Guild Wars 2

I know the typical glass cannon build, but I’m looking for a different way to play and also hoping to not have to respec between dungeons and wvw and don’t have the cash really to buy 2-3 sets of gear for situational uses. I’m good enough to effectively copy good tactics and builds but I’ve never really come up with them myself. Watched vids to find pistolwhip+steal+haste, and C&D+steal, stab.

I have a dungeon build (20/0/30/20/0) meant for venomshare/self healing for dungeons with my primary stat being vitality (i want a big hp pool for survivability). I’m definitely tougher, and when i’m in a big group I can run around without dying, but I rarely can finish people off without help and 1v1 i either lose or just can’t finish them off before their next heal is up.

Obviously I’ve asked for these problems, I’m just seeing if any creative people have made it work with a build that gives good dungeon self/group healing/survival stats, and good enough burst damage.

Backstab is just craptastic with no crit. Pistolwhip+haste is ok, but not enough for anyone in full exotics who isn’t a glass cannon picking their nose for a second. That leaves trying to whittle people down and stay healed which against any hard hitters I can’t seem to do. I suppose I should use stealth a bit more, but see the backstab problem, and hitting someone with a sword out of stealth is only soso useful it seems.

And getting 9k backstabbed with only my chest armor broken was depressing. Toughness is starting to feel like a crap stat in wvw. Might try valk next.

Still severely lacking in details, man. Are those 10 people level 10? Are they level 60 in crap blues/greens they picked up in pve? Is the guy using abilities he shouldn’t like stealth (when he’s an elem)? Any well played class in full exotics can easily avoid dying to if not manage killing really low level players or even some higher level ones with crappy gear.

Screen shots of combat log?

@Xavi Is he using abilities of every profession? Is he stealthing? What is “groups of people?” 40 people, or 3-4 people not even level 80? An 80 thief in exotics can roll 4-5 maybe even more if they’re low level and a simple steal from a mesmer gives him every buff for a while.

Your post lacks the info needed to make it credible – and screen shots of combat logs would go a long way.

p.s. Are there 15-20 buffs in the game?

@Ekove – it is annoying, but this particular instance wouldn’t have been improved all that much by rendering – he was restealthing almost immediately with C&D. Watch the video. With portal bombing, rendering would help only minimally. For many people the instant render would mean massive lag in which case they couldn’t do anything anyway. The most obvious fix to portal bombing is limit players that can go through to 5 or 10.

Thief nerf will probably be for the revealed debuff to always trigger even when exiting stealth without an attack – that and/or make it so they can’t defend/cap points while stealthed in wvw (like it is in spvp). In the mean time just try to play smart. I spam cluster bomb and detonate it (stacking bleeds and doing aoe) when I see a thief stealthing – that wouldn’t even work on him because his defense is stacked. This is the “bunker” thief you are looking at.

Thief was my primary char almost day 1, and I love it, but I’d like to see this fixed, too.

The 2 suggestions you gave are not good, though. Longer debuff would have a serious impact on thief dps in pve and pvp and stealth really doesn’t last that long. While a thief may not be visible due to rendering, they need the legitimate stealth timer to land a backstab. It’s hard enough without shadowstepping as it is.

Ideally there just needs to be a priority given on the client to rendering people coming out of stealth. But if you’re looking for a bandaid fix, instead of those 2 suggestions how about the game letting you maintain target on a thief even while stealthed. It should just fire abilities straight in front of you like normal when you have no target. You could watch your ‘in range’ and when it goes from red to normal hit abilities.

Oh good idea. I did that test on my 15 range. Got a blue power coat for lvl 5 and 11. One is 6 and the other is +9 and I got different amounts when equipped. The armor and weapon damage also scaled up. I equipped a sword with only vit on it and my attack went up by 700 So everything scales up, but running in old gear makes you that much worse and blue/green gear on top of that.

I have a feeling even a level 80 in blue/green gear that is 10 levels too old for him would get destroyed by a lvl 80 in full 80 exotics.

The gear stats itself had the same multiplier to get what I got (gear stat *11.25) – so that seems to be fixed for your level at least, not based on the item level. I tried a green and it had the same multiplier and was level 14 gear so the quality and level of the gear are independent of the multipler applied to it. i.e. the better gear for your level, the better your stats will be – i think once you get 60 and get 3 stats on your gear and jewels, as long as you keep rares on you might be about equiv to an 80 in rares – but still weaker than an 80 in exotics. and you won’t be able to keep them your level.

To add – my take that thief is a melee class in wvw even in ranged fights:

I am still doing s/p in those fights. I use signet of malice, haste, and whirlwind dagger thingy. Stack some might, shadow step forward, steal if targets in range, or you can steal during the WW without interupting. start dagger and hit haste. You will probably heal faster than any 1-2 people can damage you and most of them will just be backing up going wtf? cuz their health is dropping, they’re getting bleeds and cripple stacked up. Then if you get targeted, shadow step back. If you’re lucky and stole from a warrior then hit that one and keep on spinning!

Just don’t let your circle run out or you will go down like a wet noodle.

I haven’t found a clear answer to exactly how gear scales. Supposedly the stats scale up, but do they scale according to the equivilent lvl 80 gear of the same rarity? Or do they scale based on level difference?

1. If I’m level 55, in PvE green/blue finds are better than the yellow lvl 35 gear you can get from crafting or dungeon. But when I go to wvw, does that same yellow gear get the same stats as it would if it was lvl 80? Or does the gear stat just get boosted based on how far my character levels? (as in does that level 35 yellow become level 60 yellow gear equivilent, while level 55 green/blue gear would be level 80 equiv)?

It’s a moot point on my current character because he’s 68 and i bought yellow 65 berserker gear and gems. But in 10 levels when the green/blues are better stats in pve I will do some tests unless someone already has?

I’ve resorted to using Sword/* for ranged fights. Drop a circle, go in swingin, and pop back out to safety if you get targeted. Been using pistol for PW, but if anyone has luck with S/D in this scenario it would be fun to know.

Odd bug, though. If you shadow step, and spam scorp wire, it does not change to your return. Which can be a nasty surprise – or a great chasing tool.

A good power/crit heavy burst build with haste would work well with pistols for tearing someone down fast. If you’re not their target you could stack a couple bleeds, then stack some might (sigil mastery or something like that), steal with thrill, hit unload, haste, unload, unload. Should do pretty good damage and leave them low enough to switch to d/p and start HS spamming.

I go with the s/p burst for the stun effect. With good timing once you stack up your buffs you can take down multiple people in about 3 seconds. But the p/p version above might fit your style better. Even if they break the stun, it interupts and makes it much harder for them to stun you.

Thief is a good finisher, so it’s best to take advantage of that.

Death blossom is a whirl finisher. Healing bolts which puts regen on people to add to the regen they’re already getting from projectile finishers. People who drop water fields are godsends to a group. I actually ran d/d and s/p and did very well. survivability is a little tricker with d/d since you are not blinding and evading quite as often (ldb is a quick animation while pistol whip lasts a while). But that’s the same reason you do more damage.

Spam death blossom a few times in a water field and you will stack some extra regen on the group while stacking bleeds. One of the thieves’ best abilities is to spam combo finishers. With someone who can drop regular water fields around, LDB might become our most effective group heal (that or cluster bomb).

I think any 30 thief going into AC should strongly consider going 0/0/10/10/0 for the vit and toughness. The abilities you pick up are actually secondary to just having the +100 in each of those 2 stats because it’s the difference between being 1-shotted and losing maybe 3/4 hp and having time to heal and remove conditions. I went in at 58 with 10/20/10/8/0 and was not only doing respectable dps, I think. The sigil traits in crit tree give us a lot of burst potential for things not just from the precision and dmg boost, but the sigil traits.

I see a lot of “we don’t have a way to remove conditions” and "we don’t have a good way to heal ourselves, but that’s not true.

1. Healing – I’ve concentrated on healing that is group-friendly and fairly easy to access – shadow protector is accessible at 10 pts into shadow arts. You can not only heal yourself on stealth but allies. Now smokescreen with shortbow out becomes a grp heal, too. This adds some benefit to hide in shadows, but signet is still an option. Also makes a 2nd thief already dropping smoke a boon to the group since you can go sb and just put up a grp regen every 3 seconds or so. It’s not going to keep someone alive by itself, but it’s amazing what a little regen can do when it’s consistently kept up.

2. Shadowstep removes conditions, removes stuns, and gets you out of a lot of crap if you make sure to keep it active at all times. S/P is a great way to run against stuff as far as I’ve found. I’m only low 50s so far I run 0/5/10/20/10. I melee all the time. Smoke field, autoattack for aoe weakness. Since I’m not really concentrating on dmg i don’t get targeted and I just have to avoid aoe dmg. on ranged only fights i have the shortbow or if I know it’s coming I can go p/p (first boss in cm is a good one to NOT melee).

Heck you can just sit there and autoattack a boss and be useful with that weakness even though it doesn’t last as long.

In dungeons sustainable debuffs are sometimes more useful to your grp than straight dps. 1 smoke field can prevent a lot of damage making it better than healing. Boss fights you can interupt, root via shadow step, weaken with autoattack – just like any other MMO, 5 support chars who have good cc/debuff/buffs and can put out at least some decent damage will do way better than 5 glass cannon builds.