Guild Wars 2

A skilled DH makes for a win against most melee classes. After a few games you know that guy is going to try to block through, distort through or evade through. I notice it only depends on what you are trying to kill a DH with. If it’s a thief, warrior or revenant there isnt much you can do for a counter, it’s mostly dodge/block or stab through it. While you can make it through the trap, you skill have to kill the DH while you have low health, and you will take damage. So I figure it’s like this:
If killing the DH requires you to trigger a trap on yourself, then you are probably going to lose.
If you can out range the DH or use summons to trigger traps, then you can win it.

It’s first an issue of class matchup and THEN a matter of clever play. If you have a hard-countered class, you can definately do things like fake a push to a point to force them to use their traps on a non-fight, or just harass them before they get to mid so they will have to wait forever to effectively +1.

Hmm I play a condition rev a lot. I notice that reaper vs condi rev is pretty equal usually. If you play Mallyx chances are that you really aren’t generating any boons, unless you use FoN, which you should leave switched off vs a necro. The key is to really camp in Mallyx and watch your energy and Boons. Of all of the times vs a necro, most of the time I’ve died it’s been when I’ve desperately needed to swap to shiro for stunbreaks/ extra heals etc… when being +1’d. Resistance is as spammy as heartseeker when traited for it.

The one build that almost always kills me is the minion zerg builds. But thankfully I don’t see those often. The minions are very good at soaking up my aoe’s and attacks, nothing ever really gets through them.

I disagree with this post, the stolen skills are designed to counter the class they stole from, so I don’t think it should be a problem, thieves also only usually have 1 damage weapon bar (not including a mandatory Sb bar) and 1 utility bar, the stolen skills is that thing that makes it ok. For reference:
Mesmer: Gain all of the boons!
Guardian: 3 sec daze!
Warrior: very hard hitting aoe whirling blades attack!
Ranger: water field for free healing and aoe regen!
Engineer: aoe free access to chaos armor and free condi’s and boons every second!
Ele: a 10s!!! Chill with a high damage coefficient which is 16% stronger than slow for recharges and move speed and lasts for 10s!
Necro: 2s aoe fear which procs the interrupt traits!
Thief: stealth and aoe blind for a free backstab!

I dunno but if I were to look at the others, the rev one seems pretty soft, what makes it good vs icestab for example is that it is a ranged attack instead so you can use it if you are on short bow.

Hmm can you post your build? If you are doing something weird with like a pistol main hand, I guess that’s to be expected. However with the recent changes signet of malice for pve has gotten a real buff because our hits are faster, withdraw for pvp has finally gotten it’s buff and our increased damage has really buffed invigorating precision.
My build is full berserker with 3 berserker + valkyrie trinkets and a marauders chest piece. This allows me to have 13005 health, 99.19% crit when paired with a spotter over 220% crit damage (but I can’t remember exactly) and it allows me to hit just below the 3500 power mark with a full stack of bloodlust and might. 13k health is a lot but it’s not really where our best survivability comes from, it comes from our DPS. When you spec for high damage and swap to invigorating precision you can swap that 13% damage buff from no quarter for insane tankiness, as long as you don’t get 1 shot. Give it a try.

Prettty sure this kind of thread is a breach of code of conduct.

Lol next time I have an intense eyebrow raising contest with a DH at mid or far, I’ll be secretly crying inside for this change.

I started playing recently too, coming from completing very elite content in other mmo’s lol where I can solo raid bosses, to this, is a bit of an adjustment. Here are some things I notice.
Because it’s your first toon don’t reroll. It doesn’t matter what class you are if you aren’t completely used to the game mechanics and the class mechanics yet. The balance patch is just around the corner now too, so don’t stress, just enjoy the game.
Toughness is the main aggro mechanic in this game, for that reason if you’ll want to drop it all!; because boss tells are super easy to judge when you solo them, but not really when you are in a group. So it’s best to only take up extra vitality so that you don’t generate extra aggro. Then just get used to sticking behind and beside the boss. And timing your evades ofc. This is your + survivability.
Full berserker is superior in theory, but I cannot count the number of times I’ve seen any teammates with full zerk go splat. When someone gets downed they become a HUGE liability and usually have the worst dps because of it. Like it was said before marauders is a good choice, but over time I’m finding a mix of berserker and berserker + valkyrie to be a better choice, but still aim for around 50-60% precision unbuffed. You won’t need that much health regen with dolyak either, invigorating precision and signet of malice alone hasnt failed me yet. I like invigorating precision because it heals you for more as your DPS goes up, but you can drop it if you have a healer on the team.
Also the bow should be your second weapon. This is because of skill 2 and 5 and because it makes the easiest way to stack power from the sigil of bloodlust, and because there are no Y axis limits on aoe’s you can use it to cook enemies above you with aoe and use bow5 to travel up as well as across. I hated bow at first too though.

Why is flat berserker so important? It’s because we have so many more ways of stacking +% power and damage etc. So you will actually get more out of runes that give you any damage vs runes that don’t, because of all of the modifiers you van stack with them. You will only use toughness when you get hit too, but cause you can evade so easily, you won’t get measly as much value out of survivability runes as you do damage runes. You can’t heal or tank a boss to death anyway, that’s not how it works :P

Lol it’s so stupid that our meta is built around exposing ourselves vs using invisibility for its intended purpose.

Haha they should make revealed stack in duration or make invisibility useful for more than just the revealed buff or breaking aggro. Literally one of the weirdest game mechanics I’ve seen yet.

That kinda sucks, are you still getting the revealed buff on the backstab though?

@EasyPanda.6419

I’m trying to get a D/D build to work, but I think it only works depending on the group. I’m still losing at best about 0-150 DPS vs just auto attacks when I am specced in favor of either and using your rotation, however the burst in the first couple of minutes almost has me fooled… I think must be doing something wrong.

Lol I didn’t even realize that you made comments in the quotes.

So this is what I found specifically. For single target DPS dagger out performs sword with auto attacks by 5.75%. However sword is the weapon of choice for aoe(ish) DPS.

When I say initiative shouldnt be used for dealing damage usually, I mean that if a skill like umm lets say I hit the target with uh body shot, this skill takes 1/2 a second to cast and deals 1250 damage, lets say there was not animation time at all, if my DPS was 2k, it would be a DPS increase, but if it were 4k right at that point with auto-attacks, it would be a significant DPS loss. This is what I mean, not to mention the 4% drop from lead attacks. So its only beneficial to use a skill for DPS when it deals increased damage for 1 theoretical second vs your current DPS.

Lol I completely agree with you when it comes to stolen skills. I mean why does everything have to drop ‘tooth stab’ -.-

I still do most encounters with invigorating precision, Unless I’m grouped with someone who can keep me through the crazy aoe’s and condi’s that some content has, I find that this skill makes all of the difference! Will drop it in raids though and where I don’t need the extra heals, cause 250 free ferocity is… 250 free ferocity, who doesn’t want that? xD

If you have DD isn’t it understood that you drop trickery because you don’t make good use of Lead Attacks and Quickness. Which are the only main things from this trait line that actually boost DPS in Raids?
On quickness, what is the general up-time that you find Mesmers can output, considering you have 1.1 mesmers on your team xD?
Because with Trickster I find that 1 6 second Quickness application is a 6.25% DPS boost, as long as you keep DPS up during the entire period, not including the extra fury. I guess you would obviously change trait choices depending on group composition, and I imagine Quickness being a hassle if you have a rotation.

With auto attacks you actually DO stack that much vulnerability with sundering strikes, but your right when it comes to group content, but then I guess that depends on who you run with aswell.
Thief vs Scholar Runes were about 6.25% difference with a dagger and with presumed 100% up-time on both. I honestly just put thief in there as a second choice because it’s much better than Pack or Eagle runes that also seem to be very popular for PvE… I don’t know why though?

With break bars I checked here https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar
by this basilisk venom should do 300 damage to a break bar, coupled with 2 headshots, which gets rounded up to 1 second, it should do 500 breakbar damage vs Impact Strike which does 200 breakbar damage, because launch is only for 0 seconds. Then if we throw in a third headshot its 600 damage which is enough to reduce the breakbar to 0 in most content scaled up to a 5 man group and is equal to 30% of the breakbar on the vale guardian. A friend of mine pointed this out to me

I hope it helped to elaborate on what I put in my earlier post.

Tonikor.5637:

I don’t know what you people are on about testing dps on golems and whatnot, but this all looks very amateurish to me.

My advice to the OP is to look into theorycrafting other people have already invested time in, and did it properly. Your build is pretty bad for someone who’s interested in doing top damage and I highly doubt you spent that much time talking to experienced thieves like you mentioned.

Next time do some research, for now refer to:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Berserker_Staff

It’s not perfect but its more than good enough to start.

What builds do you personally use and what DPS do you do while you are in them?
Do you find that you can do it sustainability and please answer truthfully, how often do you find yourself dieing in a boss fight?

Testing on a golem or test dummy is very well understood to be the only viable option in any game for comparing DPS numbers and finding ways to improve builds. This is because they do not fight back and you can be sure that the damage you are doing is all in an extremely controlled environment. You can argue that it is better to do it live, but that will never consistently provide numbers as accurate as what you can get on a dummy, besides when you are live you are all messing up your personal DPS due to different armor values, occasional defensive game-play and shared buffs, so its best to immediately take all of your research and throw it in the trash, unless you care to spend days back-calculating various buffs and debuffs.

The reason I’m using mostly auto attacks is because I hadn’t found a rotation that actually provides extra DPS on a staff, as I very much appreciate now that there is one that does exist. Then frankly the only other weapon you could use for single target DPS is a dagger. In that case the only skill rotation I found, apart from keeping buffs on cooldown; will actually increase DPS… is a heart seeker spam; under 50% preferably at 25% depending on the overall health of target. The reason I chose to display D/P was because I found that intentionally using backstab actually decreased my DPS a little bit. Therefore I settled that D/P was better because of the gap closer and stun provided by the pistol help to keep time on target up thereby increasing my overall DPS, in practice.

I’m not here to argue with you though, I’m just elaborating on my decisions. So far I have seen very little to prove DPS numbers on a thief, I hoped that by simply asking I might have some guidance on this, and I’m glad I had some.

wow thats really hard to keep up. I get to 7k maybe every once every minute or so, then it just drops back to 5.6k before momentarily popping up. I can never seem to hit 7k again after about 5mins or so, it actually does stick to about 5.6-5.8k, and pretty well refuse to budge. Maybe I just have to get more used to using this rotation.

reikken.4961:

Zlater.6789:

20K!!! I’m going to see if I can get a full berserker build something close to that :/

You’ll only hit 20k with a full suite of buffs from other party members
and for some reason, no one ever seems to talk about dps potential in any other situation, so this topic has been of interest to me so far

but 4k solo dps is indeed pretty low

haha nobody ever mentions anything to do with this :/
So I guess its best to start a convo this way :P

Easy Panda I don’t know what you did to get 7k, it took me a while with that exact build, but I got an almost perfect rotation for a few mins, however the most it ever sat at was 6k, then it settled to around 5.6k

hmm I’d really like to see that build and give it a go, do you have a link to it by any chance?
I usually try to aim for 1mil damage before I make a verdict on something, the best I’ve gotten so far is 5.4k on a berzerker staff build.

@EasyPanda.5419
I’m getting 5.4k with this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EL0EmWAYCFBmrgbwR42DIBsnA-TJBFwAI3foaZAAXAgCPAAA

Now when you say 20k? do you mean a 20k vault, because I can get that to 13k now. And I guess most people wouldn’t be talking about DPS as in actual damage per second but just some skill they use a lot.

EazyPanda.6419:

I’m slightly confused. Is this supposed to be for PvP or PvE?
I’d automatically assume PvP when it’s a D/P build, but since you brought up destroying breakbars…
And DPS is not in any way helpful in PvP. Enemies are not going to stand around letting you DPS them.
Thus I’m going to assume PvE. I can’t read. Whoops.

Here are my 2 cents if it’s for PvE.

-The 2 strongest weapons are staff and main hand dagger, and its not even a little difference.
In general, D/P is not a high DPS set. For DPS, D/D is a better choice compared to D/P, but staff has the highest DPS. CnD> Backstab > 1 auto chain + 1 ds > CnD… deals much higher dps compared to simply auto-attacking.

by the way, the weapon with the highest Auto-attack DPS is the sword, followed by the staff, then only the dagger. Which means the dagger has the lowest melee auto-attack DPS

-Using initiative for doing damage will usually result in a DPS loss because of activation/cast times. So only use a skill when it will result in a DPS boost, like heart seeker; or it meets a situational requirement. Like a shadow shot to get into melee range, or basilisk venom and headshot to ridiculously quickly destroy break bars.
considering all skills are either used for boosting damage or used in different situations…. that is kind of a redundant observation. =P

-The elite specialization will only be superior to trickery while you are actually weilding a staff, not at any other point. As such bounding dodger only situationly boosts DPS, it should not be used actively but it should be ‘set and forget,’ in other words, rotating it does not boost damage.
*Whoever told you that obviously did not play DPS daredevil much. Bound’s 10% damage increase and the damage from bound itself is a much larger damage increas then from Lead attacks alone. All you need is good initiative management.

-Stolen items are mostly useless, some are good to use, but most are only if that exact situation calls for it, which is almost never, and often actually never.
whoever told you that did not play thief in PvP. The main reason why people use Improvisation in PvP is for the extra stolen skills.
True, many stolen skills in PvE are lackluster, but some are pretty useful. You many get free stealth, knockbacks, or dazes.

In terms of traits, you should always have crit strikes and deadly arts.
Sundering Strikes > Practiced Tolerance (unless you already have too much vulnerability from elsewhere)
generally practiced tolerance is the way to go. in a solo situation, you won’t stack THAT much vuln, and in a party, vuln is almost always at 25 stacks
Invigorating Precision > No Quarter (you don’t do damage while you are dead)
Hence the joy of playing thief, never getting hit
Executioner > Improvisation or Potent Poison
improv is mostly only used in PvP, and poison is only used in venomsahre builds
Thrill of the Crime >/= Haste (you should be spamming steal, even out of combat)
if only for the swiftness, i guess. But daredevil’s dash dodge will give even more swiftness in the open world

On both builds I use haste because it provides the best DPS boost of all of the utility skills, its also a stun break and condition cleansing ability.
Haste is not a very useful skill especially in a raid group. In a raid, you will have chronomancers giving out quickness, and in general fractals and dungeons it lacks utility. If you need DPS, palm strike may be a good filler skill. In PvE, you won’t need to worry about conditions or stuns very much.

The best runes to use are Scholar or Thief runes, unless you have another idea, I tried all of the free runes. Any rune without a +% is mostly inferior.
yes for scholar, nay for thief rune. Thief runes lack power or ferocity, which causes less damage. Strength runes are also a decent choice, but Scholar (<90% hp) or Ruby Orbs (overall) are the highest DPS upgrades.
Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Air provide the best DPS, Sigil of Force and Sigil of Bloodlust coming in as good replacements for Sigil of Strength though. Yes I know you are about to say it, for burst Force is better, however this is built with endgame PvE in mind.
Sigil of strength is largely redundant in group PvE because might flows like water in a group situation. One PS warrior is going to supply the whole party with 25 stacks of might in the first place. Thus, sigil force is better then sigil of might.

If you are worrying about DPS, then I’ll assume you are in a raid group.

Basilisk venom pales in comparison in to all other elites in PvE, unless you run venomshare builds. Impact strike has a daze and a launch, and deals damage on top of that.

Traits:
For critical strikes, if you are going for max dps, take flawless strikes, practices tolerance and No Quarter instead.

For Daredevil with a staff, take staff master. It gives you a 10% damage boost s well as near unlimited dodges.

4k dps is. unfortunately, fairly low, even in a solo situation. In a party situation, a thief is expected to output 20k+ dps even without quickness. I’ll use that program you used to try out my DPS to give you some idea on what kind of numbers you are suppose to hit. =)

Hope you found something useful from this post. Keep it up! There’s so little of us thieves nowadays. =(

That would be awesome

I found No Quater did help with DPS, but if I’m running scholar runes then 250 ferocity doesn’t really come in too handy, it does pop up by a couple hundred when I run them though.

20K!!! I’m going to see if I can get a full berserker build something close to that :/

I would prefer Thieves guild for just raw damage, but basilisk venom is one of the best ways to take care of a break bar, using that on headshot is often enough to take it from full to nil, that makes a huge difference!

If you use staff master, what do you do for the condi cleanse, or do you just slot one when you need it?

Is it sustained? If I get a stealth steal I will pull a backstab where ever I can. But I wont freak out if I cant. Do you have a link to the build you are using, I tried that combo before and I could get some absurd backstabs, but the damage per second didn’t go over something like 3.8k.

I can put DPS up a lot by switching in Berserkers gear, and finding some way to stack the off hand bloodlust power. But in practice I think having extra health and so not to put so much risk on losing bloodlust makes all of the difference.

You just cant sustain abilities with initiative, as a resource the management options are horribly designed. Because we start at full initiative it is a requirement for you to open with an ability for max damage over time. Because every second your initiative remains full you loose 1 initiative point. So bound and steal isn’t a good option for PvE openers on weapon skill based builds.
Then if we aren’t at 15 initiative we lose 15% damage, but that’s more of a trivial point.

Lets say my auto attacks sustainably do 4.5k dps, if I use an ability that takes 3/4 of a second to get off and does a total of 3k in damage then it means I lose 0.25k in DPS. I do use abilities, the rule of thumb for me is that I only use them when I need to, or when the damage will exceed my current expected DPS.

I started playing GW2 a month or two ago, and since I’ve been at lvl80 I’ve been working really hard to find the perfect build for me. I’ve spent so much time talking to other thieves and getting to know how they play, this is what I’ve found so.

-The 2 strongest weapons are staff and main hand dagger, and its not even a little difference.
-Using initiative for doing damage will usually result in a DPS loss because of activation/cast times. So only use a skill when it will result in a DPS boost, like heart seeker; or it meets a situational requirement. Like a shadow shot to get into melee range, or basilisk venom and headshot to ridiculously quickly destroy break bars.
-The elite specialization will only be superior to trickery while you are actually weilding a staff, not at any other point. As such bounding dodger only situationly boosts DPS, it should not be used actively but it should be ‘set and forget,’ in other words, rotating it does not boost damage.
-Stolen items are mostly useless, some are good to use, but most are only if that exact situation calls for it, which is almost never, and often actually never.

In terms of traits, you should always have crit strikes and deadly arts.
Sundering Strikes > Practiced Tolerance (unless you already have too much vulnerability from elsewhere)
Invigorating Precision > No Quarter (you don’t do damage while you are dead)
Executioner > Improvisation or Potent Poison
Thrill of the Crime >/= Haste (you should be spamming steal, even out of combat)

On both builds I use haste because it provides the best DPS boost of all of the utility skills, its also a stun break and condition cleansing ability.
The best runes to use are Scholar or Thief runes, unless you have another idea, I tried all of the free runes. Any rune without a +% is mostly inferior.
Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Air provide the best DPS, Sigil of Force and Sigil of Bloodlust coming in as good replacements for Sigil of Strength though. Yes I know you are about to say it, for burst Force is better, however this is built with endgame PvE in mind.

I have a lot of things I think about the profession, but this is only here to show you what I’m getting and to see what you guys can do and if there’s anything I can improve on.

Here are the builds:
D/P:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EH0ElOAmwIwHGpRZsfgEoCB-TpBEABAcEAI4EAYwhAIhHAAT7PYeZAA
Staff:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EL0EmWAYCFB2eAJgK0cFsDOCB-TpBEABMt/ABXAADOEAmXGAgjAQCPAAA

Oh and here’s a video of the DPS test. I completely forgot to put in a HoT (heal over time) test, but I’m sure you’ll be fine without it. My understanding is that JaxnX does not violate the ToS because it only reads my screen not the game, if that’s not right, tell me right away please.

https://youtu.be/ObQlJR6Jsjs

Spurrlock.3219:

Glad to hear you’re having fun on thief. They’re really not as bad in the current meta as people say.

You can right click on people’s names in chat to report them for bullying. I think it says abusive chat or something.

Also, unhindered combatant is a really good dodge for dealing with necros. I always take it if the other team has more than one necro because their chill hurts.

Keep having fun on thief! Hone your skills and outplay your opponents to death.

Thankyou Spurrlock.

I had this really awesome game the other day in ranked arena, it was 6 thieves 3vs3 each side with a necro also a elementalist and another profession that I forgot, and it was the most fun I’ve had in PvP yet. Everything was super fast paced, it was like a sushi kitchen and I naturally got the most points at the end xD. There were lots of 1v1’s everywhere and what was great was that there weren’t flashy epilepsy bombs going off all over the place so it was all about the combat. I wish I could do it again!

But Gibimo is right to a small extent, thieves are a little bit weaker than other classes, but I don’t feel its really much as long as I play well. I wont quit playing thief because its so fun, but I will have to eventually play other classes with their stupid cooldown abilities eventually to get ‘The Ascended’

Some things I think he is wrong about is that I’m not learning how to play so I can 1v1 against any class, I want to be better than that. And I think Chronomancers, Druids and Dragon Hunters are very hard to kill in group fights, but I also think they take a lot less work in a 1v1 vs a group fight, so given the chance I find its a good idea to deal with them alone. But that’s just my observation I guess.

EazyPanda.6419:

Zlater.6789:

Haha oh yeah fair enough, that’s my fault.

That is really helpful actually, I really like your suggestions, the build you suggested is a bit more defensive than mine I think but I’m really curious why you chose roll for initiative over shadow refuge. I kinda wrote practiced tolerance off for DPS because I was finding that sundering strikes was just a bit better and much better in groups. But now that I see you chose it I think I will give it another go.

I wonder about the healing from mug, how does it compare to the healing from invigorating precision, I will check this soon.

I’m also curious why you chose the rune of leadership, I’ve actually never even considered it before.

This is the build I’m using right now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa8Yl0MhunYpTwwJw+EL4EmXW4KsD2OABgG0cDsC2BB-TpBBAByXGojjAAAPAgi2fYjDCQAnAAA

Hi, I’m glad you’re having fun with thief in PvP, unfortunately, the sad truth is that while your build and playstyle works to a certain extent, it’s however not very viable in higher levels of PvP. Forgive me, but if you are having an easy time 1v1ing pretty much any class in pvp, chances are that you’re up against more inexperienced players.

I hope you take this as constructive criticism, and nothing more. I’m not trying to offend you, but rather give you an insight as to why some of the thieves on the forums are so cynical when it comes to your idea of PvP.

First, regarding shortbow. as you may have known, the whole reason PvP thieves take shortbow is because of SB5. You stated that by using Dash and Shadowstep, you can get around faster than with Sb5. I agree. However, you are wasting dodges, which if you take Bound instead, would give you +10% damage, up to 4k crit damage per dodge, and a leap finisher.
You’ll also be wasting a very long cooldown stunbreaker. In my experience, if you are ever caught in a hard CC without a stunbreak, you are prtty much dead.
The reason why we can afford to take SB is because we lack cooldowns, so there is no real point in taking more then 1 damage weapon set. Sure you can be more versatile with 2 weaponsets, but you’ll be giving up one the reason why thieves are taken in the first place, +1 and decapping.
And, shortbow gives you unparalleled vertical mobility. You can’t get to the roof of khylo with just one Dash now can you? Or getting past the choke points of the stairs of windmill by simply porting up the side of the ledge. SB5 is not about horizontal movement alone.

The current role of thieves are 2 things, decapping and +1 fights. Decapping uncontested points will deprive the enemy from points, while +1 will either save your teammates, or makes it faster for your teammate to capture a point. Your job requires you to be constantly on the move, exploiting weaknesses in the enemy’s team, and ending a fight as quickly as possible, hence the emphasis on burst damage. The longer the enemy stays alive on a point, the less points your team is earning/the more points the enemy is earning. A well played thief can turn a game around, provided that he is able to do his job effectively (bunker chronos, I’m looking at you. =_=)

Having 2 offensive weaponsets may work well when dueling, which you can do in private rooms, that much is certain, but in conquest, or stronghold in that matter, winning is not about killing an enemy, its about playing the objective.

As for utilities, it largely depends on your playstyle. You’ll rarely see people running shadow’s refuge anymore because of the amount of reveal and AOE flying around in the current state of the game. Dropping an SR is equivalent to saying “BOMB HERE”, or the enemy will either reveal or knock you out of SR. I’m not saying SR doesn’t work, but its harder to play against experienced enemies with SR.
Hence people take blinding powder instead, for in uninterruptable access to stealth, and an instant blind.

I personally will never play PvP without Shadowstep, if only for the stunbreak or a safe stomp. Having 2 stunbreaks and a 1200 range shadowstep is just too good to pass.

As for thieves guild, I’ll say unless you are playing a venomshare build, it’s largely a wasted elite. It deals negligible damage, and decent players will simply ignore the clones and focus on you. Basilisk venom and impact strike brings more utility to the table. Having a 2 second hard CC, or potential for an instant stomp, is better then having 2 clones with hardly does anything, objectively speaking.

As for traits, the reason why people run Deadly Arts is because of the Burst Damage. Yes, Critical Strikes may deal more damage overall, and Invigorating Precision heals a lot more then Mug if you manage to land decent amounts of damage, but Deadly Arts’s Mug gives you additional burst damage and a mediocre heal.
It applies weakness and poison on the target when you steal, immobilises the target when it’s below 50% hp, and either gives you a 20% damage boost when your target is below 50% hp, or gives you 2 uses of a stolen ability, and randomly resets your utility skills. Some stolen abilities are extremely valuable, namely Mesmers’s Ecto, Guardians’s Daze, Revenant’s OP stolen skill (slows and deals 4k crits), Thieves’ stealth for example.

Compared to Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes simply gives your more sustained damage (not burst dmg), while DA gives you more utility, and comparable damage.
I’ll personally say CS is better in PvE, but DA is better in PvP. (But then i’ll take both in PvE)

As for trickery, Sleight of hand is very much better then quick pockets. A CD reduction on steal and a Daze in steal is very useful, compared to an extra 3 initiative when you swap weapons (which is something standard thieves rarely do during fights).

For DrD, I’ll really recommend taking Bound over Dash, for more AOE pressure as well as a +10% damage boost, but that’s my opinion.

Hope you found something useful in my post, and you’re welcome to have your own opinions. I’m simply stating the current role of thieves to be effective in the current meta (but with so many bunker mesmers nowadays… they need to be toned down).

Have a nice day, and please, continue enjoying playing thief. There’s so little of us left who’s still enjoying playing thieves nowadays.

Hehe I think you are right, and thanks for being very positive. I’m still very new to the game and I’m only at the second tier so far, so I thought most of the players I’m fighting would be as bad as I am xD

I get why everyone uses the bow, and I think I would use it in WvW, but I’ve never tried WvW before. I see that I have to choose at least 1 resource to sacrifice for map control, I figured its easier to do that with endurance because its easier to recover and I can still offset dodge onto my initiative if needed. Is it a bad idea to look at my initiative and endurance as I would in a game with emphasis on resource management?
I completely forgot that I can teleport through roofs lol.

Oh I never really notice it much, I think you are definitely right about quick pockets and losing a stun break, this is definitely a weakness of mine that has come up once or twice before. I don’t think its technically the same, but couldn’t I use sleight of hand just to steal to get out of a sticky situation when shadow step is still on cool-down? I’ve done this a few times on gravity wells and other crazy cc like that but without the daze.

You are also right about shadow refuge. I really want to keep using it though, I learnt when I first started using it for escaping to make sure to use my surroundings with shadow refuge. For example I never place it at my feet, I always place it ahead of me and against a wall (or across a door if possible) so that way I can roll into it, LOS behind a door or arch, or just stand against a wall so they only knock me into the wall.

HAHA oh my gosh you agree! All of the crazy tanky mesmers I bump into on far, catapults and just out and about are almost the whole reason that I am playing more defensively. They can spam their skills almost as fast as I can, however I found I can kill them if I can just keep the pressure up for long enough, its freaking hard work though and then I still only win about half of the time, the rest I’m usually forced to make escapes or get rekt seriously badly by me doing something stupid like habitually roll dodging out from them when I should be using black powder after I know their endurance is low.

Haha yeah I couldn’t be bothered re-rolling another char just yet, I’m not even level 80 xD Hopefully by the time I reach lvl80 the devs might have done some re-balancing and people wont be so rude to me anymore. Am I allowed to report those people that bully me for being a thief?

Serious Thought.5394:

Kitten is the swear word override.

As for your build http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ this site lets you post to us. Use “Get Quick Link” on bottom when you finish building.

I tried to recreate yours though I missed some of it because you seemed unsure:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa84klOBvnA7TosTYbBAm5CC-TZBBAByXGAgHAAN7PsxRAIgTAAA

People say you need shortbow simply because it is our better ranged choice (pistols are good in certain scenarios, whereas shortbow is better in general sense) and because of the massive mobility. The other thing to remember is since we have no cooldowns, it is far more practical to grab a single set for fighting and a single set for supporting.

My personal suggestion for a build (assuming you can rotate d/p and s/d) is http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa8Yn0MBVOh9OBmOBkmiFfCzrJsEiCbBgXTAaeAmAjgA-TpBGABeXGIhDCAAPAg0OBAHcEASf/BA

You have a lot of resistance to control, a lot of mobility provided you have someone targeted, a good deal of sustainability, and some general support. However, it is far more efficient to swap crit strikes for deadly arts with all mid traits. Mug and Improv are life savers, panic strike is just good in general and you can’t get rooted so condi reflect has no meaning. On top of that, I’d highly recommend finding which set you like better then swapping the other for shortbow. High area damage and control along with high mobility is too good to pass up until we can one on one. Also, have you tried the staff yet? The reason I am asking is you have an all-in set with dagger/pistol and a burst engage set with sword/dagger and these two styles are far different, however staff has both styles but misses out on boon steal and stealth.

Just some thoughts, hope I helped. I probably didn’kittens a wall, people don’t read walls.

Haha oh yeah fair enough, that’s my fault.

That is really helpful actually, I really like your suggestions, the build you suggested is a bit more defensive than mine I think but I’m really curious why you chose roll for initiative over shadow refuge. I kinda wrote practiced tolerance off for DPS because I was finding that sundering strikes was just a bit better and much better in groups. But now that I see you chose it I think I will give it another go.

I wonder about the healing from mug, how does it compare to the healing from invigorating precision, I will check this soon.

I’m also curious why you chose the rune of leadership, I’ve actually never even considered it before.

This is the build I’m using right now:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa8Yl0MhunYpTwwJw+EL4EmXW4KsD2OABgG0cDsC2BB-TpBBAByXGojjAAAPAgi2fYjDCQAnAAA

Then I guess I will have to be the most skilled xD

The range is really low and initiative cost is super high, it takes a while to land, by then you’ve already covered half of the distance of the shot. Every time I’ve tried it I find it really is slower than the combo I am doing now. Oh I do spam shadow shot a lot so I like that I can get out of melee range when I want with a dodge. On a side note, wow there are so many gap closers to use!

Yeah I wish they would hit harder too. The extra blinds and just general noise really do change the fight ahead. Its those little things that have made me love it more though, like when you and your opponent are down, they are almost a guaranteed rally.

I thought you were supposed to use it when they are like 10% health, because if you use it when they are down its only a tiny bit shorter than a normal stomp?

What is kittens and kittening? I see it everywhere, it sounds really lame though, no offense meant.

assassin.7895:

“The Noob’s manifesto”

either this is an attempt to troll or someone is a little stupid.

thief is the worst class in the game now, deal with it. there’s nothing you can change about that, the best have tried, but failed horribly. dreams were crushed.

Man the community here really does suck.

But I wanna fight!

How do you do high burst and is it enough to kill someone? I couldnt find anyway to burst someone hard enough to down them.

I don’t really need a short bow to get around the map in pvp, and it really annoys me having useless abilities on my bar, with shadow step at 1200 range and unhindered combatant I tried and have I can move from one to the other in almost half the time it takes my to get there with infiltrators arrow, which is about as far as I need to go in any short period. I also use the dodge for the condition removal, if I bump into a tanky player I usually dodge around them a lot, maybe a bit too much at times xD So the hits don’t usually bug me, but its all of the little bits of damage I cant avoid which usually kills me. What do you use instead for condition removal? I really think that black powder and bounding dodger is a really cool combo that I never thought of.

I was using the physical elite for quite some time, I found it was real good when I could land it, otherwise it gave me so many of those “gotcha… ohh nevermind moments.” What I loved about thieves guild is that they persist even if I get downed, its a really strong elite, but you’re right its on a very long cooldown. Is it only because of the cooldown that thieves don’t use it?
If it is, its only in situational times I use it, when I’m “backcapping” or I’m in a 1v1 I dont really need it; unless I know that I’m about to get into a tough fight. I think I will continue using it.

Hey guys, I’m playing a bit of guild wars 2 because my uncle says I should play it because its fun, and it sure is I really fell in love with pvp and now that’s pretty much all I play when I play GW2. I am playing the thief and I have spend a lot of time coming up with something I really love playing and that is still very strong. I’m not sure I like the community in GW2 though, they are very mean and rude, I often get bullied for just being a thief, I have made some great friends though, there are really nice people here too.

I use mostly dagger + pistol for my main bar, it has everything I could ever ask for and I feel like no skill there is wasted, especially not shadow shot xD It has the sigil of force and the sigil of accuracy.

I also use sword + dagger for when I have to get into a group fight because it has some ranged damage lots group damage and some really great escapes that fit pretty well for group fights. the cloak and dagger skill is also really useful for stomping, I’m always visiting this bar. Not to mention the extra evade I get which is sweet. It has the sigil of energy and the sigil of leeching.
A lot of people I talk to think I should use bow, but I would only use it for poison gas and cluster bombs, and only for a little bit, its also super lame. The shadow step ability is cool and stuff if you plan to never get into a fight, but I need my initiative and daredevil gives enough of a movement buff, I’m always the first person anywhere anyway, and by a long shot too.

I use Withdraw for my healing skill, but I tried the others and also thought signet of malice is good too, the cast time kinda makes me not use it, the heal over time is hard to resist though.

Shadow Refuge is my mostest favouritestest skill of all time! The cooldown is soooooo long, it feels like its always got 10 seconds left on it xD I can use it for escape, opening, rezzing, stomping, for situational group play, for the healing and life steal… whatever I want. So I don’t mind that the cooldown is long.

Shadow step is also a usual ability, it is really helpful for escaping, re-positioning myself if I need to LOS, getting out of CC combos, but I mostly use it for getting around the map xD I have also tried most of the others and also don’t mind using them, but not as much as this one. What do you think, is there a better ability I could use here?

The last 2 are ones I struggle with though, I use signet of agility mostly because it gives me more damage and helps me trigger on crit effects that I need for self healing, it takes my crit chance to 70% without fury, but do you think assassins signet gives me more self healing with invigorating precision? I cant seem to decide, I know that passive health regen is super important for helping with that damage I cant avoid with dodge or blind, but what do you think would work best here, or have I chosen the best choice?

My elite skill is thieves guild. I also like the others, but having the thieves up just changes everything about my next fight. I think the most important thing it does is just add to the busyness of a fight and I can summon them right before I engage so I don’t have to worry about stupid cast times later. Dagger Storm is bad because it means I cant dodge, basilisk venom has a cast time which makes it wayy to tricky to use it when I actually really need it right now. Impact strike is nice, I find it sometimes getting wasted between when I start it and when I make a stomp. Am I using those elite skills wrong?

My amulet choice is the marauder, someone told me I should go with the berserker amulet, but I cant resist all of that extra health, I didn’t really find the DPS difference to be too much anyway. What are your thoughts about the other amulets, do you find them to be very useful, especially with the barbarian and celestial amulet?

Rune choice is hell for me. I really struggle, at the moment I use the rune of the eagle, but I also love rune of the thief for the superior DPS with the auto attack poison, the Rune of infiltration because I can execute quickly and have a free access to backstab or to just disengage, or rune of the pack which doesn’t have anything in particular but it has some very nice stat bonuses that I think might out perform the thief in combat.

Finally is the specializations. In daredevil I choose havoc mastery because all of my damage comes from melee range, but what do you think of that vs weakening strikes? escapists absolution is a pretty obvious choice I think. I also use unhindered combatant. I love this change to roll dodge because it wont pull me from stealth, it also means I don’t need to worry about conditions when I can just roll dodge, it has increased distance and bonus swiftness which makes it great for map control and getting in and out of melee range very quickly to annoy the hell out of whoever I have to kill. the reduction in incoming damage is also a very huge bonus if I get caught. I really feel like all of the traits are useful.

I also love critical strikes. I use side strikes which should take my crit to close to 100% during combat, sundering strikes because my crit is really high and Invigorating precision which blends really well with my crit, but I wonder if you guys find the insane up-time of fury with no quarter to be that much better? I think I would have to change a lot of my build if I ran with that though and would need signet of malice.

I still struggle with choosing between deadly arts and trickery but I think I will go with trickery because it makes spamming steal a bit more appealing without losing much damage and it comes with a lot of extra initiative. I chose thrill of the crime bountiful theft and quick pockets. I struggle thrill of the crime vs caltrops and quick pockets vs both of the other 2. I chose thrill of the crime because I found vs other thieves that caltrops kinda gives away your direction and tells your pursuers where you went. I like to have the initiative there when I need it, so for example when I need to stomp and I cant use my bling field, I can just stomp with my cloak and dagger. I don’t know how useful a 1 second daze is, but i imagine it would add an extra layer on steal by making it interrupt or how far a bit of torment will go toward killing the person I’m facing. What are your thoughts on this?

I know I am asking so many questions, but I wanted to get your opinions on these things. I can 1v1 (except I only stand a chance if I have thieves guild up) decap/cap and zip around the map like I’m supposed to, but when its in 1v2 or even 2v2+ I kinda suck. I know everyone says that thief is bad but this is my first time playing so please help me out a little bit. Thanks everyone for your help.