Guild Wars 2

its not 30 sec, its 5 seconds of the all boons. but it is a good additional condition clear button if want to play a style with weak inherent condition defense, i’d probably equip that and shadowstep

It’s not easy to play, working out a viable build and how to maximize its synergy in your playstyle for the build. You may grasp the basics but after playing in plenty of matches you can begin to grasp the major weaknesses. It isn’t that you choose the play a challenging build, you choose a build for a playstyle that clears up the worst weaknesses (incoming condition damage & initiative inefficiency/starvation)

How to underwater: spear 5

• note this is from my experience on raid of the Capricorn structures map

Yes. 30 critical 30 shadow or 30 shadow 20 acro 20 trickery to do a support build with boons on steal. Berserker & valkyrie . I like runes of dwayna

Don’t know about good but the issue with condition builds is the initiative costs/regain. Main reason I haven’t settled into one that feels sustainable and not reliant on short bursts of high condition damage. Sustaining condition damage seems to need sigil or earth and good critical chance, paired with solid initiative restoration

Going to be trying this (have to copy and paste)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQRAoY4alcmiPXey2E+JFx+hey9gpGtpeKILa7FA;TwAg1CqoKyUkoI7Nubk3s+YEw2jZFA

super thief special heals / support build

- 30 shadow: shadow protector, shadow rejuvenation, pick any for the middle slot, condition removal can be good or hidden thief.

- 20 acrobatics: Assassin’s reward gives heal per initiative point spent, anything you like that goes with your utilities for the first slot.

20 or 10/10 any other, i like trickery for thrill of the crime and bountiful theft. but critical can work great since you gain initiative on crits.

any dagger offhand works great with it so you can use cloak and dagger to capitalize on healing in stealth. or dagger and pistol, setting up the black powder heartseeker combo to get into stealth and try for backstabs. runes of dwayna or lyssa, i always get dagger storm. can work with either hide in shadows or signet of malice. my utility slots are blinding powder, shadow refuge, and 1 other that i change around, sometimes trip wire, sometimes roll for initiative, shadow step, or agility signet. using a lot of stealths you gain heavy healing and in general avoidance of heavy hitting direct damage. it makes you hard to fight unless they can land some serious daze, root, knockdowns. the stats that seem to work best are balanced but with good amount of power, healing, HP, and precision/crit damage. I was able to set it up with berserker/valkyrie

Not exactly the same, due to initiative costs. When working out synergy in builds the efficiency of resource to benefit & time is important to seek. You may still have a better result with both passive stealth heal traits

Weird it did not accept this edit though I had no error:

Since the initiative spending for this particular build is not used for attacks it may gain little from the signet synergy. The other traits that even helped in critical are debatable as well, thinking furious retaliation & side strikes.
From there, when stacking up the protector and rejuvenation benefit, I think runes of dwayna would augment that and really create a higher value than hidden thief option. I still really like signet of agility for the endurance refill use in the 3rd slot, but scale venom seems like a good option as well to give weakness

Shadow rejuvenation is weaker than shadow protector, if you intend to stack both that does add some heal with the stealths you have, but hidden thief gives you another stealth to gain utility and only give up a small amount of the total sustained healing

Given the way this build applies initiative use it may not gain much with signet traits but the rest of the traits available in critical line are pretty debatable as well. I’m seeing the combo of infiltrator step and cloak and dagger as a huge initiative cost and could find additional utility stealth useful, bringing hidden thief as an option

Copy paste this one which is what I made before, taking hidden thief over shadow rejuvenation

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQRAsY4alUmaPHfS4E+5Ex2jeuTey9gpOFpdkittenA;TwAA2CnoqxUjoGbNuak1s+Y8xeiJGA

Looks like the clipboard had a wrong build link or failed the recopy from the actual build, maybe read the description of what I took while I re load it out

It doesn’t defy so much as confirm what I mean about thief hybrid play. I tried loading out your build on gw2skills just now and I do find it to be heavily hybridized. Your offensive capabilities are traded off slightly for high avoidance and the stealth heal and condition defense. The way I set it up was as a signet use build, signets of power, and executioner. With signet of agility and infiltrator’s signet.

In shadow I took shadow protector, shadow’s embrace, and shadow rejuvenation. For this build I think hidden thief might be better, and I would then change the 1st slot to roll for initiative.

I put in the knight amulet and berserker jewel, runes of divinity for balanced improvement and critical damage, and sigil of superior leeching & blood for a heal on critical /30% chance. I think I would take dagger/pistol as the 2nd set for heartseeker sprint or finisher and the blinding shadow step on 3. Plus the black powder stealth combo. This gives us a lot of heal from the stealths.

But, For condition removal I’d rather use shadow step utility, as I can heal way more with signet of malice than shadow rejuvenation adds. It’s going to heal about 120 per strike with these stats

The build like this will have 20k hp, 400 +heal, about 1600 heal per 3 second stealth, 52% crit chance and 48% crit damage. 1670 power

It’s as hybrid as you can get short of the bag of everything builds I am using with assassin’s reward & signet of malice. It’s a great use of thief avoidance and damage capabilities in the traits.

I can’t say I agree completely with original post.

What I’ve noticed is we do have a weakness to condition damage when the foe can keep replacing it against our limited removal. Being supported by team member condition removal seems essential to thief viability.

Another essential aspect is the balance of healing and/or toughness without total sacrifice of offensive boosts. Thieves are useless without some strong damage options equipped. They are also useless if everyone can instagib them if caught. We can get away with not taking toughness more than others since we can avoid a lot of hits with our blinds and evades. Weakness is highly under appreciated.

My favorite builds rely on hybrid stats that improve just about everything & ensure solid precision and some condition damage so I can make use of both my weapon sets, deal versatile damage that can’t be completely countered with a single tactic, and utilize my full evasion potential as a thief.

i dont think it’s a meaningful difference, but due to the synergy that a solid crit chance gives with sigils, i have leaned slightly toward critical and some boosted critical damage to capitalize on that, with a great amount of +con dmg as well. i can do that with rampagers, divinity runes, and the right trait points mix. around 250 +heal, 800 condition, 1600-1800 precision, and around +40% critical damage has been very nice with my signet of malice builds. this way i can’t be hard countered/useless and my damage is solid and not sacrificed just to get durability

roll for initiative, shadow step, caltrop

glad it was fixed i never ran out of vigor before now it makes proper sense that i steal and the buff runs out with around 10 seconds left before my next steal

I just wanted to throw out my appreciation for the design we have especially on thief allowing such a high level of playstyle customization. This way is so much better than picking a general class and advanced/sub class type, locking you in to at most one or two styles of combat based on talent. When I am creating builds and trying them, it’s no longer a question “no, this combination is not viable, it doesn’t work for my combat abilities” just a case of learning how to behave in combat to make a new style that capitalizes on my build synergy, and which stat bonuses reinforce that once I figure it out.

This makes the experience of build crafting a subgame of its own merit of fun.
Brilliant! Keep it up!

Try another build, dude. Go for a well rounded hybrid, making you unpredictable & strong against most any specialization that could counter you. I have posted an example build idea of this in the build sticky.

My suggestion is to start up a podcast or reach out to Mog radio / the siege podcast and offer to help organize this a a community tutorial process

And now, for the relaxing sounds… Of cheese.

10/10 post

The points you make here are actually a solid case for having additional 2-5 skills that can be unlocked and swapped in. I think a few choices per slot would be great, specifically to help cases like this where the default skill may not perfectly fit the goal of the player’s build

Little underpowered. Get thrill of the crime!

However, when paired up with due amounts of dodge spamming either through the energy sigil, signet of agility, and/or vigor traits, you do gain some synergy as you can place down far more caltrops while your slot skill is recharging.

Dagger pistol is a pretty solid secondary since you can go very mobile sprinting with heartseeker and do black powder heartseeker combo for stealth if you have synergizing traits

Same decision process here and just went whispers after seeing the quest options for the actual final decision. Pretty happy with the follow ups so far I’m only a bit past the decision point to L35

I have 2 ultra mitigation builds designed as variants of the full offensive burst and bleed builds for sPVP. I call it the superthief because he is ridiculously durable and deadly still.

I’m using the sword/pistol & dagger/pistol burst version for tournament. We’re looking at 20 critical strikes: signets of power for 5 stacks might/5 seconds on signet activation, and signet use for 20% faster reset & 2 initiative gain on signet use

20 shadow arts, for shadow protector, giving me and teammates 5 sec regen boon on my stealth effect with shadow refuge. And hidden thief to stealth during steal, allowing for the regen boon, and a great benefit to both escape situations and pistol whip attack setup

20 acrobatics – going with power of inertia to gain might on every dodge and assassin’s reward for added passive healing, what makes the superthief tick. Option I can change to trait 3 to gain vigor on heal if I need to go more defensive/mobile and use heal to up my dodging and speed instead of keeping the passive heal up all the time

10 trickery – thrill of the crime to add more boons during steal for me and my team, and make steal an initiative regain

Signet of malice makes this build work. Ideally keep it on passive or else the only option is to run and hide or finish the opponent for 12 seconds. Pistol whip, dagger storm, are both quick heal buttons with this overall setup due to the high number of strikes that multiplies the more targets you can land it on.

Slots are shadow refuge for team revives and survival boost, signet of agility to let me dodge for swiftness while moving between conflict points and give more precision while passive, infiltrator’s signet 1 initiative regain/10 sec which activates as a stun break/shadow step to target. Dagger storm finishes it off as a tool for dealing with being swarmed by enemies or illusions/pets thanks to massive heal.

The key to this build has been balanced stats. Runes are divinity for all 6, +12% critical damage, +60 every stat. This enables me to be lethal and terribly hard to down much less catch. It’s viable either with berserker or celestial, there is more condition damage but less critical synergy without berserker so it fits a dagger/dagger alt set

In the main set I have sigil of rage which gives quickness for some random burst, great for finishing when it happens at the right time. Sigil of superior blood is 30% chance to life steal on critical for more damage mitigation

Off set can be used to sprint with heart seeker and do black powder/heart seeker combo to gain stealth and shadow protector regen.

http://is.gd/O9JEos via gw2 skills

Here is the alternate version, using maximum hybridization while using all 3 special heal tactics in the thief skill set- assassin’s reward, signet of malice, and Shadow protector/shadow rejuvenation. Blinding powder, shadow refuge, and roll for initiative round out the build. Dagger storm including for combo in shadow refuge and standalone high heals on signet of malice. Shortbow for weakness combo and evading/fleeing options, plus cluster bomb detonate provides a lot of signet of malice heal as well. still undecided on perfect hybrid stats for it but this is the best mix that fits the strengths I have found. Moving the 20 points to critical instead of trickery leans away from support into lethality and works awesome with dagger pistol instead of shortbow alternate
[have to directly copy and paste links for gw2skills forum calls it a bad link]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQNAsYVlcmiP3dy9E+5EB3Dm60m6pgsjtTxV1KA;TwAg0Cvouxcj4G7Nubk3syYIyeiZGA

Thieves have crazy levels of mitigation available when needed. Check out signet of malice, assassin’s reward, shadow protector. Most of our true excellent mitigation is in acrobatic maneuvering though. normally it’s your top priority to not take a hit. I love a style of play that capitalizes on both the avoidance and damage reduction aspects of defense

I’ve previously made note of the basic concept you’re pointing out here.

Some amount of your build for your role is locked in to the trait lines. I don’t like this. I feel that traits could still be organized like they are, but would make far more sense if you had two tabs, one for stat points and one for minor & major trait tree.

The reason that’s better than how it is now is to improve the amount of choice you have to pick the stats that boost your playstyle as well as the special traits that go with your idea. Hybrid build is already heavily encouraged so I honestly find it completely strange that traits and stat points are linked up in this way.

For one thing, the number of trees doesn’t make perfect sense to me. Could the number of trees be reduced and then more of the traits that make sense together? You don’t get a choice of minor traits currently, making some builds work out with 15/25 point allocations. The unlinking of stat builds and trait capabilities would allow the design process to more strongly clarify the choice players have and ensure balance of the trait options themselves.

Thinking about the above, it seems like all the professions in game now already play like that. They have to choose what to use to get the best effect per time spent at any given moment and manage what weapon/set to have equipped or switch to in order to maximize that efficiency.

I read your post and what you’re suggesting reminds me of a rune resource system from another class of another game. The same BASIC idea applies here. If initiative is changed such that you have different initiative types to separate damage from utility and reduce the number of times you could press each one in quick succession, paird with incrqsing the effect of those attacks, and give a random chance on non initiative costing actions to refresh one or two of the total pool that is on cooldown for use on any skill every now and then

What you’re left with in that system is a complex cooldowns mechanic with chances for refresh but a much slower pace of usage on the most powerful offensive abilities. This makes the choice of what action to take at any given moment very meaningful. It also makes you you the opposite of an ability spamming playstyle

Shortened/simplified- what If initiative were actually a cooldown reset mechanic rather than an energy bar. The idea is already in the game in the improvisation trait. I’m actually kind of at odds with the initiative vs plain old cooldowns on our slot skills as it is.

it’s a pretty ridiculous move. i’ve tried it. i was impressed by the power to waste people but saw it fail just as much as it succeeded, and became burnt out in less than 1 session of playing that like because there was nothing i could do but go around trying to wreck people before they could do anything to me. just wasn’t that fun after the novelty of the burst settled down.

however when used in tournaments i understand it can be very potent when you play effectively as roamer, basically doing a job of finishing battles wherever they may spark. i used oshef’s version with haste, signet of agility and shadows. plus signet usage traits, mug, and 20 trickery for thrill of the crime and trickster.

well, toughness is not as big of an issue, i was watching some buildcast and ed and gary were going back and forth about the fact that some sacrifice of toughness works out for the thief since as you say, at times we can and will need to pump out some extra dodge. we can get skills that us dictate distances, and avoid those hits where toughness would otherwise be quite essential to boost the value of our already limited health with such lowest base health of any profession as we have.

i like to have around 1500 toughness and at least 16k HP. if i can fit in 400 +heal after all that whatever is leftover for damage ends up working pretty well for me. i have some builds where i really only get toughness from traits though and with heavy evasion boost in the traits and slot skills i take, i am still more effective since my damage stats are higher.

maybe you/we just haven’t come up yet with the builds that still fairly moderately counter most profs and can deal with and/or shut down the guardian and mesmers with thief vexing build/styles

Can you add detail regarding the 15 points acrobatics endurance regain after all dodges- do we know the exact value of that recharge, it seems to be close to 40-60% of that 50 cost

Telling you there is already a dev response to your exact question in an earlier thread for this topic. I provided a recap the two purposes of the skill for a helpful add to this thread.

We don’t need another topic for this since we Already had a developer respond when it really was not necessary the information is fairly easy to infer from the wiki.

Ultimately there are only two cases for these skills:

1- durability, offhand breaks, to have any 3 skill this needs to exist. Weapons can take damage can they not?

2- the weapon you start with in the very first level 1 to level 2 step on a brand new thief at the very least needed a 3rd skill. Offhands upgrade slot 3 to the dual skill, that’s the concept at work and the existence of the light version serves to illustrate that when a user is looking at the weapon skills tab

Hard to catch trickster. Capable of unleashing deadly strikes and capable of avoiding or catching anyone.

Will move for the right strike at the right time. Will be long gone for the next priority location before any risk of being stopped rises.

Basically jack bauer

I think all the weapon combos support that and the variety itself is important. I’ve seen great builds tuned for that player’s favorite weapon sets to capitalize on the strengths they each offer. There are some bugs like the sword/dagger 3 that need to be addressed but I can’t think of any specific flaws other than some small variances in utility between some of the sets.

I also think that sword and pistol is a bit of an outlier. It goes with the ferocity choice-set merged with the quickness of the profession. It’s not out of place, it’s just the apex of the dirty fighter, I will stun you and lock in place dealing immense swift blows & evading at the same time. It’s the most over the top Bauer but it does fit & is a favorite for pvp for this same reason

Well in that case you could pop infiltrator’s -shadow return or dagger storm to try to reduce the impact. With my mitigation builds dagger storm turns in to a great answer to getting swarmed (mesmer noise, thieves guild, just plain getting zerged) and condition pain I can’t otherwise shake off.

Assassin’s reward ultimately seems to double my mitigation power since I run a heavy spending/heavy regain initiative setup. It’s worth nearly nothing when not stacked up with healing stat and signet of malice but with all synergy it is essential

Hey they can actually have retaliation up 100% of the time with a few utilities and a first tier trait. Or just knowing the great sword combo 2/4. I tried it after seeing one do it. They don’t even need a superdefense build. That retaliation shuts down any instagib you might’ve been hoping to unleash.

There are all kinds of great build combos for spvp. With the thief from the very beginning that I was hooked to play one, I’ve been into acrobatics and trickery. You & I probably had completely different views of what our thieves could or should play like. I enjoy being impossibly quick, evasive, and uncatchable.

In spvp I’ve found a lot of advantages to building well rounded. My favorite builds have three 20 point traits and a 10 with fairly all around stats instead of maxed out power or precision and it is doing very well in my guild team free tourneys we just started trying

still undecided on replacing it with pain response in my healing build… you do get added healing all the time which i treat as additional passive mitigation. seems like when you are getting hit with bad enough conditions to drop you that low the damage condition removal should be pretty effective. going to try it out this week a few times

Tthe bow is brilliant it’s almost all I use other than my sword which occasionally comes out for some parts of boss fights in the personal quest

I think precision has good value but the problem is how it decays while you level. I think power has more benefit.

Heart strike goes off twice when I only want it once, many times that I am trying to leap through black powder. So my stealth gets dropped when the 2nd attack goes off, removing my ability to try for a backstab. This often occurs after I’ve been dazed or interrupted

Also can we get confirmation of whether the behaviors of shadow refuge are intended or a bug, often I’m casting it ahead of where I’m about to dodge into and have inconsistent result whether I’m stealthed properly or still hit by 5 more strikes someone had already cast at me

From the wiki its effect is 3s stealth, 1420 healing, 600 size

Here’s the description:

Pulses five times over four seconds, once as it’s cast and then once each second.
Moving outside the area of the refuge triggers revealed. The area it was cast on retains this property for about 10 seconds after the spell was cast, or 6 seconds after the refuge appears to have expired. You will be revealed even if you were stealthed by another skill and didn’t enter the refuge while it was pulsing.

So leaving the spot the refuge covers reveals you. But you’re free to get the whole stealth time and wait in the area it hit. You also cannot add another stealth

Reminds me of a single saber wielding Jedi. Could this work? What would a 2nd hand situational tool for a thief be? Extra trap implement/tripwire? For some reason I’m imagining the improvised execution items I would pick up in the game Manhunt (a favorite rock star title) like shard of glass, screwdriver, sickle, the plastic bag, the list goes on. For a system like that it’d be best if you could equip a set of extra thief tools and actually give us a use of f2-f4 slots, letting us change to 3 different offhand skill pairs based on combat situation. This would also add more choice, which isn’t unprecedented when you compare engineer and elementalist

It’s pretty small. Close or exactly same size as the infiltrator strike circle. I believe it lasts 3-5 seconds, so it will add bleed for set damage if anyone sits in it that full time, like the utility slot caltrops. You can keep dropping them, you dont lose the old one after chaining more dodges. So it works best with vigor, signet of agility, sigil of superior energy to give yourself maximum dodging

and what do you once all that is on cooldown? soft counter only if you manage to equip all of those and they are up when the condition damaging opponent fights you

plus heal, signet of malice, assassin’s reward, and the shadow protector thing to give you regeneration 5 sec anytime you go into stealth. you become a mitigation beast. also learn how to best apply combos like black powder then heart strike to get stealth, and best use of black powder itself. it seems attempting to be as well rounded as possible stat wise other than slight preference to toughness and vitality/+heal is best. you dont do any good dealing worthless damage.

and bountiful theft is another must have to give vigor for double dodge bar regen rate.

here’s how my setup looks just to give the general idea:
http://is.gd/CCtTTz

yeah but it mainly is with points in deadly arts to increase the damage of poison. there is also a 5% boost trait i think in critical strikes. so if you were to build for it i’d say make it poison build and use the poison venom, 30/20 and pick 20 points in one other tree

i had that issue at one point but it went away when i came back to the trait. i can’t seem to take any other builds now that i’ve done +heal ones with this and signet of malice. it’s making me tough and resilient.. and is the best counter to condition damage since we can’t really fully hard counter that

I just think it isn’t a very good choice. It’s cool but why not have it roll a 50% chance. so sometimes it fails but the rest of the time if you roll a yes it then picks from whats on your bar and refreshes it

the signet is very nice but i only find it essential where I can’t scrap together the 10 or 15 points into acrobatics for swiftness on evade. I have few if any builds I like that don’t get that far. I came to the same conclusions that you are never stacking up speed bonuses, the fastest you can get is with 6x rune of speed where you get up to base + 40%

Yeah I’m using d/p in my secondary weapon slot for defense and escape. Heart seeker sprint, mainly, I will have to try your tactic here. Thanks!