Guild Wars 2

To any Maguuma who are complaining about spawncamping or poor sportsmanship on here…this is what I saw when I logged in to Mag BL today:

Same situation at each of the three exits from spawn.

I don’t personally care about this. We’re winning by a lot, and spawncamping only lasts till we break through. Just wanted to point out that Mag is making a coordinated effort at spawncamping. So if anyone has an issue with a handful of TC people doing the same…well maybe you should start working on your own server first. We’ll try to do likewise.

asura have a slight advantage in very high level play. When playing against people who anticipate moves based on character animations, the asura animations are smaller and harder to notice.

Some people like the human outfits better. With humans you can make your guy look like a cowboy or pirate…similar armor looks kinda silly on asura, and the human cultural armor isnt available.

I play asura though, and my guy looks like a kid dressed up as a power ranger. I even went with weapons that look like toys. The asura animations are kind of fun, but silly. They always look like they’re barely balancing, also the sword/pistol 3-skill looks like a warner brothers cartoon. Speaking of which, I once saw an asura warrior who managed to look just like marvin the martian.

So as you can see the main concerns are aesthetic. I happen to like the aesthetic, but if your friend doesn’t, he may want to go with something else.

-enjoy your scepter while you can…after that last SOAC gaming podcast, Kylia is going to get it nerfed :p.

I made a pretty nice s/d build that has clerics armor/zerker trinkets. Acrobatics works really nicely there. Especially the newly buffed pain response. Between this, regular heals, and some health regaining foods, I find myself not dying of attrition in protracted fights, like I used to.

The trick is it removes conditions + gives regen if you’re under 75% health every 30 seconds. with the +boon duration that’s 13 seconds of regeneration for every 30, when you need it. The condition clear means if someone bursts me with damaging condis, I’m saved. Between this and withdraw, I can frequently get in and out of a zerg, without having to wait too long to reset.

Having invested so much into acrobatics, and using s/d means I rarely stealth, and really have to rely on mobility to keep away from larger numbers. But all in all, I feel like s/d is stronger than it was before this last patch…or maybe I’ve just gotten better.

http://bit.ly/1aAh06H

As you mention playstyle is important.
IMO for d/d – battle makes more sense – since you don’t want might eventually, you want it in time for the first backstab.
For p/p strength makes sense, since you’re hitting a lot, assuming you’ve got frequent crits, you can probably maintain slightly more might over time.

As Shemsu pointed out, you shouldn’t run two sigils with cooldowns in the same set, because they share a global cooldown, so your battle sigils are making your air sigils not proc.

Better to go with one constant effect and one proc effect on each weapon. Also best not to have something like Air on one set and battle on the other – since if air procs and you swap before the cd is up, you won’t get battle to proc.

As to whether to go with air or strength/battle, I think Air is probably more dps, and also not subject to boon removal.

Hey all, the OP seemed pretty satisfied with some of the more helpful responses here. This started as a mild QQ thread, but more a sincere request for advice. Many of us gave that advice. Now it’s devolved into “nerf it all” vs “you’re a jerk”. Let’s leave it be for now please.

I think there are some builds that use this with the trait that gives retaliation for blocks, in heavy ranged scenarios (i.e. wvw) to stack long duration retaliation. Haven’t played with it much, but it certainly improves survivability…not much use vs necro marks and wells, which seems to be about all I’m seeing in wvw these days.

@archon, actually I play that build…the damage comes from condition damage, caltrops and death blossom spam. It does pretty well in duels, zerg battles and small groups. The survivability comes from frequent stealth/tps and evades. Not saying its the strongest build, but it is very mobile, and fun.

@gaspara-you’re right, the thief mobility has less margin for error because you need to select targets, ground target, and sometimes turn around quickly to do those back-leaps.

MiLkZz.4789:

I love the rally mechanic and think it is an unique addition to the game and should not be removed. And hope it will never get either.

This ain’t the main reason why guilds don’t want bambis to follow them. They want to run with their guild alone and do things as a guild. They run tagless not only to make bambis not follow you, but also that the enemy can’t focus down the leader. Mostly there is a bambi commander on the map and all bambis should follow him. Not the guild, the guild can do insane things if the bambi commander pulls away the attention.

Bambis give away location, die and rally enemy, can’t hear your instructions, group up way to late. So in other words they are useless to a guild. That is why a guild does not want them to follow them.

I’m pretty much with you here, my guild has done some great things as havoc squads, but also fields a few commanders regularly. Part of being a responsible wvw guild is recognizing the need for commanders in every zone, but also recognizing that only one or two commanders should be running in a given zone at a given time. When my guild’s commanders are in a zone, they don’t just pop their tags, they check with the other commanders, and get a sense for who is in charge, and whether they are comfortable with sharing/ceding leadership – and whether this would be useful. The commander leads the zerg, and ideally is in some sort of communication with leaders from guilds that may be performing alternate operations. Too many commanders means the server gets split into small groups and then we may as well have no commander.

The commander leads the zerg, full of random players (we call them “militia” on TC), while guilds are like special forces teams, sometimes operating on their own, sometimes coordinating with the commanders, sometimes doing boring, thankless tasks, sometimes running with the zerg or fielding their own commanders, creating a strong core of the zerg.

While the rally mechanic does make a few mindless stragglers less welcome, I believe we all recognize that there is still value in numbers, and leaving 20+ people in a borderland to wander leaderlessly is a waste of resources. It’s better to risk a few rallies and have someone wear a tag than leave the whole server a patchwork of unaffiliated tiny groups who all get swallowed up by the enemy zerg 1 by 1.

While the rally does punish fools, and their associates, it also allows for battles to turn, rather than simply going to the bigger force, or the one that struck harder first. If a group is losing a battle, a quick focus fire and rally can give them a chance to regroup and change things. Meanwhile it makes stomps an important element of cementing a victory. If you just steamroll through a group, you may down many of them, but if you don’t take the time to finish them, it won’t matter. This adds richness and depth to combat, and the social consequences are not very dire at all.

Scorael.8952:

Incurafy.6329:

Like Xmtrcv said above me, you basically answered your own question. Snare a Thief and they’re dead regardless of what build they’re running.

Also, just to clear something up, a Thief using D/P for a pseudopermenant stealth isn’t able to burst people down in seconds, ttheir damage isn’t that great. Secondly, they gain stealth by using Heartseeker through Black Powder. If you stand in it then they can’t use it to gain more than a single 3 second stealth.

The thief I engaged just kept dropping black powder on the floor (red circles with smoke?) and still maintained perma-stealth without engaging anything else. He still managed to burst down a ranger in a good 5 seconds.

Also, first thing I do when I see a thief is to throw snares at him. The issue is if he stealths I don’t know where I can throw my snares. If there is a way to at least gauge where his position is, it will even the odds.

Try playing a thief for a bit in pvp…once you do, their movements become predictable, and then once again skill level of the thief will determine whether you catch them or not.

You mentioned indicators that the thief is there…the red dot from black smoke in a perma stealth build, the little house above shadow-refuge, the little puff of smoke from blinding powder. All of that stuff gives away a thief’s location, the combo for perma stealth is:
drop black powder on your location
heartseeker out-turn around
heartseeker back in
heartseeker out.

If you can aoe on the black circle when it goes up, there’s a good chance you catch the thief. If the thief reacts quickly and avoids the aoe, well that means they didn’t pull off their stealth combo and just wasted a lot of initiative. The stealth will start to run out if this happens once or twice.

If you snared the thief before they went into stealth, keep aoeing the spot they were standing. They may have condition cleanse on stealth, and they may have heal while in stealth, but they can’t have all of that and solid perma-stealth.

I play a thief – though not a perma-stealth build. But I also play mesmer, today I dueled a d/p stealth focused thief in wvw (as mesmer) and won by just anticipating attacks. When he was stealthed for a bit, I’d throw up a block or dodge, all -the while doing aoe damage. I only occasionally saw the thief when he went out of stealth, just long enough to get up a few clones to keep up the pressure and keep the thief on his toes.

As thief I’ve dueled my guildmates who play d/d eles, and I have not been able to beat them. They are much better players than me, but that consistent pbaoe spam is just tough for a squishy thief to get through. So then the other option is to go ranged – which just does not work vs an ele, with those great gap closers. I realize in wvw, you can’t always anticipate a sneak attack, but hey we all have to deal with it, we need quick reaction time, and a good sense of awareness. Frankly without those, you can suffer the same insta-gib burst from a sneaky elementalist or warrior.

so finally got it set up in wvw. The one major issue with scepter in zerg vs zerg fights is it’s a slow projectile that doesnt track, so if it misses-no clone. The blocks are easy to get…I just move around and eventually aoe hits me.

I’m thinking of using greatsword as an alternate for chasing situations, since the 2 skill has a quick cd and spawns a clone near the target (and the phantasm is no slouch vs a zerg). I’m really trying to drop clones into zergs so people waste time killing them and they do aoe conditions. Shatters can also work for this since the clones probably get killed before they can shatter. As long as they’re in range it’s good.

as you pointed out, variations get farther from the original. For me, I’ve gone more extremely toward dropping/killing clones, and am trying to think of the best ways to do this in different wvw situations. so far it seems to be staff – scepter/sword for small groups and gs – scepter/sword for zergs.

@archon-
I totally agree about the sprint thing…I don’t play warrior, so I’ve got no personal experience to draw on.

I’m currently playing a condi-tank build that has very high mobility and initiative regen.

the thing is, I am limited by initiative, but I dont just have to wait for it. I get cooldowns too and they help a lot.

First I get 1 initiative every second
an extra 3 initiative every 10 seconds (trait and infil-signet)
5 initiative from steal every 21 seconds (and a short speed boost in stealth)
2 initiative from my heal every 30 seconds
So in a minute I’m getting 60 + 18 + 15 + 4 initiative = 97 initiative
so thats about 16 infiltrator arrows in a minute or 1 every 4 seconds (which ignores the 2.5 free ones you get at the beginning for starting with full initiative).
this is in addition to 3 × 1.5k steals in a minute (in a distance wvw run, you can probably expect at least two of them to be profitable distance wise, maybe giving you an extra 1k distance each.

This is all in addition to perma-swiftness and occasional bursts of speed in stealth.
I also left out infiltrator signet-because I counted its initiative regen instead, so we’re assuming no activations.

I know energy + hydromancy would be amazing, right? sadly it’s not an option. Both have cooldowns and when the cooldown procs any other sigils cant proc till the cd is over. I actually tested that combo, and only one procs. I also tried hydro (cd 9 secs) and the poison on swap one (no cd)…only one procs. Not sure about two with no cd.

Also if you use energy (9cd) and a proc on crit sigil, you wont get any procs during the 9 sec cooldown.

Also if you take a proc on crit sigil with a cd(like earth-cd5), then immediately swap to an on swap weapon, it won’t proc. Basically those cds are global.

So essentially, you only want one on swap or on crit sigil per set. and you should probably only have one type in your build, so the crit cooldowns dont interfere with the swap ones.

Not sure how armor runes work, but I’m pretty sure theyre on different cds.

how about, when you attempt to dodge while immobilized/stunned/etc. You will instead tp back 1000…something to make it predictable and under your control.

I’ve been doing a balanced boon-share/mantra healing support build with Bountiful interruption in pve, works great. I like using sword/focus and staff for it, but you get the same results, lots of interrupts, right before the boonshare.

one more thing…your sigils are wrong. They share cooldowns so you won’t get to proc them all. I’d suggest, especially if you go with something like two dual weapons, doing sigils that proc after weapon swap – so you’d get a proc every ten seconds.

sigils of energy on each set, means a free dodge (and clone) every 10 seconds.

Sigils of hydromancy would add chills – which would round this out with another snare + defensive condition, making cleansing harder. You can get this for 4 out of every 10 seconds.

For the off-hand sigils, I’d go with something that increases condi-duration, depending on what you want…you may go with chill/bleed/weakness duration.

I was just playing around with this in pvp today…now I’m gearing up for it in wvw. I see it as a strong counter-tactic to the necro mark spam that we’ve been going up against lately in zerg vs zerg.

I also tried out different weapons, and with your same trait distribution, it’s possible to trait out sword, which opens up using scepter/sword for extra clones/blocks and maybe sword/torch in the other set for when you need to chase someone/disappear.

crouze.3078:

bobross.5034:

Vitality boosts survivability vs conditions.

In my oppinion this is so wrong.
Vitality only helps against burst damage. (on 10k HP professions more then on 18k HP professions)

I think its the worst defensive attribut.

I more or less agree with you that it helps vs burst, and that it’s not a great defensive attribute by itself. But it does give something, and the picture as a whole is somewhat complex.

Vs all damage, vitality affects the health pool, so boosting vitality makes it take more hits to get you.

Toughness also makes it take more hits to get you, but does nothing vs condi-damage.

Investing everything into toughness makes you strong vs regular damage, but vulnerable to condis.

Investing everything into vitality makes you reasonably strong vs condis, but still fairly squishy as a whole.

Investing in a mix of vitality and toughness gives the best of both worlds. Vitality becomes more valuable, the higher your toughness; so 1000 hps on a tough character may represent 2 hits negated, whereas on a squishy character, it may only represent 1 hit negated. This is why many people recommend an even split of toughness and vitality for most builds.

Similarly, toughness + healing power are great together, since decent healing on a tough character is effectively cancelling – say 10 hits. Whereas the same amount of healing on a squishy character may effectively cancel -say kittens.

Back to thieves – low vitality in general makes it hard to work this out, as ideally you really don’t want to get hit much either way.

The other issue that I see is the way the lines buff stats for thieves.

SA buffs healing and toughness, which go well together, but leave open a weakness – condition damage: which hurts if you don’t have vitality. Except the traits then balance this out by giving you condition cleansing.

Acrobatics buffs vitality and boon duration. Boon duration is sort of mediocre on thieves as far as survivability, since there aren’t many defensive boons (aside from vigor, which we need to specially build for. Vitality boosts survivability vs conditions. On other classes, investing in vitality alone can make them outlast a condi build without good condition removal. On thieves, with our tiny hp pool, this really only buys us a tiny bit of time. The lack of consistent condition clearing makes this build still vulnerable to conditions. Meanwhile, it does have good avoidance of damage, with the extra dodging and initiative (for use with evade skills), but it still doesn’t feel like we cover as many bases as Shadow Arts – defensively. On the other hand, all the +initiative stuff and + boon duration can help us out offensively, but not as much as either of the offensive lines would. So it winds up being a bizzarre, reckless offense-minimal defense traitline, that should ideally be taken in conjunction with another offense traitline.

Since this latest patch, I’ve been playing around with thief, and it is very fast. If I were going to make a raw speed build like 0/0/20/20/30, it’d be able to:

Steal – 1500, dropping into stealth with 12 seconds of swiftness on a 21 second cd
Stealth – while in stealth run 50% faster – yup a bit faster than swiftness alone
Infiltrator signet – 900 teleport toward target
Dodge for swiftness (only 3 seconds per dodge, but taken with steal, that’s perma-swiftness).
Infiltrator Arrow – 900 teleport (since the build also has high initiative regen, this is pretty spammable, just needs ground targetting).
Withdraw + Roll for initiative – two moves to jump backwards, used together you gain some good distance.

Optimal use of all of these together would take some skill, but it is possible, and the result is amazing speed.

Eles are certainly good as well, but I have consistently been able to chase them down before this patch (after their ride the lightning nerf). With the new buff to steal, there is no contest.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Thieves had to be completely useless for them not to be whined about. Just run with a Shadow Trap and vanish in thin air, I am sure that will rise more QQ eventually.

except when it fails about 30% of the time and tps you less than 5 feet.

s/p is more straightforward…but also kinda boring.

joshisanonymous.5270:

Jakare.6807:

Like Forty Seven Ninjas.6982:

Just make it so they appear after any attack during stealth. Boom, problem solved, bad thieves super suck now, good thieves are still good.

I have a thief, I play said thief, I think it’s stupid that I get free chances at my backstabs as even if they are evaded or blocked. Makes 0 sense.

I completely agree with this, what’s super ridiculous is that even if I backstab into a block or an aegis I still don’t break stealth, so i can break a guardian’s aegis and backstab inmediately, or with something like a shield block I can just carry on spamming 1 until the block is down without losing anything. That doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t promote skill.

I wasn’t aware of this, actually. I’ve put up a block against thieves before and seen “block block block block” pop up, like 5-6 times real quick, and simply assumed it was their regular chain and that not being revealed was some sort of lag. What you’re saying is that they’re actually repeatedly hitting me with backstabs and then landing the backstab once my block goes down?

backstab is the autoattack for dagger mainhand – with the prerequisite that the thief must be stealthed to pull it off. So since a miss (or apparently blocked attack) doesn’t reveal the thief, they can continue to auto-attack backstabs until one lands. the better defense for you going against a thief in that situation is when you see the blocks, you know their position more or less. this lets you immediately turn to face them, which will halve their damage on a backstab. You can also swipe at them at this point.

If you watch jumper’s videos (an evasion based thief http://www.twitch.tv/loljumper/c/2238503) where he duels a stealth based thief, you notice him determining the thief’s position by using evades and noticing when it registers an evade. Obviously these are both excellent players playing on a very high level, but the same principle applies in regular play.

yeah, I have lost many duels as a thief to elementalists. They can be very tough to kill, with good aoe burst damage. Basically the bane of thieves. Then again, vs a noob elementalist, a noob thief should win -that’s probably because a solid ele build takes a bit more skill to get started with than a solid thief build (skill floor), at the other end, (skill ceiling) both can improve drastically with player skill.

It does work, but smoke screen is much more obvious, which causes problems to a thief trying to escape…on the other hand it blocks missiles, and you can ground target it, so you could use it as a distraction if people are aoeing your smoke screen.

I think it just comes down to – you have 3 utilities, and while this is a nice trick, it makes much more sense to take blinding powder for emergencies, and shadow-refuge for the long stealth. That leaves you with one utility left, and going without a stun-breaker is asking for trouble…so shadow-step or shadow-trap, and now you’re out of utilities.

Personally, I’ve liked the steal buffs the best, though the d/d (poison duration/death blossom/dancing dagger) buffs were pretty nice and have encouraged me to start playing d/d as a condition tank build.

My favorite combo has been to use infiltrators strike and steal (with the long-range buff) to close a 2k distance gap, all while channeling caltrops, so that it pops as I steal, thereby dazing the opponent and cloaking me, allowing me to backstab and start spamming death blossoms. I’ve basically used shadow-arts to turn steal into roll-for-initiative.

This build has been fun in wvw, and gives me a new sense of what to do in zerg vs zerg fights. Harrassing with aoe.

Shadow trap has also been a very important (but buggy) lifeline for me in this playstyle.

In Pve, I’ve noticed a disturbing problem – I have more toughness and vitality than I did with my zerker build, but I feel less survivable. It seems that I’ve gone too high with toughness, and now I am getting focus-fired. Even as a tanky thief, I don’t have access to boons like aegis and protection, and my evades, though frequent don’t defend against random pve focus fire. Not sure how to fix this, but I think the build that is working for me in wvw needs some heavy modifications for pve viability.

I know people are upset about a few nerfs to the thief class, and there are already threads addressing that. So I thought I’d start a thread to consider the buffs that happened. Please leave the QQing for another thread as I don’t need to hear anymore about thieves being overpowered, or the nerf making you want to quit the game.

So disclaimer aside,
what is your favorite buff to thieves from this patch?
Has it significantly changed your build / playstyle?
Are new builds viable now, that weren’t before?
Do you have any tips for fellow thieves on how they could use these new skills?

havent played ele, but from my understanding they are a solid all-around profession in pve/wvw and pvp. Regarding thieves, they can do well in wvw, but tend to take a decent amount of skill to play in high end pve (monsters hit harder and there is a low margin for error…if you miss your dodges, you can easily die).

I think it comes down to your playstyle and goals.
Thieves are all about hit and run, opportunist style play.
Eles tend to either have more staying power in their tanky builds, or more range options, and lots of aoe.
Thieves swap weapons only to access the skills they want. So shortbow would be used for ranged and mobility, while melee may be used for the majority of a 1v1 battle.
Eles swap attunements to access specific skills and to deal with cooldowns on skills, so they tend to swap often.

Mere Image.8376:

I would have preferred that the moved the trait farther down like they did with Illusionists Celerity, rather than making it absolutely worthless. . . Come on Anet. What were you thinking?

I was thinking something similar…that or swap it out for a major trait, so only specialized retal builds would use it, and it wouldn’t be an automatic in phantasm builds.

Sovereign.1093:

I don’t get it. FA really wanted to fight TC last time. And now that they do and is about to end, all the negative talks are filling this forum like a plague.

Careful what you wish for?

Anyway, ty FA and K. both of You are awesome this week. Just like old times.

I don’t think it’s that bad. My experience with FA (and kainang) this week has been 90% positive. Aside from us outnumbering them 80% of the time, there have been some good fights.

There was a bit of drama on these forums, but I really think those involved represent a vocal minority of both servers (who like to complain), and if you read through it, you’ll see that even they resolved their differences by the end.

Been a great matchup, guys, and I hope to see FA again sometime, though maybe after you guys get a match-up where you’re on top for a while.

Virgil.3869:

Also I wouldn’t mind if they reverted Skale Venom back to Weakness from Torment and place Torment on Pistol #2.

both great suggestions. If torment is going to stay on a venom, it needs to be better than it is (i.e. more stacks, more charges, etc.) as it is, it is never worth taking, even in a venom condition build, as any utility is better and there are already 3 other better (in all situations) venom options for utilities.

torment on pistol 2 would be great, especially since p/p haas such issues with any sort of movement control. Of course p/d has the newly decent dancing dagger, but the added option of torment would make for some interesting choices in battles. Thieves may have to choose between using CnD – sneak attack for bleeds, or use body shot (maybe rename it to ankle shot) to restrict movement. It also opens up the strategy of alternating between 3 and 2 to kite/kill meleers

Oh you could also make it like that engie shotgun skill, with more /less torment depending on range. Again, giving more strategy elements to that sort of build (wait for approach, hit 2, and quickly hit 3 and start autoattacking. If they start kiting away, they’re good, and the thief has to find a way to get in close. For P/P it punishes people getting close, but still leaves unload for range.

to the OP, interesting suggestion, but it goes against the precise/bursty feel of the thief and makes them into more of a paper warrior with venoms. As others have mentioned, we want the venoms to proc when we need them, not randomly.

Virgil, I like your suggestion, sort of like mesmer mantras. I also like the idea of a thief hiding in shadows and reapplying poisons since they have cast times. It’s the perfect time for that, and it gives some great counterplay if the casting can be interrupted.

Then again, some of the appeal of venoms is the instant cast. Maybe though, they could be rebalanced so that each application is a single use, but recharges are better. So for example, a venom with a 30 second recharge and 2 applications could just be changed to a 15 second recharge single application. This of course messes with certain traits, like the one giving might on venom application. This could easily be rebalanced to give a single stack of might per application, which might give marginally more might in a venom focused build, and less might in a build with a splash of venom. But the venoms should be the main attraction anyway, right? With the might being a bonus, not the other way around. It would also affect the skill that gives an extra application of a poison, which would probably have to be redesigned altogether (since it wouldn’t work at all in this system). Maybe switch it to a trait that gives a single stack of torment per venom attack – seems worthy of a grandmaster venom trait.

The problem with this and virgil’s suggestions are that they both would require a lot of clicking. and may lead to a playstyle that feels downright spamtastic.

Hey all, seems like this whole thing is getting kind of tense. Lots of accusations about spawncamping, glitching and poor sportsmanship. I obviously can’t speak for the whole server, but for myself, I’ve been respectful, even partying up with kaineng and FA players to duel and comment (positively) on their skills.

Also, when you see a few people spawncamping, please realize that this happens on every server, especially when one server outmans the others. And though it’s obnoxious, it doesn’t represent the whole server. I had the outmanned buff in Kaineng BL last night and found about 20 guys from FA spawncamping us (TC). Rather than try to fight or run, I /sat to indicate that they should think about what they were doing and they just killed me. The bulk of them moved on after a few minutes, but some stuck around, and I msg’d with them to remind them that they are representing their guilds (who I won’t name, because I assume that it’s just a couple of loose cannons and not the guild as a whole responsible) in poor sportsmanship.

But this is a video game, and we have to realize that immature people are going to play it, and be immature. They wind up on every server to some extent. Many of us try to keep people in line and remind them to be good sports, but they don’t always listen.

Regarding the glitching, people received a sincere appology from one of our good commanders who tried to stop it. Never-mind the fact that in the video, the defenders obviously didn’t have the numbers to defend the keep anyway, despite half the attackers leaving out of courtesy. Can we just leave it at; “it was a glitch, some people took advantage of it, maybe out of ignorance or maybe discourtesy. Many others left out of courtesy, and in the end, it probably doesn’t matter much anyway, since this isn’t a close match.”

engies can do a dual pistol build I believe, you may want to give that a shot.
I actually enjoy p/d right now, its an odd playstyle, part melee, part shooting and good condition damage.

the venom share build excels at cc. If you’re roaming with a small group, you can easily focus someone down with careful use of venom share. The constant immobilizes and stones and chills will keep them in place long enough to down.

Then again, necros do it better. Still it’s a fun change of pace. I tried it a bit, but got tired of not being a good duelist.

randomfightfan.4091:

DanH.5879:

OIIIIIO.7825:

^^ No Value added I will give a reply though as I find your analysis incorrect.

Thief is very strong for DPS and this is important in PvE. (Above All)

A bad thief is bad, a good thief is going to bring the most single target damage out of any profession in an organized group.

warriors will just laugh at what you said…
explain why there are no 4 thieves+mesmer in cof p1 farm ?

Because a few warriors made warrior vids saying warriors is the end all be all of pve. About 50% of the player base is warrior as well and warrior is the easiest profession to play in pve. It’s easier to get a passable warrior then a good thief and the thief needs to be good to be better than a warrior. The best potential for a CoF run is 3 thieves, 1 war, 1 mes (need the banners) but nobody cares about saving a few seconds when it’s 20x harder to get decent thieves and even harder to get a warrior that is willing to put a fire field down to let the thieves stack the might before the fight starts. Most thieves also aren’t running 25-30-x-0-x.

The MAIN reason you don’t see mainly thief runs in cof is b/c of ignorant people like you. You’re close minded about the potential of a class if played properly so you just bash (edit for swear filter) it and believe what every pug tells you. Btw, ignorant isn’t an insult, it just means you aren’t aware of the facts yet.

I’ve done plenty of CoF and AC runs on my thief and find them fun and relatively easy.
Incidentally, not many people run cof p3 because it’s “too hard”. I ran it in a group with a fellow thief. Only one of the players knew the run. He said it was the fastest run he’d ever seen. As a zerker thief, I was able to solo one of the parts where people are supposed to split up. We were able to stealth everyone past some turrets that insta-gib. We also managed to do enough aoe damage while surviving in that major battle against lots of guys. Thieves kept stealth resing people as they fell, and just doing solid, consistent aoe damage with shortbow, while kiting. Nothing shameful about that at all…it’s just thieves have a much lower margin of error in pve dungeons.

I run a lot of berserker gears in dungeons, no problem, I’ve even excelled in AC, even made it half-way through the boss fight despite the bug that gets rid of all your utilities and heals. The trick is using mobility.

For me, I like d/p for stealth, or s/d for mobility as well as shortbow.

Lately, I’ve also been playing around with d/d and p/d condi-tank builds.

In kholer, S/D is great, and makes you more survivable than most. use that 2 skill to engage, and when he pulls just hit it again. Otherwise, you can use range, and then use shadowstep to get out if pulled. You always want a stunbreak though (in dungeons and wvw).

You may want to get some heavier gear until you survive better, but honestly, the zerker gear will be almost as good. Many bosses can 1 hit kill any player, so why even try to tank them as a thief? Just get to know the bosses and get good at dodging at the right time.

whelp the original post here is a bit out of date since the latest nerf. So again, QQers rest easy…the thief is finally squashed….

My favorite complaint about thieves is how they always get away…and it’s not fair, they should just die when they’re supposed to. Nevermind that base health is 10k, and the armor is paper. Never mind that 2 hits from your tanky build brought that thief down to 20%, it should’ve stuck around for that third hit, and since it didn’t it’s OP.

As Craig pointed out, other classes can be quite survivable as well, even when specc’d glass. The difference is that if you go against a guardian and can’t bring him down to 80%, after a while, you give up and decide wow, that was a good match. If you go against a decent thief, you may land a few blows on them, but if you bring them down to 20% and get away, you say…aww, I should’ve won that one and the OP’d thief got away!

So the issue here is really psychology. In one case you hit the guy 20 times and barely do a dent, so he must be a good player. In the second case you hit the guy 5 times, nearly kill him and then he gets away, so that’s unfair.

The whole reason thieves have such low health is because we have so many survival skills, it’s the reason you can be outplayed by thief, and still feel like you should’ve won. Just remember, if the thief isn’t downed, or running away from you, you haven’t won.

Hellride.6571:

Not trying to start anything TC but arent you a little tired of zerging around with 40ish people to kill our measly 15……

I’m not offended, I saw this from your side when we went up against SoR. The thing is, you don’t get it from our side. During our prime times, We all want to play WvW, right? So we’re in a Borderland, everything else is queued up, there are no camps/towers to flip. A camp turns blue, I run over there, and by the time I get there everything is dead and we’re just waiting on the cooldown.

When orange swords go up, everyone runs to it. It’s not like an organized zerg, it’s everyone in the zone who was bored and waiting for a fight. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always turn out to be a fair fight, as we can outnumber you guys a lot, especially in the borderlands (since people tend to like EBG most).

I don’t want to disparage you guys, I’ve also seen some great stuff coming from FA and Kaineng, including some nice Zerg v Zerg and smaller skirmishes. It’s just hard when we’re out in force, and the enemies sort of dry up.

The issue of course is the population difference between our servers, and I hope that you all understand that it’s not something we can control, and it’s not what we would prefer. I believe most players like roughly even fights that we can win through strategy and tactics. And when I’ve gotten those, it has been awesome, especially going up against our old friends in FA.

s/d gives a lot of really nice tools for pve and pvp/wvw. You can use 2 to get in, spam 3 a bit for a bit of a damage boost/boon ripping and your auto-attacks are pretty solid. If things get too hot, hit 2 again to get out.

The builds can vary a bunch, but it’s possible to make a build that is nearly constantly evading if you invest enough in acrobatics and/or trickery. Alternately you can do a hybrid that uses some stealth for survivability. Either way it’s a fun, very mobile playstyle.

one more thing – with the may patch, s/d got a major buff with skill 3 (flanking strike) where the pathing was fixed, and it got split into two great skills. They also nerfed it a bit in this latest patch (upped it’s initiative cost). On the plus side, the autoattack got a buff – because weakness now affects every attack, including crits. So by autoattacking you can help reduce damage by about 12.5 %.

regarding the “bundle” thing, that’s a stolen skill right? Because I decided to try that and runes of the engineer in heart of the mists with steady weapons and found that my damage only went up from 132 per hit to 134. Correct me if I’m wrong but 15% bonus damage should do more than that.

yeah, but the reason that mesmers were powerful underwater was that they could easily stack tons of bleeds with their clones. That nerf hit their opness hard. I play mesmer and thief, and actually mesmers got hit pretty bad all around with this set of nerfs. Not that it’s important to argue who got hit worse. I think mesmers are pretty balanced now. Thieves, I think have a way to go to get some build diversity. There’s still one or two solid builds that have been nerfed now, and other stuff doesn’t seem to compare.

don’t know how a thief gets through that harpy fractal. I imagine the rest are still fairly do-able with a zerky thief. I have full zerker armor on my thief and have done most of the regular dungeons and a few fractals (though nothing high level). As far as builds…not sure there, stealing’s gotten better, shortbow’s a tiny bit worse, but nothing that’ll affect dungeons. S/D is pretty solid all-around. Good auto-attack damage, and there are builds on here that will give you loads of dodges and evades.

mesmers got an underwater nerf too.. their bleeds are half duration. just fyi. Thieves still suck underwater. I like using my 5 skill on speargun to move around quickly…thats about it.

tested it out in a keep defense. I snuck around behind the zerg, put down my shadow trap a good distance and condition bombed in. managed to get out alive, with about 5-10 guys distracted by me, and when the whole thing was cleared, I had 10 loot bags.

I tried a few other times too. Once on the steps of hills, I did this and got knocked off the stairs. As I fell, I shadowtrapped back to safety just in time to get a few loot bags and watch the guys retreat. I’m not taking credit for these victories, my server is kicking butt right now, and it’s hard to find a fair fight, still it’s probably useful to have thieves distracting parts of the zerg.

I’ve also had episodes where shadow-trap doesn’t work at all….very buggy skill.

ok a few new ideas…for a zerg bombing build
you can do this combo:
with signet of malice on heal
Select a target in the middle of zerg
Precast shadow trap from far away (2k) from zerg
Start channeling caltrops
infiltrators signet
steal to the middle of a zerg
caltrops drops
death blossom spam
dagger storm
destroy shadow trap

been trying it out on the pvp dummies and I can kill most of them without them even getting to react.

Hi all, I’ve been playing around with a build that I’m going to call my STEALth build.

Essentially, it’s loads of easy stealth fueling either death blossoms or pistol sneak attacks

The build is 20/0/20/0/30
In deadly, I have:
-sundering strikes (vulnerability as a cover condition)
-Improvisation (+10% damage after steals and can recharge skills)
In Shadow I have:
-Infusion of shadow (extra init on stealth)
-Hidden Thief (stealth on heal)
In Trickery I have:
-Thrill of the crime (buffs on steal)
-Bountiful theft (vigor on steal + steal boons) – good for small groups / long reach to tp into zergs for dagger storms and death blossoms.
-Sleight of hand (faster steal recharge + daze)

Now with all of these it’s actually enough with P/D build to do a variation on perma-stealth the stealing gives free stealth and initiative, which allows you to get more stealth spam with black powder if you want. You also have a bigger initiative pool. The downside, is you’ve invested a ton in condition damage, and you don’t do any damage with conditions (it’s possible to do a critical strikes variation for this purpose).

So I’ve tested this out a bit, and it works out ok with shortbow, d/d and d/p to do decent power/condition damage. I don’t have all rabid gear yet, but that’s what I’m going to work towards. I’m also thinking melandru runes, to flesh this out as a condi tank.

As far as skills, I like
Signet of Malice – with both death blossom and sneak attack, this is a solid consistent heal, and with enough toughness you can tank pretty well (not to mention the frequent stealthing).

blinding powder – great all around skill
signet of shadows / shadow trap – more mobility, shadow trap seems to be working similarly to how shadowstep used to work, as a solid escape. It’s a bit buggy though, so you want to be careful of your placement.
roll for initiative / haste – I want a trick in here to get recharged from improvisation – haste is more useful with d/p since initiative is never an issue.
dagger storm – more bleeds and heals with signet of malice.

Anyway what do you guys think? It’s still in development phases, but I think it’s got potential in wvw. Maybe in pvp too?

i see it as a nerf to glass cannon builds. shortbow made glass thieves both good at roaming and decent in zergs. The new improvement in death blossom and signet of malice seems aimed at encouraging thieves to play tankier builds. with the new changes to steal (max 1500 range) thieves can now steal to a group and spam death blossom, doing some solid damage on a tanky build.

Also the new buff to shadow trap (or whatever it’s called?) gives thieves an escape button for tricky situations.

it recharges one of those groups at random. People that run it like to take a variety of utilities (one deception, one trap, one trick, etc) so that one of them will get the recharge no matter what. alternatively you can go all venoms (or something) and hope for 1/5 free recharges.

as to whether it’s worth taking…even with the steal changes, I’m thinking no. to get your money’s worth with it, you’d have to have a playstyle where you quickly blow all your utilities, then hope that it procs in a way that benefits you. the problem is that for a thief, blowing all your utilities usually means you’re running away, or you’re a sitting duck. not a time that you want to be taking chances with steals.