the key is to not focus all your time on the BP>HS>BS but do what pistol offhand does best, screw with everyone.
Black Powder spam is very effective. You can solo Supply Camps with it,
I’d like to point out that having good offensive stats and using daggerstorm will also pretty much accomplish this, killing everything but the veteran.
Try them all and find which one you actually enjoy playing. You’ll never be effective with a weapon if you’re hating it and wishing you could play how you really want. They’re all viable once you figure them out.
That said, I’m of the opinion that in open-world PvE it is extremely hard to match the potential of sword and shortbow, simply because you can usually dictate your number of targets and AE weapons (both of those have AE main attack) are incredible whenever you can actually fully utilize the AE.
Oh thx, heard charr were good cuz of the shout. Someone told me that it fits a lot with the thief gameplay. But im still hesitating… charr are big as hell ! :S
Charr are a great choice for thief and one I’m surprised I don’t see more often. It doesn’t hurt that the racials are pretty good. I definitely slot in the shout for group situations, especially since I already run some +might duration.
That said, I play a thief pretty directly, closing as quickly as possible and using primarily sword strikes and dodges with stealth to disorient and interrupt instead of to escape. A charr might not match a more “flighty” playstyle.
PvE player shelving thief class - trying again thanks to community!
in Thief
Posted by: Tulisin.6945
Caltrops is mostly nice because
A) In the case of dodgetrops it basically gives you an attack when you dodge, which is very nice, especially with extra dodge. Creating an AE bleed/cripple field for 4 seconds is basically an entire viable skill on its own, and you do it by dodging.
B) Utility caltrops last a pretty long time on the ground and take effect per-second per-mob for that entire duration, multiplying that small bleed/cripple effect by literally >50 applications. Also unmatched for event tagging for thieves since you can drop it before mobs become attackable.
C) Signet of Malice fully benefits from both types, turning your dodge into a >100 per second per mob per dodge heal, if you can dodge three times in the same spot where 5 mobs are, you can and will pull over 1500 hp/second out of your dodges. With the utility version, you can lay it down on a group and keep yourself healed fairly easily over a decently long period.
The caltrops abilities don’t look like much upfront, but their hit-per-second AE potential has incredible synergy.
The most potent thief ranged weapon is situational in that it is vastly more effective vs. multiple targets.
That said, if you’re looking to stand at a range and do damage without “dodging or kiting”, then thief may not be the way to go. Several skills in every thief ranged arsenal involve kiting or evading to maintain that range. Even when I’m in zero danger of my target closing I’m still dodging to build might stacks. There’s no excuse for standing still.
1. Get a good amount of points into the Acrobatics tree.
2. Eat Orrian Truffle And Meat Stew
3. Take a 2-rune set bonus of 20 % might duration. Hoelbrak for power, Pirate for MF.
You can now sustain 8-10 stacks of might just via dodging, which should also give you near permaswiftness and drop caltrops every time if you’re doing it right.
4. Get a Superior Sigil of Strength and stack precision to make it proc often.
->Now you can sustain 12+ stacks of might, again, just by dodging and hitting things.
This is where I stop, personally. I can easily run around with 10~ might stacks (thats 350 power, 350 condition damage) without sacrificing any utility slots to support it or really worrying much about the upkeep of it. Overall, people ignore the effectiveness of Acrobatics offensively, especially if you leverage might-on-dodge. My 20 points in acrobatics give me almost as much consistent power as 20 points in Deadly Arts in addition to a whole host of other benefits.
If you want, you can certainly go down the signet path at this point and get 5 stacks of might on signet use, which will allow you to max out your 25 stacks as a thief for a burst period. It is a powerful combination, but you’re majorly basing your combat effectiveness at that point on it. You can also, as you noted, go full +might duration runes and make might incredibly effective, but, again, that is putting a lot of eggs in one basket.
Paranoid has an interesting setup going with the sigils of battle, but I’m inclined to believe sigils of strength are more effective if you have good critical chance.
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PvE player shelving thief class - trying again thanks to community!
in Thief
Posted by: Tulisin.6945
I’ve yet to have significant issues with PvE as a thief. If you want advice or a build critique, post what you’re using and how you’re using it and you’ll get solid advice.
If you just want to say you’re giving up, that is fine, but you aren’t going to convince anyone that it is the profession that is weak instead of your inability to figure out how to make it work well in PvE.
Those are your options, either “help, I want to get better”, or “sorry, I’m bad at this”, there’s no “the profession is bad” because most people here have been there, done that, and found ways to make thief extremely effective in PvE.
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The question shouldn’t be “Is Basilisk Venom a viable skill with some situational use”, it should be “Is Basilisk Venom good enough to be an elite skill, a class of skills considered powerful enough to be mutually exclusive”.
The answer is pretty simple: A 1s cast time for a 1.5 second breakable stun would not be out of place on a utility bar, but it doesn’t warrant an elite slot. The skill has situational use, but it isn’t so powerful that it should be mutually exclusive with the other elites, which is the entire purpose of having that segregated slot.
The fix is equally simple: Make Basilisk Venom a utility skill and give thieves another elite or buff a utility skill into elite status.
Yes, denying 4 simultaneous venoms might throw off some builds, but this could be rectified by creating a new venom elite. Besides, it’d be a chance to implement a worthwhile underwater elite for thieves.
Paranoid is right. What the initiative system does is allow you to spam a particular skill so you can specialize at whatever that particular skill does, whereas most professions have to rotate between several of their skills and use traits/utilities/gear to push that entire rotation towards the role they’re pursuing. Lots of people pick their high damage skill and spam that for high damage. This is a legitimate use of the concept, but if it is the only one you consider valid you’re going to miss out on the vast majority of malleability the thief offers.
That said, if you wanted this to be a controlled environment you should’ve done 0 invested trait points and 0 gear pieces. The values would be much less real-world, but wouldn’t be skewed by specific build philosophies.
You’re also vastly undervaluing AE-capable abilities by only including single-target damage. You don’t even need a large group of enemies for some abilities to get huge boosts. Dancing Dagger and Shortbow main attack, for instance, get 400 % and 300 % stronger, respectively, against only 2 opponents. You can’t really do cross-valuation of different weapon skills if you ignore the situations those weapon skills are meant for.
Some interesting and useful data would be if someone could establish a baseline damage-per-initiative value for comparison’s sake. There are obviously some shared values. Dancing Dagger and >50 % Heartseeker for instance.
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Dagger AA has a three-attack chain, that results in 4 hits total (two fast small hits, one hit, one hit). Sword also has a three-attack chain, each attack causing one hit per target upto 3. The result is that a full AA chain of sword will heal 9 times on 3 targets, while a full AA chain of dagger will heal 4 times. Sword doesn’t necessarily do “higher single target DPS”, but sword offers more utility, survivability, and AE damage. AE damage that, notably, does not require you to invest in condition damage like dagger AE does.
On paper, you might feel like Signet of Malice is tough to leverage, but I can assure you with almost no healing stats I can fairly easily use signet of malice and dodge caltrops to stay full HP in melee range of 5+ level 80 mobs. NPC AI is terrible enough that the vast majority of damage can be simply avoided by not standing still, and >500 HP/second gained from Signet of Malice alone will negate any hits you do take. Personally, I also take Assassin’s Reward for spot healing which is great for getting out of sticky situations.
You’re doing him a disservice by insisting that he must invest in defensive stats. They’re an option, but they certainly aren’t a requirement. They may even be a detriment in open-world PvE where you’re giving up valuable offensive stats in favor of defense you don’t need.
Black powder is extremely useful as well but, again, not strictly necessary. By all means, do whatever works, but don’t say “x is required for thief PvE to not be terrible”.
Daggers btw provide better defense then sword for melee, because your AA regenerates endurance for your evade. If you use DD, death blossom is also an activatable evade if timed right.
This is where signet of malice comes in. When sword autoattacks also triple heal, it makes sword a defensive and offensive powerhouse compared to dagger, and that isn’t even counting the availability of weaken, daze, and condition removal for sword.
Signet of Malice + Caltrops on Dodge + Any kind of AE attack, Dagger Storm for emergencies.
Enjoy coming out of 9-pulls of level 80 mobs at 100 % HP without having to wear any defensive gear or pour points into defensive trait trees. The problem is probably that you’re playing the thief as “a dagger wielding specialist” in PvE which heavily heavily rewards AE damage and just pulling massive amounts of mobs at once. Unless you’re focusing on LDB, dagger isn’t really the way to do that.
I can run more stacks of might than that and permaswiftness with just food and dodging with acrobatics. That isn’t that impressive for an elite.
How To Counter Dagger Storm:
1. Melee the crap out the Thief who cannot dodge for 8 seconds while channeling this attack (but can break channeling to dodge, yes I know).
2. F-key stomp after he’s down
You’ll need condition removal or some good runspeed, otherwise the thief will simply spin away while you’re crippled and trying to chase.
You’re absolutely right about the counter, and there is nothing more satisfying to me as a thief than gap-closing and ruining someone else’s daggerstorms, but thieves have a good toolset for it that many other professions won’t be able to readily pull out against daggerstorm.
“so you’re preferring dancing dagger over an on demand interrupt, an AoE pulsing blind and a great burst attack ? even more knowing that FS is currently useless ?”
Much of the thief community hasn’t grown to appreciate how useful dancing dagger is. DD’s utility matches Black Powder’s depending on the situation. FS is no more useless than a PW sans setup (and is our only spammable boon removal), and C&D->sword can still act as an interrupt in a pinch although nothing in the game comes close to offhand thief pistol for interrupt spamability.
They’re different playstyles, surely, but then again I’ve never tried a Lyssa’s Basilisk build but I can appreciate how effective it can be even though that isn’t my playstyle.
>“you can build an S/D differently of course, but shadow arts is a must. Otherwise there’s simply no reason to have an off hand dagger without heavy stealth components over a off hand pistol.”
Not so at all. I run S/D without shadow arts at all. Dancing Dagger alone is a good reason to use /D instead of /P, and C&D can still be effective without Shadow Arts, you just can’t base your entire setup around it. S/* favors a target rich environment, and S/D caters to that far moreso than S/P.
There are two factors when I make this decision:
1. How much condition removal am I running? Toughness won’t help against conditions but if I’m running Shadow Step + Signet of Agility then conditions are much less of an issue anyways.
2. How good is your server at PvP? Good WvW score boosts everyone’s HP all the time, and having orbs is another massive boost when you’re within WvW. These are important considerations when choosing HP vs. toughness.
From someone who has used something similar to this, a few critiques/tips:
1. Signet of Malice, use it. It is so amazing with dodge caltrops and will synergize even better with your signet setup. I can often dodge >6 times in a row with a signet of agility activation. Doing that through a crowd with Signet of Malice will net you literally dozens of heal ticks per second. Dodge is already really powerful with acrobatics, turn it into a heal with Signet of Malice.
2. Assassin’s Signet isn’t worth it. Agility is an awesome escape along with a well-synergized passive, while Assassin’s passive is just okay and the activation is pretty bland. Take utility caltrops or the always-amazing shadow refuge.
3. It can be a little pricey, but the top-end dodge-enhancing food gives +100 % endurance regeneration and 100 % chance to gain a might stack on dodge. This means that every single dodge will net you 2xmight and you’ll be able to dodge all day long (and heal/cripple/bleed/swiftness, thanks to synergy).
4. With as much dodge as you have, you should actually be able to keep swiftness up long enough to negate most of the use of Signet of Shadows, but it may be worth keeping for the utility.
5. +20 % might duration runes, they’re worth it.
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Thieves guild isn’t just for single targets – their best feature is they pull attention away from you while also doing significant damage. Calling them in when you’re in over your head can turn a fight around instantly.
Which is exactly what Daggerstorm does if you’re using Signet of Malice, except much more often and with much better applications in a high target environment.
There’s better choices in some dungeon situations, but in most PvE where you get to pick your number of targets there is no reason to just not pull as many mobs as you possibly can and destroy them all with daggerstorm.
You’re positive this isn’t a lag issue on your end, and it’s definitely a game engine issue?
Absolutely. Player culling in high-population situations is a well documented issue that isn’t client-specific. Haven’t you ever wondered why sometimes you’ll run upto the trade post in Lion’s Arch and it’ll look totally empty for 3/4 seconds before an entire mob of players fade into view? Or surely you’ve been running around in WvW and suddenly seen a zerg materialize deep inside your clip plane. This couple seconds it takes for models to load completely covers the stealth downtime and allows one to attack from stealth and restealth before they are visible. Some times I quick tab target will allow you to attack the targetable-but-unloaded model, but this is not always the case.
This is quite simple. He’s using his heal to stealth himself, knowing full well he probably won’t need it.
He pops Hide in Shadows, his #6 heal ability, which stealths him, he then opens with a backstab using his #1 ability, which is different if he is stealthed. he then pops Cloak and Dagger, vanishing from view again, then repeating backstab.
He can chain his stealths together with 2 seconds between them and with the proper build he can do this almost continuously with very little initiative lost.
He’s not only a “good” thief, he’s very aware of his stealth cooldowns and timings and chains his stealths together to keep himself alive.
There is already a mechanic in place to prevent true chain stealth. As the people above you have mentioned, he was likely exploiting the fact that character models don’t immediately load when stealth drops to truly have 100 % untargetable uptime, while skill assists in this, it is the failure of the game engine that truly makes it powerful.
A string of clips of you using finishers?
Chakuna, that trait is aweful. By that point most builds already have 50% crit chance.
Freelancer, I don’t know. It wouldn’t be that hard to judge ingame if you equipped two of them and had 0 precision traits/gear on at all, as you’d only have a 4% or so to crit… 5% and 10% from two would be a very significant gain in crit chance.
Hardly an awful trait imo. Especially if you’re stacking +crit damage and using assassins signet, if you don’t crit you’re missing out on loads of potential damage.
The problem isn’t so much that 100 % crit after stealth isn’t good as much as +20 % damage at <50 % HP (the alternative high-point trait) is so much better. The benefit of an autocrit is directly diminished by what your crit rate already is, while +20 % damage is never diminished regardless of your stat setup.
As for the OP, take caltrops on dodge, take it now. You’re already running Signet of Malice and 30 points in Acrobatics, and I have no problems saying that Uncatchable is easily the most powerful trait thieves can take due to the synergy you can generate by creating hits on dodge. You’re also not really getting the most out of your 6 rune bonus with zero toughness on your gear.
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Personally, condition-builds may well work great for soloing, but in group events and dungeons – given the potential nature of high burst damage for the thief, and the fact that the stacks are capped, I’d avoid a condition build.
Just personal opinion of course.
While this is true and bleed caps are something that should be looked at, people way overestimate the situations where this actually hinders you. Most events are not “everyone gang up on this one mob and beat on it for 10 minutes”, those are easily <10 % of all events. Even in events where the bleed cap will be reached on the main opponent, attacking that main enemy isn’t what you should be doing as an AE condition damager anyways. Hint: You get far less loot/exp from an event like Claw of Jormag if you spend your time focusing the dragon.
When it comes to dungeons, it all depends on if you know the people you’re running with or not. It is pretty easy to come to an agreement ahead of time about who is going to be using bleeds to maximize the use of those 25 stacks.
Conditions can be removed in WvW, but that is why thieves use consecutive short-duration high-damage bleeds instead of, say, stacking a massive duration of burning. This is also where apply a multitude of different conditions comes into play. Most condition removal is not passive, and expending tiny effort (like dodging through a crowd to drop caltrops) to force your enemies to make multiple ability activations to negate your action is still a major combat efficiency win.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
Or you could take shortbow and caltrops-on-dodge and just dodge and spam #1 to kill those same four mobs four times faster.
The only time I take P/D for kiting is against champions where there aren’t enough targets to make shortbow worthwhile.
I’m going to say no simply because shortbow is largely ineffective in 1v1. While 1v1 isn’t the majority of situations in PvP, it happens enough that I wouldn’t consider shortbow a viable “main” weapon.
That said, there’s a reason why almost every thief has shortbow as their secondary weapon, because in a large number of situations it is amazing.
its all single target.
This is what kills pistol mainhand for me in PvE. AE attacks just blow single-target attacks away in efficiency as soon as you start engaging multiple targets, and usually PvE is target rich enough that you should always be pulling and killing 3+ at once.
Going toe to toe with a mesmer is suicide as a thief it seems though.
Caltrops on dodge + sword main attack + Signet of Malice will clear the field and keep you high health for zero initiative if a mesmer wants to actually toe-to-toe with you. Mesmers that want to brawl, in my experience, are much easier to kill than the ones that try to stay at range.
Dancing Dagger is a high damage skill and, in actuality, is S/D’s primary burst ability.
The thief community has always been willing to quickly overlook this ability because it is immediately considered a utility option due to its cripple and weakness against single targets.
Consider that a Dancing Dagger hit does the same damage as the much-beloved Heartseeker when the target is >50 % HP, and roughly 50 % of the damage of a max-strength Heartseeker (<25 % HP target). This means that, against two targets, every Dancing Dagger is the equivalent of a maximum-strength Heartseeker on each target, cripples, and hits twice as much (thereby doubling your opportunities to achieve on-crit effects, and doubling the effects of any combo fields).
I don’t think Dancing Dagger is broken in comparison to other thief abilities, but it is highly underappeciated as a damage application tool.
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Thief playstyle involves dancing back and forth between melee range and medium range. There are quite a few “jump back” abilities (such as Withdraw, Roll for Initiative, Shadow Strike, Disabling Shot). A big part of the Thief playstyle involves closing in and then rapdily withdrawing. I don’t think Steal needs an adjustment based on this.
Many thieves’ playstyles revolve around this bouncing back and forth between ranges, but I’m hesitant to classify the entire profession based upon the playstyles of some thieves. As someone who has played thief setups that both seek minimum range 100 % of the time and thief setups that seek maximum range 100 % of the time the desire for some people to be able to exclusively jump in and out of melee range should not shape the profession as a whole. We’ve got plenty of shadowstep/return options, I’d like to see something else for steal to remain relevant to thieves seeking to maintain range.
That said, the previously suggested “store stolen abilities” feature would be incredibly broken simply for the ability to save up several of the powerful abilities while still retaining steal’s mobility and traited offensive attributes, even if the cooldown was preserved.
It is just you. Mesmers are the only profession that can come close to thief mobility, and the only other profession I won’t have a >95 % catch rate on, but in the end they aren’t more mobile, especially if you’re running sword/shortbow.
Unfortunately the early levels of playing Thief is kind of hard. We’re really REALLY squishy until the later levels. Thieves don’t have many good survivability options until tier 2 traits. At that point you have:
Leeching Venoms: Steal Health when triggering a Venom.
Using two of your utility slots for venoms along with Leeching Venoms allows you some pretty nice in-combat healing on demand.
Pain Response: Gain 10s of regeneration and remove bleeding, poison, and burning when struck and health is below 75%. This effect can not trigger more than once every 45 seconds.
Pain Response is another nice passive heal that you can almost forget you have once you slot it, but definitely notice it’s lack if you don’t.
Or instead of Pain Response you could take:
Assassin’s Reward: Heal yourself whenver you use a skill that uses initiative. Heal yourself for each point of initiative spent.
I’m not a fan of Assassin’s Reward, since you need to be a heavy initiative spender to make it useful(and thus more trait points to support it), although you could combine this with the heal skill Signet of Malice that heals you every time you attack. But I prefer the heal+stealth+condition removal of Hide in Shadows that you get at level 1. It’s gotten me out of more trouble than I can even remember.
So for the first 40 levels or so, I highly recommend Pistol/Dagger. You can kite up to any four melee targets forever with your 4 button: Dancing Dagger. I’ve taken down all kinds of veterans and even a champion or two like this(although champs take FOREVER. Prepare to be bored to tears).
After level 40 the class really starts to feel like it’s coming into it’s own. I personally don’t like the glass cannon builds that people find so popular in PvP. They work fine against other players when you can exploit their weaknesses and fight 1v1, or when you have backup.
But for PVE when you are often fighting three or four enemies, sometimes with a veteran mixed in, a heavy survival build is going to serve you a LOT better. My personal build suggestion is to go Pistol/Dagger with a core of :
20 Shadow Arts: ( V Infusion of Shadow) ( IX Leeching Venom)
20 Acrobatics: ( II Power of Inertia) ( VIII Pain Response)You can only get one right at 40, but both by 50. I recommend going for Pain Response first, but you can choose whichever you feel more comfortable with. Using Spider Venom and Ice Drake Venom as defensive heals instead of offensive poisons keeps you topped off for HP, and if you start to take a pounding hit Hide in Shadows to buy more time. You can also pop your 5 button, Cloak of Shadows regularly to get a bit of spike damage and more stacks of bleed on the target. Pain Response will kick in automatically as needed, along with Last Refuge if you happen to get dropped all the way down to 25% HP or less.
So it does take level 50+ to become really tanky as a thief, and you won’t be killing things quite as fast as other build. But you WILL survive a lot longer.
And this build works well with just about ANY gear setup, which is perfect for levelling since a lot of the time you can often be wearing some fairly outdated equipment. And it’s much more forgiving while you’re still learning the class.
I will say that the thief playstyle probably changes the most, depending one which traits and skills you choose. You’ll have to experiment a LOT to figure out what works best for you. Try using the Heart of Mists area in the PVP section to test out builds.
As someone who an initiative-efficient setup, what Assassin’s Reward gives you is the ability to regulate your healing to burst out of a bad situation and reserve it when you don’t need it. Shadow Refuge will get you out of more trouble than Hide in Shadows without taking up your only heal skill, and Signet of Malice is simply amazing any time you’re hitting multiple targets (which you should usually be in PvE). Running Assassin’s Reward + SoM means never waiting for your heal skill to get out of a sticky situation, the most effective option to get your health back is be aggressive and take it back.
I wouldn’t put points into Shadow Arts unless you’re using very heavy stealth or in certain dungeon situations. The survivability of the tree is just overkill in open-world PvE.
After reading this thread I tried out the Sword/Pistol where as I have been using only DD/SB up til now (level 25). I was amazed with the survivability with this! My question is what stats other than vitality should I be pushing? I am mostly condition damage/vitality as of now but I am guessing power/vit/precision?
Thanks for any insight!
The reason you’re probably noticing an increase in survivability with S/P is that sword is absolutely amazing vs. multiple targets with Signet of Malice. Get caltrops on dodge, always pull at least 3 mobs at once, and dodge over them. You should end most fights at full HP once you get the hang of it, and should be able to handle 3-8 mobs without many issues, as long as the majority are melee. This works all the way to 80 and doesn’t really require you to use any weapon abilities but sword #1 and dodge unless you’re mixing it up for fun. For utilities activated caltrops are a great compliment as well as shadow refuge for general movement/utility.
Mark the real mesmer before you engage if possible, it’ll make it much easier to pick your targets. Most of winning a fight with a mesmer is in reading their actions and being able to pick the correct target. They’re one of the only professions that can come close to thief mobility so expect them to try and run/kite if they’re in a difficult position. If you’re running a glass cannon, confusion will make you hate your life. Signet of Malice and having some AE capability helps a lot with keeping you topped up while you down clones.Their downed skill is trivial to combat once you understand that the real mesmer always appears after the clone. Down the mesmer, attempt finisher, fail because they stealth, wait for second mesmer to appear, finish.
Optionally, daggerstorm.
I have on as well, what weapons do you use?
Fort wall defence: Pistols for single targets/shortbow for groups.
Assassination: Dagger, Dagger. Sword, Pistol.
Fort attack: Sit back, get a deck chair and a box of popcorn and let the classes with survivability and group combat viability do the work. Maybe defend the siege weaponry from strike teams if they try by being behind the siege line. If you really must get involved: shortbow clusterbomb the enemy front line.
For defense a single good thief with some decent condition damage can usually push a zerg off of a gate by themselves by dropping as many caltrops as possible and daggerstorming before rolling back inside. Caltrops are easily one of the most potent “field” AEs in the game, and will also prevent people from escaping a concentrated AE if you’re able to coincide your attack with some fire from defensive emplacements. This allows you to take a more active and exciting role in siege defense, and as a bonus I’ve been able to steal flame ram blueprints left on the ground on several occasions before they could be built due to driving a zerg off of a gate.
For offense your job is to use the thief’s many gap closers/cripples/immobilizes to ensure that no one is reinforcing the target structure. Few professions are as good as a thief at ensuring that ranger can’t roll his way inside to plink people from the wall with a longbow, or bring supplies to get an arrow cart up.
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What runes/orbs are best for Berserker Gear if going for a full glass cannon build?
in Thief
Posted by: Tulisin.6945
Technically Scholar runes are the best for putting out maximum damage during a favorable <5 second engagement, but Divinity are so much more useful in actual applications because PvP is usually not a series of bursting people down in 5 seconds without letting them move and then stealthing to do it again in a minute.
The build is solid, gduber, but the 30 points in shadow arts are all unnecessary overkill. I run 0 shadow arts and Signet of Malice + Assassin’s Reward are sufficient to keep me at >90 % HP most of the time in PvE.
Running something like that will probably make you unkillable in PvE even if you don’t bother to dodge, but if you introduce even a little movement you can drop 30 points in an offensive tree instead of a defensive one and vastly increase your kill rate at pretty much no loss to defense.
However, if you’re feeling “useless in WvW” it is probably because you’re doing something that the profession isn’t very well suited to. Thieves are amazing at chasing people down, soloing control points, soloing supply points, killing explorers, killing dolyaks, etc. Far better at it, in fact, than most professions. I’m sorry you aren’t having fun in WvW, because your chosen profession has so many better options than are available to most people for fun WvW play.
How many of those activities increment the “kill 50 players in WvW” monthly objective, because I’m still only halfway through that one, and most of the kills I do have came from people stupid enough to get close to our tower when I had access to a cannon, and not running away fast enough when damaged (if it were a ‘damage 50 players in WvW’ I’d have completed it in ten minutes).
I can usually get “kill 50” in a few hours of solo or small group play. Just camp out by a “safe” skill point (one in the back of enemy territory) and you’ll be surprised how many people you can ambush and destroy. Optionally, set yourself up along an obvious road from the enemy’s respawn to wherever the fight is and kill people trickling in. Very few people can survive a thief getting the jump on them, especially if they’re completely unprepared for it.
Its a bummer that as a thief i feel like somewhat useless in WvW atm.
While everyone is having fun shooting from the Walls, all i get is " Out of Range " message all the time.
Look, I get it, you want to shoot from walls, and I agree that a longer ranged option for thieves on siege defense would be nice.
However, if you’re feeling “useless in WvW” it is probably because you’re doing something that the profession isn’t very well suited to. Thieves are amazing at chasing people down, soloing control points, soloing supply points, killing explorers, killing dolyaks, etc. Far better at it, in fact, than most professions. I’m sorry you aren’t having fun in WvW, because your chosen profession has so many better options than are available to most people for fun WvW play.
I think the concept of FS is pretty solid, and people underestimate having a spammable boon removal, and the combined damage of the two hits is actually fairly impressive. The main issue with it, as so many people have noted, is the terrible forced positioning it does. I’d be happy if they just halved the initiative cost on it.
Most lower-level thieves share the opinion that steal isn’t very good. It really does shine when traited though, if for no other reason than it is an ability that is completely outside the regular battle rhythm. A traited steal can allow instant closure with an enemy, give initiative, do a hefty big of damage, poison, etc, but most importantly it can do all that without breaking your stride or having to choose it instead of another ability. It is also important to remember that profession-specific mechanics can’t be compared to eachother directly. Compare thieves as a whole to other professions, not just steal vs. other profession mechanics. Don’t forget that initiative is a large part of what makes thieves unique as well.
I think a lot of people miss the fundamental fact that the thief is built to spam certain abilities. Other professions’ ability cooldowns force them to vary what they’re using, with most abilities pushing multiple mobility/damage/control roles. Thieves, on the other hand, are meant to use whatever ability suits the situation. If they want damage, they use their damage ability, if they want control, they use their control ability. This means that when a thief wants to do one specific thing at a time, they do it really well. When that thing is damage, it often means spamming the one ability on the bar built for damage. It isn’t that the ability is broken, it is that instead of all attack types being broken up throughout a bar that is supposed to be fully utilized, they’re all compartmentalized to be called upon in specific situations.
I’m level 80 in level 80 gear.
That is a pretty wide range though. Some folks have already noted that whoever killed you was likely using a one-hit-wonder build where they can pop everything and bring someone down extremely fast…but only once every minute or so.
However, this could be greatly exacerbated by your equipment. There’s leaps and bounds between, say, level 80 offensive-stat greens and a balanced or defensive 80 exotic set. Traits could also have a significant effect on how effectively these glass cannon setups can bring you down.
I think we can pin down what he was using to kill you, but I’m equally interested in how you’re set up to be susceptible to these attacks.
shadow refuge which lasts for 4 seconds and each pulse stealths you for 3 so you can be stealthed up to 7 seconds.
Try 13 seconds.
Ah, I was just going off the description on the Wiki, I don’t usually use it in my build.
You should play around with it a bit, Shadow Refuge is easily one of the more powerful and versatile utilities thieves get.
Stealth, Dodging, Damage: pick any two.
I’m sorry, but no, you can’t have everything.
I run 5/30/0/25/10 with sword/dagger and have a grand old time doing all three of these. Might+caltrops on dodge help a lot with ensuring that lots of dodging doesn’t hurt your ability to put out damage.
And I assume you just fabricate Stealth from thin air?
Cloak and Dagger provides stealth on demand, even without using utilities. With a good amount of initiative regen from crits and the fact that otherwise sword doesn’t really use initiative for much I’m free to use Cloak and Dagger quite a bit and benefit from the 2s daze from stealthed sword strikes.
shadow refuge which lasts for 4 seconds and each pulse stealths you for 3 so you can be stealthed up to 7 seconds.
Try 13 seconds.
Stealth, Dodging, Damage: pick any two.
I’m sorry, but no, you can’t have everything.
I run 5/30/0/25/10 with sword/dagger and have a grand old time doing all three of these. Might+caltrops on dodge help a lot with ensuring that lots of dodging doesn’t hurt your ability to put out damage.
If you’re already using some +healing like I am because of Signet of Malice, it is actually pretty potent. I haven’t stopped to calc it out, but it looks like you heal about as much HP per initiative spent as you do per hit with Signet of Malice. So, for instance, when I throw a dancing dagger, I usually get 480~ immediately from Assassin’s Reward, and then 4×120 from Signet of Malice for the 4 hits. Since that is spammable, I can heal a few thousand HP in a couple seconds even at a range.