Guild Wars 2

Why does it seem Anet ignores the PvP side of the game almost completely? Besides 2 maps, and a solo que I cant think of anything they have done for the PvP side since I started playing. Progression is literally at a snails pace (something like 250,000 wins required for max level, which can become extremely discouraging). Not to mention the gear distribution is wack, why is arah gear the easiest to obtain, why is the gear carbon copied from the PvE side, etc….? Theres no interesting game modes, everything is basically capture points with some twists here and there.

There really isnt any good PvP MMO’s out there that I can think of, and I thought maybe GW2 would at least try to emulate GW a little bit.

p.s. WvWvW is not PvP, Its PvOjective/Door/Supply

In Warhammer Online you had Options like this for spell effects.

1. Yourself Only
2. Your Group Only
3. All

It of course played all enemy spell animations, although I believe there was a way to change the radius at which they were displayed. When you had 400 ppl in a single area it was nice to know what was going on lol.

Azawrath.7304:

Hey guys! I have been playing the thief since the game came out and the majority of the time I have used a backstab build or a P/D condition build. Are there any challenging and fun S/D builds out there? Thanks

They are of course, although you will always do better with a backstab build. This class is pretty boring. Necros are pretty fun.

Auesis.7301:

While Melee is preferable in 99.99999999999999999999999% of situations, I do think that at least one ranged weapon being able to reach 1200 units would be nice.

the only thing I can really think of is to make trick shot 1200 range, but penalize the bounces

ex: 0-400 (3 bounces) 400-800 (2 bounces) 800-1000 (1 bounce) 1000-1200 (single target)

Maybeeeeeeeeeeee increase the damage for for 1000-1200

Just about every solo lupi video ever is a thief…using…Melee. Secondly Thieves have the highest mobility of any class, and should never get hit in PvE if they know the fight.

Your PUG thieves are dying in arah because they are terrible, not because their class is restricting them.

But yes pistols are garbage and need a massive buff.

I gotta agree with OP on the playstyle aspect of thief. It really is a watered down warrior with stealth sprinkled here and there, which isn’t even used for stealth its used for backstabbing.

Kincaidia.3192:

Not only did they not nerf it, they added 300 to the long range steal ability =) So now we can insta-gib you from further away. Because with Infiltrator’s Signet (900 range) + steal (900 range traited to 1200) wasn’t enough – we need 900+1500 = 2700 range. Add in one infiltrator’s arrow (900) = 3600 range gap closer in under a second for exploding your target.

I loves it.

-no one uses infiltrators signet, esp not in a burst build (you wouldn’t get ANYTHING from it unless the fight is >10s long that you wouldn’t get with shadowstep)

- using infiltrators arrow to gap close means you lose a load of ini if you even have enough to CnD by the time you reach your target you definitely wont be able to use heart seeker which is extremely important because we HAVE to kill our target b4 they can heal or cc. The entire build is reliant on the element of surprise and hoping the guy you attack is slow. Engineers and necros seem like the hardest targets for me because they are so conditioned to elixir s or DS fear that they can pull it off like 2nd nature.

I wish people who have no idea how a class works / is built would stop coming to our forums to kittenpost.

Sweetbread.2679:

Phantom.8130:

if you’re simply going to resort to personal attacks, i’ll simply report your post and ignore any further comments from you. good day sir.

God you thieves are hilarious. You play a class who’s core mechanics are the ability to go completely invisible with absolutely no counter, deal ridiculous amounts of damage while also having some of the best baked in defenses short of mesmer, and a resource system that let’s you completely ignore cooldown management or timing in favor of just brain dead spam. You finally get something remotely resembling a weakness in a 300 range nerf on one ability and cry to high heaven about how it’s destroying your class. And then you wonder how anyone could POSSIBLY think that you’re skilless, or cheap, or broken, or a blight on pvp and game design in general.

Here’s a thought, maybe next time you pick a class try something that isn’t obviously a skill devoid, nub magnet designed as the easy mode class for even idi ots to succeed with in pvp. Suprisingly nobody will give you crap! It’s amazing! You don’t even have to run away from every argument you don’t like on the forums because you’ll actually have a counterpoint that isn’t “lol l2p”.

- You don’t get those “amazing defenses” and “ridiculous amounts of damage” in 1 build.

- There is a counter its called dodge/stun/invuln idk how many times and engineer has slapped my kitten by drinking elixir s then proceeded to nade spam me / were I’m stealthed. (his F1 with nade kit does 3/4th of my hp if they all hit me when I’m in zerk mode)

- Calling people skilless when you literally have to stand still for 3 seconds to get hit by a 1200 range clusterbomb

Radmage.3741:

I can’t handle them, they blind, stealth have a sizable amount of dodge abilities and can spam spells that deal a pretty huge amount of damage and they regen a lot of HP from being in stealth. I there any way to deal with them as a necro?

Oh hey I didnt see I could run a 30-30-30-30-30 build now!

-Spells that deal alot of damage
-Regen alot of hp in stealth
-Blinds

these don’t go together.

necros have plenty of hp to survive the burst. If you have the reaction time of at least a 5th grader you should be able to setup a fear then drops your aoe ontop of yourself, this wins the fight for you or forces the thief to run away (probably the latter). At this point he doesn’t really have the element of surprise, setup accordingly I don’t really know that much about necros, but if you main it you should be able to deal with this.

It’s patch day and Jimmy a 13 year old gw2 enthusiast logs onto to his warrior for a day of fun and games in WvWvW. But unbeknownst to him a sinister and evil force lurks in the unseen shadows, a thief. As Jimmy leaves his server camp to meet up with the warband the thief readies his basilisk venom, and activates his assassination signet. As soon as poor jimmy is in range the thief precast his cloak and dagger and steals onto Jimmy. Jimmy was talking to his friends in guild chat “My mom says I can stay up all night guadasdwawdasdwad234423333333adwad” And like that the thief lands his end all be all “Backstab” 14k damage it hits Jimmy for. He now has 3k hp and just regained control of his character, but its too late. Two more auto attacks and hes down. The thief stealths, and Jimmy has no chance to even interrupt his stomp.

“How could this happen” Jimmy thought to himself. It surely was not that he was snuck up on by a stealth class, no no… couldn’t be that. He decides to read the patch notes for thief, Furious he sees that thief has some new condition! How can such an overpowered class be buffed! So now Jimmy is off to the thief forums to tell those stupid thiefs how it is….

Seriously, zerker thief’s were nerfed this patch with our only 1200 range attack gone. Our “insta-kill” rotation was not changed AT ALL with the exception of a cd reduction on steal (which means we only would take advantage of it if the fight lasted 30 seconds…that’s not really an insta kill). So why are there so many uneducated idiots out there complaining on the forums about thief’s this patch? You guys realize no one uses venoms right? right…?

godhammel.4691:

Nike.2631:

This will be an unbelievable buff to my thief (D/D signet of malice 0/0/10/30/30 super unicorn variant)

1 gets double the poison (on a condition damage build, hot kitten )
3 the cornerstone of you damage and self-heals is 20% cheaper/fires 25% more often
4 key to keeping enemies from wandering off gets 25% cheaper/33% more spamable while in pursuit
6 the passive heal that is already amazing with the right armor gets 33% better?

Throw in Slowed pulse is easier to trigger and a shorter cooldown on pain response…

Its like my own personal godmode.

I am 100% with you on this. I run a similar build and I am drooling over these changes. Please let these be the real patch notes.

Have fun killing anything outside a 1v1 that lasts for 10 minutes without any interference. In group play thats actually a pretty awesome build for running away!

>0 – 0.9 seconds – CnD (0.9 seconds) — 12 ini to 6 ini
>0.9 – 1.9 seconds – Backstab (1 second) (revealed starts 1.9 seconds)
>1.9 – 2.5 seconds – double strike (0.6 seconds)
>2.5 – 3.05 seconds – wild strike (0.55 seconds)
>3.05 – 3.95 seconds – lotus strike (0.9 seconds)
>3.95 – 4.45 seconds – lotus strike after cast (0.5 seconds)
>4.45 – 5.35 seconds – CnD (0.9s)(revealed ends at 4.9s)(hits at 4.85???) – 9ini to 3ini
>5.35 – 6.35 seconds – backstab (1s) (revealed starts at 6.35)
>6.35 – 6.95 seconds – double strike (0.6s)
>6.95 – 7.5 seconds – wild strike (0.55s)
>7.5 – 8.4 seconds – lotus strike (0.9s)
>8.4 – 8.9 seconds – lotus strike after cast (0.5s) – 5ini cant CnD
>8.9 – 9.5 seconds – double strike (0.55s) (revealed ends at 9.35s)
>9.5 – 10.4 seconds – CnD (0.9s) 6ini to 0ini
>10.4 – 11.4 seconds – backstab (1s) (revealed starts at 11.4)
>11.4 – 12 seconds – double strike (6s)
>12 – 12.55 seconds – wild strike (0.55s)
>12.55 – 13.45 seconds – lotus strike (0.9s)
>13.45 – 13.95 seconds – lotus strike after cast (0.5s) – 4 ini cant CnD
>13.95 – 14.55 seconds – double strike (0.6s)
>14.55 – 15.1 seconds – wild strike (0.55s)
>15.1 – 16 seconds – lotus strike (0.9s)
>16 – 16.5 seconds – lotus strike after cast (0.5s)
>16.5 – 17.4 seconds – CnD (0.9) (revealed starts at 17.4s) – 7ini to 1
>17.4 – 18.4 seconds – backstab (1s)

at this point the cycle from 11.4 seconds to 18.4 seconds repeats itself indefinitely. However I’m not 100% on 15.1 seconds to 17.4 seconds. It would seem you would have to give up a lotus strike for a less than 1 second sooner CnD + Backstab if you wanted to pop it as soon as you had 6 ini. Remember that this timeline is for the non shadow arts trait spec were we don’t care about the initial strikes trait. It also seems that CnD would cast 0.05 seconds too soon for the revealed debuff? Scary stuff indeed but I tested the rotation plenty on dummies and didn’t seem to have many problems with re enacting this timeline.

if you put 5 more points in the 1st tree you get a basically permanent +10% dmg. Do it. Also only pansies have defensive stats on their gear. MAN UP

Lets make a timeline for the perfect rotation…

>0 – 0.9 seconds – CnD (0.9 seconds)
>0.9 – 1.9 seconds – Backstab (1 second) (revealed debuff began at 0.9 seconds)
>1.9 – 2.5 seconds – double strike (0.6 seconds)
>2.5 – 3.05 seconds – wild strike (0.55 seconds)
>3.05 – 3.95 seconds – lotus strike (0.9 seconds) (revealed ended at 3.9s)
>3.95 – 4.45 seconds – lotus strike after cast (0.5 seconds)
>4.45 – 5.35 seconds – CnD

see I think I’m doing it wrong in your above post you make it seem like CnD can be casted before the revealed debuff ends but according to my timeline revealed ends well before you can cast CnD.

Anubarak.3012:

Does this mean the revealed debuff actaully starts when CnD hits at 0.4s?

• okay I’ll try to explain.. You go to a mob, and you are stealthed… you land a backstab and right after your debuff revealed appears.
  1) Your autoattack starts -> 0.6sec for double strike + 0.55 sec for wild strike + 0.9sec for lotus strike -> you surpassed 2.05 seconds -> your revealed debuff remain 0.95 seconds
  2) You start your Cloak and Dagger while you have still your revealed debuff
  3) There is a little time between Lotus Strike and Cloak and Dagger where your thief will just stand and do nothing (called aftercast)
  4) After that your thief will start to swing his/her dagger for Cloak and Dagger while you are still revealed
  5) Your Dagger will swing about 0.4 seconds until revealed ends, right after that you dagger will hit the enemy and you stealth yourself
  6) You start your backstab (we are at ~3.4 seconds now)
  7) Your thief will swing his dagger for backstab and needs about 1s until it finally hits
  8) You land backstab, bypassed ~4.5 seconds and have revealed debuff on you
  9) chain is over

Also whats just the base damage for CnD Backstab and an auto attack chain separately?
You can calculate by your own if you want^^
dmg calculation

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Skill dmg coefficients
Autoattack chain = 2.26
CnD = 1.5
Backstab = 2.4 (from behind)

dmg done
952 (weapon dmg) * 2499 (power with assassin’s signet and full ascended and 30 DA) * skill coefficient from above / 2600 (average targets armor)
= 2199 with backstab

now we have the base dmg of backstab without any bonuses, but we want the max dmg….
so we add all our + X% dmg traits
Dagger Training 5% more dmg
First Strike 10% more dmg
10% more dmg against foe with condition
Executioner 10% more dmg in total

that means
2199 * 1.05 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 3073 dmg
usually you want to add the vulnerability from sundering strikes and Cnd but for this test we just say you don’t use sundering strike, so your dmg increases by 3% because of CnD
= 3165
with sigil of force you add another 5% dmg and so on….
and if our attack crits you have have to look at you crit dmg that should be 1.12 -> 150% + 112% dmg -> 3165 * 2.62 = 8292 dmg

edit: download https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3A3Op-Hj3dOUkJRU0xvcng5ZWc/edit and look at page 34

Alright that definitely EVERYthing I’ll need to figure this out. You really have helped a ton. I’ll try to get on it asap.

Anubarak.3012:

endless testing^^
I used fraps and watched my tests frame per frame so I got those animation durations. Scootabuser done the same thing and I compared his numbers with mine… they were very close (for examble my aftercast for autoattack was 1-2 frames longer -> 0.04sec difference)

For dmg calculation I created a spreadsheet and testet endless times if my calculated numbers are right.. Finally they were all very close. So I was able to calculate my average dps with/without might
It took about 4h to write down all the attacks and dmg of an arah p3 run but it was worth (for me)

sry for my bad english – I’m sitting in a lecture right now so I can’t concentrate very well^^"

Thats awesome, imagine how much easier everyone’s lives would be if anet would be open to letting someone create a damage meter lol.

So again this…

Autoattack = 2.05s with .5s aftercast
CnD = .9s (but you hit right after ~ 0.4s)
Backstab = 1s

Does this mean the revealed debuff actaully starts when CnD hits at 0.4s?

Also whats just the base damage for CnD Backstab and an auto attack chain separately? Since might and crit etc… effect them proportionally (I think) the answer w/ or w/o will be the same (% wise)

psykles.1573:

Has anyone tried x/30/x/x/25 ?
The damage is very nice, especially when keeping initiative over 6.

The best thing about it, imo, is that it works with every weapon set and combo and you don’t need to keep switching a trait out in deadly arts whenever you go from dagger to sword mainhand to keep max damage.

Also, the regen is pretty crazy with it, especially when you have the trait which has a chance of giving 1 regen on any weapon’s autoattacks and steal giving initiative for even more hs spam !

I’ve tried the 25/30/0/15/0 build, but when you run out of initiative, you’re pretty much stuck with autoattack.
With x/30/x/x/25, you can free up a utility slot by not having infiltraitor’s signet or roll for initaitive although they would enhance this build even further still.

For absolute farm mode, you can have haste, assassin’s signet, signet of agility and never have to worry about initiative.

Thoughts ?

It seems interesting but if we get 1 dagger auto attack chain + 1 part of double strike in 3 seconds then that means on average you looking at +1 initiative every 9 seconds IF all you are doing is auto attacking which means in most cases this is worse than just having an infiltrators signet. not to mention the loss in dps due to not having points in the 1st 2 trees.

you would have to weigh the ini gain vs damage lost from stats and traits in the 1st tree to get a clearer answer. You should also weigh the benefits of the ini gains from the signet and roll for initiative vs the damage bonuses from the signets like agi/power. Feel free to set the math up lol I’m still working on the shadow arts one and with the new event coming up idk if im going to have time to spend doing all the math just yet :S.

Thanks for the info i can use that to readjust the variables.

>pls don’t forget the + 10% dmg while initiative > 6 you do less dmg without infusion of shadows because this trait doesn’t trigger

Cant believe I never thought of this Ill make sure to include that. Btw were are you getting all this info is there some kind of calculator for GW2 out there?

You here to rub it in meanie?

I got alot of questions from that but lets just stick to traits for now.

It seems we can at least agree upon a 25(up to 30)-30-x-x-x build as a skeleton.

Just how much of a dps increase are we getting from putting 10 points into shadow arts? For this we would have to know…

- Ini regen (counting out seems to give just under 2 seconds for 1 ini – google search didn’t turn up much).

- We would have to know exactly how long it takes to cast CnD + Backstab (tooltips suggest 3/4 seconds in total)

- How many dagger auto attacks can we get off in 3 seconds (revealed debuff)

- Damage for CnD + Backstab & dagger auto attack chain (over 3/4 seconds)

If I haven’t made any mistakes above (I most likely did) then we could say….

If the time in between each CnD + Backstab is 4 seconds (I think it fair rounding up from 3 3/4 ((revealed debuff+cast times))) then over the course of 12 seconds we would have 6 more ini more than we would have without it (enough for an extra CnD+Backstab) The 12 second mark is also the point from starting our rotation that we have started relying solely on ini regen for having enough ini to CnD+Backstab (6 ini cost every 4 seconds mean we only gain 2 ini from were we were at the last CnD+Backstab).

So after 12 seconds it takes 6 seconds after every CnD+Backstab to cast it again, whereas with the trait in shadow arts that number is reduced to 4 seconds after CnD (only 4 seconds of auto attacking between CnD+Backstab instead of 6).

If we use 60 seconds as our “S” in DPS which I think is a fair number for most boss fight lengths. Then…

With 10 in shadow arts we… CnD+Backstab 15 times [(60-12)/4)3] were 60 is total time 12 seconds is the time were we start relying on regen and 4 is the time inbetween CnDBackstabs and 3 is the amount of CnD + Backstabs we see regardless of traits during the 1st 12 seconds.

w/o it we…. CnD + Backstab 11 times. [(60-12)/6)+3]

If we assume it takes 3/4 seconds to cast CnD+Backstab and 1/4 second to cast a dagger auto attack then…

w/ we have 11.25 seconds devoted to CnD+Backstab which leaves 48.75 seconds of dagger auto attacks or 195 dagger auto attacks / 65 complete chains

w/o we have 8.25 seconds devoted to CnD+Backstab which leaves 51.75 seconds of dagger auto attacks or 207 dagger auto attack / 69 complete chains

so…

w/ – [(CnD+Backstab dmg)x15] + [(Dagger auto attack chain dmg)x65] = Total Dps over a minute traited in shadow arts

w/o – [(CnD+Backstab dmg)x11] + [(Dagger auto attack chian dmg)x69] = Total Dps over minute w/o the trait

Take the answer to the traited equation and multiply that by 100 then divide by the non traited answer to recieve the % increased dmg over 1 minute.

Well christ that was alot more than I thought I was going to do… so much for the other questions lol. Someone who knows how to calculate damage pls fill in the numbers (I have no idea how damage coefficients work and how they play with our % increased dmg traits) / correct me on the actual cooldowns of those particular attacks (I have a feeling each part of the dagger auto attack chain isn’t really 1/4 second cast as the tool tip says same for CnD+Backstab) or wants to correct anything else pls do.

Once we figure this out then we can move on to the other trait options do something similar for them then compare…

like how might stacking from dodge with 15 points in acrobatics stands up against the shadow arts. Or how much dps increase is thrill of the crime both solo and from a group perspective or what do we actually get out of putting those extra 5 points in the 1st tree? etc…

“stealth != invulnerability”

if only people would learn this there would be alot less QQ.

-Switch to weapon with ground target aoe
-Roll face
-Ded thief

Can we have a sort of in thief community theory crafting thread for coming up with the best PvE build? There seems to be alot of disagreements scattered across alot of different threads.

Looking at everything from the best situational utilities, traits, weapon sets, and rotations? We ofcourse have to agree on what the PvE meta currently favors. In my opinion it revolves solely around active mitigation, and maximizing dps. That is to say stats like vitality and toughness are worthless in comparison to dodge/vigor and skills that allow to dodge or become invulnerable. This then means that we should pump everything we have into power/precision/crit dmg. The TTK of bosses, bleed stacking limits, and the fact that bosses are pretty much immune to any kind of control such as blinds should back this up even more.

Traits – 25-30-0-15-0 I cant really think of a better spec if we accept the meta I mentioned above. 25-30 is obvious, but putting 15 into acrobatics is less dmg overall than putting into the last tree. The reason for this is feline grace helps out with our active mitigation astronomically, no to mention the swiftness and might on dodge.

Utilities – The best 3 utilities for DPS imo are Power signet (8% increased across the board dmg) Precision signet (9% crit) and ambush (thief npc with only 15 seconds of downtime). leaving us with our 2 best support based utilities SR and our projectile reflection wall. For stuff like farming CoF P1 I usually run the 2 signets and ambush since no one really ever dies or need the wall. Fractals I’ll run 2 signets and SR, or power signet and SR + Wall on encounters like the fire shaman.

Weapon sets – D/D + SB – d/d has the highest dps hands down. Sb has the highest ranged dps output + its our best support weapon.

Rotations – Right now in d/d I run with something like this [ Steal> Ambush (if its slotted) >Heart Seeker(if target is <25% and you cant get behind him) > CnD + Backstab > Auto Attack]

SB – Cluster bomb > Poison field (in between cluster bomb flight time) > auto attack

I’m interested in what the thief community thinks about the current meta, and what they think is the best spec suited for it. This very much is a PvE min-max type of thread so keep that in mind.

and I’m especially interested if any of you have done some math on things like “when is heart seeker ever higher dps than CnD + backstab” or whether or not poison fields are worth using over just plain old cluster bomb spam.

Travlane.5948:

Zepidel.5349:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Zepidel.5349:

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

A ranger/ele combined with a thief’s clusterbomb can do miracles though.
I don’t run support, but when possible I’d shoot clusterbomb on healing springs
Just wanted to comment on that part :P

Ya i have too many bad experience with thiefs in dungeons using stupid kitten like pistols or trying to run condition/support. They are the reason people dont like thiefs in PvE. A D/D thief out dps a zerker warrior anyday.

and they die in 1 hit from a boss doing it. the reason thieves arent liked in groups for dungeons is bc they keep having to revive them every 3 seconds and they offer 0 support. not bc they run stupid builds. if u wanna see whos good/bad take all good players with all good builds then compare. not take a bad player/build then compare thats just silly.

the bad ones do. If i mess up my dodges and what not and im sitting at 5k or less hp with no heal I go to shortbow and play it safe until im healed up etc… Secondly thieves have awesome support according to the current PvE meta. We bring the dps which is all that matter honestly BUT we have SR which is amazing for ressing, we also have loads of combo fields and a blast finisher whenever we want it + projectile reflection.

d/d + sb 25-30-0-15-0 is the best PvE build for the current meta period.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Zepidel.5349:

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

A ranger/ele combined with a thief’s clusterbomb can do miracles though.
I don’t run support, but when possible I’d shoot clusterbomb on healing springs
Just wanted to comment on that part :P

Ya i have too many bad experience with thiefs in dungeons using stupid kitten like pistols or trying to run condition/support. They are the reason people dont like thiefs in PvE. A D/D thief out dps a zerker warrior anyday.

wont most people just be running a really cheesy spec that only useful in 1v1? I remember fighting full shadow arts and acrobatic thief’s who go into stealth every 2 seconds and heal to full all the kitten time. the average fight lasted around 10 minutes thief v thief and I swear to god we had one fight that last for around 25/30 minutes. I have nightmares.

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

P/P is awful, and your specialized role is taking out squishy targets in WvWvW SPvP with D/D (choose you kitten targets well if there is a guardian a bunker ele and thief go for the guardian… try to assassinate him if you fail no big deal switch back to shortbow and like you said provide long range dps and blast finishers till you can go back in with d/d and try to assassinate someone.

at least someone finally realizes this

“This game is not balanced around 1v1, its balanced around 5 man groups.”

Too many kitten kiddies getting mad they get kitten d 1v1 by a thief who has the element of surprise on them. They cry on the forums until we get nerfed and are useless in group play effecting us negatively especially in dungeons.

aegis pales in comparison to protection… aegis could block a 10k backstab but most of the time its probably a 1k or less auto attack. Protection will block WAYYYYYYYY more damage over time than aegis will.

Condition wise chilled is the obvious answer.

Theres been plenty of people myself included asking for much harder PvE content and it sounds like this might be a probe to see the backlash from the community for adding content that may require a brain. If this dungeon really is hard (every boss on the same tier or higher than a 1st encounter lupi) then expect 100x more people flooding the forums with the opposite opinion.

Atherakhia.4086:

The problem with venoms in general is they’re skills. They would have to be obscenely good to ever be worth more than shadow refuge, shadowstep, blinding powder or roll for initiative.

The only one people consider using is basilisk and that has less to do with how good it is and more to do with the fact thieves guild and dagger storm are very narrow in their use.

Even if the new patch notes are true, I can’t imagine anyone would bother using the new condition attached to the venom.

Is roll for initiative even that good? +6 ini every 60 seconds isn’t that much dps, and that evade isn’t really something thieves are starving for.

6 ini is enough for 1 CnD and a backstab, takes around 3/4 second to cast subtract 3/4 second of 3 daggers auto attacks from that and I think you are around a potential 6-12k increase in damage over 1 minute. But we haven’t even thought of how much dps is lost after we roll out of place then have to run back.

Comparing that to signet of agility which gives us a potential FOUR evades instead of 1 in 60 seconds on top of the fact its passive 9% increase of crit rate far exceeds the dps increase that 6 ini over 60 seconds would give.

Roll for initiative sucks, Shadow step blows, blinding powder blows and SR is amazing. I guess this is from a PvE perspective tho.

I like my mini priest of Balthazar too much to care.

new meta = Nothing has changed

Patrician D/D 25-30-0-x-x will go on about exactly as they have before patch knowing thier at the top of the thief tiers.

Venomturds, bunbkerbutts, conditioncraps, and swordfreinds will keep on wallowing in their own filth as they change thier pathetic specs around to play with the new worthless abilities.

You know I’m right.

I’d probably stop playing altogether if they use laurels as the ONLY method of obtaining new ascended items. Its just a really kittenin lazy way to add near gear without real content to get it.

Chansuai.6254:

I have trade every single profession and level them each up to 15 and just like every mmorpg I can never choose which class to go with. Any suggestions? I am tired of switching.
I like guardian, warrior, elementalist, Necromancer, and thief. I plan to plan to do both pvp, pve, and wvw. I just want something really fun I can stick to.

Necromancer will be FoTM soon id play it.

against, ANET has bigger prioties than letting OP make his character look like Pico from Boku no Pico.

How could anet possibly top such classic fights as “press 2 to zhaitan” or “Stand on a rock and auto attack shatterer”?

IDK OP i need to do it if you want to get a group together to do it PM me in game within the next hour.

Steal is just a means to teleport to your target. Honestly its the most boring class mechanic ever. We should of gotten venoms as a class mechanic not steal.

Deified.7520:

Here is the picture, people are apparently saying that “it is impossible and I’m lieing”.

I main a thief so take what a say with a grain of salt. That thief dies just as fast as he kills you. In a 1v1 situation you are dead meat if he gets the jump on you no doubt. But it you can interrupt him during those 1st 2 second with something your rifle 3 or your shield block you can turn the tables pretty quick with some decent burst from your end.

Games like these are NEVER and should never be balanced around 1v1. It’s all about team based combat, you see those 2 guys in your party… stick with them. Thanks to downed states a thief will never finish you off if there is at least 1 other person with you.

Pistol is beyond saving, shortbow is better in every single aspect unless you think the massive ini cost blind field or daze are worth it?

They would have to completely redo pistol MH at least

SharadSun.3089:

Zepidel.5349:

Phantom.8179:

Good day!
I’ve been messing around with the Thief profession, and I like it. Alot! However, I am still relatively new (also new to the whole assassin characters in general). I’m thinking that I would like to go with a dagger/dagger main set, with a shortbow offhand. My logic is that I can get close and personal with the dagger/dagger set, and also pick off/distance myself with the shortbow or stealth skills. I’ve been reading through the wikis, various guilds and forum posts. However, I am still very confused on how to approach the build. My main concern is survivability. But I guess that what dodging, stealth and add healing bonuses to armor are for? What would be the staple build for this kind of approach that I could read up on? There are so many it seems (very daunting lol).

Edit: I’m more concerned with PvE, than I am PvP or WvW.

Good, you didnt get sucked into thinking a condition or venom build is viable. Thats great man.

Run a 25-30-0-15-0 build for max zerk with a little survive based on active mitigation. Spam backstab when you can and switch to heart seeker at 25%. Use sb on anyfights with more than 1 mob, cluster bomb is you bread and butter spam it like crazy and throw in poison fields for good measure. Always wait a wile before attacking a boss so you dont over aggro and die. When kitten hits the fan in meele range and you out of healing dont obe afraid to switch to shortbow and take it easy untill you got a heal on cd and some hp.

Does anyone else smell… cheese?

:P

Anyways, I run S/P P/P Knight in PvE/WvW, and it works very well. Really steady damage, lots of survive, lots of cleave with intelligent choices.

IDK but I definitely starting smelling some Limburger when I saw you use P/P. Theres bundles you can find in the open world that will do you better than that.

Grimwolf.7163:

Phantom.8179:

I don’t know what you mean by five-digit Backstabs? Again everyone, thanks for the information. This is a great community. I didn’t expect this many replies lolll.

10,000+ damage. People building just to sneak up on another person in WvW to insta-kill them then flee.
Good for nothing except making video montages that get everyone ranting about how “OP” Thieves are.

Instantly killing anyone is a bad thing? Sure it is lol….

Sounds like your just mad. 1st off you need to know who you can and can’t instakill with a rotation. Guardians are easiest (remember to not be a turboscrub and probe aegis off b4 u blow ur load) necros and mesmers would be among the hardest. Taking out a support like a guardian completely out of a fight before it even really starts is HUGE. Not to mention if you go a sr lined up you can not only escape the front/back lines but most ppl will pull their attention to you mitigating alot of damage off your buddies. Then you switch to sb and go to town till your cd’s are off and your rotation is ready to go.

This is how you should play a stealth class in any game, thats why I always laugh at bunker/condition thief’s. You entire job in life is to pick up weak people in the back lines and get out of town, although thanks to anets policy on the trinity it is less true in this game perhaps.

What it with you nerds and black and white good and bad only? And limiting yourself to 2 factions? Disgusting.

GW2_on_Cry3engine.jpg

… you post stupid topics and even lamer post

I agree with you OP, by trying to remove the trinity they also removed any kind of party based tactics. Imagine trying to play chess with only pawns or only kings. This meta then now supports DPS only, I want to gouge my eyes out when I see a guardian/mesmer with a staff in my party or any condition speced player.

Tolytt.7963:

Zepidel.5349:

Tolytt.7963:

Jrunyon.3012:

How about make your own build that you want to play rather than listen to min/maxers that supposedly think things are viable/un-viable.

Find something that works for you and if you like it, stick with it.

To be honest, this is what I wanna do. But I mostly wanna know why people say venom builds are not viable on thieves.

Because the PvE meta favors zerkers.

- Condition stacking (25 max bleed etc)
- Active mitigation (Dodge/invuln)>>>>>>>> Passive mitigation (toughness vitality)
- Expliots and Easy bosses every where
- Best loot is always at the last boss (pls lets get there faster)
- No need for support/specialized roles

In PvP every class has some kind of massive condition removal (have fun stacking all your conditions on a mesmer just to have him transfer them all to you or having an ele/gaurdian convert them all to boons)

conditions are in a really bad spot right now.

Well now I understand. But what I wanted to do was run zerkers but with 30/30/0/0/10 because of the trait with increased damage while the enemy is afflicted with a condition. I’ve played a condition trap ranger which worked well, but as you said conditions can easily be transferred from mesmers.

you don’t want 30 in the 1st tree, the best traits in the last 2 trees cost 15 to get anyways. The grandmaster traits in the 1st tree effects venoms, or an immoblize (pretty useless stuff) aside from the +50 power)

crouze.3078:

Am i the only one around here who doesn’t give a kitten about this change?

What we are losing is a good skill to pull a group of mobs in PvE.

At 1200 range its unreliable anyway because of the projectile speed.

900 range is a nerf… but it does not hit us that hard.

I bet you think P/P is good too

Tolytt.7963:

Jrunyon.3012:

How about make your own build that you want to play rather than listen to min/maxers that supposedly think things are viable/un-viable.

Find something that works for you and if you like it, stick with it.

To be honest, this is what I wanna do. But I mostly wanna know why people say venom builds are not viable on thieves.

Because the PvE meta favors zerkers.

- Condition stacking (25 max bleed etc)
- Active mitigation (Dodge/invuln)>>>>>>>> Passive mitigation (toughness vitality)
- Expliots and Easy bosses every where
- Best loot is always at the last boss (pls lets get there faster)
- No need for support/specialized roles

In PvP every class has some kind of massive condition removal (have fun stacking all your conditions on a mesmer just to have him transfer them all to you or having an ele/gaurdian convert them all to boons)

conditions are in a really bad spot right now.

randomfightfan.4091:

I think it’s funny that you wrote the complete opposite of what’s actually happening. The only semi-good thing about this change is that it’s forcing thieves into a melee position (where they truly belong). This MIGHT help make a few terrible thieves start meleeing and do damage instead of sitting at max range in a desperate attempt to stay alive while doing nothing.

Idiots with pistols trying to be useful you mean. You realize how scary a sb zerker thief can be in WvWvW or SPvP/TPvP when no one cares to engage/notice them wile they spam trick shot and cluster bomb on 3+ ppl on a objective? Cluster bombs crits for 4-6k at 1200 range thats every 3 seconds or so + trick shots hitting for 2-3k crits.

DanH.5879:

Tolytt.7963:

So I started leveling a thief as my second 80, and I wanted to find a strong build for what suits me best. I want to go D/D and focus on WvW, but some dungeons and PvE in the mix. I thought I had a good build with 30/30/0/0/10, but then I found out that venom builds aren’t viable for thieves, and I’m not sure why. I would prefer SB secondary, but I’m open to suggestions.

give me 1 reason to share my build
so it can be nerfed the next patch ?

Share your build? You mean the one some random came up with within the 1st day of launch? 5 linear trait lines, with 70 points overall that makes up FOURTEEN total choices. And some how you made a combination that 6+ months after release no one has realized.

Anyways OP 25-30-x-x-x is the best build currently for thieves. I use 25-30-0-15-0.

It gives you survive through a little more vitality (useless tbh) but it gives us what we need to survive (active mitigation) by giving us a huge boost to endurance regen and swiftness on dodge not to mention might on dodge.

The 3rd tree is only good for bunker specs in PvP, and only turds play wanna be guardian thief’s.

The last tree gives you overall +4% crit +1 ini ever 12 seconds + 8 or so power and, 150 condition damage (somewhat useless), and +3 to your ini pool which is again only really useful in PvP.

Ruby orbs if you got hair on your chest and consider yourself a man.