (That aren’t my usual – Run in and whack down all the damage I can and kill everything before I die tactics)

1) All classes have Stability (Some have more than others)

2) Devs don’t want to segregate how PvP and PvE works to allow PvE players to hop into PvP and have a good idea of how things work (Adding Diminishing Returns to PvE only would affect this, people hopping into PvP won’t know there’s no DR there)

3) A lot of Knockdown skills are telegraphed and can be moved away from/dodged/evaded/distorted/immuned/stabilitied/interrupted. While yes it can be annoying to be farming up 5-8 Centaurs at once and be knockdowned a lot, it encourages using alternate skills/finding ways to split groups/controlling certain mobs/bursting down certain mobs.

I usually go for whomever doesn’t runaway upon seeing me…

So usually other Thieves (I will have to chase them down halfway through the fight though) and Rangers.

Also – Whomever I can bait into following me into a large group of allies waiting to ambush (Usually GC Warriors who think I’m a nice easy target to melt through)

I don’t much like running into zergs so I keep to the outskirts doing smaller skirmishes, it works well (It’s also hilarious to bait half a zerg into ambushes small groups at a time)

Druitt.7629:

People love Infiltrator’s Arrow, but I’ve found it to be meh: there’s an in-flight time and a short range, so it I’m firing in the direction I’m running it’s not a very large jump. It doesn’t fire across gaps or height differentials. What am I missing?

It’s a spammable location shadowstep on a weapon set that also provides more utility (Poison combo field, AoE damage, spammable Blast Finisher etc)

For travelling the options are; Heartseeker and Infiltrator’s Arrow. Heartseeker is good, but also has it’s downsides (It being on Dagger mainhand so not much other utility for Pistol or Sword mainhand users, it initiating combat with nearby targets, it only goes forwards, it occasionally bugs out when used on an incline, it’s affected by movement impairing effects etc)

That’s why people love it, or at least like it. Not because it’s super awesome teleport wherever ability, but because it’s a nice ability on what most people use as a backup/utility weapon set.

Not only does dagger hit faster (Dagger chain takes 2 seconds to complete, sword chain takes about 2.4 seconds to complete)

But a lot of Dagger’s damage comes from other abilities (Backstab, Heartseeker, Shadow Shot, Death Blossom) while Sword primarily uses Auto-Attacks to deal damage (Occasionally Pistol Whip, though it does about the same DPS as auto-attacking)

XZERO.3014:

Did A.net design death lotus so I could blow all my initiative, and do no damage as a burst thief?

Yes.

By the fact you say that this ability allowed you to live through some burst that would kill most classes without using high cooldown skills (Though you say a Warriors 100blades, which can be 100% negated with the “S” key)

You had a choice:

• Take the damage and hope to be able to save the initiative for killing the target attacking you
• Use a utility/Elite to try and escape the damage to ensure living through the incoming damage
• Use Death Blossom to evade the damage at the cost of initiative (A finite resource that needs to be managed – Part of the Thief class mechanic)
• Swap to an alternative weaponset to use another skill to help in the situation (Infiltrators Arrow/Disabling Shot/Pistol Whip/Flanking Strike)

You chose option 3, and therefore have to live with the consequences, just like everyone else whom have limitations to their builds (Since no-one can use a 30/30/30/30/30 build, every build has it’s strengths, weaknesses and limitations)

D/D Death Blossom Builds are unique in that they’re able to get 25 stacks of bleed onto 5 targets on their own along with high uptime of evades. Completely dismissing this kind of build to say “90% of condi thieves are P/D and Shortbow works better” is narrow minded.

As far as the debate goes on Deadly Arts traits, ALL classes have Power combined with Condition Duration in their trait lines. It’s neither a Direct Damage line nor a Condition damage line, it is a “Venoms and poison” line (As stated by the wiki)

Whether that means you use it to supplement condition damage from poisons or use it to increase the value of venoms with the side effect of improving the uptime of negative effects such as the -33% healing from Poison or the -50% damage and endurance regen from Weakness doesn’t change what the line is designed for.

XZERO.3014:

Also with the upcoming nerf to stealth providing counter play, burst thieves will suffer if they don’t land a back stab, why wouldn’t death blossom getting a buff for burst thieves not be reasonable?

Not really, if getting that buff completely destroys other builds (D/D Death Blossom/Endless Dodger etc)

Since Burst Thieves will still have the capacity to deal the same damage (BS damage isn’t being nerfed, it’s just if you don’t hit with BS in the time you have stealthed you’ll be vulnerable for 3 seconds) and will likely be getting changes in the future (Devs mentioned “Boon Hate” mechanics and mobility increases)

What I’d like to see coming to Pistol (Main hand, off hand is okay as it is, maybe some change to make Headshot more than just a very expensive interrupt)

Pistol #1 – Either an increase in attack speed or an attack chain that can shoot 1/2/3 times rapidly. Reasoning – Currently does low damage and provides very little bleeds due to low duration (Faster attack rate = More bleed stacks = More of a hit + run kind of damage to fit with the fast playstyle of a thief)

Pistol #2 – Changed into “Dragon Shot” a 600 range shadowstep that provides a short duration Burning to targets in the area. Reasoning – Provides Burning to P/D condi thieves (Something Devs wanted to try and fit in thematically, a bullet coated in some sort of dragon blood or something to cause fire could work) and provides mobility for P/P (Also some towards target mobility for P/D to make CnD easier to get off)

I also would like Unload to pierce targets (I don’t mind if it was tied to Pistol Mastery trait to be honest)

Khenzy.9348:

Charged Shot. You fire a high powered pistol shot the applies vulnerability to your foes. 3i. ½ cast time. 5 stacks of vulnerability. Combo Finisher: Blast (where you stand)."

1 concern would be:

Smoke Field + Spamming this = Huge duration AoE stealth, with the possibility of perma-AoE stealth…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/D-P-Build-Theorycrafting/first

Bunch of D/P builds in that thread (With a few I’ve made and know work well)

The upcoming nerf to stealth shouldn’t be that big a deal (Since it’s very hard to get the initiative to gain stealth that often on a D/P build, that and stacking stealth will be unaffected)

hammer.9721:

blasius.4723:

my lovely thief,…

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/51918/gw126a.jpg

anyone know what the chest and legs are in this post

Chest – Krytan Armor from Gem Store
Legs – Norn Cultural Tier 1

So I was messing around in the Mists with various builds, and came across a fairly fun one to play -

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlcmiPHby8E/5EymCgSn8eQWjVYppgmaQA;ToAg0UFZKSUktIXRyiWEMGZSA

20 III, VII
20 V, X
0
0
30 V, VII, XI

Sigil of Rage/Sigil of Accuracy + Sigil of Accuracy

6/6 Runes of Lyssa

Signet of Malice/Blinding Powder/Tripwire/Caltrops/Basalisk Venom

Pros:

• Lots of control (Knockdown + Cripple from Tripwire, Cripple from Caltrops, Stun from Basalisk Venom)
• High potential burst (Quickness + Sneak Attack > Unload)
• Lots of boons (Lyssa Runes + Steal)
• Ranged attacks (Can kite, harder to be kited etc)

Cons:

• Easily avoided damage (Dodge un-hasted unload)
• No reliable defences (No reliable stealth, no extra dodges, unreliable vigor)
• Limited mobility (No shadow steps, unreliable swiftness)
• Limited condition removal (Only via Lyssa rune 6. Can compensate with food in WvW)

Haven’t tested it on players yet, but looks to have potential if requiring a lot of skill to pull off (Due to randomness of defences and lack of crutch skills such as Shadow Refuge and other abilities that can facilitate running away)

Rump Buffalo.2594:

Dasorine.1964:

Rump Buffalo.2594:

dont forget that the CRIT ratios (% dmg boosted by crits) is higher than that of triple chop from the axe. Therefor a critting backstab is worth MUCH more than all 3 hits of triple chop critting.

I’ve been backstabbed for 9000 before on a glassy build and i can guarantee you against the same build I’d never hit 3000 3000 3000 with triple chop.

How do you work that out then hmm? Smells like bad math to me

You’d have to figure out what the actual crit ratios are due to runes / traits and all that.

Also let’s not forget that that Attack Power scalings on these 2 abilities are also totally different even though their base damages might be the same

Damage calculation for all attacks:

Weapon Damage * Power * (Skill Dependant Coefficient * Critical Coefficient) / Target Armour

No different power scaling, no different critical coefficient, the only thing that differs between weapons is the Weapon Damage and Skill Coefficient (Average weapon damage for all 1 hand weapons is the same though)

Through some easy math (Tooltip Value * 2600) / (Average weapon damage * Power) you can figure out the coefficient for a particular skill.

I calculate the coefficient for Backstab to be around 1.62 while the coefficient for Triple Chop is 1.73.

This combined with the higher maximum damage for Axes would mean that Triple Chop will be able to beat out Backstab given the same stats. (Various % damage increases on Thief, the lower chance of meeting an Axe Warrior that’s gone full GC in traits and gear will shift the observed values somewhat)

stof.9341:

There’s no such thing as variable crit damage bonus per skill. The crit damage bonus is exactly and only what is written on your character sheet and the same for every attack.

If anything, warriors Axe would have a bonus since there’s a trait that gives 10% crit damage with axes…

If by smoke bomb you mean Blinding Powder, then hell no.

Blinding Powder is hugely useful for not only PvP (Free, instant stealth) but also for extending stealth.

If you want a Smoke Field utility there’s still Smoke Screen.