Guild Wars 2

My attempt at putting my thoughts of how to beat thieves into words.

Build yourself up at least moderately tanky so you don’t die in one BV+Mug+CnD+BS combo. Also if you see your opponent has BV on it usually works to just dodge as soon as they get in range to make them waste it. You can also just use a block skill.

If the thief has bloodlust stacks on it usually means they’re a glass cannon and likely bad. Sorry any thieves out there (I’m not actually sorry) but from what I’ve encountered people who waste time on stacks usually suck. This part is not actually advice or helpful :P.

Moving on, snares work incredibly well on D/any thieves. They have very limited means of escape and if they don’t have the trait to remove conditions in stealth they are usually free kills. You can lead a HS spamming thief to follow you drop some cripple and just slowly kill him.

Worst thing you can do is just stand there and let thieves kill you. It seems a lot of people freeze up around thieves and don’t dodge them or do anything if they stealth. If you have swiftness and some kind of mobility skill just use it to get distance and make the thief lose stealth. If they chase you just take them down maintaining distance if needed. Even if they manage to get a CnD on you you can still avoid the backstab by putting distance between you two.

Blocking and dodging, this appiles when facing any class but you need to be able to dodge some of the more important skills such as BS and CnD. This combo is the highest damaging combo a thief can do to a single target. If a thief is HS spamming whether it be chasing or w/e you can just block them to get him to waste initiative.

SB thieves, if you lose to them its your fault. I have no advice for you here, just learn to not be phazed if a thief pulls out a SB.

D/D bleed builds, you just don’t want to stand there and allow bleed stacks to pile up. Keep moving and apply pressure to the thief, this build requires a high amount of initiative for a moderately low payoff so if you just have consistent condition removal they don’t hurt. Most of all just don’t stand inside their caltrops.

Sword I don’t have much to say about, they are one of the harder sets to beakittens the only set that makes me actually feel like I have a chance of death. Just play against them enough and you get used to them, kinda.

D/P builds make me sigh everytime. I have no idea why people make a big deal about them. They are pretty much just D/D builds in my eyes but they waste more initiative. My strategy for killing them is just to do damage to them and when they drop a smoke screen I just move away far enough away that they can’t HS me from the stealth and when they unstealth I just kill them. My actual strat since I play engie is just to condition the heck out of them and if they stealth I hunt them down so they can’t run.

The main idea is to stay mobile and maintain pressure on them, they’re thieves and die easy they shouldn’t be pushing you down.

Also make sure to push thieves out of SR, its like catching them with their pants down and makes me laugh everytime :P.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

TheGuy.3568:

@Sir Vincent III You definitely don’t play mesmer so sit back on this one. I am serious about this. Acting like a clone is not going to help vs anyone playing more than a week.

Did you even understand what you read from my post?

Obviously not.

I have to dissagree with your post as well, mesmers are very easy to pick out from clones and standing there with them is not going to help. It just reduces their dps and makes getting close and landing hits easier since they aren’t moving.

So can we also do machines?

Coldin.2840:

You know. I really wish Daggerstorm reflected AOE projectiles. It feels kind of useless in most cases.

It does reflect grenades if thats what you mean they just have to hit the player, but when you see daggerstorm you might be less likely to aim for them directly.

I used to main my thief and although I still play it from time to time I probably won’t go back to playing it for the majority of my time.

Now after getting to learn the class there are just some things I learned to not do. These just feel down right insulting when used against me.

What I’m talking about is things like daggerstorm. Daggerstorm is in no way going to prevent me from doing damage or hitting with ranged attacks, please stop using it for more than a second. Usually I will just be roaming and then some thief will just pop it off whilst I’m spamming nades, the skill does not stop nades from hitting with aoe so I just aim at the floor and watch the thief go down. It’s insulting to think people believe I would actually let my skills be reflected by it.

Another problem is people who just spam HS, stop doing it when I’m at 100%. You just waste your initiative and I can just heal quickly. I don’t care if you have some random mesmer helping you you’re not helping when you go down in 5 seconds with no initiative to escape.

The last thing that bothers me is D/D bleed builds. They are basically useless against people with condition removal (or just engineers). Please don’t drop caltrops all over me and expect me to take more damage than you from conditions, the evade from death blossom is not going to save you.

You think stealth is your ally? You merely adopted stealth. I was born in it, molded by it. By the time I was visible I was already a man and it was nothing but—well actually it’s much better being visible ;)

Kaaboose.3897:

Have you watched THIS video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBxStGB6-UE

Proposed solution to defiant and to dungeons as well.

Don’t just self advertise on other peoples threads, since yours is clearly still there on the front page it shouldn’t be necessary.

Instead use written words to talk about what your proposed change is, I don’t like to watch youtube videos that try to teach things. If you want me to listen to your suggestion take the time to make a written version.

When I asked for feedback I meant on my suggested change, if you want to compare mine to yours thats fine but like I said talk about it.

The following system may sound kinda familiar since it has been done before however I feel that it would greatly improve the game.

Currently bosses (Champions and higher) are given an effect known as unshakable.

Unshakable is an effect that grants resistance to control effects. Most champion and legendary rank creatures have this effect, especially dungeon bosses. Unshakable will grant one stack of Defiant for each player in the area, with a minimum of three stacks. For example, 13 players in the area will cause one use of control to create 13 stacks of defiant while one player in the area will create three stacks. -Guild Wars 2 wiki

Now a system of CC resistence is necessary to make bosses more challenging and engaging but I do feel it has too many flaws.

The system requires co-ordination and typically luck, which is something too prevelent in the game imo. The luck not the co-ordination. Anyways for example a thief is spamming headshot to get the defiant stacks off but right before the last one someone hits it with a stun. At this point the last headshot is used and a very poor stun is done. This becomes worse on group events where you get 50 people with possible interrupts making it virtually impossible to get a good stun done to the boss. Worse if no one is using stuns it makes that one guy who is useless. The system discourages stuns, and infrequent interrupts with powerful effects are seldom helpful. A quick knockdown or 3 second stun is good but it should not be considered equal to a 1/4 second daze one just because it was used too early.

My suggestion is to add system to replace it to function as follows. When a boss takes damage or gets hit with interrupting effects (Intterupts will drain it faster, also the stronger the intterupt the more it’ll bring it down) it will drain a meter. When this meter is depleted the boss loses unshakable (which will have its description changed) allowing for full condition durations (and effects) and CC effects to be applied constantly. I feel damage should also be increased by 10-50% (based on a decrease in armor to not make conditions useless). Once it is depleted it will start going up but CC and damage can be used to slow the speed at which it goes up. Obviously this will scale with the number of players present. When the meter gets to be full unshakable returns and can be brought down again.

This is mostly intended for dungeons but can be used on world bosses (Dragons and such), but should only increase damage since I don’t think they should be able to be stunned.

This is intended to improve the use of CC skills and reduce the feeling of wasting them.

Unfortunately the (pve) content in this game is considered to be too easy by many, as such I feel dungeons should recieve a revamp before a change like this is needed or at least have bosses given more survivability before unshakable is removed (depleting the meter) to compensate. The reason is most of the content is beaten using very little stuns and typically just dps builds.

I do have suggestions for dungeons but that can wait.

Also feedback is appreciated

Thieves are not as great as everyone makes them out to be.

Back when I used my thief as my main I could get a lot of kills using my GC build of 30/30/10/0/0. but they were just instant ganks and against better players it did not perform great. There were also times I could kill a group of 3 or more players but it wasn’t usually because I was a thief, it was because they were poor players. They don’t res downed players, attack near/CC near downed player and so I just picked them off one by one.

I wasn’t a fan of SA arts builds but I didn’t try them for too long.

As my engineer I can perform much better in 1vx situations I feel. Also I have no fear of any build of thieves, however I have yet to come across an amazing thief player. My ratio of wins to losses of thief fights would be something like 30:1 but I can’t even remember losing to a thief as an engineer. SA builds do help them survive but does not give them an automatic win, it just makes their death take longer :P.

x per fection x.2096:

It took a long time and many new skills for people to be able to solo gw1 dungeons though, pretty much every path of every dungeon that doesn’t require more than 1 person mechanics has already been soloed just months into Gw2.

The difference between the two games is that Gw1 Dungeons/Speedclears/Solo’s took so much more time, effort and planning to do then Gw2. Every Gw2 solo I’ve done has been first try without changing my build and no planning involved with the exception of Grawl fractal.

We need something that isn’t kitten mechanics mixed with 5x to much hp and blocks that force you to kill everything to advance. It has to be challenging for a talented player, undoable for a below average one and have a chance at a rewards worth it.

Well 55 monks were doable in just prophecies alone and they could do a good portion of the UW if not all of it, so it didn’t really take a long time to do.

Also what do you consider a dungeon? If you are refering to EotN dungeons than you should know that was basically the end of new skills so at that point there were no new ones.

I can’t say I’m not guilty of doing this but comparing a 1 person solo of a 5 man dungeon is not the same as comparing a 1 man solo on an 8 man “dungeon”.

GW1 took more planning and sometimes required actual research but the result was that you could do content designed to be challenging without challenge in less than half the time. Topk could be soloed with just 1 sin before the sf nerf, and even after it was an easy farm.

In addition the game ended up being a lot more role based than GW2 where you literally would just sit their waiting until you got specific builds of the same class. “Need a snow? No sorry only need A/P.” Waiting for monks was fine but 8 different assassins?

I do agree that the dungeons in GW2 need an overhaul or just new ones, but just asking for them to be harder based on GW1 doesn’t make sense (GW1 wasn’t hard, but it was a really fun game). The only content I ever found difficult in GW1 was WoC hm and it wasn’t impossible I just didn’t care if I beat it.

If you all are asking for more difficult content so that we can LoS mobs to one spot and just dps them down like GW1, or remove revealed from thiefs and have them perma stealth kill things, maybe even bring back prot spirit and give it guards, or even give necros SS and MoP, or how about we stop comparing GW1 so we can have fresh new ideas cause GW1 ideas had their flaws too.

UW, FoW, Urgoz, The Deep, DoA, Slaver’s exile (Duncan the Black is racist btw, no wonder the place is called slaver’s.) and the other dungeons were all easy. UW and FoW cost money but you made a lot more, and didn’t lose too much if the group failed assuming you were at least completing some runs.

The only areas out of all of these I never successfully completed with heroes was UW and DoA, although I have heard someone claim to have done UW (I still don’t believe him).

These areas did take coordination but you would not see people really talking about the instances before entering unless they were just doing randomway (I don’t assume everyone remembers this phrase). All that would really happen is people say their role and begin. These endgame dungeons (and elite areas) that were frequently run were done more easily than a lot of the runs that take place in GW2.

Edit 2: I just realized how big a contradiction this sentence was, oh well. Please don’t just assume things are hard just because you heard they were.

Edit 1: Also before a lot of the nerfs that took place a lot of “hard” GW1 instances could be soloed or done with maybe 1-3 heroes.

Edit 3: Alot of parts of “dungeons” and entire dungeons can still be soloed in GW1 even today.

Don’t use D/any in a duel with an engie, its kinda useless. Go with sword instead.

Shortbow is a similar story since it won’t bounce as most engies won’t use turrets, plus some use supply crate as a finisher. Also engies range will kill you faster.

You need to keep extremly mobile and constant stuns/dazes will help.

Don’t stand behind him or near him constantly doing melee damage. They can create a ton of condition fields, blinds and snares to keep you stuck.

I honestly don’t find thieves much of a threat as my engineer, I kinda feel like I’m fighting a war and often tone down my skill. I seldom if ever lose in 1v1 situations to thieves (or wars).

I wouldn’t say avoid engineers but it might take some time to get to a position where you can beat them comfortably. Also fighting with help always helps.

Never thought that it would get fixed the day I made a thread requesting for it to get fixed, but thanks A-Net.

For the people that are upset learn to adapt, the skill was clearly imbalanced and broken.

This is coming from a thief player incase anyone is wondering. I also enjoy using the sword to avoid being killed by opponents but it’s just too powerful.

The skill clearly states range 1,200 however this is not the case. My video here shows how even though the skill states it works similar to shadowstep’s shadow return with the only difference being 2 less conditions lost, it works entirely different. It allows the player to return to the same spot from an infinite distance, or as far as possible by the player. The skill can be used from so far away it gives a loading screen. It also returns the player to the exact same position assuming there are no obstacles in the way.

Shadowstep’s shadow return however will not allow the player to return to the same spot if a certain distance is passed, it instead brings the player as close to the spot it was used at as determined by the skill. If the sword skill could be made to work like this that would likely be optimal.

I have been on the recieving end of thief sword users and it is incredibly annoying. I actually wait at the exact spot they used the skill in hopes that my server does enough damage to get him to return and that I have the damage to finish him. In addition I don’t really feel its fair that one skill can allow a player to instantly break aggro from 10 enemy players with no chance of death with one click of a button and 2 initiative lost.

I do this myself sometimes if I’m bored and even though it’s really funny, it’s not really fair. I honestly feel like I have no possible way to die, so I run into a zerg get low health and just port out when I feel like.

Please get the skill fixed :I

This really needs to be fixed, this skill clearly does not do what it says it does and for the initiative cost is way overpowered.

Few options to help fix it: remove the part that says range 1,200, make it work like the shadowstep’s shadow return, increase the initiative cost or remove the skill.

The skill can be used from so far away from the initial spot and return to that exact spot, that I get a loading screen.

The autoattack under water is the worst I’ve seen in this game. If you are not ahead of your opponent they will never hit them. Giving players the option to throw them where the want is a blessing, instead of giving us poor auto aim that rarely hits.

Why would they need to make the class a heavy?

Armor is really only aesthestics and as such does not determine what the class can actually do.

If they want the engie to have higher defense they could just give them a free higher armor rating, just as they currently have a natural high hp pool.

It seems all you really want is more weapon choices just like the other classes, well I gotta be one of those guys that say we have kits. The engineer does not only have firearms as offense, we have explosives and the wrench. To be honest I don’t have a problem with more weapon options but I don’t think that we would need a weapon swap option.

On the topic of dervishes, they don’t really fit into GW2 like they did in GW1 because they worship the “human gods”. As such I hope the class does not make a return, but if they redesign it and call it something else I’d be for it. I only really care about the scythes, the class in general is kinda dead.

This kinda doesn’t seem like it needs to be in the thief section. I would assume most thieves know how useful they are.

I think it’s the other people that need to be informed.

lunyboy.8672:

More ======

Notes:

The Gear Shield blocks for its duration, even if you use other skills.

If you see shadow refuge (the AoE stealth with the stone house over it), your freeze grenades almost completely fill the field, as does your barrage… use them liberally. And if you have Supply Crate available, it ALSO fits neatly into the radius.

Set your skill key binds in places that make them fast for swapping, I use Shift +1-5 for heals and utilities. Make sure your dodge-roll is on a key that is EASY to get to, I use one of my side mouse buttons, because I can have my thumb on it loosely, and then trigger it when moving the mouse easily without having to find it on the keyboard.

Don’t chase thieves, but focus on an area of combat that you can control with your supply crate, box of nails, and AoE damage/conditions. Make them come to your in an area you have control of. On stuns and roots, apply conditions first, and then whatever burst you have available to you.

Please feel free to add anything you like for thief neutralization, as Engineers we have options other professions don’t, so let’s share our tactics.

If you see shadow refuge its best to run in the centre (assuming ofc you have a shield offhand) and use skill 4 than hit 4 again. It’ll push the thief out and makes an easy kill. I wouldn’t recommend dropping supply crate or freeze nades in case they run a SA build which will simply allow them to walk out. Supply crate will do nothing in general except maybe stun the thief.

If you have good defense and play more defensively most thieves are actually pretty easy as an engie. However don’t make it easy on them, apply pressure and keep a cool head.

I don’t have the math to really be able to tell you how to achieve the highest dps possible, however I usually like to have at least 15 points in BM for the quickness from pet swapping. In addition pets can do more damage per hit than the player but I can’t guarantee it’s more than if you just stuck to power. I exaggerated slightly on how useful the pet can be but it still won’t do too much without BM. Zerker rangers don’t work exactly the same as other classes so it might take some experimenting.

To be honest though it really depends on where you’re playing and how you want to play it.

Well its a little mixed up. Also I assume this is for pve and will critique it as such.

You don’t need eagle eye in pve (although the other traits aren’t too much better you could probably use beastmaster bond instead). You probably won’t get much of any benefit from sharpened edges or companions might since you have no condition damage and put no points into BM. Again you don’t need expertise training since your pet will die immediately and does no damage.

Personally I’ve never been able to use the marksmanship trait line due to the lack of useful traits it provides. I suggest going for different weapon other than the longbow, it’s damage is just lacking. I suggest the axe or greatsword.

Again this is just for pve, for pvp just find a good group to absorb damage and change everything I suggested except eagle eye. Then let lose arrows.

It won’t really change much of anything, using daggerstorm for the entirety of its duration is commiting suicide. Adding the effect just allows you to get downed with style.

It depends how experienced you are and how comfortable you are at delving into dangerous situations.

You can usually get away with higher dps builds in pve such as pure zerker ones. Also I notice even though my thief has high damage I don’t too often pull attention from aggro, so higher damage works effectively.

WvW is different, although there are some thieves (and other classes) that run glassy high damage builds I don’t recommend it. Stealth does not negate damage and against better players won’t always shake them. Personally I think its best to have some form of survivability whether in the form of armor or trait lines.

If you have strong condition removal you can try to go with toughness (knights), and if you don’t vitality (valkyrie). However with thieves low hp I’d almost recommend soldiers (Infiltrators) for pvp.

I personally run a 30/30/10/0/0 with soldier armor, everything else is zerker. Runes are scholar.

I like thief harpoon gun skills underwater. I rarely lose a fight with them even though I rarely fight underwater to begin with.

Try other proffesions underwater skills before asking for buffs. Some of them don’t even do anything, I’m looking at you engineer.

Don’t really wanna be that guy (I’m a bad liar) but thats the right side

The sword shadow return is broken beyond recognition.

It’s most definately not OP.

I decided to try going with 30 points in SA just to try a new build. Not only was all the aforemention traits not more helpful than 30 points in DA, they were useless for my playstyle.

There is no high dps burst with 30 points in SA and backstab builds still work if you know how to make them work.

Shadow arts only improves surivability (imo).

I’m not sure where you play that you sit there accumulating 10 might stacks before fighting to kill one person, but it’s a waste of time. Save your initiative if you want to escape.

Thanks for the responses guys (or girls).

I’ve been leveling an engineer lately and am just wondering if I can get a list of the traits that are bugged, or at least direction to somewhere they are.

They can already melee with the tool kit. In addition this kit has a skill called magnet which pulls enemies to the engineer. It can also be used underwater.

Plus there is not really any safe range distance. Most classes can easily close the distance between themselves and another player.

I just use a high dps build with fairly low survivability. 30/30/10/0/0.

Video of build in action.

edit: Just do you know theres no skillful playing in this video. Not by me and especially not by the other players.

Well firstly it is possible to play with multiple armor sets. You might change your build in the future and having different armor sets will make it easier to compliment yourself.

Also picking the correct armor to start off really depends on your build, playstyle and skill.

You can’t really go wrong with berserker armor as it is really helpful in pve to obtain high dps.

If you have a low defense build it might also be worth getting more defensive armor, such as one with power, vitality, and toughness.

If you’re looking for easy ways to get berserker armor I recommend Citadel of Flames runs, or crafting it yourself. Buying off the trading post is typically always more expensive than getting the item yourself.

If you’re simply interested in the look if you just google gw2armor theres a site showing most of your options, although you will likely be required to purchase a transmutation crystal (previously fine transmutation stone) to get better stats. The crystals are not too cheap.

In particular overcharged shot and rocket boots. Both send the player flying backwards inadvertently CC’ing them.

I’d prefer if they worked more life thief skills doing an evasive roll instead. Overcharged shot could simply not send the player backwards at all or have an aoe effect rather than single target at the very least.

Video to demonstrate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIOLZc-Gd3A

Heh I found this so funny when I heard this I deleted my mesmer and rolled an engineer.

I have to agree with the previous comments, the damage is kinda low to be bragging and with 22 might stacks.

Super Riceman.8702:

Maybe it converts a boon on the enemy into vulnerability, that way sword remains defensive boon-hate while pistol is the offensive version.

Also, have they changed unload to allow you to move? (I haven’t played P/P for a long time)

I don’t remember it ever not letting you move, although I haven’t played the class since launch even in the videos before launch it was shown you could move while using unload.

I like basilislk venom, it’s pretty much the only elite I use. I currently use a GC build so it works perfectly with it.

Thieves guild can just be ignored or in larger encounters just destroyed instantly. I honestly will either directly attack the thief who used it (rarely causes a problem) or just HS away and reset.

Dagger storm is horrible in pvp unless the fighting against uplevels in wvw.

I basically only got one option.

Firstly I have to agree that if the thief escaped than I don’t see any indication that you outplayed him.

Good ways to stop thieves from going into stealth is to stun lock them. As soon as you see a thief getting low its usually a sign that they are gonna want to go into stealth. If you see a shadow refuge it’s best (imo) to just start swinging a melee weap to find their location and just keep hitting them.

As soon as you’re no long getting your melee 3 hit combo just wait a second to see if you get ooc, if so just ignore the thief.

It’s not worth trying to catch a thief, you need to down him before he runs.

Dodging itself does not provide immediate evasion so why should withdraw? :P

Are you sure you’re a thief player?

Also thieves aren’t really as perfect as you make it seem. While stealth may be powerful, it’s not invulnerability.

I’ve been able to down and kill 2 thieves playing together on my guard (provided they were bad players) and later another one solo, all in a row. Thieves are definately powerful but winning will still at least require some skill.

To be honest I am currently happy with the class as is.

Try engineers they are a class to be unhappy about.

What did we do to deserve this?

I can always fall back on a different class but why only mention stealth traps (and anti supply traps)?

Assumibly there will be ones targeted towards other parts of proffessions such as mesmer clones and pets but wth.

You can pretty much remain permanently stealthed with proper timing, skills and initiative management (plus trait setup).

Although if you want to learn how to beat thieves and figure out what they’re doing it’s best to roll one and try it out.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Shadowstep it’s great. I really can’t think to play without it, saved me so many times. Maybe a little bit too high cooldown, considering it’s our only stun breaker.

Shadow step is not our only stun breaker. Theres also roll for initiative. Also there are so many ways to shadowstep we get 5 stun breakers from it.

Shadowstep utility, shadow return utility, shadow step from the signet, steal is also a stun breaker and sword’s shadow return too.

Can’t watch the video but assuming you’re using shadow return on the sword you should know it’s broken and is likely to get fixed.

Thought you meant codex arena, you had me really scared there.

I have to agree, I feel like a lot of the updates we’re given are lacking substance. I don’t even know what the story of this molten alliance thing is or why we’re no longer fighting the elder dragons.

If only there were ships in Tyria, I would sail across the unending ocean o.o

If you fire ink shot but don’t teleport and get downed (than teleport) you become unable to move. It’s a bit of an inconvenience, not that I really expected to survive anyways.

I really hate this bug with a fiery passion. I hope it gets fixed one day.

This also happens to me a lot lately.

There is also a bug where if I slowly walk off something I take no fall damage.

Happened to a guidie yesterday, please fix it.

+1

I find D/D works more effectively with bursts.

I can’t see how a D/P thief can outburst a D/D but w/e.

If you’re trying for a condition build death blossom can work but I can’t recommend it.