Guild Wars 2

This build doesn’t know what it wants to be.

P/D is mostly an “outlast” build, with venom share & condition damage.

You’ve specced it like a crit build, except it doesn’t really have any damaging abilities with a high base damage, meaning your crits will be fairly lacklustre.

It won’t be a terribly “bad” build, but I don’t think it’ll shine. Running D/P or D/D would give you much better yields and burst; D/D for raw burst, D/P for a bit of control/mitigation.

Otherwise, spec P/D venom share w/ condition damage.

If you get rid of your starter hood you can simply create a new Thief, give him the hood + a basic transmutation stone + a white head slot item. Transmute them, put them in your bank and then transmute that against the head slot item on your “real” Thief.

Also works for Engineer goggles, monocles and other medium armor headgear.

See here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/How-does-chill-affect-thieves/first#post183988

D/P Blind Build http://cl.ly/3t0X1H3L030E

sPvP/WvW build, with (obviously) some minor trait/utility tweaks as needed based on the format or team. It’s a blind heavy build focused mostly on denying hits and getting backstabs off where appropriate. Roamer role for tPvP.

Options:

• Swapping Quick Recovery for Pain Response is an option
• Blinding Powder or Shadow Refuge (depends on your preference)
• One of the Signets for Roll for Initiative (stun breaker)
• Whichever heal you like the most (I pref. HiS for the opportunity to backstab and target break)

Sigils: Blood on my MH & Shortbow, Bloodlust on my OH
Runes: Divinity.

Running a D/P power/crit build so Runes/Sigils are nothing out of the ordinary.

Blind. D/P is a great avoidance build. Black Powder, Heartseeker, and take up Shadow Refuge/Blinding Power, Signet of Shadows and Signet of Agility to add more Blinds and condition removal to your repertoire.

Dronin.3957:

Clicky

perhaps this is for you buddy

You seem more interested in attacking the user instead of articulating on your idea of “balance”.

For what it’s worth, I think max range of 900 is entirely appropriate given that we a) deliver most of our burst from melee, and b) have so many escape tools at our disposal that putting us 300 ft further away from our opponents is only tipping the scales in our favor (a bad thing).

Also note that the Guardian’s 1200 range isn’t that great, as their projectiles are very slow moving, so you could effectively consider them in the same boat as us (swap “escape tools” with “mitigation tools”).

metaphorm.6904:

this is a great way of getting your stomps off without being interrupted or taking too much damage while doing it.

Similar approaches include using Signet of Shadows and Black Powder (for the pulsing Blind) to either a) blind an enemy to deny them their interrupt, or; b) deny the enemy a stomp on your ally (the stomp can miss).

Same goes for Shadow Refuge and Blinding Powder.

I have Melee Attack Assist turned off. No impact on the root from SS.

Just updated my looks, but still repping the same old coat (just exotics underneath)

• Midnight Ice Dye
• Copper Dye
• Strong Leather Coat skin
• Engineer goggles

Only two common ones from me:

• Shadow Shot self-rooting you for .5s on landing
• Ability queue issues (customisable queue ala SWTOR would be nice)

Private servers are intended for hosting custom sPvP tournaments—as in you pay a fee to ArenaNet, rather than self-hosting.

I don’t think we’ll see Oceanic servers, as it would introduce WvW issues (WvW would still need to be hosted over there) and/or sPvP issues (you’d play on a server in the US).

Which means the net effect would be minimal as it doesn’t really matter that much in PvE anyway, as CnD is usually easy to land on mobs.

PS: Trust me, I feel your pain. 250ms from Perth; the laws of physics won’t change any time soon.

D/P is my build of choice for sPvP, WvW and single target PvE.

S/P is a bit better for dungeons and general-purpose PvE (with the same build underneath) due to the PBAoE you get from auto-attack and Pistol Whip.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQNAoaVlUmaOHfS4E95Ex2jeKUe6pgsjtTBXtKA;TsAA2CnoqxUjoGbNuak1swYgxECA is my D/P build with (usually) SoShadows, SoAgility and Blinding Powder. Very strong in sPvP due to the Blinds, gap closers and mobility you get out of the build. Strong in WvW also, for the same reasons. Tweak the traits to suit the specific encounter.

Xerithas.6014:

It’s super punishing for players with a higher ping (I’m in Australia), I can’t even land auto attack if someone is running away from me and I’m using Signet of Shadows.

Have to actually hope someone stops moving to land anything other than steal or heartseeker (which seems to have it’s own issues).

It’s pretty frustrating when you get punished because of where you live.

What else can they do about it? Tuning combat for higher latency players actually just makes it worse for all players (sluggish combat).

There are tons.

• Power/crit S/P build
• Venom share S/P build
• Power/crit D/P build
• Power/crit D/D build

Shortbow in your off-hand is a no brainer for any build anyway, so there’s no loss there.

D/P definitely gets my vote. Use Signet of Blood on your main-hand, and Bloodlust on your off-hand. Power/Crit build with Signet of Shadows, Agility and something like Shadow Refuge, Blinding Power or Scorpion Wire.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQNAoaVlUmaOHfS4E95Ex2jeKUe6pgsjtTBXtKA;TsAA2CnoqxUjoGbNuak1swYgxECA

Swap whatever Acrobatics or Steal related traits out as suits your playstyle.

D/D and S/P are also viable, with Shortbow in your off-hand (as always). P/D is a slower, bleed dependent build that isn’t that great in WvW. Conditions are only great in small battles due to the condition caps.

• Hide in Shadows removes most damaging conditions
• An Acrobatics trait can remove cripple on dodge
• Signet of Agility removes conditions based on nearby allies

I use HiS and SoA in my D/P build (PvP) and often in my PvE build (S/P). In a dungeon or WvW scenario, SoA is almost guaranteed to remove all conditions as you are nearly always near allies.

The weapon doesn’t do more damage than an exotic, so even if you don’t get a legendary shortbow you won’t be kittening yourself.

S/P with blinds and Signets. PBAoE 2-3 mobs at once, drop AoE blinds (Black Powder, Blinding Powder) to reduce incoming damage. Very effective.

• WASD for movement
• 1234Q for skills #1 through #5
• E for heal
• R, T, shift+T for utilities
• shift+E for elite
• G for weapon swap
• Side Mouse Button (SMB) 1 for dodge
• SMB 2 for autorun
• shift + SMB1 for turn 180
• shift + SMB2 for camera flip
• Middle click for Vent PTT.

I like to make sure I can stay on WASD regardless of what else I need to do.

Teaturtle.2094:

Heartseeker is just boring to me unless they change it up to make it a long-ranged gap closer or something actually interesting,…

Shadow Shot (D/P #3) is a 900-range gap-closer already.

Not having tried your precise build, but a fairly typical P/D venom build with lots of +cond gear: I always found it “slow” to kill compared to D/P, D/D or (my PvE staple) S/P.

S/P has strong AoE, you get the evade during PW and you can drop blinds (SoShadows, Black Powder, any extra utilities) in-between PW’s as your init regens.

P/D is probably “safer” but ultimately you can always stealth to reset a fight and Infiltrator’s Arrow out of there if it’s going really bad.

Expected, and not really a deal-breaker in any way. As D/P I only use it as an execute (mostly), a re-stealth (often) and a last-resort gap closer (rarely).

Won’t negatively affect any of our primary builds and should (hopefully) reduce inbound complaints.

Traits don’t really give a “meaningful” amount of stats, though. You pick traits for their traits, not for the stats their line might have. It just so happens that most weapons suit a trait line that also has suitable stats.

Anyway, for the OP: for D/D, S/P, D/P or even S/D, go with power/precis/vitality when levelling. It’s easy gear to come across and during the levelling stage of the game you’ll replace it often.

Rika.7249:

In conjunction with the shadowstep ability from having a sword equipped, it might be too strong. And I would highly suggest the initiative cost was increased to a much higher cost, making a thief unable to use this more than once, before waiting for initiative to regenerate.

Given that this is the only major damage source from S/P, increasing the initiative cost would do huge damage to the viability of the weapons set.

At 5 initiative you can only use it twice, and given that the stun doesn’t last the whole animation it means you really need to invest in gap closers to keep on top of your opponent.

I believe that PW is in a good state right now, and doesn’t need to be tinkered with at all.

Shadow Refuge vs Blinding Powder:

Why is Blinding Powder even an ability?
I really can’t think of a reason to pick Blinding Powder over Shadow Refuge, in all honesty.

As others have said: BP is a PBAoE, stealths you (rather than the area) and the PBAoE blind is really good. I prefer it to Shadow Refuge personally, mostly because SR’s regen effect is so little as to barely be worth it. SR can be nice for denying stomps on your team-mates at range, though.

Stealth:
The way stealth works in Guild Wars 2 is how stealth should always have worked. It is a useful ability that allows you to shift in and out of visibility midcombat, allowing for confusing the enemy and stabbing them where it really hurts.
My one gripe with it: Thieves who appear out of stealth are not always immediately visible, and I have often taken damage a good second before the thief was visible.
My suggestion: Upon using a damaging ability (this would require some specific skills to be adjusted) , you leave stealth immediately, regardless of whether you hit your target or not. This isn’t too much to ask, and I hope an ArenaNet employee can confirm that a thief doesn’t appear until damage has been done. Therefore my suggestion would be that as soon as the attack animation is started, the thief leaves stealth. Feel free to discuss.
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This is what happens already. There’s just a latency issue that generates a high delay between the Thief de-stealthing himself (from damage) and the opposing player’s client getting that message.

The two major issues with S/D are that:

a) C&D doesn’t synergise well, as Sword doesn’t really have a strong from-stealth attack (unlike daggers or pistols), and;
b) Flanking Strike is unreliable.

That, and S/P and D/P are better options because they don’t have these problems.

Back in BWE1 it had a 1s cast time and used to be pretty decent.

Completely depends on your weapon sets and traits.

“Prowler’s” isn’t half bad.

For hearts/DE’s, I strongly prefer Sword/Pistol. You get an inherent AoE from your attacks, a stun, and good burst damage. I was (and still can) take on 2-3 mobs without an issue; more if I play it right and they’re melee.

Dungeons are a bit different, and will depend on your group make-up. Typically you’ll want to be running with traps, Shadow Refuge and/or Blinding Powder for your utilities. Lots of players like condition builds for dungeons as you can use the SB and stay at range whilst stacking bleeds/poison.

Arc it up onto keep/tower walls to destroy siege equipment and harass enemy players.

The WvW armor is a bad fit for a condition build; there is no way you can rune it with “enough” condition damage to be as good as a proper set.

Get Karma gear from Orr, dungeon gear, or (better) crafted gear.

The points in Shadow Arts look wasteful.

+1s to stealth skills on a weapon set (S/P + SB) that doesn’t have a ton of re-stealths, and +5% SB damage aren’t really “great”.

I would get Thrill of the Crime (boons on Steal) and Bountiful Theft (vigor on Steal), which will also give you +3 init on Steal and +3 init (total).

If you ever played a Mage in WoW, Infiltrator’s Arrow is no different. Can’t use it across different terrain tiles or features (rocks), just like when I would borrow a friends’ Rogue and Cheap Shot Mages trying to Blink in/out of the WSG tunnel

The easiest solution is to just enable the ability to turn down, or turn off, the ability queue. No need to over think it with GCD’s and stealth mechanics.

Go in prepared and make sure you have enough init to use w/ Haste, or get off one init ability and the rest as your “free” ability?

Seems like a no brainer to me.

“Strong” armor skin (LW150-200). I prefer it over the L80 skins right now.

Most builds are “popular”, although I would say that S/P, D/P and D/D are the three most popular weapon sets right now.

I run a heavy blind/roamer D/P build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQNAoaVlUmaOHfS4E95Ex2jeKUe6pgsjtTBXtKA;TsAA2CnoqxUjoGbNuak1swYgxECA), but used to run the old P/D venom share and have run with both S/P venom share and S/P crit/shadowstep.

Really comes down to your team composition and what classes you’re up against. D/P has become the standout for me as it has strong mobility and retains decent group utility (esp. w/ Blinding Powder).

Shortbow, no question. AoE, one of the best escape tools, and combo’s.

SB is always my second weapon spec; P/P is too heavily focused on Unload, and not ‘different’ enough if you are already running a D/P or S/P spec.