Guild Wars 2

Thief is one of those classes where you get better relying on frustration, no matter what your build is ^^

So if you are ready to get frustrated a lot for small but intense satisfaction, welcome

The basket brawl is really well made !

The gameplay is fluid, the skills can be used in air, the action camera is surprisely good to shoot. The skills are interesting as well !

Good job on that mini-game ! Can’t you add it in a town where everybody can watch it ? It you make the game even more exiting. like a beach in lion’s arch ?

Doesn’t retribution of shadow had a bit too much synergy with everything ? if you have steal + shadow step + d/p it’s basically 4 condi clears, one spammable, one available every 20 sec ( with TR ) and one that removes 5 condis ( 1 + (3+1) ).

And since you shadowstep on shortbow it means perma superspeed. even with sword, you can use 2 twice in a row and it is super speed for free.

OK so I tried staff for a few games.

It is effective against DH since you can get high spike during short windows and it is effective to break block from the focus. Vault is also great to go inside the trap without getting damaged by the traversal.

At first I was using staff with DD/DA/TR but the probem is :
- Staff AA is slow, 1/2 sec on first part of the chain 1/2 sec on second part of the chain. I find really difficult to proc the third part of the chain without getting hit heavily. So the dammage form the first two are low.
- Vault is an init eater and easy to predict, I can land it with a bit of anticipation.
- I underestimate debilitating arc.
- There is no gap closer except for steal, which is even harded to hit AA
- one interrupt which give the matchup against channeled skills less easy. ( no headshot + impact strike )

I found myself too vulnerable and traded DA for ACcro whith upper hand, I was more tanky and got better.

Anyway that was a good experience. I think I will stick to d/p keeping the timings of cooldowns, heals and blocks in mind and wait the 50% window to spike. I will also be more careful about true shot.

I will give it a try then

It was worth posting in the guardian part of the forum, having fresh tips is always the best !

Saiyan.1704:

There’s definitely window’s of opportunity that most Thieves are either unaware, or don’t know how to play the wait game so they go all in.

If the Guardian has full health, odds are they have full cds. Unless you burst with a Rev or Ranger’s pet bursts first, it’ll otherwise be an uphill battle. But if you burst while he’s at half health and/or you know he already used his F3 Shield & Test of Faith trap, then he has very little to recover.

Your first CC (stun, pull, push, knockdown etc) activates his Stability trap. Guard can have a total of 3 stability items up unless he’s Symbolic built. You know he’s symbolic when his 1-hander weapon symbols are larger on point. That means he lacks F3 stability and is weaker to CC (if you attack from back).

Unlike a Necro or Rev where you have to burst head on before they get stronger later; if you play the wait game with the Guardian by deliberately watching DH health drop to half and wasting cds, that’s usually your opportunity to gank him. Bait him out with hit-&-run attacks.

If you insist on attacking a DH head on, Staff Vault builds can 1v1 him more successfully, followed by pistol builds (though not as successful).

That ’s the kind of tips I was looking for, since d/p is pretty much the only build viable at all level of pvp.

I know that p/p is a good counter, but I don’t intend to play it as it doesn’t offer much utility. And condi d/d is too easily countered.

Anyway, thanks for all your answers

Hey Dragon hunters,

I’m a pvp player and obviously DH is in a good spot this season ( at least below diamond ). The goal of this post is not to complain about traps, but to understand the weakness of the current meta DH.

I have little knowledge of playing the class ( maybe ~10-20 games playing burn guardian and bunker ), so I wanted to ask to people used to play the class, because you get more knowledge from someone playing ~1k games.

I know, as a thief I should avoid fights involving a DH. Sometimes I don’t have a choice and I need to face one ( delay a cap / temporize / no other choice in rotations ). So my question is how can I pressure a DH at best with a thief ? is there a window where they are more vulnerable ?

I often try to start the fight using a daze ( head shot ) to proc the passive auto-trap ( it’s a heal If I’m right ).

A thing impossible to do : scrap the points and just have a spectator mode of the match that just happened to see what build people played, what mistakes you made and etc.

Thanks for you answer

I like that way to communicate. It’s not a promise of things and then people are salty because what Anet delivers is not up to their promise. It’s not a complete silence as well.

Just a simple, we know where is the problem, we are trying to figure it out. Simple and efficient Thanks again Grouch !

I thought they implemented it like Bountiful Theft. If I’m right the boon rip happens even if they block ( not sure about that one).

But I still like the idea of multiple boon stripping if they block.

I just saw the video of Helseth on the PVP pro league and the reasons why there is not much pro players on the pvp forum. It’s really interesting btw.

So thank you for coming on the thief forum from time to time Time to learn new things now !

Come on guys stop beeing all salty after we got a dev answer.

Josh, I suppose you won’t give us an answer about what are the change. But can you at least give us the areas ? Is it a change about the MMR, pips system, leagues, seasons ?

Thank you for your answer.

It’s clearer to me now.

I can’t tell if I’m against that ICD or not. D/P offers enough as a set to go around a cooldown on backstab. I never spammed the stealth attack on other sets ( I stopped using d/d a while ago ).

However, I find rending shade quite nice and it fits in the game looking at all the boons going around. On my mesmer I get around 200 boons applied to myself each pvp game for instance.

I don’t think rending shade is too OP. I would even argue that without a 1s CD it would be a good counter to blocks and invulnerability in a really interesting way. Since you you can redo stealth attacks on block and invulns, it litteraly sucks the boons out of the target.

The drawback of invulnerability, is that your boons can be removed by thieves. isn’t it nice? It gives us a unique mechanic and could mitigate the use of invulns/blocks through a mind game. “Is it worth using invulns now and loose my boons, or is it better to keep my boons ?” That sort of thinking.

Yes it would remove aegis, but seriously compare the amount of aegis and the amount of other invulns / block and you will see it’s not a problem.

It might also be OP keeping the boon steal, I’m not against a simple boon strip on rending shade.

I agree with Ensign. What is te point of adding more things to steal ? We are dependant of it for so much already, we don’t need something added.

The only thing I would add to steal is the Coolddown reduction from trickery to avoid relying on trickery that much. The daze, I can make my way around it.

Hello lore keepers,

The story is heading in the direction of the surging magic making people crazy. The biggest evidences are the numerous white mantles going crazy after beeing in contact with the Bloodstone in Bloodstone fen.

According to Doric’s story, the bloodstones are five pieces to limit the races’ ability to use magic. The first four segments rule over its respective school of magic: Preservation, Aggression, Denial, and Destruction. ( From the wiki and the manuscripts of prophetie )

-Is it possible that, peole are getting mad after experimenting with the bloodstone and it’s explosion because it is the embodiment of the Aggression magic ?

-Then how do you explain ley line energy according to what the god did ?
-Where does the schools of magic fits in there ?
-How do we classify skills regarding the 4 schools in the first place ?
- Isn’t there a problem regarding the dragon’s or lazarus ? How are they able to glups that much magic considering what the god did ?

“Because the four schools of magic are separated, no individual is capable of fully utilizing all forms of magic.” Now that one bloodstone hkittentered, what should we expect, an innability to use magic since there is no balance between the 4 schools, or in the contrary a surge of power of the magic of the school associated to the bloodstone ?

I’m sorry if this post is messy, but I’m just confused over the splitting of magic by the gods and how it affect the world.

The question is where does your character get it’s legacy.

If his roots are from the cantha assassins then both gods where patrons of that class (wiki). But if you go back to the Guild wars faction manuscripts, then you can learn that they were worshipped for two different reasons.

Assassins were asking for a blessing from a Grenth priest before each assassination contrats because he is the god of death.

But in a more general way, assassins worshipped Lyssa for her duality. She represent deception and illusion but also both sides of luck, which was a big part of the class.

I would say Lyssa is the main god for assassins since only the Lyssa’s muse coul give a +1 to all characteristic for assassins( equivalent of heros point back in the days ).

As for a Daredevil thief, we don’t have lore attached to the specialisation. So if you are a WvW player, ypu can also tell that years of war in the Mist made you closer to the way of Balthazar. Without denying your main deity, you also learned the art of war of the battlefield where deception was not as effective as physicals skills.

My thief dream ? getting ahead of time in a world with +10-20 elite specializations to choose from, as the system was designed.

Or an elite skill combining both assassin’s promise and silhouette. But it means perma invulnerability so too OP.

For spvp my condi clear options are dash for immob and shadowstep. I used to trait for condi removal on tricks but the Daredevil heal is too great and trill of crime as well. For the rest I try not to get hit by condis in the first place.

Hey guys !

here is the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQFAVl0MhymYzTwoJw/EHyEFXPsD+uoN+Q9eOFBAA-TZQZAAQZAA

Just kite and apply condi. Venom aura is now render something, more utility…

One of the possible combo : trapwire -> caltrop (precast) -> steal -> Choking gas

Nobody is used to that build, so it works relatively well

Hey guys !

here is the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQFAVl0MhymYzTwoJw/EHyEFXPsD+uoN+Q9eOFBAA-TZQZAAQZAA

Just kite and apply condi. Venom aura is now render something, more utility…

One of the possible combo : trapwire -> caltrop (precast) -> steal -> Choking gas

Nobody is used to that build, so it works relatively well

I agree with that one ! It’s a simple change that doesn’t constraint us to use two trait lines to boost venoms.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

It’s been a while since we’ve commented on leagues, so here’s a brief update.

There’s definitely room for improvement in the league system, and it’s safe to say that it’s the team’s highest priority now that we’ve signed off on everything going in for the July release. It’s still a bit early to talk about specifics, but I do think we can talk about some of the goals we have for the changes:

• Improve match quality
• Make divisions more reflective of player skill
• Make leagues feel more rewarding after you’ve placed in your appropriate division

-Grouch

I’m not going for the legendary backpack, as I enjoy the pvp for what it is and not the shiny at the end. An idea tough would be to acquire the backpack by two means.

- Fast way : crossing the division → representative of the level
- Long way : “legendary commitment” achievement → representative of the investment, like a participation in 1000 pvp games.

You could change the color of the backpack a little bit, depending on the way you get it, so you would have two different kind of prestige.

If you don’t select a DD grand master, I suppose you can make a perma evade build with no vulnerability frames in the dodges and still having 3 of them.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Wargameur.6950:

• Dagger / Pistol : damage – utility flavour

Without changing the traits at the same time, changes like that will not work out since trait like Dagger Training will add condition damage to this set, for example, the it will be an unintended imbalance.

Isn’t it what the traits are for ? Of course committing a trait or a trait line toward a different gameplay should have this effect.

What I wanted to highlight is that we should have solid weapon sets first, and above all something coherent. To me the damages weapon sets are coherent both in flavouring and in balance. The problem, is that every main hand pistol sets aren’t coherent.

because pistol main hand is a mix of every thing. It makes p/d a hybrid set that is not competitive in every aspect of the game. And p/p is a power set only because of unload.

I feel like, it would be nice to have a broader choice of condi sets, that can be considered as such as a stand alone. Then you can tweak them into something else with traits.

If you play pvp, staying in the spawn area is the most sustainy thing you will ever do.

Put on swiftness while you you swim, passives are still active even if the skills are disabled.

It makes the place a little more deadlier, isn’t it great ?
Anyway they stopped supporting water related things, so I doubt that will be addressed any days.

Hey guys !

this post is just to initiate a talk about the margin given to the devs regarding weapon sets balance and flavoring for build diversity. It’s only focused on the weapon sets, not affected by any traits. Just keep in mind that I’m a main PvP player, so my insight may be biased by that.

Edit: Currently, this is what I think the weapon sets stand for.

- For each weapon ( I’m not considering skill #3 for 1 handed weapons) :

• Staff : damage flavour
• Shortbow : Utility – Condi flavour

• Dagger main hand : damage flavour
• Sword main hand : damage – utility flavour
• Pistol main hand : a mix of condi – damage – utility flavour

• Pistol off hand : Utility flavour
• Dagger off hand : Utility flavour

- The skill #3 for each 2 weapons set :

• Dagger / Pistol : damage – utility flavour
• Dagger / Dagger: a mix of condi – utility – damage
• Pistol / Dagger : a mix of damage – condi – utility flavour
• Pistol / Pistol : damage flavour
• sword / Dagger : damage flavour
• sword / Pistol : damage flavour

- Weapon set flavour :

• Staff : Damage flavour
• Shortbow : Utility – condi flavour
• Dagger / Pistol : Damage – utility flavour
• Dagger / Dagger : Damage – utility flavour
• Sword / Pistol : Damage – utility flavour
• Sword / Dagger : Damage – utility flavour
• Pistol / Pistol : Damage – utility flavour
• Pistol / Dagger : Condi – damage flavour

This is 5 out of 8 Damage / utility sets, 1 damage set, 1 hybrid condi – damage set and one utility – condi set.

Thief don’t have a fully condi oriented weapon set. The most ambiguous weapon is the pistol main hand. It has no defined identity, trying to play in both condi and damage field.
Defining pistol main hand as a fully condi weapon would allow two things :

- Both p/p and p/d to become fully fledge condi builds.
- More freedom in #3 skills balance.

I have the feeling weapon sets are the easier parts to balance compared to traits. And that’s where devs can have the more freedom and stability in balancing.
I’ve said it before but, balancing can also be achieved by more effective build diversity.

What do you guys think ?

First season was to see how far I could get ( ruby 5 ). The other seasons were to get the wings of ascension ( that I transmuted to champion’s wings because it looks better ) and rank at least in ruby.

I know I will play pvp anyway, even if they removed leagues. leagues just add a meter of self esteem.

I’m a bit hyped for the next following patch, maybe they will come up with a patch focused on unused weapon sets. That would be great.

Almost every game I say hello and people are responding. People answer to the usual "who close ? " question as well.

As for rude people, well it’s either noob enemy players or some " OMG team what are you doing ? ". You can troll the first and ignore the second.

I have the feeling people talk more and more as you cross divisions.

Chuckles.8153:

Specifically, that it’s hard to tell what is going on half the time. Important abilities, buffs, etc, are hard to track because there aren’t very definitive animations for them that are clear. Buff bar is extremely small and most of the time things like might/regen/etc aren’t visually represented.

All buffs have a visual effect on activation ( might = flamme in the hand, regen = blue aura, edige = blue shield, stab is a white thing, etc. )
Anyway f you only rely on what is on the center of the screen, you are doing something wrong. You need to rely on your UI a lot more. I always check buffs of the ennemy I focus before engaging, same for his stances/passives/etc.

If you can’t do it for buffs and condis that mean your map awareness, isn’t good either. Map awareness can really improve your pvp lvl. You can try to make your UI larger in the options for that.

Chuckles.8153:

I want to get good at it, but in all honesty, I can’t even tell what is going on half the time until after it happens.

Put on the normalized character models ( all humans with the same armor/height/skins/animations ). Enable the smaller particles effect from allies. Keep yourself out of AOE red rings.

As for the animations, well… Play a lot with other classes learn their mechanics and corresponding animations. Necro, Ranger and Ele have easy to read casting animations. The worst would be Dragon Hunter, I rely on sound for insta cast traps.

Chuckles.8153:

If you don’t think that is true, ask yourself, if you were a person who never played GW2 and watched the pvp in it, could you figure out what was happening, where damage was coming from, and what classes seemed to be doing?

I’m not saying you’d know the exact mechanics, but if you can’t tell what is going on in a game, it’s a good indicator that it is not well presented.

You obviously need to know the game to understand what is going on. A LOL teamfight is one of the worst thing to understand, even more when you never played it before. It’s the same for GW2. Once I had to watch a friend play, using the observator mode in custom arena because he was using a cheese engi build that applied 15 burn stacks in 2sec. I couldn’t even tell how he would do it without that.

Anyway, just keep practising and good luck. Pvp is nice in this game.

General Health.9678:

When you join a normal single map squad to do something you may join the wrong map and have to right click on someones name to join them in their map.

This is the same only there are many squads on many maps.
When you join, right click on someone to join let’s say Squad 2.
Now move your icon down to Squad 2.
You should see squad 1 – bunch of white icons
Your Squad – all green players
squad 3 – bunch of white icons
etc

If squad 2 or map 2 sucks for any reason OR if it’s totally awesome and wins whatever it’s doing and you have no further use for it and want to be in squad 3s map, right click on someone in squad 3 and if everyone is playing by the same rules you will end up in map 3. Move your icon to squad 3.

There is often a rule about moving to a lobby (squad 1) when you’re done with your map before moving to a new map. Some people enforce it, some people don’t even have a lobby. So figure it out as you go along but please make sure you are in the squad that goes with that map. The clue will be if your squad is all green icons, you’re in that map with them.

Ok so if I understand what you are telling me, people are basically using a squad the same way as a team speak server with multiples rooms, one subsquad for a different instance of the map. Am I right ?

Hey guys!

Just a question, how does the LFG works for that meta event ?

I’m basically a pvp player that enjoy PVE. Yesterday I tried to get into the Auric basin event using the LFG and it was a mess.

There was the usual “taxi” squad that were full. But there was also some were the squad was divided in several sub squad in different maps. That resulted in travelling in random maps that were no full enough for the event. I also got a squad that decided to completely change map on a whim…

I know there is actually a thing called multi loot squads but those are advertised as such and the map I joined were not theses.

So how should I use the LFG effectively?

If you really want to dedicate yourself to 10 v 10 you can always create a guild that focus on that in the guilded hollow. You can create a community around that, just like 1v1 is a thing in custom arena.

Don’t wait for the devs to do it when we have tools ( to a certain extent ) to do it. It’s not that expensive if you get people in, it’s just about advertising correctly.

I mean even asura ball is a thing guys !

Nice videos! It’s always good to have some recent tutorials for new players. It helps a community to gather around a class.

Note : You should tell that you are a WvW player. The pace and your job is totally different in pvp.That’s a great deal in weapon set choice. You won’t be effective as a +1 person with a p/d build for example.

I think you carry the most in those matches where your team win the first encounter and and each kill has been delayed. That moment where each enemy spawn is delayed and you can +1 each fights and swiftly help in the next fight. Even if the rotation potential of the enemy team is great, this is hard to cool your head down and regroup at the cost of ~70-80 points in solo queue.

But you need a team with a little of common sense. I don’t get those kind of games before ruby.

Urejt.5648:

thief easily carry by making one oponent stay on far while u run +1 mid. Very effective with tp trap. enemy leaves point u tp to that point and decap it then rush mid. U get there 5 seconds after oponent that left point and u win becouse your 5 decaps gave your team 100 point lead.

That moment when a DH comes mid and you let him see you on purpose before going into stealth and he goes back to far afraid of the decap ^^ And at the end of the mid teamfight you see him coming alone when his team has been wiped out ^^

check Mike post on the core game subsection.

I suppose it comes from panic strike.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Panic_Strike

Thank you for every advises you gave me guys !

Dying is the best way to clear condis

sry don’t have anything to add to the things said before…. Maybe be aware of skill animations and avoid them in the first place ( better said than done ).

I feel like simply resetting traps wouldn’t be that useful.

Why not make something like : " when triggered your trap breaks and leave parts on the floor. Picking up those parts reduce the traps cooldown by X amount" ?

I leave the balance to someone else on the X.

They have the tech to do it since things like continium split exist.

Taobella.6597:

also if your recording yourself you should watching are you spacing moves right ? wasting dodges ?. stuff like that can really inprove your game play.

Yea, I saw that, I’m much more aware of necro staff animations that I failed to dodge before…even if the animation is obvious. I just didn’t pay much attention before.

Taobella.6597:

i can tell you 100% every game i go home then mid to grab a quick stomp then rotate far. then i stay at far untill someone try to contest me if i can win fight i stay around if they 1v2 me i just rotate to mid to get another quick stomp. that basicly how i play every map lol.

How do you manage someone coming close at the beginning ? someone you will have trouble with like an engi or a warrior ? How do you counter that ? I suppose it depends on the ennemy team comp. Could you explain for both sustainy and medium ennemy comp ?

So what is your class target order, independant from comp and positionning ? It coud help me making choices to rotate.

Oh yea so I suppose they are 4 mid, sry about that.

me I suppose since I just re-spawned. Don’t ask me it’s sapphire…team rotations are not the best out there…

I miss that feeling when the rotations with your team is smooth

Hum..one exemple that comes to my mind is the following.

I just re-spawned on nifhelm, there is a 3v3 battle on mid. At the same time our warrior is going far to decap, he comes on the point and few seconds later is contested by an Ele. Where should I go ?

Helping the warrior against the sustainy ele ? Or helping to shift the balance mid ?

No thief in their comp

Hey !

Something strange has occurred to me several time already in a very specific context.
When I spam a weapon skill (1,2,3,4 buttons) on a downed ennemy, it doesn’t start but instead start the “finish him” animation. This doesn’t always happens, but when it does, it’s really annoying…

I have the feeling the game is receiving a “double click” event ( I have the double/click to interact or attack option active, but it shouldn’t be related ) from the skills keys.

I tried to reproduce the bug on the pvp npc but couldn’t do. It only happens during games. has anyone got the same problem before ?

Hey guys,

I feel like I’m getting worse and worse on my thief recently. I managed to get to ruby in the last 2 seasons, but I’m stuck in sapphire tier 2 for a while now.

I hang around the forum quite a lot, so I know the +1 and decapping thief role. It’s just I can’t make it work right now. The first season was so tanky I was forced to that role (and it was a good thing), but with the second season I started to go for 1v1 and teamfights and now I can’t get rid of that temptation…

I start to get “kittenty thief” comments as well. I want to improve so I started to record myself.

One thing I noticed is that I’m not rotating well. There is some situations where I don’t know what to do.

So if I had one question it would be what are your golden rules for rotations ?

Maybe I expect to get ruby too much for this season, so I try hard too much. I have to enjoy it more, like I used too.

Let’s post here in advance for future thief GM.

Or should we set it up every sunday ?

I had to get marauder trinket and knights earings to feel confortable in HoT, not anymore though.

But if you don’t want to change gear, p/p is a good ranged solution coupled with CS