Guild Wars 2

when a Thief is chilled the distance travelled by their leaping abilities (Death Blossom, Heart Seeker, and the dodge roll) is also reduced by 66%. Similarly, when a Thief is Crippled the distance travelled by these abilities is reduced by 50%. I assure you being chilled or crippled is a huge problem for Thief.

thanks Flamu. thats a helpful video.

depends on your build and your strategy. i’ve been using Air on a high crit chance backstab build and it is definitely very effective.

Thanks for the sticky! this is a good idea.

Here’s my sPvP build:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#3|3|2642|3468|3997|6677|4485|10|1738|0|0|30|1195|1726|1196|20|2384|746|0|0|0|0|0|10|786|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

I use Dagger+Dagger and Shortbow for weapons here. This is a Backstab burst damage build primarily. Quickly kills single targets, then falls back and lurks for another opportunity to set up a backstab kill. Shortbow for point capping and map movement. daggers for the stabby stabby.

and here’s my PvE build:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#19|0|2642|8743|6680|3906|4485|30|1142|1714|1708|0|0|0|0|30|2384|2387|785|0|0|0|0|10|2358|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Venomous Aura Shortbow build. The main group role this build performs is offensive support and team-mate reviving. The damage here is not the greatest, but its actually still pretty respectable in fights against multiple targets. It only really suffers noticeably against single big targets. I usually switch to melee (usually with Dagger+Dagger) against single opponents for this reason.

the problem is your language use. here are some things you have said

• “Thief neds more control…”

• “I feel like I can do nothing but die…”

• “It feels extremely wrong as a mechanic”

• “We need something…”

• “Thief, as a class, is just off…”

do you understand that your attitude is the problem here? in your opening post you’ve made it clear, based on what you have said and the words you used to say it, that you feel that your difficulty is the fault of the class itself. you don’t appear to even for a moment allow for the possiblity that it is you who is having trouble and need to learn something.

if you wanted to ask people for help and advice wouldn’t you do that by saying “i’m having some trouble, can you please teach me a bit about this class and suggest some strategies i can use to help out in these situations that i have found difficult?”

if you knew how to play the class you wouldn’t be dying to a couple of level 50 PvE mobs. wasn’t that the problem you described in your opening post?

you’re just missing the fundamental point of view i’m trying to communicate here.

Yes, obviously it would have been possible to create trait lines that facilitate peak efficiency. They could have put in a trait line that looks like this:

hypothetical non-existing peak efficiency trait line

Sword Mastery: (increases power by 10 per point and crit damage by 1 per point)
5 point minor trait – Sword Expert – deal 5% more damage when wielding a sword
10 point traits:
– Damaging Sword Expert- deal an additional 5% more damage when wielding a sword
– Flanking Sword Expert – deal 10% more damage when striking from behind with a sword
– Envenomed Sword Expert – deal 10% more damage when striking with a sword that has had Venom applied to it
– Critical Sword Expert – +5% chance to critical strike when wielding a sword
– Sword Defense Expert – gain (20 + level) toughness when wielding a sword
– Crippling Sword Strikes – gain +50% duration of cripple and weakness condition inflicted by sword attacks
15 point minor trait – Really Good Sword Expert – deal an additional 10% more damage when wielding a sword
20 point traits:
– Mighty Sword – gain a 10% chance per auto-attack to gain a stack of Might (10 seconds duration) when attacking with a Sword
– Efficient Swordsman – Initiative cost of Infiltrator Strike, Flanking Strike, and Pistol Whip reduced by 1
– Hardy Swordsman – condition on you have their duration -20% while wielding a sword
– Leeching Sword Strikes – gain a 10% chance per auto-attack to drain life when wielding a sword
25 point minor trait – Really Really Good Sword Expert – gain an additional 10% chance to crit when wielding a sword
30 point traits:
– Executioner’s Sword – Gain +20% critical hit rate and +50% critical damage against opponents that are at 50% life or lower
– Miraculous Swordsman – gain a 10% chance per auto-attack to convert a condition on yourself into a boon when wielding a sword

there’s an example of an “all apples” trait line. do you think this trait line is an example of good game design or bad game design? obviously it allows players to create hyper-efficient, specialized sword wielding characters. that seems to be something along the lines of what you want.

My point is that while this would be good for allowing efficiency, it is bad for the game. It leads to one dimensional characters who are good (too good possibly) at the thing they have decided to be good at but don’t have any enhancements to things they did not decided to be good at. But that’s not really why its bad game design. Its bad game design because its BORING. Its not fun. Its not interesting. There are no meaningful decisions or tradeoffs for a player to make here. You just get everything you want in the most straightforward way possible. This has the illusion of choice (choosing between 5% damage or 5% crit accomplishes the same thing, it is an illusory choice) but there is no choice to make that makes any kind of difference. There is no way to distinguish between players who are skillful at constructing trait builds and those who aren’t here. Every choice is too obvious and not very different from whatever other options you might choose. There are no constraints in place to prevent you from min/maxing your way to the most efficient build possible.

You talk alot about feeling forced into something by the devs and not being able to get it “FOR ME”. you have the entirely wrong point of view on this. If the trait lines were the way you want them to be you’d be ACTUALLY forced into something because there would be no meaningful choices. The way trait lines are now you have many choices to make. The way trait lines would be under your preference would reduce a diverse set of choices into a single choice (take this trait line, yes or no). You get your efficiency. You lose your choices, your character customization, your ability to develop an individual playstyle.

Good game design is not about facilitating industrial efficiency. It is about creating interesting and multi-faceted choices for players. It is the very fact that you can’t have it all that makes the current trait system a well designed one.

Martym.6971:

…snip…

I know exactly how to play this class

…snip…

you do? really? so then why are you posting here asking for advice? apparently you already know how to play, which is an incredible feat consider you’re only level 50. you must be really good based on what you say about yourself. Clearly you, the master of the Thief class, know everything you need to know about how to play this game and your failure to do well with Thief, despite your obvious and inarguable skill and mastery are solely the fault of the incompetent game developers and their inability to make the Thief class playable. That is definitely what is going on.

that video is exactly the opposite of what i’m looking for. its very easy to find “highlights reels” type videos where somebody cuts the clips and shows the 4 seconds of glory where they nail someone and make big numbers pop up on the screen. i don’t care about that type of meaningless bragging.

i’m hoping someone can link me to a video that is a full match of sPvP with a Thief player using the Pistol Whip burst build and doing well throughout the match, not only when they are popping cooldowns.

Anyone know of a video demonstrating skilled play with this build?

post edited to more accurately reflect interaction between chilled and dodge roll. thanks for the corrections all.

Zed.9508:

That is not the point of this discussion. Yes you can only kill someone every minute, yes you can’t dodge once you use haste. The point of this discussion is that the person on the receiving end has to take it, he has no choice. I

Yes, he has to take it. Its a strategy that delivers a successful kill on a single target with > 90% success rate against that target. Its very hard to get away from it. The Pistol Whip burst damage build is extremely favored in 1v1 fights.

The game isn’t balanced around 1v1 fights. End of story. What’s left to discuss here?

i definitely disagree with you that you ought to be able to easily specialize in “apples” and not have to “chase the apples through the B and C line”. you should have to chase them. absolutely 100% it is good design to make you chase them. bad design would be “here is apples on a silver platter”.

the point of the trait lines is not to facilitate creation of the most efficient, specialized builds of your class. the point of the trait lines is to present a game system that players get to interact with. you see the difference? this is not industrial design, this is game design. the objective is not efficiency and specialization. the objective is something with depth and diversity that forces strategic tradeoffs and decisions.

Caltrops works nicely if you are capable of benefitting from the cripple. If you’re using Sword+Pistol with a Pow/Prec build then it won’t be of much benefit to you. Dagger+Dagger or Shortbow is better able to take advantage of Caltrops.

You mention you’re having trouble with the ranged mobs in particular. I’d suggest using either Infiltrator’s Strike (sword 2) or Infiltrator’s Arrow (shortbow 5) to close with them. and Steal of course. always Steal for the Shadowstep.

Daggerstorm I find to be almost useless in Orr unless it is also combined with Signet of Malice (for the heal on hit triggers). Without the signet, you will likely get killed by melee attacks and AoE attacks while you are spinning. So either switch your heal skill to the Signet or switch your elite skill to Thieve’s Guild.

I’m a huge fan of Blinding Powder as a survival tool. Its a great “oh kitten” button for when you get suddenly surrounded. Similarly, Roll for Initiative is useful for the same reason.

My current build for Orr is Dagger+Dagger/Shortbow with Signet of Malice, Caltrops, Blinding Powder, Ambush Trap, and Dagger Storm as my slot skills.

I’m able to do alot of damage even while avoiding retaliation by dodging, stealthing, or blinding. I recover health quickly thanks to the Signet and its favorable interactions with Caltrops (it procs once per second whenever a caltrops stack is applied to an enemy in the area), Death Blossom (triggers 3 times per enemy struck), Dagger storm (many many triggers), and the naturally fast auto-attack speed of Dagger.

Zii The Mad.2563:

Shortbow is a horrible weapon on thief IMO

lolololololol

can’t believe i just read this.

Shortbow is so important that it is basically the mandatory weapon swap for Thief. you have whichever melee set you like on your 1st swap slot, and shortbow on the second swap slot. doing anything else is just wrong and misplaying the class.

Why would you even think Shortbow is bad anyway? Haven’t you ever done any of the Dynamic Events with swarms of enemies? How about Dungeons? How about sPvP? Shortbow is AWESOME in all of these. The only time its not a great weapon is in 1on1 fights.

the site you have linked to does not have current data for the game. the build you linked doesn’t exist anymore. i’d suggest a more up to date skil calculator such as this one:

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief

don’t take this the wrong way but…. the Thief class is fine and has all the tools it needs, the problem is with you.

Time to start taking survivability more seriously. Time to learn how to utilize evasion, stealth, positioning, control conditions like Blind, Cripple, Immobilize, and Weakness.

Time to start paying more attention to what your enemies are doing. If you expect to actually win fights by standing around and pumping out Pistol Whip all day then you’re gonna have a bad time.

I don’t mean to come off as too harsh, but you should know that most Thieves don’t have the issues you are having. You just hit a hump in your learning curve. A better solution to your problems would be to practice more and learn what you have been doing wrong, rather than assuming the issue is with the game itself.

i dont particularly think your build is the problem, though more vitality is always helpful. i think you’ve probably just got some learning curve issues on the content in Orr. its harder than the rest of the game. more mobs, faster respawn times, no safe spots.

which utility skills are you using? i’ve found it very important to focus on utility skills that make it easer to fight multiple mobs at a time. almost every pull in Orr ends up with 3 or 4 enemies at once.

Kund.1096:

Hello everyone

Venomous Aura, 30 point trait in Shadow Arts line.Really?
A line which boosts Toughness/Vitality and supports Stealth, needs a trait for venom sharing? A damage dealing trait? Couldn’t that trait be in Deadly Arts, where someone actually might use it?

Venomous Aura is not a damage dealing trait. There is only one Venom that actually deals damage actually (spider venom), and it isn’t even a very efficient damage source. The venoms are debuffs. They are controlling and debilitating conditions inflicted on the opponent. The Shadow Arts trait line focuses on both Stealth and the control and support roles for group play. Considering that Venomous Aura is the strongest control and support trait in the entire class, doesn’t it make sense that its in the control and support trait line?

Again, i’m not sure why you think this is a damage dealing trait. You simply have the wrong impression.

Kund.1096:

Same goes for Hastened Replenishment, 30 point trait in Trickery line.
Why would i specc for that on a line that supports Condition Dmg/Steal Recharge?

Again, you seem to just not really understand what the Trait lines are actually focused on. You seem very confused based on some superficial causes. Please read through the other traits in the Trickery line again and notice there is a heavy emphasis on Initiative Recovery throughout this trait line. Hastened Replenishment is the most powerful Initiative Recovery trait, so it is sensible that it should be at the end of the most Initiative Recovery focused trait line.

Kund.1096:

Flanking Strikes In Trickery? Shouldnt that fit better in Critical strike Line?

Why would it fit better in the Critical Strike line? Critical Strikes already has Side Strike.

I think I know what you’re complaining about. You want to take both Side Strike and Flanking Strikes, because you are trying to min/max around the idea of attacking from behind. You’re using all Power/Precision/Crit Damage equipment and don’t have any condition damage. So you have managed to convince yourself that it is bad to take points in Trickery because that trait line gives condition damage.

I would suggest that instead of complaining, you should actually just figure out how to use the trait lines.

Kund.1096:

First strike, 25 trait in Critical Strike line…Are you serious? You reward me for NOT using my initiative, NOT using my skills, while i am a Thief, a burst damage profession?

The trait is called FIRST STRIKE. it is clearly intended to be a bonus for the FIRST STRIKES OF A FIGHT. why is that not obvious? its right in the name! this trait increases damage on your opening hits, before you have spend your initiative down below 6.

As an alternative you can also try to think of real contexts where this trait is optimized. You seem to complain because you have imagined some playstyle you want to do, and the find that the traits don’t match it perfectly, so you think the traits are badly designed. The truth is its the other way around. The traits are elegantly designed to encourage diverse playstyles and exploration of the Trait lines.

You seem to think that it would be good if you could cherry pick everything you wanted all the time and have a build that gives maximum bonuses to one specific playstyle that you have in mind. This would be bad design though. Instead, we have a well designed system that forces players to think more and make interesting tradeoffs and decisions.

You should start thinking more about those tradeoffs and decisions. You don’t get to fully support a 1-dimensional build of the class with your traits. You have to build a more multi-dimensional character.

i’d like to see some youtube stuff for this. just curious how other Thieves like to play. I’m primarily specced for either Backstabs (so Dagger+Dagger with alot of stealth traits) or Offensive Support (Shortbow venomous aura). I don’t play Sword+Pistol myself and whenever I do try it out I find that I’m not doing as well with it as I’d like. So I’m looking for a video that demonstrates how to do well with this build. Can anybody help me out?

I don’t want to see just 4-seconds-of-glory burst damage clips, btw. That part is easy to figure out. I’m looking for good videos that show the entire matchup in an sPvP fight so I can get an idea how the Sword+Pistol Thief uses the rest of his skills, in addition to the Burst Damage combo.

pistol whip stuns for 0.5 seconds, not 1.5 seconds. the target DOES have an opportunity to react in some way.

not that i disagree that the combo of Haste + Devourer Venom + Pistol Whip is very strong. Thats a very strong way to kill 1 person every 60 seconds.

Do I think there is a class balance issue because a Thief built in a particular way is able to easily kill a single target once per minute? Nope. What do you do for the other 56 seconds in that minute?

there is a known issue with Hidden Thief not correctly suspending auto-attack if your mainhand weapon is a ranged weapon (pistol or shortbow). You are almost certainly encountering this bug. Try it out with a mainhand dagger or sword. it should work.

Mug is not bugged here, btw. It does not break stealth.

underwater combat is really bad and annoying, buts its not just bad and annoying for the Thief. its bad and annoying for all classes.

he still hasn’t posted screenshots….

have you considered the possibility that the problem is with yourself rather than the thief?

very good post. i use a Venom Sharing Shortbow build for support in PvE and i like it quite a bit. thanks for writing about it!

edit

this is my favorite PvE support build

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#19|0|2642|8743|3906|6680|11435|30|1142|1714|1708|0|0|0|0|30|2384|2387|785|0|0|0|0|10|2358|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

i like where you’re coming from with this idea, but i don’t like your particular suggested skills.

the best idea in your post is the 300 minimum range deadzone though. that seems like a really interesting, flavorful, and fun balance mechanism for a long range weapon for the Thief.

I don’t generally like to speculatively suggest skills but this idea is interesting enough that i’ll suggest a couple of details for the idea that would, in my opinion, be good ways to implement this.

All Rifle Skills range 300-1500, automatically interrupted (with loss of initiative) if the targeted enemy is below 300 range when the cast bar finishes filling up. That would make the Sniper Rifle way too risky to use even at medium range.

The Stealth Skill is the real opportunity for the one-shot kill thing that you associate with Sniper Rifles. however… thats really unfun to play against in a game like this and even though its what we traditionally expect from a Sniper Rifle I don’t think we should have big burst damage from super long range. Just unfun.

I’d still like to see a very effective long range Stealth shot though. instead of huge burst damage (which would inevitably lead to 1-shot kill crits) it might be a good idea to implement this as a really harsh debuff, like 5 stacks of bleeding, and a 4 second daze and cripple, so getting Sniper Shotted would really put you in alot of trouble (particularly if another enemy was nearby, he would just eat you before the daze wore off) but wouldn’t be so unfun as just instant death with no risk to the Sniper.

we can evade A LOT. thats one of the main focuses of the class. It might legitimately be the case that 50% of your attacks are getting evaded. That is a feature by design of the Thief class. landing a hit on a Thief is non-trivial if the Thief is paying attention to evading you and using all his skills.

How often we can stealth is based very heavily on the weapon set choice and utility slot skill choices. I can play as a Dagger+Dagger Thief with 3 utlity skills that grant stealth and enter Stealth 4 times in a row before hitting the limits of my cooldowns and initiative pool. OR, I can play as a Sword+Pistol Thief with no stealth granting slot skills at all and simply never enter stealth. This varies heavily.

For reference, the Heal skill that stealths is Hide in Shadows. It grants 3 seconds of Stealth, heals a fairly large amount, clears Burn/Poison/Bleeding and grants 4 seconds of regeneration boon. It has a 30 second cooldown.

There is a trait called Last Refuge that alot of Thieves have (its only 5 points in Shadow Arts) that throws out Blinding Powder automatically at 25% health. It has a 90 second cooldown though.

There are a couple of ways to shut down Daggerstorm but none of them are easily available. We gain Stability and Projectile Reflection while spinning so its not really possible to interrupt it and stop it. You can definitely control it though. For example, we can outright die if a Mesmer puts confusion on us during a Dagger Storm. For a warrior I would recommend putting up a Shield Stance and trying to move away from the Thief. The blades are thrown out kinda randomly and its distance based. more blades hit closer in, so if you’re further away you’ll take very little damage compared to if you’re right next to us. Or you could just pop Ignore Pain for the 5 second invlunerability and charge right in and Burst us down. we’re not immune to melee attacks while spinning.

interesting. i was unaware of those traits. i know that those classes don’t have any activated skills that stealth them. can you list which traits these are? good to learn something new about other classes.

obtuse,

you are referring to Feline Grace, right? I don’t have exact numbers on that skill. The wiki entry implies that it restores about 20 endurance. That sounds about right, but I don’t have an exact answer for you, unfortunately.

only certain builds of Mesmers or Guardians are hard counters against certain builds of Thieves. So while its true that a Defensivesly built Guardian will hard-counter a Burst Damage built Thief its not true that Guardian > Thief in general. i don’t have a problem with this situational, contextual, build-specific hard countering. That seems like a fair way to implement a PvP metagame.

Player One,

stealth only lasts for 3 seconds at a time (4 seconds if you’ve got a trait to extend it) and there is a game enforced 1 second of “revealed” after coming out of stealth before you can enter stealth again. it is possible to build your Thief to include several abilities that enter stealth, so thats not that unrealistic, but its not permanent stealth. the Thief will be forced to blink into visbility for at least a second every 3 or 4 seconds.

i think you may be having learning curve issues here. Thieves take full damage in stealth, and you can bet that when a Thief Stealths near you they are probably trying to creep in for a Backstab. the behavior is predictable so it is easily countered. here are my suggestions:

1) drop AoE circles over yourself. the Thief is going to be nearby and will almost certainly get hit by these AoE circles. if you have an AoE that inflicts a status like Blind or Daze then you’ll just fully counter his attempt to Backstab you. if nothing else though you can whack the Thief for alot of damage just because you can predict where he is actually standing.

2) Drop an AoE movement controlling condition (like chill or cripple) and then just dodge roll out of the way. The Thief won’t be able to connect. He’ll drop out of stealth in another 2 or 3 seconds and be standing around crippled and vulnerable.

thanks for the response. i’m glad you enjoyed this. i’m gonna try to add a couple more sections today. check in again soon.

PvE tip:

Shadow Refuge + Dagger Storm = massive damage life leeching bolts.

this can be used to kill an almost unlimited number of basic mobs in PvE without any risk to yourself. my record (so far) on this combo is 12 mobs at once. i could have done more except i wasn’t even able to gather more than that at one time with my pull.

another PvP tip:

Heartseeker is actually a very good way to complete the kill on downed opponents. It will automatically hit for its max damage against them (the 0-25% bracket) and if you’ve got initiative to burn you can usually Heartseeker kill a downed player in less time then it would take to complete the stomp animation. this is particularly the case for downed players that have been bleeding out for a little while already and are close to dying.

dragonskin’s answer is (more or less) correct for stolen abilities from other players in PvP. couple of minor corrections/details

Elementalist: the chill is not short duration, it is long duration (10 seconds, one of the longest in the game)

Guardian: the daze is 4 seconds long.

defensively specced Guardians are VERY hard to deal with. i basically can’t kill them and they can hold a map point from me without me having any realistic chance of taking it from them. when i identify a defensive Guardian on the other team i usually try to avoid direct confrontations with them and try to just outmaneuver and attack map points that they aren’t guarding.

alot of people don’t realize that movement debuffs also effect the distance that your dodge roll and leaping attacks (like Heartseeker and Deathblossom) travel. being chilled is very punishing to a Thief because it makes those evasion abilities basically ineffective and the Thief relies on them heavily to avoid damage in melee and stay on top of their opponent.

here’s a tip that i find incredibly useful in sPvP battlegrounds.

if you have an off-hand dagger, you can use Cloak and Dagger on downed player. it will deal some damage to them (not that important but it interrupts bandaging) and it will stealth you. this way you cannot be targetted (either by the downed player or anyone else) while you spike them. this is a great way of getting your stomps off without being interrupted or taking too much damage while doing it.

post screenshots. if you post WvW screenshots post screenshots where your team is not riding +50% damage and crit damage from world buffs and group buffs.

in fact, ONLY post sPvP screenshots. post an sPvP screenshot of a cluster bomb doing this level of damage.

I’ve been able to avoid AoE that was targetted right where I was standing. If I hit Death Blossom when the red circle appears, and my landing spot is outside of the circle, it evades as if i had dodge rolled.

projectiles are much harder for me test so i’m not sure. i know when i’m in melee range and Death Blossom i appear to be evading projectiles that were fired at me in point blank range, so i think it does technically work. i’ve not been able to test using death blossom to evade a projectile fired from long range. i suspect it also works, but because its so hard to get the timing right from long range you will rarely be able to get the evade with it.

lol. a blackjack is like, a sock with some pebbles in it. its not a combat weapon. its for whacking people on the back of the head when they’re not looking. a mace is a combat weapon. and they’re HEAVY. definitely a warrior thing.

I don’t like this suggestion.

It was a very conscious design decision of the developers of this game to make stealth a short duration, in-combat mechanic instead of a long duration movement related mechanic. This is by design. This is intentional. It is not an oversight. It is not a weakness.

If you want movement related stealth you can still do it, btw. Use Infiltrator’s Arrow and shadowstep/teleport from one piece of physical cover to another. you actually an conceal your movement across a battlefield by Infiltrator Arrowing from behind one piece of terrain cover to another. Its actually very effective on most maps.

Re: Death Blossom – i haven’t tested this under all circumstances, but my observation is that it is an area based evade. you will evade all of the attacks that occur in the area you were standing in when you begin your leap. in that respect its similar to a dodge roll. you can still get nailed by attacks that are hitting the area you land in though.

Re: Dagger Storm – projectiles are basically just arrows and bullets (and some magical projectiles, like ice shards or necro bolts). these skills always have a “Combo Finisher: Projectile” label on them in the tooltip so they are pretty easy to identify. Area affects will not be reflected.

gw2db.com

wiki.guildwars2.com/Thief

KaiserCX.7103:

Tolfast.6289:

KaiserCX.7103:

Tolfast.6289:

Edit: Just tried this vs elemental NPC in the mists, when I have chill I can only HS a VERY short distance!

The short distance thing isn’t a bug, movement speed effects Heartseeker. If you have swiftness or Signet of Shadows on it will go slightly further, if you’re crippled or chilled it won’t go far.

Learn something new every day, I never really noticed this before but that is most likely because I don’t overuse heart seeker (not saying you do btw), or because I am rarely chilled.

However this means that movement debuffs are reducing the range of a skill, which I don’t think is right, if chill decreases range for a skill then it should be universal across all skills

I don’t use it often either, truthfully I didn’t know till I saw people complaining about Heartseeker in the forums and some people mentioned chill/cripple was a counter, then I went into game and messed with it and noticed swiftness/Signet of Shadows boosts the range as well. I mean it could be a bug, but I think it’s intentional so people can counter it with slows.

This is definitely not a bug. Movement speed affects ALL leap type skills. It is by design. And yes, cripple, chill, and immobilize ARE intended as counters to leap skills (which would be otherwise impossible to escape from).

No dude. Drizz’t is explicitly a Ranger. He’s from a Dungeons and Dragons franchise of novels and they’ve even provided character stat sheets for him. He is a Ranger class character under D+D rules. Story wise, he was trained as a Ranger by surface dwellers after his exile from the Underdark. He even has a pet like a ranger. He’s not a stealthy urban Thief (would be called a Rogue under D+D system). He’s a wilderness Ranger.

Classic.4072:

Hide in Shadows clears all Conditons

no. clears all Bleed, Poison, and Burning conditions. does not have any effect on the other conditions.

very useful to avoid dying from DoTs but you can still be extremely debuffed when coming out of your Stealth.

Power/Precision/Crit Damage will be a good stat setup for maximizing damage from Unload, which is good since thats you’re main damage skill with Pistol+Pistol. lack of condition damage will leave your auto-attacks (Which have low direct damage but stack bleed) a little worse off though, but thats probably not a big problem.

Venom skills can be useful but each of them can be replaced by something else to do the same job if you prefer. Venoms are very popular for dungeon PvE though because of Venomous Aura, which is a very very powerful offensive support trait. Its not necessary at all though. If your traits don’t include Venomous aura its good to take other skills that synergize well with the Pistols (Caltrops for kiting, Shadow Refuge for some safety and a Dark combo field, Smokescreen for taking on ranged enemies, etc.)

Shisx.1658:

refrence: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/53941-does-pistol-whip-cause-evasion/

unless i have missed some patchnotes….

i havent used Pistol Whip in PvE in a long time, so maybe it works against opponents who just stand in front if you and swing with melee attacks at your front arc.

i do however play sPvP every night. and i know with 100% certainty (from personal experience) that while i am channeling the swings from Pistol Whip I don’t auto-evade attacks from enemy players when i’m channeling this. so if it does evade attacks, there are major restrictions on which ones it evades. i’m taking the full force of projectiles, AoE attacks, and melee from the side/rear when im doing this.

it doesn’t give evasion during the damage portion. i’ve been whacked repeatedly while channeling the swings. you’re just wrong about this.