Guild Wars 2

From my perspective DD pales in comparison in terms of creativity. Reaper is what a base elite spec should be. It just blows so much out of the water on how awesome Reaper is to play…

That being said, Staff and Daredevil are still very good. With the right build, where Thief struggled with damage mitigating and conditions, Daredevil doesn’t. I counted it out as a bad elite spec pretty early but theory crafted something which strengthens a Thief’s weaknesses.

Being able to go toe-to-toe with a D/D Cele Ele for over 5 minutes and almost beat him (until he got ran over by a 5 man Roaming party) felt amazing. Not once did I stop and think:

“kitten, these burns are killing me. Oh my god he’s just gone from 25% to 100% with his water rotation” (If I had Impact Strike I could’ve stopped his water rotations but w/e).

Yes they gutted acro, yes some of the animations are still a little wonky, yes they’ve reused old animations, yes it’s not a mind blowing Elite spec.

But with a well crafted build then Daredevil stands up against FOTM and OP builds.

I’ve got 55 Points left to fully complete my elite spec.

12 hours in total – Just ran around with Commanders and got my levels for masteries. Hero Point Farmed with my two friends.

I find PvE VERY boring but I just gritted my teeth and stuck a bunch of movies on my 2nd monitor.

By the way, these WvW “coins” you get which you can trade for Hero Points, you get a random amount per level between 2-5 each time. So it’s not too bad.

Yeah Trash mobs were face rolling me on my Thief, but we’re pretty squishy so it’s expected. Running a high stealth uptime build to run around significantly helped me get around and Thieves Guild will help take agro away from myself.

If you can summon stuff to tank for you, then do it.

Playing with Friends helps a lot – No friends, then LFG in mapchat.

The Dash dodge roll combined with Withdraw, Roll for initiative, Bandits defence and shadowstep makes you almost untouchable and impossible to pin down. The fact that Vault now has a 0.5 evasion built in makes it even better.

Zipping in between 3 warriors agro’d to you, being impossible to catch, dealing hefty damage with vault and a cheeky weakening charge, whilst your roaming partner cleans them up is so satisfying.

After all this time of being 2 or 3 hit by other classes and now they can’t touch this

You can, if you want to spec for it, keep them almost always inflicted with Weakness + weakened foes hit for less on you + Dash reduces all damage taken for the next 3s by 10%… It all adds up.

I will say Daredevil struggles with initiative sustain but this is something I’ll/we/you’ll get used to managing with the new staff skills.

The build I used is in my signature but I’m using Dagger Storm because I haven’t unlocked Impact Strike yet.

Also, you’re zipping everywhere so. kitten . fast. You can stack 1m30s of Swiftness in spawn then zoom away.

Gray.9041:

it’s not masteries to unlock. it’s hero points. and those come 10 at a time in the jungle, so it’s not so grindy

You need the masteries to unlock new ways to travel. 2/3rds of Hero points require certain masteries to access. Masteries are the grindy part because you’ve got to get 508k exp or something like that.

But without getting off topic too much, I’m so happy they fixed bound back to being a leap finisher and not a blast.

Tringsh.2380:

Anyone else feeling the pain in the new area? I just feel so lack luster and get knocked on my kitten all the time.

Mobs hit pretty hard in HoT. Even with 3 Valk/3 Zerk gear I’m still getting 3 hit by Vet mobs.

I’m running Thieves Guild just to try drop agro.

Had to jump into sPvp to try them out. The new Dash looks amazing with the little pitterpatter feet is awesome.

Not looking forward to grinding out these masteries though to unlock them for WvW >_> So boring.

gennyt.3428:

Welp as someone who just wants to use the new spec in WvWvW, it got annoying running around trying to find an objective on a twisting and constantly coiling map only to find out that I can’t even interact with it anyway. Protecting these soldiers/rally points etc got boring fast because you’re just freaking grinding mobs.

I’m in the same boat as you. I just want to play the new elite spec for WvW. I’ve been running around for 4 hours and have only got 6 HP challenges done. A lot of the challenges are champion monsters which you can’t solo >_>.

I’ve stopped running Basilisk Venom for Dagger Storm as it will kitten up A LOT of ranged classes. A lot of players run ranged stuff/builds, so I get so much more out of using it. The Stability it grants will stop you from being taunted – how ever you’ll still get interrupted.

So I suggest you use Infiltrator Signet and activate Dagger storm immediately after being taunted. You’ll no longer get Feared from the wolf and the ranger is instantly forced to stop DPSing with Longbow and Switch to GS or whatever melee they’re running. Considering Dagger Storm cripples, you can kite pretty decently. Dagger Storm also crits for about 2500 every seconds so it’s very good damage too. Remember you can still cast Steal to teleport into their face if they use Swoop or other abilities to run away, it won’t break the Dagger Storm channel.

You can end the channel prematurely by stowing your weapons. You’ll need to bind this to a key if you haven’t already. It’s not bound by default.

Hope this helps buddy, good luck with Rangers.

I’m kind of kittened off that they just decided to not do Daredevil.

There’s a bunch of Thief streamers cough that would’ve happily done it. Heck they could’ve gotten a Dev to do the stream.

Welcome to the Jungle,
We’ve got fun and grind,
We’ve got every point you want honey,
We control the game.

I knew 170 points for the traits and skills was too good to be true. Friday is going to be one massive farm fest for hero points.

Maugetarr.6823:

meepeY.2867:

I like to run Infiltrators Signet over Agility because then it allows me to be very cheeky with my distance and gap closers. Rangers Point Blank Shot is made redundant because I’m back in their faces straight away.

Why not both?

Shadow Refuge and Shadowstep (a must take) are both really good.

Shadow Refuge mainly in sPvp so you can revive downed friends easier – It gives you party support. In WvW it’s also very strong for running away or resetting an unfavorable fight. It’s very strong against D/P Thieves who also use it because then you’re back on an even playing field. I personally value it higher than Signet of Agility.

I’ve started to run S/D purely because it’s a side of Thief i’ve never explored and I love it… And I also hate it.

Because you don’t have access to consistent blinds and easymode stealth it’s like playing the game on hard difficulty. Thief dies in like, 3 crits from a Warrior and if any one of those hits land then you have to go full defence and recover or face more stupid 9k Rush Crits – I’m using Warrior for example, it’s like this with most builds/professions.

You can’t dodge roll everything – No one is perfect, so once or twice you’re going to get hit… But S/D requires you to be more perfect than every melee thief weaponset.

S/D is all about using distance, evasion and CnD stealth for your defences, in that order.

I’ve found creating distance with 2-Return to dodge out of the big telegraphed skills is a life saver. I’ve seen a lot of people go absolutely ham on thin air, to only find me stood 900 range away with my shortbow out ready to arrow them to death.

So if anything, try to include distance and shortbow into your rotations.

I like to use the 2-Return and shortbow them around a bit – Keep my range up. This helps with important cooldowns like steal or my heal to recharge.

I like to run Infiltrators Signet over Agility because then it allows me to be very cheeky with my distance and gap closers. Rangers Point Blank Shot is made redundant because I’m back in their faces straight away.

But right now every class hits as hard as Thief used to do but we didn’t get any defences to balance it out. If you can’t teleport away, dodge it or blind them, then you’re gonna get 2 or 3 shot.

Wait until HoT drops and swap either DA or Acro for DD, take the Dash dodge roll, Agility signet and you win at life because you’re now untouchable. Dash does what Infiltrators Return does on a dodge roll too. Got melee problems? Dash, Dash, Dash away and begin the shortbow antics!

However, I’ve found the best way to learn new tricks is to watch montages on youtube of really good Thieves using whatever build you’d like to try. Now, find a good video and watch what they do. Rewind it several times, see how they reacted and remember it for next time. This allowed me to pick up S/D a lot quicker than if I’d not done so in the first place.

I’m by absolutely no means a S/D pro but with enough practice I’ll get there eventually. 1 Week, 1 month, or maybe even 1 year, getting better takes time but if you have the will and drive to improve then there’s no stopping you.

Sigil of Air/Fire/(any damaging sigils) can reveal you after using Cloak and Dagger to gain Stealth – It happens maybe 1 out of 5 times.

I don’t wanna be “that kitten” but farming Hero points doesn’t take very long. I’m a WvW only player, but farming the 140 HP only took me about 5 hours. Spend an hour a day for the next week and you’ll have enough for the elite spec.

Find out how you can spec for lots of swiftness, dashes or teleports and go crazy. Use this map and you’ll be golden. 5-6 hours, trust me.

If you can close the gap, try and stay on their backside with blinds. Don’t stand infront of them so they can easily use Hunter Shot/Pointblank Shot.

Thieves have a lot survivability issues – we still lack good damage mitigation. Stealth and Blinds aren’t really enough any more because a lot of classes got decent damage boosts. If you blind one out of three attacks, you’ll still lose more than 30% of your HP. For example warriors can frequently kill you with only Blade Trail → Rush → WW Attack.

Other than that, not too bad. Damage is Okay but D/P is still the undisputed king.

Here’s the build he was most likely using

Funny thing is, Necro is really good at killing the Ghost Thief – Staff especially. Look for the black powder, whilst walking up to it use Staff 3 and 5. Chilled to prolong cooldowns, feared so they can’t stack stealth anymore. They will get revealed very soon.

There has been, I joke not, about 20 posts within the past two weeks all over the forums discussing this – one is still going over at the WvW Subsection.

SlayerSixx.5763:

I know to deal with the clones and dodge, but sometimes they just instagib you with their wombo combo whenyou arent looking and make you sad.

Oddly I’ve found running Roll for Initiative the ultimate “nope.avi” to the Mesmer power combo. Just play with your fingers ready to press it. The roll is instant, breaks stun and then evades the rest of the combo.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Hated fights are probably mesmer. Everyone else is eh to easy.

Ah man, Mesmers

Power Mesmers aren’t too bad but the Perplex PU Mesmers can be a problem.

As far as Power Mesmers are concerned whenever you’re revealed, but they’re invisible you should try kill any clones which pop up and prepare to defend against the incoming 15k burst. Shadowstep, and dodge rolls are pretty much required to nullify what’s coming.

Try your best to out stealth them, but it can be pretty tricky because they don’t rely on stealth so but have access to the PU trait which makes it silly.

Blinds as well. Blinding them is pretty hilarious.

Watch out for the GS#5 as well for when you Shadow Refuge, it WILL knock you out of the zone no matter where you stand inside.

Perplex PU Mesmers can go die in a fire. The only success I’ve had vs these kittens is to kill their clones, clear the conditions and occasionally hit them because I’m too worried about the 13 stacks of Confusion and 10 stacks of Torment. 5k Damage for casting my Withdraw which only heals for 4k >_>.

Hey dudes,

Post what Profession/Build you struggle to fight 1v1 against and anyone who has knowledge of the match-up chimes in with suggestions and help!

UmbraNoctis.1907:

meepeY.2867:

First and foremost, Disrupter Trap aka Reveal Trap is the biggest counter. Drop one on yourself and wait. A smart Ghost Thief however will use Shadow Trap, pop the Disrupter and then port away.

I have actually tried to use this trap against you once, but you never stepped into it. Instead an other thief, who got ganked by multiple players triggered it and died.
What do we learn? Don’t play perma stealth trapper, it gets “innocent” thieves killed :p

I think I remember seeing that happen. To be fair, it’s really obvious when you put it down ^^, I probably saw the box in your hand.

You see, the big problem with Ghost Thief is that it’s got a lot of counters that you don’t really understand unless you’re the Ghost Thief.

First of all, I will say that Ghost Thief is pretty powerful, borderline overpowered.
Secondly, I’m partially to blame for it being more popular than it would’ve been – Sorry about that.

So the counters.

First and foremost, Disrupter Trap aka Reveal Trap is the biggest counter. Drop one on yourself and wait. A smart Ghost Thief however will use Shadow Trap, pop the Disrupter and then port away.

Second, Chill. Chill gets me killed the most I’d say. More than people walking into my Blackpowder (That’s #3). Chill stops me from running away to stealth up with 2/5 on D/P. Chill stops my Steal and Traps coming up sooner which will cause me to reveal, usually for longer than I’d like.

Third, Pressuring my Blackpowder. Wait for it to go down, stand on top of it. I can no longer stack steath at risk of tagging you with Heartseeker. Also, spam AOE on this area and you’ll hit me 100% of the time. Necro staff 3&5 kitten you so hard in this regard.

Fourth, Reveal skills. Sick’em, Analyse, and the other ones which names I forget. A bit niche but still work wonders against me if I accidentally reveal myself. I will reveal sometimes if things a close or if I’ve been chilled, ect.

But it goes without saying that if you come under attack from a Ghost Thief, clean the immobilize and teleport away as fast as possible. Ghost Thief has no chase potential other than Steal and Super Speed.

Plus, if you’re running a build with no condition cleanse then you deserve to die to a Ghost Thief.

The obvious fix to Ghost Thief is to give Thief Traps a base damage. Something decent so that they can work with Power, like a 5/600 base damage or so.

wtf I go afk from the forums for a few hours and now we’re discussing Pythagorean Theories and playing number games.

Yeah I was me and my buddy, Jana – I suck at S/D pretty hard. Luckbox was using D/P so that’s where the backstab came from.

I was using an offensive varient of my usual Gunslinger build that can deal with conditions a little better at the loss of Shadow Refuge to reset the fight.

P/P is actually pretty decent in 1v1’s, contrary to popular belief. You fight with D/P and whenever there is a distance between you and the enemy, switch to P/P and start Unloading. It usually forces them to use dodgerolls or defensive skills whilst trying to close the gap with skills. It’s a good way to draw out cooldowns. Also, if you can ever open with P/P you can pull extreme cheese and instant kill someone.

Basi venom → Stealth with D/P → Weapon Swap → Sneak Attack → Unload + Steal → Unloadx5milliontimes.

Daze on steal usually secures the kill because they can’t cast kitten all other than dodge, but they usually can’t do that because they’re still partially basi venomed. This has caused me to win fights straight off the bat.

I’d say P/P Unload is much better than S/P Pistol Whip, purely because S/P is hard to hit without using a gapcloser like Steal or Inf Signet. The Stun/Evade frames are nice but not worth the cooldowns or effort + Unload hits harder than Pistol Whip and has range.

To be fair, both are pretty good skills and it’s a close call.

Warning: my laugh is dherpy as kitten

Funny thing is, my Unload didn’t do very much damage.

The build I use is in my Signature.

Doggie.3184:

meepeY.2867:

Enforcer & the Guild Commendation Staff both look really cool for Daredevil.

Lets face it, the Scythe skin though… Anyone got 3500~gold spare for me?

Final Rest looks cooler and is cheaper.

Nah, it looks pretty clunky and cluttered. Scythe is clean and + its blade is massive!

Enforcer & the Guild Commendation Staff both look really cool for Daredevil.

Lets face it, the Scythe skin though… Anyone got 3500~gold spare for me?

You forgot Burn Guardian!

Blocks for days and if you can’t clear the instant 8stacks of burn you instantly die!

Shame it takes about 2s to stealth with Heartseeker/Blackpowder.

Its funny you say this because right now at this second, there’s a player running around our keep s, spamming siege weaponry and building them all. Wouldn’t be surprised if he moves on to other towers after he’s finished.
(Aurora Glade)

’the kitten did I just read?

You’re accusing Trap Thieves of being cheaters?

The Traps add conditions, along side caltrops which do NOT deal physical damage or Trap specific damage.

Your damage log will show the conditions only because you’ve taken no other damage from any other sources.

If he’s playing Ghost Thief, which It sounds like it from what you’ve typed, the only damage that will show on your logs are conditions, because that’s all there is to it.

Yo dudes,

I’ve been toying around with some ideas for Thieves and I believe I’ve come up with something really decent.

Thief really struggles with two things:

- Viable Condition Removal
- Damage Mitigation/Sustain through damage

My proposed Daredevil build has a decent answer to these problems.

It also gives us complete control over many situations a Thief was never able to control!

Here is my Defender Daredevil build

So, using Trickster, we get Withdraw and Roll for Initiative which will now both clear 1 condition. Escapists Absolution clears 1 condition as well, so now a well timed Withdraw or Roll for Initiative will clear 2 conditions, so this adds a minor skill based factor to condition clearing. Both dodge rolls also clear movement impairing conditions too, so they’re very strong.

Because we use Withdraw and R4I, we don’t need to take Dash because it’s a little overkill but you can swap Bound out to Dash if you really do enjoy being overkill. You’ll lose some DPS for overkill movement condi clear.

Now, also due to Driven Fortitude, Withdraw and R4I can heal us if we time them well to dodge attacks and not just burn them.

So to recap this section:

- Both our Utility Dodges can Clear 2 conditions + all movement impairing conditions
- Both our Utility Dodges can heal us for 500 HP if well timed
- You can use Dash instead of Bound to go complete overkill for clearing movement condi

Now, we can go one step further with Bandits Defense. This skill opens up Runes of the Defender which heals for 4000 when you block and attack. Bandits Defence on a 15 second cooldown and the heal when block is on a 30 second cooldown, means we can ALWAYS get the heal for added sustain. Bandits Defense is also a stun breaker which is awesome. Also, if we don’t have Bandits Defense, we can Withdraw which will grant Aegis for blocking.

Something beautiful about Bandits Defense is it’s retaliation kick which is a perfect line up for our Elite skill. The Elite is clunky and hard to land on a moving target, so it opens them up for an easy 1,2,3 combo elite.

Because of our 3 main Utilities, we now have 3 stunbreaks, 1 is an evade, 1 is a teleport and 1 is a block. Meaning we’re now extremely diverse and allows us to control the situation to an intense degree.

Allllsooooo, they’re making it so Staff#5 Vault has a built in Evade at the start of the cast time and Weakening Strikes makes enemies hit us for 10% less if Weakened. Holy crab!

And I’ve not even started talking about the Shadow Arts Tree! Even more condition removal, plus our Steal grants us Stealth for some epic damage combos (discussed later on). But I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Shadow Arts tree so I wont discuss it too much.

So to recap the whole shebang:

- We have 2 Utility evades which will clear 2 conditions (Survival Ranger stuff)
- We have 3 Stun Breaks which are great for almost every scenario a thief can be in
- We have 1 Block and a Knockdown Retaliation on a 15s cooldown
- We have Strong CC chains through our Block Retaliation -> Elite skill combo
- Every attack we block grants 1s of Regeneration
- Every block (once per 30s) will heal us for 4000 HP
- Withdraw now grants Aegis
- Every Evaded attack heals us for 500 (1s ITC)
- Weakened foes deal a further 10% less damage to us
- We are immune to Movement impairing Conditions at the cost of DPS Loss (Bound or Dash)
- We have the option to Stealth through Dagger Pistol
- Due to the Shadow Arts Tree, we are even stronger against conditions
- We have access to panic stealth through Steal

Finally, Mango Pie heals for about 900 every 10 seconds its active!

Now, we’ve gone over the defensive mechanics, now lets look at our offense.

Staff naturally has some very hard hitting abilities. Staff#1.3 hits 4 times for a load of damage, and Vault hits almost as hard as backstab.

We can use a combo of Steal -> Weapon Swap > Backstab (Intelligence+Leeching) for around 8k burst damage.

Reflexive Strike (Bandits Defense Kick retaliation) is a 2 second knockdown which allows us to either: Vault on their face, Backstab them through the above combo, or use our Elite skill combo.

You can also, Blackpowder -> Weapon Swap -> Vault for a backstab level damage, which will now give you hookstrike, another skill you can chain your elite skill into!

Then finally, we can use D/P to go defensive, with blinds and easy stealth access. I feel D/P fits into a lot of builds quite nicely and I see it working well with this one.

The negatives is that you don’t have Shortbow #5 so you may struggle to escape fights you may lose due to outnumbered to ambushed or ect,ect,ect.

So there you have it guys. This is the build I will be running when HoT drops. It has a very “Survival Ranger”-ish feeling to it, which is fine because that’s what my ranger is specced to.

But more so I feel my build answers a lot of questions a Thief struggles to answer.

Feel free to ask any questions below and I’ll be happy to answer them!
Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Y’all sound like a bunch of wet noodles.

Hardcore buff thieves enthusiasts making exaggerated claims,
Hardcore nerf thieves enthusiasts making exaggerated claims,
Level Headed people making decent claims,

Standard Thief Thread.

Here’s the bottom line, regardless of whatever your thought process is;

Thieves need no damage buffs. Thieves need no Utility buffs. Thieves need defence buffs.

That’s all.

Thieves are the most squishy class in the game, stripping away all defence mechanics and dealing with getting hit naturally.

So the general consensus is to give us some solid defence mechanics, right? Right. We rely heavily on things like Stealth and evades to survive buuuuut, we don’t have any specific damage mitigation. The Thieves problem is we get blown up so quickly out of stealth or when we’re not evading. We totally rely on not getting hit. We can’t take hits, so we have to play like kitten, hence Stealth reliance.
We need some proper damage mitigation. Daredevil is getting some with the new Weakness trait fix they’ve announced today buuuuut, that’s not enough. We need some proper damage mitigation for both physical and condition based.

I’ve proposed several times, give the Revealed Training trait 5 seconds of Resistance. Condition problems are solved with a competitive trait against Panic Strike.

Shift some traits in the Shadow Arts Tree around and make a new Grandmaster. Make it so that effects from stealth apply to you whilst revealed. This adds competition for Shadow Rejuvenation and solves our damage mitigation issues.

Stop blowing kitten outa proportion guys.

Clownmug.8357:

Mesmer is my main profession actually. I’m just being nitpicky because it seems like thief players only know their own profession and give advice that requires non-thieves to work ten times harder to beat them.

Uhh, okay… So are you suggesting I’m giving bad advice to sabotage fighting vs Thieves or am I reading that incorrectly? If I’m not, that’s rather paranoid of you o_o.

Whichever way you read my OP I assure you it’s decent advice. I’m only here to try and help people :/

Clownmug.8357:

OP, you said this topic applies to mesmers as well but why do I only see advice for a single thief weapon set?

I’m most familiar with Thief, so it was easy to tell it from a Thief perspective. I’m not fully aware of the times with Mesmers, it’s something I’m not well voiced with. But I see a lot of people yelling, specifically towards Thieves as they use it the most, that Stealth is a problem because its a mechanic with no “counter” or however you’d like to word it.

So I offered a counter to the side I’m most familiar with to help ease some of the stealth agro.

If you want Mesmer counters, then do what I’m doing and visit a website which tells you the timers they get with Stealth and memorise them. Don’t forget that a lot of mesmers spec for PU!

Hey, hey, hey guys,

meepeY here with a new build for all of you to enjoy!

For over a week I’ve been testing this and that todo with the new Pistol buffs. Today I will finally “release” my newest build called The Gun Slinger.

With Pistol/Pistol & Dagger/Pistol you too can become a ruthless toothless killing machine in the eyes of your enemies. With your quick draws, blast away your enemies for Unload bursts of upto 11,000 damage. Yes 11,000!

“But meepeY,” I hear you cry, “Pistol/Pistol has no utilities and very low defenses, we’ll be sitting ducks!” Ah, this is where Dagger/Pistol comes in. We use this weapon set in coexistence with Pistol/Pistol to complement each other. The Raw damage which Unload brings and with the Stealth + blinds Dagger/Pistol brings, the two together provide an excellent combo.

Removing Shortbow from the mix leaves you with a low flight response to fighting but having Pistol/Pistol increases your damage and fighter strength to an utmost extreme. Something to take into account is that this weapon set will punish you for poor play. This is a weapon combo I’d only suggest to higher skilled players as this is not a newb friendly build.

What this build brings to the table the ability to surprise your opponent with a massive burst combo which can and will one-shot someone. Then it allows you seamlessly transition into a Stealthed Dagger/Pistol for easy access to a backstab. If at any point the enemy intends to still fight, but puts distance between you, switching to Pistol/Pistol for an instant Unload will usually cause them to panic as you’re still pressuring them at range. This works really well against Rangers, providing you position yourself so the pet doesn’t tank the Unload.

If they push themselves into melee, you can kite easily until you can switch back to Dagger/Pistol. It’s flawed but in some cases devilishly cheeky and works very well.

So,

Here is the GW2SKILLS build in visual form.

Utility Skills

• Blinding Powder

Amazing instant stealth with a blast finisher, which inside of Blackpowder grants you 7 seconds of stealth. A great tool to use to either blind important attacks (Warrior Eviscerate), or blast finish for a long time in a defensive measurement. This is a must use with P/P because it gives you a strong stealth access.

• Shadow Step

100% Must take. Don’t bother arguing.

Here are the viable changes you can make:

• Shadow Refuge or Roll for Initiative

Shadow Refuge allows you to reset the fight in a semi-risky sense, that you have a giant target marker over your refuge point. Survive the pulses and you’re good to go. You can also use it as an aggressive battlefield to fight on. Pistol 1 Sneak attack is a 100% Combo Finisher, so you can leech a lot of health when fighting on it. Another funny thing is that when Refuge goes down, the enemy instantly thinks they’re winning and you’re on the defensive. They wont expect you to suddenly blow their faces off with a Basi Venom Sneak attack + Unload combo.

Roll for Initiative is an amazing stun-break with an evade & condition removal built in. You’re getting the benefits of Withdraw WITH a stun-break, minus the heal… But hey, we also have Withdraw! We haven’t even touched on the 6-Initiative regeneration at the end of the roll. This gives us a free Unload or stealth stacking or whatever, it’s a great skill which is vastly under looked.

Trait choices

• Bountiful Theft or Trickster

If you’re taking Shadow Refuge, take Bountiful Theft. If you’re taking Roll for Initiative take Trickster. There is no two ways about either one of these.

• Practised Tolerance or Ankle Shots

Ho-boy, there’s been a lot of talk about Ankle Shots being weird and not giving you the DPS it should be… I’ve done some testing on this and I couldn’t quite tell, tbh. However, the Cripple that Pistol Crits apply is very, very strong. It gives you a viable defence from your opening bursts as you will always apply the cripple. This prevents a lot of players being able to walk up to you willynilly.

Practised Tolerance is nice because it benefits both weapon sets for your overall damage. To be frank it really doesn’t matter too much which one you take as they’re both very, very good.

Gear

Your runes are something you can have free reign over. The runes I used are just for “whatever” purposes. You can run almost any runes and they’ll be fine. However, Hoelbrak and Strength wont work very well because we don’t stack might very well. Rage runes suit it well because we get perma-fury which benefits No-Quarter + We get 5% extra damage. They’re pretty good.

If you’ve got Applied Fortitude then you don’t need to bother with Valkyrie gear. Keep the food and utility though.

We have an Intelligence sigil on our D/P so that when we Steal + Weapon Swap + Backstab, it’s a guaranteed crit. Massive damage. Good stuff.

Okay dudes, that’s everyting. I’m going to post some media stuff below.

My Twitch Channel, please support the stream with a quick follow

The Gun Slinger vs Axe/Shield Warrior

The Gun Slinger vs S/D Thief & Power Guardian (Warning: I get a bit kitteny)

The Gun Slinger vs Melee Power Survival Ranger (Warning: Pet makes me PJSalty)

Thanks for reading guys,

I’ll be happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have!

Hello guys,

This is tailored towards Thief stealth, but it works the same with Mesmer invis too if you know the duration’s.

Apologies for the clickbait title – There’s a character limit on the topic title so I couldn’t write what I wanted to.

A little backstory before I get to my point,

So today I was put into a situation whilst roaming as my Thief where I had to stealth up against a Warrior and he would run away until my stealth ended. He would turn around and come at me until i stealthed and he would run away again. This went on and off for a few minutes. Long story short, he decided to commit to the fight and I defeated him in the 1v1.

He invited me to a group and called me a Noob for Stealthing so much. He was joking as it was one of my stream viewers, but it raised several questions in my chat about stealth and why people very much dislike it. It shows that the uninformed really struggle against it because they have very little experience in using it.

I see it all over the forums and subreddit: Stealth is OP, anet pls nerf. And because of this, a lot of the new elite specs have build in, very potent and extremely strong AOE Reveals. This kind of sucks for Thieves as there is such a very simple counter:

Heartseeker -> Blackpowder = 3s of Stealth. This can be stacked 4 times (5 with quickness sometimes). Stacking Stealth also takes time so the first stack is generally ticking down as you’re applying more. So usually you’re ending the stack with 9-10 seconds of stealth.

Question: Did you pressure his Blackpowder?
- Yes -> Probably only stacked it a max of 3 times.
- No -> Has free reign to stack 4 times
- BUT – Has he used initiative on other skills?
- Yes -> Can realistically only stack it 2 or 3 times.
- No -> Could have stacked it 4 times
- BUT – Are you within 1200 Range?
- Yes -> Probably stacked it once or twice so he can use Shadow Shot/Backstab combo. Get ready to fight
- No -> Stacked stealth 3 or 4 times so he can get in range.

Which ever situation is your outcome, start counting down. When the duration of their stealth runs lower, the more pressured the Thief is to make the first move. Don’t spam spells other than your #1 skill. Prepare your instant response and be on the lookout for the Shadow Shot bullet. You can 100% nullify backstab if you’re prepared for it. If the count down gets so low that they only have 1 or 2 seconds left then you can assume either:

1. They plan to engage RIGHT NOW. Dodge roll at the ready. They will come out of stealth shorty after evading their backstabs.
2. They plan to restealth through 2/5 stacking. Be aware that a Thief CANNOT stack stealth 4 times after previously stacking 4 times. Their initiative regeneration will only give the Thief enough for a 3 stack. Then a 2 stack the next time, then finally once. They can burn things like Blinding Powder or Steal (Stealth) to delay for regeneration for another 4 stack.

The last things to remember are:

Their Target – Which is you.
Their angle of attack – Your back for Backstab.

You now know how to count down their stealth timer, their target and what angle they want to come at you from. You have all the base line tools to counter a Thieves backstab. With this, those uninformed players who struggle vs Stealth might stand more a chance if they take their time to learn the above.

I use these methods all the time vs other Thieves with good results every time.

Now, this post is relatively specific to D/P stacking but D/P is the most used weapon set for Thief roaming. If you’re upset with perma steath Ghost Thieves, just stand in their blackpowder and they’ll accidentally hit you with Heartseeker or they stop the stack and run of out stealth shortly after or they burn traps in the open on no target to keep stealth uptime.

This method isn’t foolproof as nothing really goes 100% as planned but its a solid point to start at.

Apologies for the long post but I thought I’d share this with everyone. Hopefully it helps deviate a bit of the stealth hate.

I’ll happily answer any questions you may have,
Thanks for reading.

Inflames.8026:

Mr MeepeY what type of gear do you reckon daredevils will use in roaming Small scale wvw guilds?

Perhaps some experimentation with Soldiers Gear for Pulmonary Impact/Interrupt builds as they don’t need Precision or Ferocity. I see a lot of hybrid builds coming into play with the Lotus Dodge roll, so that would be Sinister – But Hybrid builds are already a thing for Thieves and they’re very powerful in the right hands.

Buuuut more or less the same for typical power builds. Full Zerker if you’ve got Applied Fortitude or Valk Mix without. You can get some pretty nasty bursts with Daredevil, so staff power builds would be pretty strong

Showbiz.9725:

I’m curious how effective a Thief can be in Exotic gear? I don’t think I’ll have ascended for quite some time, it seems like a bit of a grind.

Ascended Gear isn’t really required for WvW unless you really want to min/max everything. I’ve got very few pieces of Ascended and I’ve never died and thought:
“Man, if only I had full ascended gear”

Individual skill vastly outshines having a few minor extra stats.

Hello there,

I’m mainly a solo/duo roaming Thief (with a Thief partner). I’ve got a lot of hours under my belt for roaming and I’d like to say I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

First things first, Metabattle.
Yeah… I don’t use any of the builds on the website because they’re very specific and don’t really allow for freedom to pick and choose your own style of play. I suppose the phrase is “pigeon holed”. If you are going to build your thief, look around at other players, whether it be streams, Youtube or even asking other Thieves you see in WvW. Check out the one I’ve got in my signature below – It’s one I’ve come up with after the P/P Damage buffs and it’s something I’ve been enjoying tremendously. Shop around or make your own!

For gear, use your badges of honour to purchase what you can, but you might not be able to get it all from the badge vendors. Weaponry, certainly as you’ll be buying berserker. If you’re looking for other stuff, then you might need to look at vendors in the Orr Ruins or from the Trading Post.
Personally, you almost always have to run some Valkyrie gear until you get Applied Fortitude through WvW Ranking or you’ll get blown up by a couple of Warrior skills or other Thief backstabs. My personal gear set goes as follows: V/B/V/B/V/B (Valk/Berserker) with everything else as Berserker… Alternatively, my partner runs full Berserker, but all his trinkets/rings .ect are all Valkyrie. To each their own I suppose.
As for food/utilities, you’ll want to run the best you can get… Which is Furious Maintenance Oils and either the Steak foods or Mango Pie. Food and Utilities aren’t cheap but they’re very useful for roaming as it’s practically another 2 or 3 pieces of armour, stat wise.

Solo/Duo roaming is certainly possible as Thief, you just been to be selective of who you fight. If you can avoid certain “cancer” builds then you’ll be golden… You can tell these builds by what food/utilities they’re running (be careful of people who use fake foods and stuff – Kinda rare). Heavy Condition builds are usually the ones to keep an eye out for as Thieves have a few problems with condition spikes and bombs.

For WvW D/P & SB is more or less the king weaponsets for all your Damage, Utility and Defence means. Dungeons aren’t my thing, but from what I’ve read, D/D is best for consistent backstabs.

If you’ve got any more questions, I’d be happy to help.

Is the build for PVP, PVE or WVW?

We’d be able to critic if we had more information

I’ve suggested this before and it got laughed at:

Give Revealed Training 5s of Resistance.

Boom. Condi problems are solved in a reasonable way.

Jana.6831:

meepeY.2867:

Fair enough, I’ve not played Ghost in like, a weeks or so. Been having fun with other builds and my Ranger

I actually defended you guys – I know it’s a troll build and that the runes (or thief) will be nerfed because of it but most people just saw THIEF AAARGH NERRF!!

I just see it as smart use of mechanics. Lots of people complain that it’s OP, but look at some other builds out there; they can be just as bad.

I see a trap nerf coming if Ghost Thief starts to become a thing. They’ll make the trap popping reveal you by giving it a base damage. I can say that I’ve somewhat “helped” Ghost Thief gain popularity through streaming but it’s been around for a while. I’m also trying my best not to stream it as much. I get A LOT of rage whispers of people reporting me for hacking. I’m afraid I might get falsely banned because anet has a habit of listening to the loudest voices.

Jana.6831:

meepeY.2867:

;-)

Fun duels btw on Friday – If that was you I was testing P/P against.
I’ve only seen one D/D Thief from Gunnars, so I assume that was you.

No, that was another- he’s usually around SM and duels a lot. D/D and P/P last time I checked his weapons. He’s really nice, probably nicer than me
I was around SM and dying to your traps while discussing “THE OUTRAGE” in mapchat

Fair enough, I’ve not played Ghost in like, a weeks or so. Been having fun with other builds and my Ranger

Jana.6831:

So it was actually you who I met – you caused quite a rage

;-)

Fun duels btw on Friday – If that was you I was testing P/P against.
I’ve only seen one D/D Thief from Gunnars, so I assume that was you.

runeblade.7514:

What build is this? It looks interesting.

This is the build

This is some longer gameplay

That warrior was a bit kitten y. Not quite sure why he hung around for so long.

When HoT drops, staff will become a funny gimmick to use every now and then. It’s very strong against other Powerbuilds as if you run Acro and Agility Signet, you can dodge around like a mothertrucker, weaving inside and out of fights with quick bursts of damage. Weakening Charge and Steal makes for a heavy burst, somewhat on the level of backstab damage. Me and my Friend found extremely hard hitting combos which make for insane opening damage (10-15k Damage). Then you just dodge roll around and then do it again.

However, with the WvW “meta” being so condi focused, you die so fast. Staff and daredevil in general has no condition removal. Escapists Absolution sucks kitten as it only removes one condition-per-second-per-attack you dodge. Smart enemies wont even attack you if you dodge. Agility Signet only removes one condition, which is usually the least damaging one on you! I had 9 stacks of Confusion and 1 stack of Poison and it cleared the poison, WTF?! Shadow Step is the only reliable clearance we have and yet it’s our most important utility but it’s required for so many situations that burning it on one thing, can lead to your death when the inevitable other situation arises.

As far as the “trinity” (Damage-Utility-Defense) goes, Staff and DD have Damage, some utility and very low defense. One extra dodge roll does nothing in the grand scheme of things. Thieves have been longing for better access to defenses but we aren’t getting any, any time soon.

I would love for them to go back to the drawing board for Daredevil and come up with something better and something that can deal with conditions.

Edwin Starr will tell you better than I can

But seriously, nice damage – no utility. I don’t see any high level pvp players using staff over anything new. Also the fact we have to bug staff 2 with steal just so it does damage is silly.

Some quick fire problems with Daredevil:

- Staff 2 – Never hit this 3 times naturally. You HAVE to combo with steal.
- Staff 4 – I will never use this ability, it sucks. #SilverwastesShovelAnimation
- Staff 5 – This ability is bugged. It’s AOE radius is much shorter than it’s indicator. You also do not travel the full distance implicated.
- Bound dodge – This was changed from a Leap Finisher to a Blash Finisher – RIP P/P Synergy.
- Lotus dodge – This Deals Physical damage so I will never take it with a condi build because it will reveal me if I have to dodge roll whilst in stealth… Anet pls.
- Dash dodge – The animation looks hella’ weird… Other than that, not too bad.
- Bandits defence – The moment you start the kick animation, you’re no longer blocking AND you’re now animation locked. The animation for the kick is relatively slow so people are taking advantage of this because it’s super telegraphed. It will actually get you killed in some situations. Blocked a Warriors Shield bash, only to stun myself with the kick animation, giving the warrior time to crit me for 9k with Eviscerate. Yeah, sure, I kicked him but it was too slow to stop Eviscerate…
- Impact Strike’s window of opportunity to move onto the next attack is FAR too low. Make it 10 seconds, there abouts. Right now it’s like… 3 seconds or something very low.

So far, I’ve only gotten success from spamming bound dodge rolls and vault. You can get around 10-12 leaps going on the trot. Very funny and effective but very kitten y.

Some quick fire problems with Daredevil:

- Staff 2 – Never hit this 3 times naturally. You HAVE to combo with steal.
- Staff 4 – I will never use this ability, it sucks. #SilverwastesShovelAnimation
- Staff 5 – This ability is bugged. It’s AOE radius is much shorter than it’s indicator.
- Bound dodge – This was changed from a Leap Finisher to a Blash Finisher – RIP P/P Synergy.
- Lotus dodge – This Deals Physical damage so I will never take it with a condi build because it will reveal me if I have to dodge roll whilst in stealth… Anet pls.
- Dash dodge – The animation looks hella’ weird… Other than that, not too bad.
- Bandits defence – The moment you start the kick animation, you’re no longer blocking AND you’re now animation locked. The animation for the kick is relatively slow so people are taking advantage of this because it’s super telegraphed. It will actually get you killed in some situations. Blocked a Warriors Shield bash, only to stun myself with the kick animation, giving the warrior time to crit me for 9k with Eviscerate. Yeah, sure, I kicked him but it was too slow to stop Eviscerate…
- Impact Strike’s window of opportunity to move onto the next attack is FAR too low. Make it 10 seconds, there abouts. Right now it’s like… 3 seconds or something very low.

So far, I’ve only gotten success from spamming bound dodge rolls and vault. You can get around 10-12 leaps going on the trot. Very funny and effective but very kitten y.