Switch to Shadow Arts D/P. There. You’ve been saved (for the time being!).
The only current “viable” interrupt builds at the moment for thief would be WvW builds using Runes of Perplexity. When HoT comes out, that might change, and you’d be looking for something like this for sPvP.
If under pressure, use dodge roll out of pistol smoke field to disengage with stealth and reopen with Sneak Attack. If being left alone, use pistol auto-attacks and Headshot. A WvW version would use Bewildering Ambush and Runes of Perplexity.
Really looking forward to trying something very similar to this as a solo queue far point Rambo and/or small team-fight-carrying build. Thanks for sharing your version. With the potent poison buff, it looks very viable and with a lot of potential to gear the build more towards sustain (agility signet, RFI, adventurer runes, etc) or condi bombs (precast caltrops + steal and basi venom, precast impairing daggers + steal, etc.). What’s your thinking on using Bandit’s Defense and Brawler’s Tenacity vs Weakening Strikes? They both seem so good.
Worry less. Adapt more.
Saying Thief is just a +1 class is like saying The Godfather is just a gangster movie or The Room is just a bad movie. If you skip the details, you’re skipping the parts worth talking about.
Unless you’re considerably more skilled than your opponent, you generally shouldn’t fight anyone playing a class with any kind of sustain by yourself. Our class is being balanced around our mobility. We’re much better at using that mobility to jet around the map and assist others in taking players down. If you’re having difficulty killing players while performing this role, perhaps you need to look at how your utilizing your CC and burst abilities. For example, sometimes you can be much more effective by staying out of a fight and waiting for certain thins to recharge, like your initiative, Basilisk Venom, Sigil of Rage, Flanking Strikes, Steal, etc. Maybe you’re not utilizing them together or haven’t waited until after your desired target has exhausted some of his defenses, like a dodge roll, protection, stability, etc. We’re also the class which benefits the most from coordination. I encourage you to attempt to find people to play with regularly so you may more easily tap into the potential of GW2’s most misunderstood class.
Everyone’s trying to define p/p with a single definition when there are basically three different categories for how the weapon set plays out.
Category 1 – God Mode: Bursting down every player in sight by spamming unload and possibly timing it around steal daze, basi venom, and haste(s).
Category 2 – Almost Viable Mode: Bursting down players with relative ease only to watch them get rezzed with even more ease because P/P has no cleave and Unload spam has left the Thief without initiative to spam Clusterbomb and Headshot.
Category 3 – Harsh Reality: Players singling out the Thief with a combination of pressure, CC, dodges, invulns, reflects, retaliation, LoS, and rezzing of allies who ate the basi/haste/steal burst to effectively turn the match into something far closer to a 4v5 than a 5v5.
This is the new P/P. It’s got the same old bag of tricks with a lot more punch. Sometimes it’s absolutely awesome. All of the time, however, it’s a few quality decisions away from being reduced to what can not yet accurately be defined as undoubtedly good.
Love this idea. Replace the current Swindler’s Equilibrium with it.
Wow, I want this change for sPvP. Shortbow would be more viable with condi builds because we can immediately swap out of it after dropping the poison field. (Being able to sneak attack through a poison field with poison and confusion on Steal looks painful on paper). P/P and S/P would be able to stack stealth in situations where an opponent is unable to hop on the smoke field. Being able to use Surprise Shot as often as we would be able to in a team fight on a D/P + SB build might be a little overpowered though.
Because when played well, we are the absolute best class at creating a snowball effect, and snowballing is fuuuuuuuuun!!