Guild Wars 2

Zoom, camera collision settings… So many options to help the apparent “issue”. Instead, we get this lazy “fix”.

Agreed, the Poison and Blind wouldn’t “fix” Off-Hand Dagger. But it’d be a nice place to start and work up from, plus they’re useful regardless of wether you build for Power, Condi or a Hybrid build. Heck even a support build benefits of those conditions given the right niche.

As for not wanting poison on Dancing Dagger because you can trait for it, really? Dagger Training is a very poor trait when compared to Mug, or even Trapper’s Respite. If it’d actually add a 33% chance to poison with any weapon (even if you’d put it on a 10-15 second ICD or something), now then it might be interesting. D/D already has plenty of poison application with the AA chain and both Dancing Dagger and CnD are too ini heavy to try and get value out of it. In PvE against high-Health NPC’s, sure. Not in a PvP setting, or against low-health NPC’s in PvE though.
Don’t even get me started on Cloaked in Shadows, which is in an even worse state when you consider it’s a Grandmaster trait nowadays. What a joke.
Thief’s traits issues are worth a topic on their own, per trait almost…

To reply about D/D already having plenty of Poison application on AA, so therefor Dancing Dagger shouldn’t get it… P/D and S/D don’t have that luxury, plus D/D’s playstyle wouldn’t change a bit because of it, regardless of the build you’d run with it, I think.

Also, let’s not speed up or increase the damage of Sword AA. the ‘burst’ category is already excellently filled by Dagger mainhand and even Staff, I’d say.
Sword Mainhand is perfect to once again be that agile bruiser-ish weapon, without adding ridiculous (not to mention, uncalled for) powercreep. That’s why I’m advocating the poison on Dancing Dagger. It’s an indirect way of buffing Sword’s “damage”, by reducing the enemy’s healing potential, which is a lot more flavourful and interesting to play with. I’d gladly have them take away the slight damage Buff that they gave Dancing Dagger rather recently, in favour of a single stack of Poison that’d last 4 seconds.

In conclusion, there’s so many things wrong with Thief… Off-Hand Dagger would be a great (arguably, the best) starting point though.

Yep, those ‘on interrupt’ sigils work.
I personaly use the Sigil of Draining for my D/P build (lifesteal on interrupt), works like a charm!

On a map as small as Kyhlo, horizontal mobility itself is very strong. There’s several classes that could easily catch up to ‘high mobility classes’ such as the Thief and Mesmer, when the fight moved from Clocktower to either the Windmill or Mansion point. The ‘high mobility classes’ only have a real advantage when vertical mobility is a factor. Like when you move from either Windmill or Mansion, to the Clocktower point.

Now, there’s two major factors that are indirect nerfs to a roamer that relies on it’s vertical mobility with this new Kyhlo.
The dumbed down jumping puzzles are easy enough to accomplish blindfolded after taking a 2 second look at them. The distance required to move from the bottom to the top of the Clocktower using these jumps (really, nothing here is remotely puzzling) is so short that it’s really easy for classes such as the Druid, Scrapper, Warrior, DH to actually follow up and even catch up to a roamer class that has the advantage of a vertical port.
Plus, it’s really easy to keep tabs on the movement of any roamer classes because the entire map is open, which is in turn an indirect buff to any node-holding type of build because they require a whole lot less awareness to make the right rotation at the right time.

The element of surprise is gone, that’s a big deal.

Crinn.7864:

Vornollo.5182:

Roof issue got fixed by a treb shot,

The broken roof causes more camera issues than the unbroken roof. The issue was always the rafters, and breaking the roof left the center rafters + bits of raggled debris. than play havoc with the camera.

I have never had any camera issues on the mid point, even when using the torches/sconces to kite on… To be fair, I can also not remember ever seeing anyone make any sort of remark about camera issues on Khylo’s mid point.
It’s simply one of those things that you deal with, I reckon. Maybe it’s due to a difference in camera setting (collision etc.), but that’s up to the player to fix and should not ever warrant a ridiculous dumbing down of a map accompanied by indirect nerfs to mobility classes/buffs to (ranged) bunker players.
That said. They could’ve removed a lot of the roof while maintaining the (litteral) extra layer of gameplay and increasing visibility.

This is just lazy design.

A classic case of “git gud”, the Warrior vs. Thief matchup will be in the favour of a good Thief for sure. There are however several ways for the warrior to win, as soon as the Thief messes up once. If you can land one well timed stun, they’re done for, provided you set up your follow-up burst right.
Like others said: Play Thief for a while, get used to it’s mechanics so you know how to work with them as well as against them.
At the very least, go duel with a friend who plays Thief and briefly recap what went wrong/right after every fight.
Thieves are far from OP if you play your cards right.

Old Khylo, definitely.
Only thing this “improved” version has going for it, is the third gate out of the base and that’s a very minor thing. I can’t remember ever being spawncamped on Khylo after getting rank 20 some years ago lol.

Roof issue got fixed by a treb shot, which is now easier than ever before, jumping puzzles could be normalized while still retaining the value of “skill”/“knowledge” required to make them.
Now we just got a bland, boring, dumbed down version of a map that I’ll loathe playing on. Quite literally removed several layers of play and nerfed mobility classes in the process. I’m not happy, no.

All Matter Fecal, D/P has more utility than S/D due to the reliable Blind, Daze/Stun and out-of-combat stealth, easy enough. It also allows for much bigger plays because of these differences.

For the topic S/D… Aside of it losing a lot of its mobility and potential with the “bugfix” to Infiltrators Strike. Which dumbed down the set, as well as heavily nerfed it. I think the real issue isn’t with Sword, but with the off-hand Dagger.
Poison on Dancing Dagger and a short Blind on Cloak and Dagger would go a long way for S/D, D/D and P/D. Both of these Conditions don’t need to be high in duration/stacks (4 second Poison for 1 or 2 stacks, 2 second Blind or something) but would be beneficial both to Power and Condi oriented builds due to their effects while still being in line with the Thief archetype.

I think for S/P, there’s way bigger issues. Ini management can be a kitten, but it’s manageable after some practice. Still, it’s a big thing that makes it far from in-line with D/P (S/D suffers from this to a lesser extent).
Headshot’s absolutely fine, but S/P doesn’t inherently get a lot of value out of Blinding Powder. Not much to do about it without probably harming D/P. If they’d let it pulse faster again, that’d be great but it would still be OP.

On a final note, don’t nerf D/P for the sake of S/D (or anything else, really). Rather put some effort into getting them both in line and viable for different playstyles.
You don’t stabilize by shooting yourself in the foot, you know… Try it some time if you got your doubts!

EDIT:
Oh right, the thing about skill queuing really is an ‘L2P’ issue. Try to keep your calm better, I’d say… It does happen to me that I get too trigger-happy on the Flanking Strike (especially against Blocks…), but I always feel like zn idiot then because I spammed my skill, when a single tap would suffice.

DeceiverX.8361:

The problem I see with split evades, particularly for WvW, is that it’d allow people to play such things like D/P thief with bound for stealth and then run into the water for a second to stack swiftness from auto-switching to dash while getting weapon swap procs such as Sigil of Energy to allow for said swiftness to come at no cost.

I think the intention with Elite Specializations is that you can only have one active at a time. Can’t recall where they mentioned this though.
Looking at Anet’s track record though… They’ll probably allow more powercreep, lol.

Oh god I forgot about this part of the update…
Please tell me that Achievement progression is blocked in Ranked games, I highly doubt it… But please.

Port bugs aside, I just really don’t like how huge of an impact this is.
Opening up the Clocktower like this dumbs down the map and the gamemode in a major way. You can have a clear overview of the entire map, just standing on the middle node and doing nothing special. This has major impact on tactical movement and strategic thinking in itself, but also affects all mobility-reliant classes in ways that should have been predicted.
The update to the extra gate to leave spawn is decent, makes sense. The adjusted jumping puzzle is just lazy, there’s no skill/knowledge required to make this “jump”.

So in short, this update has nothing going for it aside of maybe the extra gate to leave spawn.
Don’t try to fix what isn’t broken, Anet. You got bigger things to worry about and the old map was fine.

I mainly wonder why so many Daredevil abilities are locked underwater… Doesn’t make sense for most of them.

As for a more on topic opinion… I think there would an issue with the dodges alone being interchangeable. Either Anet would need to create a new feature to allow us to do this, or they got to make all traits interchangeable (like our utilities are now).
Considering the latter option makes more sense, I feel there’ll be a massive rant and outcry just because of the infinite stupidity that the vast majority of players displays.
I just don’t think that they’ll understand, lol.
The game is too hard, you know… So there’s my sarcastic note(s) on the matter!

Larcenous Strike works fine as it is if you’d ask me.
The Poison on Dancing Dagger and the Blind on Cloak and Dagger is something that I’ve been suggesting for a long time now so I obviously agree there. Though I don’t think the blind should be AoE. Blinding the person you hit is more that good enough for the assumed “1v1” role. I haven’t played a lot of D/D ever since they changed the way traits work though (and to be honest, not a lot prior to that either, I always preffered S/D and D/P). When I used to play with D/D I’d go for the 6/6/2/0/0 trait setup and only put those 2 points into SA for CiS, I feel like part of the issue with x/D’s surviveability is in lacking that simple blind. Yes you can time your dodge with CnD to negate whatever would hit you, but that does cost 50 endurance. Not a big deal for Daredevil, but definitely big for Core Thief, which I think would benefit a whole lot more of that built-in Blind.
It won’t take over D/P as the go-to meta set, but it’d definitely allow for some niche use in certain PvP matches and more viable use in WvW.
Ofcourse, it wouldn’t do much for PvE, but I don’t recall S/D ever being a thing there to begin with nor see PvE players ask for changes to the set. I doubt they’ll mind we leave them out of this one :P

DeceiverX makes good points too, overall Boon application is way too high across the board, indeed.
That said, I don’t see why Torment would be preffered over Poison. I feel like Torment would only benefit condi-aimed builds, while Poison would also benefit power-aimed builds due to their respective effects (other than the flat Damage over Time). Dagger Training still holds it’s value as a trait for condi sets compared to the other options anyway, I’d think.

EDIT:
Also, as with Kicker’s document… A revert on the “bugfix” to Infiltrator’s Strike would be nice, it just feels like they dumbed down the game by removing it even though it does fit their streak of disabling mid-air skill usage on other classes too.

Basilisk Venom is a Single hit and it doesn’t stack between other Thieves that might share it.
It should also be noted that Stability and ofcourse Immunities (Mesmer’s Distortion, Guard’s Renewed focus etc.) fully negate the effect.

It’s a good Elite though, it can be used to interrupt abilities that block, which can be huge to finish of a fight in PvP/WvW. In PvE it’s also good because it’s shared between 5 people, so it’s a solid option to get some break bars down.

A lack of Stealth to throw off your enemy for rotations, jukes or to help out a teammate that’s low and can be saved with a quick stealth. Not to mention simple openers…
No reliable interrupts to turn the tide of fights. General lower mobility (even if you do take Dash and Shortbow), which ties in directly to gap closers etc…

Fact of the matter is, D/P offers more utility for your team than Staff does. Staff brings better cleave and the option to blind 3 targets at once, that’s it in a stripped down, but honest version. But if you want better point pressence, play a Rev, Engi or Guard. They can do it and they’re far better picks.
Truly it’s a shame that we don’t got other weaponsets that are just as viable as D/P (I personally always preffered the feel of S/D), but that’s simply how the cookie crumbles. Deal with it.

You’re free to play anything you like ofcourse, but you probably shouldn’t go making assumptions and stating them as facts.

Tested this back at HoT launch.
As a Core Thief and all variations of utility, I’d always reset one of the 5 utilities.
Did 50 Steals like that, so it seems to be 20% chance per variation as long as there’s no Daredevil traitline active (I did a few steals with the same 5 core thief utility variations but with Daredevil active) and ended up not resetting any of those 5 CD’s at that point so the 16.6% applies.
So yes, Improv does seem to take Daredevil on/off in account, unles I got lucky 50 times in a row.

Considering D/P will always be better, even if it’s nerfed and all of the nerfs S/D had got reverted, simply due to how the meta is and how other classes have been developed. There’s definitely room to improve on S/D as a good option in at least WvW.
But like others pointed out, it’s mostly the /D part that needs changes or full reworks. I’d love to see a Blind added to Cloak and Dagger and a short Poison to the Dancing Dagger bounces. An increased range to Infiltrator’s Strike would be great, I don’t believe the extra 300 range would develop an issue with disengage potential for enemy classes.
The increased Ini cost to allow Infiltrator’s Return to be used while stunned would be amazing as well (but not break stun), I’d be fully behind that!

PI’s more in need of a nerf in terms of a 5-8 second ICD. Making it an AoE with it’s current state is just ridiculous. That trait rewards braindead spamming and is currently only worth existing in it’s current state because there’s plenty of other, even more ridiculous crap on other professions.

It’s just one of many post-HoT things that need toning down.

Maybe… But not without guarantees and specifics plus details on what improvements we get in return.
I just don’t trust Anet with nerfs that Thief mains themselves ask for, for the sake of ‘Balance further down the line’.

Also, I think there’s other ways to go about achieving the goal of Balance that doesn’t include a nerf with such big of an impact.

Hopefully this is just a way for Anet to cull the amount of whining about Stealth.
I mean, it’s a terrible utility even with this buff. I’ll gladly face warriors that run this… It’s 4 seconds in every 30 (or 24 if they actually bothered traiting is)… If you can’t kite that out against a warrior, you’ve got bigger issues than a Reveal.

As pointed out, Infiltrator’s Arrow has been at a 900 unit range for years now.
It’s also painfully evident thereby that you don’t play Thief yourself.

Please do us all (and mostly yourself!) a favour and play Thief for a while.
You’ll understand the class and you’ll quickly learn how to deal with them because, really, Thieves are very easy to deal with. Maybe you won’t kill them all the time, but you’ll definitely be able to comfortably hold your own in any situation with a Thief involved.
They need their mobility far more than you realise.

Good luck and feel free to hit me up if you got any questions!

Seems good for WvW and PvP, not sure about PvE as I never enjoyed that side if the game (or any game for that matter).

If you’re using the build that Kingsdavid linked and are still struggling with survival, you could change the Heal to Channeled Vigor and use Invigorating Precision in the Critical Strikes trailine instead.
Staff and Sword/Pistol are both solid sets to help in survival while provididing the (cleaving) damage that you’ll need.

In zerg? Not much use no.
In organised guild setting? Plenty!

Reveal, heals, condi cleansing, pull, CC and the power to stay alive.
sure you won’t be taking the role of a frontline guard/warrior/revenant/druid etc. But in different settings there’s a lot of use for Scrappers. Just not for mindless zerging.
If you’re not into the organised setting, then yes… You’re in a tough spot (but Thief is still a way more selfish class, don’t you worry :P)

Out of curiosity, how old was this video you watched?
If it by any chance was Jumper’s video from a few years ago, I regret to tell you that it’s probably not going to be as effective as it used to be. Too many things that those sort of builds relied upon have been nerfed since then.

Still fun to play at times though!

kash.9213:

Vornollo.5182:

kash.9213:

I jump/Flanking Strike so that I do the half moon spin up in the air instead of on flat ground so that objects or terrain wont hold me up, but it can send you off a high place if you’re not careful.

Interesting, that’s one trick I can’t really pull of consistently. How do you do this?

It’s not reliable enough even when you get used to the timing but it’s a little easier with my keybinds, I have skill 3 on Left Ctrl so that I can lean my bottom left palm on it because I don’t like lifting my hands and fingers too much and soft press that plus spacebar jump at the same time. It’s sort of the same way you might jump+core spec dodge to clear a small curb or rock which you might do by pressing spacebar+V at the same time. I only use it in tight fights with topography that would hold me still so I don’t melt in a zerg vs zerg or something.

Between combat lag and the way skills can queue up or cancel it can’t be spammed, I wouldn’t bank on it, it’s more of a “what else do I have anyway” thing.

I see, seems like it’s just a general issue with it not being too reliable then. Cheers!

kash.9213:

I jump/Flanking Strike so that I do the half moon spin up in the air instead of on flat ground so that objects or terrain wont hold me up, but it can send you off a high place if you’re not careful.

Interesting, that’s one trick I can’t really pull of consistently. How do you do this?

Short Poison on Dancing Dagger and a Blind on CnD alone would already go miles for build diversity by applying only a small buff to S/D, D/D and P/D.

Got plenty of ideas for fair nerfs and buffs but I simply can’t be bothered anymore.

Anything but power DH and tanky condi mesmer/chrono is fair game for me on an equal and/or comparable skill level.
Condi mesmers I can deal with if I play with cleanse ln Evade (or like godmoney said, swap ping Da to SA’s a similar sort of option). Power DH is beatable if there’s enough objects or height difference to LoS with.

Ofcourse, with anything it’s possible to simply disengage… But I never run from a fight, it’s simply not my nature :p
In fact… The better I’ve become on/as thief, the more stupid /risky things I do, lol.

This update dumbs down Thief play aswel as the entirety of the game.
Did Sizer pull a Helseth and whoop the kitten of some Devs while playing S/D and using this trick?
Like others have said, this little “fix” hits those who played non-meta (without SB#5 for example) really, really hard and does indeed shoe-horn us even more into same old boring D/P.
Nice job A-Net. Made me really kitten sad for the past few days.

I’m not a PvE-er at all, but I can see how the increased Precision received from using Marauder’s instead of Berserker’s may allow you to more comfortably run the ‘Flawless Strike’ trait instead of ‘Side Strike’ in Critical Strikes without needing a Ranger/Druid with you that runs Spotter (which I think is meta).
that 7% increase in damage might warrant the switch to Marauder gear… Not sure though.

I very much prefer Marauder gear due to the fact that you actually get very solid Precision → Critical Hit Chance of it. Besides, if you play your Thief right, you shouldn’t need much more than 17K Health. Even 14K is enough for most of what you’ll face in WvW.

You can stow Shadowshot just as the bullet hits any NPC or destructable object.
This won’t reveal you and only put a blind on whatever you hit.

Time to work on your reactions and your ability to predict enemy movement, lads!

Add physical damage to them or remove the effect on trapper runes that Stealth the user upon trap placement.
That’s the only thing I’d like to be changed about traps.

If you run P/P, better to use Basilisk Venom combined with Headshot for breakbars.
Aside of that, you could go with Havoc Mastery and Bound for more damage, but the swiftness and mobility that comes with Dash is indeed nice for Open World.

Won’t work. As soon as your frontline leaps in, you’ll fall behind and be good for absolutely nothing.
Also, why wouldn’t you pick up Illusionary Inspiration? Relying just on the actual Signet Utility won’t cut it if you intend to go in and out of bombs more than once.
And Illusionary Defender? Did you ever try to use your iLeap in a frontline situation? Phantasms, let alone clones won’t live longer than half a second (if that). Worthless trait for Frontline. I don’t know how your frontline plays, but with this build you’ll definitely be a liability.

EDIT: Oh, just use the gw2skills url so everyone can see it. The owners deserve that much aswel.

Sure! But yeah, got to keep in mind that we got NA and EU members (EU myself).

IF they’d do it, it’d probably be too little and it’d definitely be too late.
Might just be me doom-thinking, but I just don’t see it working.

I’ve been playing around with 2 variants on S/D, traitwise mostly.
First and favourite being with DA/TR/DD:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhKnYpTwwJw/ELwE28HsE2C9SDnh2gWCIAsbA-TVDEQBA4IBki9HewhEoDaYSwJAoN6D8n6OG4AIQgHQATU6tFlgOUZwiUJIAACwNbz28mBO6RP6RP6R7m38oH9m3sUAVpzC-w

And the other being Acro/TR/DD:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVn8lCFmilOBGOB8PhFqiqrnCggcO77+x3LE+gSA-TVDEQB+TdnOohxAHABAckASx+DJ4EAwEleOUZwWUCSgHQwiUJ4BHSg2oPIAACwNbz28mBO6RP6RP6R7m38oH9m3sUAVpzC-w

The DA/TR/DD one also works perfectly fine when swapping the traits Weakening Strikes and Brawler’s Tenacity while picking up Channeled Vigor (and Bandit’s Defense).
I like using the Might on Dodge food as it sort of replaces a trait that we used to have in Acrobatics (Power of Inertia), the food combined with the Sigil and Runes of Strength gives S/D quite a bit of punch that I find lacking in many other S/D builds I’ve tried.
Both builds also work if you’d change the runes on the Armor to something like Hoelbrak (slightly more sustainable), Privateer, Pack, Vampirism or even Eagle and Rage (Rage technically being a cheap variant of Strength Runes, with a slight loss of DPS).

Yeah, I probably should’ve mentioned that it’s a tad hard to pull of at first…
But yeah, Revealed Training can boost your Backstab damage like DecieverX said.
Fair enough, the AA chain also does greatly benefit of the extra power.

Here’s how I play D/D power:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVlsMhOnYpTw8Jw/EHwE1OQXuUg3D5wMoTgAIDA-TVCEABAcEA2SJ4DHCgFVNwgTAQb6DI4BAkoaOMt/o8LAACwNbz28mBO6RP6RP6R7m38oH9m3sUACqzC-w

I very much prefer core thief over Daredevil when it comes to D/D.
Shadow Arts’ Cloaked in Shadows is an excellent defensive trait which I’ve always considered paramount to D/D’s survival, moreso than Shadow’s Rejuvenation.
Picking up Revealed Training in Deadly Arts is also an option to increase your Backstab damage even more, but I simply prefer the immobilize of Panic Strike.

Shortbow with good DPS skills and a sort of Arcane Archer-y thing going on would be nice. Dreamer just fits Mesmer too well not to be accessible by Mesmers.
So yeah, DPS and some mobility in it (bit like how the Ranger shortbow has Quick Shot)
I just hope whatever it is, it’s Power oriented. I’m just not a fan of condi.

Venatorn.7619:

Kind of a noob Mesmer question, but is there any specific purpose to being close while casting GS3? I don’t see any close range benefits on the toolbar. It’s been a while since I’ve played Mesmer regularly.

For GS3, no. For GS2 however, there is.
GS2 will richochet from your enemy onto the closest hit-able object. If that second object is you, you can hit your enemy with 2 hits of Mirror Blade instead of just 1.
That’s why GS2 → Blink → F3 → GS3 → F1 (→F2) is such a common burst combo for Power Shatter mesmers.

It’s generally a bad idea against good players to use GS4 first because the phantasm will guaranteed give away the fact that you’re about to burst and you’ll be wasting a lot of cooldowns for no reason.

Step.1285:

Super helpful post! Thank you.

So would you suggest that, for now, I just avoid 1v1s altogether? For instance, I cap close at the start of the match and if an enemy starts approaching me I usually at least TRY to 1v1 to avoid letting them take close. 99% of the time I fail and die. Do you recommend that I just book it and find somewhere else to be for now?

If you cap close at the start of the match and an enemy comes for you, that means your team has the advantage on mid (the enemy should have 1 capping close 99% of the time), you could go mid to quickly get the kills there and then go back to close with 1 of your teammates to outnumber that fight aswel.. I’d say you should take the 1v1 only if you know you can win it. If you realize you’re just wasting time delaying an inevitable death -> inevitable cap… Leave the point and add in on mid so you can snowball the map after that.
Even if you lose a few score points like that at the start, it’ll usually be worth it since you can maintain a 2 cap longer after that (it hopefully also prevents your teammates from mindlessly pushing to far point instead of holding 2 points and winning).

It all comes down to wether or not you can win that 1v1 for sure, or if you should come back 30 seconds later after you’ve capped mid in a 5v3.

EDIT:
Another thing to note that I was reminded of by reading DutchRiders’ post below.
If you do cap close as a Thief, you give the opportunity to your enemy to open up on you and start a fight on their terms. If the enemy team has a thief, engi or mesmer (depends on builds) they can be on top of you before you know they’re actually there.
Giving your enemy a chance to start a fight on their terms is straight up in conflict with how a thief “should play”.

Wall of text alarm :P

I’d start of by simply recommending to watch videos and/or streams of Thief players that are known to be good on the class and the Pro league matches where there’s a thief on one or both teams. Look at how they move, what skills they use to move and in some cases where they move. I’d personally recommend trying to tune in to Sindrener’s, Red Levin’s and VallunV Twitch stream as they’re very open and helpful to answering any questions you might have about what/why/how/when etc. in at least my expierence.
Just movement and setup between/around/before engagements can be incredibly helpful since a massive part of playing thief is know where to go and when to go there. You’ll find plenty of videos of thieves on YouTube who are great at fighting, but in PvP many thieves fall over the fact that Map Awareness plays a key part in your efficiency and is of direct consequence to how you use the tools available to you (be it Initiative or Utility skills).

Now to answer more directly…
1.) Key trick is to use the skill you need when you see that you need it. Some skills are best to blind, others are best to interrupt, anything in between should simply be filled up with Auto Attacks from Dagger, or in case of bigger fights, with a Shortbow until you find the proper opening. Unlike classes such as Guardian and Warrior which often play more proactive, I’d say Thief is much more reactive. Over time you’ll develop an eye and mind for animations and rotations and you’ll get an instinct for when to use what tool. Until then, play it safe and try to get in more Auto Attacks instead or scour along the outskirts of the battlefield. Pick and choose when you want to fight, instead of getting plunged into it.
It’s a mater of controlling the fight. Often times it’s enough to simply leave your enemy guessing… “I saw that thief stealth up, is he still here or not?” Mind tricks are as much of a weapon for thief as the actual combat mechanics. But since you play Shatter Mesmer often, you probably know about that all too well ^^

2.) Very situational… But in general I’d say you could try to “cut corners”. If an enemy is moving in what would be a clockwise circle, you move counter-clockwise to faster position yourself. If an enemy is simply running away, first ask yourself if it’s worth the chase or not. Often chasing can lead to overextending and generally, overextending gets you killed quickly.

3.) Pretty much the same as what I said for point 2… You know about stowing Shadow Shot etc. I assume you know about basic things such as using ports to land a backstab.
I just try to watch how an enemy moves and try to predict where they’re going. It’s the same kind of thing when you’re fighting an opponent with access to stealth… You just end up developing a sense for movement simply by asking yourself “how would I move?”. Learning the various kiting spots is paramount, but again… Same goes for Shatter Mesmer, so you should be fine there. Apply your own knowledge to figure out what your target is likely to do.
As for having your hits dodged/blocked/blinded/cc’d or simply getting hit with insane burst… Only advice I could give is to try not to tunnelvision. I know many people tend to look at their own character as a point of focus, you should try to look at what’s around your character instead (at least, that works for me).

4.) Fair 1v1’s on a thief? Try to move avoid them if you can. At least in PvP. More often than not it’s simply not worth the time spent on a 1v1. It might be a boring “role” to some, but look on at the minimap, try to keep an eye on who killed who (respawns coming up etc.) and like with points 2 and 3, try to predict movement. Decide where to go based on what you can see and on what your enemy is likely going to do.
Sooner or later you’ll get a knack for knowing when to use what skill, then certain 1v1’s will seem like the best option to take.

Ofcourse, there’s also the simple fact that some people are simply not “able” to play a certain class in a certain way. I for one for the life of me can’t get a feeling for Druids, I know how they work, how they play and whatnot. But whenever I touch my druid, it just doesn’t feel right to me.
All I can say is: Keep at it! As long as you’re having fun

It’s hard to put everything down in a forum post and this is just “my way” and it’s what has worked for me. Maybe someone else has better input or a way to work things out for you that simply suits you more.
Hope the wall of text helped!

DA/CS/TR was a very common pre-HoT build.
The build still works for the same reasons it did back then.

A more interesting topic would be if People opt to use Critical Strikes instead of Deadly Arts in combination with Trickery and Daredevil… Think CS/TR/DD is the trait layout used for some PvE power D/D builds? Haven’t bothered with it in PvP yet. Maybe in some unranked matches

Simply play WvW. With the recent addition of Reward Tracks, you can comfortably pick up 3 Berserker weapons from a full Reward Track (I know the Arah track weapons give this option, aswel as the Citadel of Flame), the final reward in the track will also give you an exotic piece of Armor that you could also set to Berserker.
By doing WvW you’ll also gain Badges of Honour that you can use to buy Exotic Armor with from the Armor Master (they can be found at the spawn points of any WvW map).

I’d buy the Sigils/Runes that you need and work on weapons/armor through the reward tracks (at least the weapons) and from Badges of Honour.

Josh XT.6053:

http://asphyxia.tv/wvw-roaming-thief-condition-build/

^ That is a pretty strong WvW roaming build for you. It is a condi build, gear is pretty easily obtainable on the trading post.

The build’s worthless, it doesn’t kill anyone who’s not a complete idiot because they can simply walk away from your source of damage and there won’t be anything you can do about it.
Also, the OP clearly stated to be looking for a power build. Don’t advertise your own website like this, go delve into proper SEO tools if you want more traffic your way.

Yep, seems to be unblockable and undodgeable.
Just what we needed, more condition crap that’s way too easy to apply.

I personally use a full set of Marauder Armour and a Marauder Amulet, with Berserker Weapons and further Accessories. Rune is either Scholar, Pack or Strength depending on how I feel.
Due to using Ferocious Maintenance Oils, my Health is around 16K while maintaining a high enough Power to get of consistent ~10K(+) Backstabs and Heartseekers (varies per class and their build obviously). Gives me just the right amount of sustain I need for WvW while remaining good for PvE aswell.

What it really comes down to is your personal expierence, need more surviveability? Go for more Marauder/Valkyrie gear. Feeling confident? Go for more Berserker gear.
Goes for any game mode really.

Silverbolt.2301:

Vornollo.5182:

(Re-)Improved damage on Dancing Dagger and a Blind on Cloak and Dagger.
Would help any weapon set using the Dagger off-hand massively.

I like your idea about the synergy between #4 and #3 though… That’s actually very interesting. But how would that Mark behave with Sword or Pistol for a main-hand?
Flanking Strike/Larcenous Strike and Shadow Strike are already good in their own way…

Did you know that once upon a time, within a couple of months of the game going live, dancing daggers had its damage reduced by 50% because mesmer clones and ranger pets died and got the players killed fast from 4 spamming?

Yea…except, they later buffed both of those, but forgot to un-nerf dancing daggers, cause….nobody gives a kitten about thief.

Did you know that I wrote “(Re-)Improved” instead of just “Improved” because I know it used to have much better damage?
Though, as DecieverX pointed out, the damage on it was absurd and did need toning down, but I don’t see any issue with increasing the damage of it again in the current state of the game.