Guild Wars 2

caveman.5840:

sword 2 don’t u need to be locked on ! same with infiltrator signet! roll for initiative pushes u back …. isn’t with drawl a heal skill that pushes u back to so u need to turn around to move forward .lol a lil ridiculous just to chase a war down !

This is why critters and ambient mobs are important. You also don’t have to worry about being forced into combat, and making a 180* turn to do a withdraw+R4I chain is pretty easy to aim in mere milliseconds when you get good at it. I’ve also mapped out every ambient creature in both EB and the borderlands, as well as common mob clusters that are greater than 900 units apart to avoid putting myself into combat. The map has also helped me plot out the fastest courses to each objective. Thief was never supposed to be an easy class, and I take pride in working for my speed, rather than mindlessly spamming 3 skills the moment they’re off cooldown. It’s all about risk/reward, and I risk it all. I happen to not use stealth either, posing more of a challenge while you and most other thieves rely on it as a crutch.

caveman.5840:

Viking Jorun.5413:

caveman.5840:

i would say war if u want to move fast a thief can’t out run a war . u didn’t like the guard because a thief can out run u idk . i say go to war . or go guard . and just not worry about thief’s running . or engine . u can have a bad @s5 looking engine still … elements r pretty sweet to . i have a lot of fun as a element and d/d elements can be fast

I’ll be back after I record me flying by a mobility warrior. Shadowstep chaining allows you to travel eons faster than any warrior could hope to. Just this morning my group of myself, 3 warriors and a FGS ele were asking me to slow down because I was killing dolyaks and flipping camps before they’d get there. We started at the same location.

yes if u chain shadow step u can move a great distance.but shadow step has a cool down so u have like one good chance to catch up to a war if u have it in your utilities and most thief’s do but none the less a war is still really fast !……… god viking jorun u spend way to much time on the forums lol

Sword 2, Infiltrator’s Signet, withdraw, Roll for Initiative, Shadowstep, Sword 2 again (off CD), Shortbow 5 x2, Withdraw, Infiltrator’s Signet, Sword 2.

Enjoy being half way across EB in 40 seconds (my personal record starting from spawn to south SM). The fastest recorded time a warrior has been able to run that is 1m 26s.
Good day.

caveman.5840:

i would say war if u want to move fast a thief can’t out run a war . u didn’t like the guard because a thief can out run u idk . i say go to war . or go guard . and just not worry about thief’s running . or engine . u can have a bad @s5 looking engine still … elements r pretty sweet to . i have a lot of fun as a element and d/d elements can be fast

I’ll be back after I record me flying by a mobility warrior. Shadowstep chaining allows you to travel eons faster than any warrior could hope to. Just this morning my group of myself, 3 warriors and a FGS ele were asking me to slow down because I was killing dolyaks and flipping camps before they’d get there. We started at the same location.

Staff, full zerk, 30/X/X/X/X.

Jakare.6807:

The 10/30/0/0/30 with either d/p or s/p is probably the strongest burst thief build around at the moment.

Couple of things to mention are: Since the daze/stun duration no longer rounds to the nearest second, sigil of paralysation doesn’t affect any of the dazes/stuns on this set. If you take the sigil of accuracy for +5% critical chance, you could swap out your combo critical chance master trait for the newly buffed practised tolerance trait, which gives about 1.5k extra health on builds with zerker amulet. Or you could take furious retaliation for more fury uptime.

Caution: Using a zerker amulet and doing a pistol whip on 2 or more opponents with the retaliation buff WILL wreck you. The flurry on Pistol whip hits 8 times, so if retal is proccing for about 200-250 damage then hitting two people with pistol whip will make you eat 3200-4000 damage. This can be deadly. If you’re cleaving multiple opponents, dropping black powder and auto attacking is sometimes better than spamming pistol whip, as it will give you roughly the same damage output but will lessen the retal ticks that you’ll take.

Also the bountiful theft trait will prioritize aegis and stability in the boons that it rips, so combined with sleight of hand you can interrupt stability stomps just by using steal.

Bountiful Theft on its own doesn’t prioritize any boons except the last ones the opponent popped, but combined with Sleight of Hand, it produces the anomaly that Stability is the first to go so that it dazes the opponent at all costs.

As for the OP’s build, I feel that it lacks the sustain needed to burn down a bunker before they kill you, and using 10/30/0/0/30 should give you enough crit damage/chance, and combined with fury, you have enough room to go with a Soldier’s amulet and Barbarian’s jewel, as illustrated in the build below. If you’re stealth rezzing your teammates, toughness is a must with the amount of AoE spam aside from conditions in the current meta. Here’s what I’ve been running:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmCOncS6E/5Ex2DfKUe69gsj1saFoJA-TsAA1CoIKSVkrITRyisFNsY9xkAA

Any thief who cares about their class will stop replying and let this thread die. It’s not happening, OP.

Hey all,

I just got done building an apothecary-based condition D/D build using runes of perplexity, and thought I’d post it here for some feedback and constructive criticism. I’m fairly new to ele, and get the basics, but if I missed something be sure to let me know.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmkbwx5wjDAkHuADLjCiUekzM2A-jUCBIOBk6AkIAIPqIasl1FRjVLjIqWfEzgTQ2iTZVKAYWWB-w

Hah. How about we go on your forums and demand rangers DPS and conditions can only be applied through their pets, and to make every ranger skill a root?

There’s your answer.

You death blossom, stealth, caltrops, dodge under the enemies to proc Uncatchable, come out of stealth, rinse + repeat. It should be a lot smoother now with the December 10th update’s initiative regen buff.

350g for just the insignias on my ascended armor…. Ouch, said my wallet.

She’s anti-establishment though, and said herself that she doesn’t want her destiny to be controlled by the Dream, the Nightmare, or the Dragons, thus making her a champion of a dragon highly improbable. Queen Jennah is more likely to be the new champion of Kralkatorrik than Scarlet is to be the champion of any dragon, IMO.

Burnfall.9573:

frans.8092:

Burnfall.9573:

Okaishi.8320:

Sanduskel.1850:

many of us thieves think stealth is ridiculously broken in this game. the vocal few who want to preserve the status quo are who you mostly see on the forums.

Many of us thieves think you’re a silly troll who only pretends to play a thief. As a thief, I can tell you this much. Let me just say this last thing to you: people are starting to pay increasingly less attention to you, you might as well stop posting.

Okaishi that was totally rude, unjust and evil of you to say, I’m serious!! Sanduskel is not a machine, Sanduskel deserves to be treated as a human being.

Are you not human?

He didn’t say nothing about a ‘machine’, that is your idea …

Unlike Sanduskel I can’t speak for other thieves, but Okaishi’s words do seem to resonate with my thoughts, whether you like it or not.

Once again,

Being a human being is to Feel,

Being a machine is to not be Human

Sanduskel is a human being, whether you accept it or not

The point is, we’re kind of sick of the two of you claiming to be professionals on the subject of everything thief, and call for more nerfs. If you truely play thief, then this is an intervention, Burnfall. Please, try to contribute meaningful posts to the conversation, any involving thief, and perhaps people might start taking you seriously. For now you’ve ruined anyone believing a word you say without assuming that you’re trolling. Even Daecollo is a normal human being now, and he was formerly in the position you and Sanduskel are.

I mean this as a compliment, so try not to take offense xD

You guys remind me of the old Team Legacy, before Freelancer became a power hungry megalomaniac. I may be in touch soon!

Dagger storm with Signet of Malice x20 = dead enemy zerg.

Haltair.3062:

Sanduskel.1850:

many of us thieves think stealth is ridiculously broken in this game. the vocal few who want to preserve the status quo are who you mostly see on the forums.

I am officer in the guild who owns more thieves of the world and I can assure you that not even one thinks that the mechanic is broken.
It seems to me that you must be trolling.

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

I think you assume that your guild is something prestigious… It’s not, sorry :x

And yes, Burnfall is a troll, if you haven’t been to the thief forums in the past 6 months.

yski.7642:

Obviously I am. Just look at my high muscle memory skill burst builds! :P

The best thief has a sense of humility ;P

Mabuse.2879:

By the way, the DB/Signet of Malice trick appears in the Leaping Super Immortal Death Troll Legendary Unicorn Blossom build from way back. I used it quite a bit for levelling, but after a while decided I ought to learn some actual thief skills.

Which is why I’m suggesting (a variant of) it to him, since it’s fairly easy to use for beginners to be successful, but it does have a low skill ceiling once you get the hang of things. Needless to say, I got tired of being invincible.

Toughness reduces burst damage, which makes you super tanky against anything but conditions. You don’t want dire, and here’s why: vitality is just a buffer due to your healing skill having a fixed, very low heal amount which doesn’t scale with your maximum health. Healing power scales with toughness, however, and you can simply Death Blossom over everyone, regaining your entire health pool while dodging. I once held a zerg of 17 at South Camp in our borderlands and killed 13 within the 10 minutes I was evading and applying caltrops, until my zerg game and wiped the remaining 4. The point of taking healing power over vitality is the fact that you’re dodging during your attacks anyway, and shouldn’t be taking much damage while you heal.

Also: you never, EVER, use Signet of Malice. Think of it as a warrior’s Healing Signet. It isn’t your primary “oh kitten” heal, which is why you have Shadow’s Rejuvination, making Blinding Powder your small heal, Shadow Refuge your massive heal and Dagger Storm is essentially Invulnerability in a zerg/group fight, or against someone who’s AI dependent. This is why you use Signet of Malice.

Zeke Azul Falcon.5176:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Oh, Burnfall you’re that Asura thief from NSP? You hit me for 3k, and then proceeded to get one-shotted by the supervisor with Indignation. I don’t use stealth or dagger ;P

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Strongest-Backstab-build/first#post2475273

check this thread – that was my old build but now i reach almost 4.9k attack.

will post screen when i get home.

oh burnfall, you hit like a wet noodle, you should see maguuma thieves and BG thieves.
i hope we cross paths one day.

No, he doesn’t hit like a wet noodle. I’m fairly certain that’s as hard as he could hit me due to armor mitigation. Backstab thieves have to work to kill me :P

OMG, thief has a teleport for 1200 range! Must nerf!

/Sarcasm

Hey Jumper, what would you think about adding Leap Finishers to Withdraw and Roll for Initiative, allowing non-stealth builds easier access to quick escapes or repositioning, without altering the S/P and P/P sets themselves? I’ve been contemplating it for some time now, and I was going to post it to your thread in the PvP forum but here seems more appropriate.

The above build would be more of a damage soak, not really for anything that would sustain you in any way. I’ll be back after I’ve theorycrafted a somewhat viable guild for you; posting here to remind myself where to link it.

EDIT: I think I’ll give you an older build I used to run. It’s a condition build, and while it may not have the vitality you get from your above build’s soldier gear, the healing power more than makes up for it and actually gives you a higher EHP. With it, you can either hold a zerg at a point for days, or hide in the shadows constantly, even applying your bleeds without having to leave stealth. Here it is:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmiP3ey8E+5EB3ji60m6p4rltTBWlPA-jUyAIOBRaBI5BgCBlHLiGb1sIas6Zioa1Nm5uIa1CBsYNA-w

Oh, Burnfall you’re that Asura thief from NSP? You hit me for 3k, and then proceeded to get one-shotted by the supervisor with Indignation. I don’t use stealth or dagger ;P

Sir Vincent III.1286:

foste.3098:

Increase the health you get per initiative spent (maybe to 75 or so), since if you go 30 in acrobatics you most likely won’t go for shadow arts and so you don’t get extra healing from healing power (since thiefs don’t generally take gear with healing power).

Secondly make it heal the thief for a set amount (say 2k hp or so) when his initiative reaches 0, and give this effect a 30-60 sec internal cooldown.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this trait cos most people agree it is so not worth the 30 points.

Also sorry if there are other suggestions like this, in which case i just wasted 10 seconds of your time.

Not gonna happen. The point to spec-ing Acro is to avoid damage so you’ll never see a good way of healing yourself in this trait tree.

You can’t avoid conditions on you, and chances are if you’re in Acro you’re not in SA, meaning you don’t have much condition removal. I think it would be balanced to add condition removal every 4 or 5 initiative spent on top of the current Assassin’s Reward healing, which would justify it as a grandmaster trait and add sustainability for acrobatics thieves, because in the current state, you’re dodging until you mess up and get bursts down or you kill them fast enough. With condition specs this is an entirely different ordeal, as the damage still ticks down while you’re dodging and healing with Assassin’s Reward.

Avatar of Belle.9623:

GoM is buying roamers now? :P

GoM feels zergy for me when I fight them though their wvw makeup has gone through some shakeups lately. They used to have good roamers but I haven’t seen any lately. I think they transferred off. That’s not to say they’re a bad candidate if you want to fight other roamers. Just don’t expect to find much company.

For servers with skilled roamers, I like NSP, FC, AR. DH is not bad but they’ve been getting zergier this week so I don’t want to wholeheartedly endorse them. ET is the kingdom of roamers.

I agree that roaming is better in the lower tiers but sometimes I have a hard time finding a fight. My guild has been focusing more on gvg lately but we still roam every night.

Good luck in finding a server that suits your needs.

PS: JQ roaming blows. I tried it and I spent 90% of my time avoiding the zerg and every 1v1 turned into 15v15. That said, you can always find someone to fight. I had good fights with TKG (The Kelly Gang). At the time they were on BG. Not sure where they are at now.

I roam almost exclusively, and I’m far from a bad player. Perhaps you haven’t met me out there ;P. I’m that stealthless S/P human female thief with a fractal sword that always takes on larger groups.

You hit like a truck for certain, but I feel the downside of your build is it’s squishiness in the fact that you’re very often not able to get a stomp off and you’re more focused on spamming pistol whip for your primary source of damage (and the players in the beginning are ridiculously stupid for having just stood in your PW). Sword AA does more damage, while PW is a utility for burning down while evading and interrupting melee attacks with large cast times.

You aren’t a bad player, I just thought I’d give you a few tips on successful roaming with S/P. While I run 10/30/0/0/30 in tPvP, I run 10/0/0/30/30 in WvW for added survivability since you’re more apt to be able to minmax more efficiently outside of PvP, and I don’t need the extra damage/crit chance from CS to effectively roam and I don’t die due to the sustainability Acrobatics gives me. I also run Assassin’s Reward and don’t rely on any form of stealth, because if you’re using S/P, chances are that the utility an extra mobility skill such as R4I will give you is far more useful than Shadow Refuge except in clutch moments in PvE, which I won’t even mention in this subforum since my primary foci are PvP and WvW.

I’ll just share with you what I run and leave it at that. You have some nice fights in there.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmSO3dS6E/5Eh3jyOWzqVgmdP4q81KA-j0DBYfREREgaAiWGgQAM5pIaslhFRjVNDRVLoqkYaXQ6XwmeQ2eAGfLrWKAsFGB-w

Recently I’ve been thinking about the condition meta and what can be done to balance it, which brought me back to when the meta started: when Torment was added, and weakness and chilled were buffed. It may be utterly insane or astoundingly brilliant, but how would a new boon which was designed in a way to counter conditions perhaps impact the condition meta and balance it out?

Perhaps a buff which decreased condition duration by X percent and functioned like fury? Or maybe a buff that reduces damage dealt by conditions as to not affect movement impairing ones and only damaging conditions; the cause of the imbalance?

I’d love to start a discussion on whether or not it would be fair to have one boon added in light of the extra condition added since launch which would tip the scales to a more level playing field in the competitive arena.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

Nice video, made me un-shelve my thief from its year long hibernation, I am curious as to what sigils you use, I currently have a force/accuracy/air mix, would it be worth changing them?

In my opinion, it’s more beneficial to your team to use Fire sigil instead of Air when using Sword to maintain AoE cleave, while Lightning is purely single target and thus synergies well with Dagger mainhand for increased single-target damage.

geist.3980:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Remember Malchior Devonholm, who was huge in the community prior to launch? He got banned for hacking. Who ever said nobody gets banned for it?

he is on NSP and has never been banned.

Not according to a former GM of mine, but then again he did kick half of his guild members because he was a power-hungry narcissist. I stand corrected, then. Send Malchior my apologies!

Burnfall.9573:

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol. As many of us have been saying…..easily done.

lol

Can we get a series where the two of you face off, eventually become best friends and start fighting “crime” together?

Arreyanne.2683:

Who or what was Malchior Devonholm never heard of him, one of ANets closed beta testers?

He was pretty deep into the community on GW2Guru prior to the official release and attended all of the Gamescom/PAX/etc. conferences, and was primarily responsible for a lot of the early footage of GW2. I believe he was also one of the lucky fans to receive an invite to the ArenaNet Fan Day and provided even more information about the game with exclusive early access.

That’s just what I remember, anyway. I never really forget anything I see/hear about.

Remember Malchior Devonholm, who was huge in the community prior to launch? He got banned for hacking. Who ever said nobody gets banned for it?

I don’t see the point of this. Perma stealthing now requires constant use of utilities and traits you would normally not have to use prior to December 10th, and doing this during combat is laughable to say the least, not to mention your lack of any decent DPS with that build. Permastealth as we know it is dead. I’m glad you’ve shown that it’s still possible, but that’s far from viable for any serious play.

Hi there Key,

I’m one of those “No-stealth” thieves, and honestly I’d prefer being a perma stealth thief purely for the reactions they get compared to playing without stealth. People have this notion that, if a thief doesn’t use stealth, they’re a bad player and only won out of sheer luck.

Pick your poison.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Arrow.4619:

Sanduskel.1850:

Yes, of course this class can survive more nerfs. It remains the best roaming wvw class, bar none, already.

Its already the least played class.

Least played? lol Go to wvw and roam a bit. 50% of solo-ers are still thieves. (bs’ed numbers, but its not that far off from 50%)

Because thieves aren’t good at zerging, so they’re forced into roaming whether they like it or not. Every other class has some place inside of a zerg other than “blast finisher dump”.

Arganthium.5638:

Ozie.4176:

Arganthium.5638:

kekuso.5837:

I’d like to see that pvp build Jorun. I find it extremely hard to kill any bunker without 30 CS…

I can kill bunkers in sPvP easily with 10/0/0/30/30. The damage boost you get from zerker amulet is much, much higher than what you get from CS. CS just ends up being more like a tiny bonus.

I’m not sure if this is serious, anyone can kill a bunker, a bunkers role is not to live forever 1v1, its role is to stay alive until someone else shows up. Furthermore 20% damage from JUST executioner is not “just a bonus”. Also, having zerker gear and CS are not mutually exclusive, most people run both. Literally nothing in this post made any sense what so ever.

If you mean your own post, sure.

I said “kill bunkers easily”, as in “I can kill bunkers in the same amount of time that a 30 CS thief can”. That 20% bonus is still a 0% bonus until you get your opponent under 50% health, so it averages to a 10% bonus which honestly isn’t all that impressive. The stats from 30 CS give hardly any more of a bonus than 10 DA, and all of the non-Executioner traits that you take from CS are fairly pointless. This isn’t the same with the traits from Trickery; all of them are useful and they all lend to increased damage output.

The point of my post was that 30 CS is not necessary to kill bunkers easily; I didn’t say they’re mutually exclusive. I said that you can just as easily kill somebody without 30 CS as you can kill them with it. Don’t twist my words.

As someone who buildcrafts night and day to optimize my playstyle and as someone who plays a 10/0/0/30/30 thief in WvW, I don’t see how you’re getting enough critical damage out of your build in order to make the precision from your Berserker Amulet worth it. No combination of amulets and jewels can get past 20% on their own, without the aid of traits, making your precision null when it comes to maintaining cleave. Sure, you can survive with the vigor from Bountiful Theft and Vigorous Renewal, but in the end your job is to roam and win team fights when you aren’t capping empty points, and putting 30 into Acrobatics rather than CS is crippling your team, due to the inability to stack critical damage in sPvP solely through gear. I would be happy to run 30 in acrobatics as I do in WvW, but the stat limitations of gear pigeonhole thief into Critical Strikes unless running a condition build, in which case you should just role a necro or engineer which can do ranged condition cleave better.

/PvP

TheGuy.3568:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

frans.8092:

Different game mechanics and different balance choices; GW rogues don’t have defensive buffs for instance. Beside, he is wrong about the movement penalty in othe MMO’s. Which show another problem with the ‘other mmo’ arguments, they are invariably false, yet require an excessive amount of time and energy to be shown as such.

Of course, if Thief got some changes and fixes to Stealth they would need some adjustments to defense, Vit and Toughness would need to be adjusted.

I just think that Stealth in combat should be a “right situation” sort of thing and not a spam, spam, spam at every chance.

Well its is more than that. Condi removal, passive healing, sustained dps, and any trait linked to stealth would have to be reworked. The full implementation would likely make thief like warrior (with tweaks). The main issue would be without reworking the entire thing ides are tossed out without considering the big picture.

too many of you have short memory. When they nerfed stealth to a 4 second revealed they literally rolled it back a month later. Stealth is inherently built into the thief class. While many thieves use no stealth builds they are essentially perma evade builds.

For the lack of AoE range stun stability active combat regen and the low health pol
and poor armor ( the least thing to worry about).

The truth is people do not fear thief in a raid, in any sort of big scale fight, the truth is this comes down to one thing roaming. So I say nerf the thief and buff everything else to the level of every other class. That means AoE, range, sustained dps and healing, CC, condi removal, burst buffs.

Let me break it down to reality for you all. You either have to buff the class into some hybrid warrior/guardian or leave it as is. Not complex. In a game where most of WvW is zerging I find it funny the singular focus on thief. Instead of throwing out some red herring I would suggest you gain some level of scope. Is it really worth reworking an entire class in PvE for the sake of a roaming scout build when wvw meta is zerging which said class does not do well?

In order to nerf stealth the class has to be reworked and everything else has to be buffed simple as that.

Can I give you a hug?

I don’t use stealth as a thief, but the way you “get it” while almost nobody – including other thieves – can get a grasp on the scope of everything is astounding. +1

See, the issue is that you’re a necro. ArenaNet wants all classes to have a massively exposed weakness. For warriors and guardians it’s blind. For necros it’s CC. For mesmers and thieves it’s AoE. The list continues on. I run a S/P thief for the exact purpose to counter necros who have very little access to stability, and then boon strip on steal to rip their stability when they do go for it. The blind on Black Powder also helps against Warriors and Guardians. Although it may be getting old hearing this: it’s a matter of Rock meet Paper. I lack AoE cleave outside of my autoattack range, and thus PU Mesmers and HGH Engineers pose a huge issue for my build.

kekuso.5837:

I’d like to see that pvp build Jorun. I find it extremely hard to kill any bunker without 30 CS…

Unfortunately it does use 30 in CS. Right now Assassin’s Reward doesn’t have a place in tPvP, and I’m only swapping to SB for kiting and team fights for quick access to poison fields, so the other Grandmaster in Acro isn’t worth taking. I posted this on the forums about two months ago with no responses, hopefully you’ll find some good use out of it. I’ve been running it as a Bruiser-type roamer for tPvP and haven’t lost a match in weeks:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmCOncS6E/5Ex2DfKUe69gsj1saFoJA-TsAA1CoIKSVkrITRyisFNsY9xkAA

I know Xunleashed is good, but does anyone know what happened to Excala, as far as D/D streamers go?

NinjaEd.3946:

ipan.4356:

It would be so much better if it were an interrupt or a boon stealer.

it does, except you must trait either 20 points into trickery for the boon stealer, or 30 for the daze. I wouldn’t count it as reasonable but heck, what do I know?

You’d be surprised how fantastic Steal becomes when you have both Sleight of Hand and Bountiful Theft. Completely worth the Grandmaster in my opinion. Now we just need Assassin’s Reward to remove conditions and most every grandmaster for the thief will be worth it.

MrFluffy.9307:

all the best roamers are in the low tiers

This is the truth. Come to GoM! If you need assistance getting over let me know ~ we’ll see if we can’t help your transfer over (unless of course you’ve already got that covered. Otherwise, use them gems to buy yourself something nice!).

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Skinnie.4825:

What is the cookie cutter rotation on sword pistol? Just trying this out after reading this thread.

The thing about S/P is it’s extremely situational, meaning you use your skills based on what’s happening in the now rather than mindlessly using a set rotation every time you enter a fight like D/D or D/P.
If you need to interrupt a cast, use Head Shot. If you need to prevent someone from moving but still damage them (ala running warriors) use Pistol Whip. If you need to chase/prep a position swap, use Infiltrator’s Strike. Sword autoattack in general is pretty strong, able to maintain permanent crippled and weakness, making it extremely powerful against burst. While sword 2 does have condition removal, it’s only enough to counter light condition classes, such as bleed thieves, spirit rangers, guardians, warriors and elementalists. If you want to counter necros, mesmers, and engineers, you’ll need to pack more condition removal in traits, runes, and utilities.

I hope I’ve helped. S/P has an extremely high skill floor, which is why it’s undesirable to many thieves as compared to D/D and D/P which have relatively low skill floors. I wouldn’t recommend it to you unless you’re adept at identifying the mechanics and skills of enemy classes and know what to interrupt and what you can and can’t counter. With S/P, it’s life or death to know your limitations. You have little to no access to stealth, so don’t try any 1v10’s with it. When you’re skilled enough, you’ll be able to identify which classes to rip boons from via steal to aid in your 1v4’s and such, but those fights are extremely difficult without the crutch of stealth (however still possible with enough talent).

As for a build, I’ll give you mine:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmSO3dS6E/5Eh3jyOWzqVgmdP4q81KA-j0DBYfREREgaAiWGgQAM5pIaslhFRjVNDRVLoqkYaXQ6XwmeQ2eAGfLrWKAsFGB-w

Feel free to swap the Traveler runes out for Perplexity. You might not have a ton of condition damage, but confusion will always be of aid and prevent your enemy from spamming their rotations without killing themselves. I have a secondary set with perplexity for this reason, but because of the cost of traveler I’m partial to not replace them with the much cheaper runes set. You can upkeep 100% swiftness during combat with vigor and dodges.

Range increase on Steal? Why?

Here’s a suggestion:

Drop the range on steal, get Fury, Might & Swiftness on steal trait. This allows you to drop Traveler and get Lyssa instead because you can maintain perma swiftness with that trait setup (out of combat aswell). You get access to stab + a full con cleanse every 45 secs and more damage + mobility because of swiftness and fury uptime.

I already have perma swiftness with my boon duration and Acrobatics 5. I increased the range because this is a WvW chasing build, not an sPvP point build, where enemies can only go so far. My PvP variant includes Fury, Might and Swiftness and does incorporate Lyssa runes. I’ve spent months delicately tweaking the build and I’m quite satisfied as is, and the December 10th patch only did it justice with increased initiative regen and pistol whip’s after cast buff. The fury isn’t missed due to already having 42% crit chance, and I don’t focus on might stacking to maintain cleave (although I do in my sPvP variant).

frans.8092:

May be, but Bush had a lasting effect on them and society in general – thief before the nerfs has not.

The mentality that thieves are still OP lasted though, as shown by the constant rain of QQ we see each week.

ipan.4356:

Again,

The problem isn’t that you can’t make Steal powerful when traited – if you do, what you actually have is a decent shadowstep.

It’s that steal itself – the skills you get – are bad, and largely because of their randomness.

Even if a couple of the skills are good, occasionally, in certain situations, their randomness always makes them bad.

Yes you can trait the “steal”, so that when you use it it does something else good, but that will never make the steal itself good.

Initiative is not an advantage, it’s just an alternative resource cost to CD’s.

And dual skills mean nothing – everyone has 5 skills on their bar – Thieves, over all, have less weapon options than any other class, bringing the fewest number of skills to the table. Especially compared to Ele’s and Engi’s, for example.

Regardless, every player has exactly 5 skills on his left hand ‘weapon’ skill set, no matter how it got there – so dual skills do absolutely nothing, except affect how you build your character. It’s not as if you’re getting an “extra” skill slot, so please stop talking about dual skills as if it’s some kind of unique trick Thieves get.

But they aren’t random. The class you steal from determines the item you’ll get, and it’s designed in a way to help you counter said class.

Skinnie.4825:

What is the cookie cutter rotation on sword pistol? Just trying this out after reading this thread.

The thing about S/P is it’s extremely situational, meaning you use your skills based on what’s happening in the now rather than mindlessly using a set rotation every time you enter a fight like D/D or D/P.
If you need to interrupt a cast, use Head Shot. If you need to prevent someone from moving but still damage them (ala running warriors) use Pistol Whip. If you need to chase/prep a position swap, use Infiltrator’s Strike. Sword autoattack in general is pretty strong, able to maintain permanent crippled and weakness, making it extremely powerful against burst. While sword 2 does have condition removal, it’s only enough to counter light condition classes, such as bleed thieves, spirit rangers, guardians, warriors and elementalists. If you want to counter necros, mesmers, and engineers, you’ll need to pack more condition removal in traits, runes, and utilities.

I hope I’ve helped. S/P has an extremely high skill floor, which is why it’s undesirable to many thieves as compared to D/D and D/P which have relatively low skill floors. I wouldn’t recommend it to you unless you’re adept at identifying the mechanics and skills of enemy classes and know what to interrupt and what you can and can’t counter. With S/P, it’s life or death to know your limitations. You have little to no access to stealth, so don’t try any 1v10’s with it. When you’re skilled enough, you’ll be able to identify which classes to rip boons from via steal to aid in your 1v4’s and such, but those fights are extremely difficult without the crutch of stealth (however still possible with enough talent).

As for a build, I’ll give you mine:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmSO3dS6E/5Eh3jyOWzqVgmdP4q81KA-j0DBYfREREgaAiWGgQAM5pIaslhFRjVNDRVLoqkYaXQ6XwmeQ2eAGfLrWKAsFGB-w

Feel free to swap the Traveler runes out for Perplexity. You might not have a ton of condition damage, but confusion will always be of aid and prevent your enemy from spamming their rotations without killing themselves. I have a secondary set with perplexity for this reason, but because of the cost of traveler I’m partial to not replace them with the much cheaper runes set. You can upkeep 100% swiftness during combat with vigor and dodges.

Skinnie.4825:

Complaining about thiefs in wvw after all the nerfs is a joke. You are just bad.

Complaining about Bush after he’s no longer president is the same thing, but people still do it.

Columbo.5924:

Droshi.2730:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Saturn.6591:

Viking Jorun.5413:

In all seriousness, I think or settled on a build (pay no attention to the boon duration…..)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmgbyx5wjDAkHuADLiCYUekDN2A-jUDBYMChUDIUIAUBgZPFRjtMMaVXBp8Ks6FY6SK1qTByfAwpgRrWEAzYA-w

Not sure if trolling…

It’s decently viable in WvW. No worse than any other D/D setup, unless you’re fighting a corrupt boon necro or boon steal thief. I use it more for team roaming, rather than solo roaming though.

30 into arcane without elemental attunement?…

and 10 into air without zephyrs boon?… let’s just assume he did not pay that much attention to the traits…

Fixed. XD

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmgbyx5wjDAkHuADLiCPUekzM2A-jUDBYMChUDIUIAUBgZPFRjtMMaVXBp8Ks6FY6SK1qTByfAwpgRrWEAzYA-w

Saturn.6591:

Viking Jorun.5413:

In all seriousness, I think or settled on a build (pay no attention to the boon duration…..)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmgbyx5wjDAkHuADLiCYUekDN2A-jUDBYMChUDIUIAUBgZPFRjtMMaVXBp8Ks6FY6SK1qTByfAwpgRrWEAzYA-w

Not sure if trolling…

It’s decently viable in WvW. No worse than any other D/D setup, unless you’re fighting a corrupt boon necro or boon steal thief. I use it more for team roaming, rather than solo roaming though.

Step 1: roll warrior
Step 2: Trait for 100% Condi duration
Step 3: immobilize downed ele for 12 seconds.
Step 4: stomp