Guild Wars 2

People QQ about thieves simpy because of stealth.

Thief will always receive the most QQ because no one likes getting killed by an invisible force.

I find this skill to be rather useless.

When I use it, I find a lot of the times, even if I use stealth+mug, the poison does not get applied.

When someone uses it against me I just use stun break and their elite is wasted.

It’s very easy to tell when a thief uses it because the buff icon shows when you click on them.

It’s probably the weakest elite imo.

Now, dagger storm? That’s hilarious. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve popped dagger storm on a rifle warrior or ranger and watched them shoot themselves to death not realizing that I am reflecting all projectiles. CD on DS is reasonable too.

I would prob use TG more often if it didn’t have such a long CD.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Backstab-Mobility-Build-non-burst-solo-wvw/first#post1049529

This is the current build I am running. It’s very nice IMO.

I am not burst thief. I like to backstab someone, hit them a few times with auto attack or DB, then CnD again, regen some health, and go back at it again.

The 50% movement speed almost guarantees a successful backstab every time.

This is a last clip of the night for me. Suicide run. Not the best played either. I screwed up a lot and still manage to stomp people in like 3+v1. Just saying. Well played thief can do some damage to a zerg.

neclon.4510:

I have yet to get backstabbed to death unless I am just goofing around and swinging my sword out of boredom trying to hit the thief. That said, it seems like the best tactic to fighting a thief, is just to stay stealthed longer, and stay mobile. I had fun running a backstab thief out of ini with shadow return… drop circle, run and dodge straight and when he catches up, return – run other way, rinse repeat. Takes me a fraction of the ini he spends catching up =). If I had the patience and ran with better 1v1 utilities I would stick around for the fight, but it just bores me to 1v1 for 5 minutes.

That might not work so well with the new 50% stealth speed. If the BS thief can stealth off something he can move really fast for almost no ini cost.

Mrbig.8019:

Warrior top profession ? WUT ?

the top proffs are mesmer guard ele necro and thief.

Warriors used to be number one. Since the whirl skill “fix” warriors and guardians are easier to deal with.

Warriors and guardians were basically killing anything in thier paths using those whirl skills that hit for exponential amount of times instead of just like 2 times.

Top profession is probably elementalist if played right to me. Hard class to learn though but not impossible.

Can you fix hidden killer trait too while you are at it ?

Mister Mustard.7203:

I’m very curious about this non-sword root.

It’s possible it was not a root. I was dead before I could even try to pop shadowstep each time. That is what was most frustrating. Even against thief with basilisk I have enough time to react. This I did not.

Thobek.1730:

perhaps he’s talking about the 2 second stun? not snare. which you can’t easily remove. Or maybe the sword dash which again is a stun not a snare.

either way they are very simple to remove. and that mesmer must be good to close the distance and burst you down in the 2 seconds he’s allowed.

He wasn’t charging at me. I don’t know the mesmer class very well. I have never played one.

All I know is that in spvp I was dead in a matter of 2-3s maybe. He used some sort of CC to where dodge/moving wouldn’t help and it was too quick for a shadowstep.

I’m not hating on mesmers because of this one guy. Just saying he played well and killed me often cause of it.

EDIT: I was pretty sure he was doing like a Jinzu spec for thief except on a mesmer. Dumping 5-6 abilities at once to drop someone really quick. Because he had a long CD before he would try to do it to me. I survived a few times because I got out of the way of the burst.

I play a thief and I do not approve of this thread. The OP didn’t even state his build and what and why he was changing it. Scorpion Wire is still bugged regardless if it’s 900 or 1200 range. It’s broke. Crowd Control for thief = spamming cnd when it comes up without attacking anyone to confuse the enemy. Maybe you should get 50% stealth speed and shadow rejuv so you can stay in stealth and heal and move fast…

People don’t like being deceived.
People don’t like things they can’t see or touch.
People don’t like being mad a fool of.

Thus, all the hate for mesmers and thieves. As long as thieves and mesmers exist in this game people will complain about them because these classes make them look like fools sometimes.

Scootabuser.4915:

Sounds like you want to run a P/D Carrion build kitten /p>

It does. I’ve often considered it but the problem is that if I went condition build I feel like running P/D to be more effective as condition. Problem is I don’t like killing people that slow.

I still backstab people for 4-8k. I don’t burst them down in less than 3s but I can kill them pretty quickly sometimes.

Hahahahahahah.

No.

Wanna.4721:

But why should it close gaps? What’s the justification behind it. Let my guardian leap 4x too

That was a very noobish reply.

There is nothing wrong with heartseeker. It does exactly what it should do. Closes gaps and kills people.

I’d say nerf HS if you could kill someone from 100% by spamming it, but you can’t kill anything except maybe a glass cannon thief with it. If you are a thief and you get kitten in a 1v1 by HS spamming thief you are bad.

Ravzar.6439:

Sounds like you may just be taking advantage of the culling issue and you can get to the back of the zerg due to that. Also, it sounds like you have a very good ping if you are never lagging. If you outside the US your ping can pose a problem.

Yes. I have a decent connection. AFAIK, I am not taking advantage of culling issue. I find the culling issue tends to be in favor of the zerg. Several times a zerg “spawned” on me due to culling. Using CND after stealth wears off is not taking advantage of culling.

If you are always in stealth as you say, when running to the back of the zerg, why do you need SoS? I think you need to make a choice between SoS and shadowstep then and a choice between stealth run speed and SoS. If you look at it like this, then when you have stealth run speed you should have shadowstep but if you don’t have stealth run speed you can consider either SoS, shadowstep, or none of them if you go heavy burst.

I don’t want to be burst. I want to outlast my opponent with stealth and mobility. I want to be as versatile as possible. When I get adds or I need to kite for a minute I want all mobility.

SoS turns my base run speed to 25% out of combat. In combat after evading I get 33%. When in stealth I get 50%. So no matter what happens, I have max mobility.

In sPvP I drop SoS a lot for blinding powder or scorpion wire or something else. The maps are a lot smaller and easier to move around in.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQNAoYVlUmiO3ey5E+5Ey2jKUnIKuHGFSBAdFwKA;TUAg0CnsAZQxsAA

50% stealth speed.
SoS for 25% base speed.
Evade gives 2s swiftness (mainly used for while in combat situations).
Shadowstep.

Lot’s of mobility. If you can’t land backstab and cnd over and over with this build you should just quit.

The 50% movement speed from stealth is huge. If you are in WvW and have a string of rabbit’s to kill or mosquito’s it’s faster traveling than shortbow. It’ also saved me a few times when I am about to get zerged and I hit a CnD and just run away. I can get enough distance in stealth to not get snared or rooted before I use SB.

I find people often get confused as to how I was able to land a backstab on their backside after they used evade in the opposite direction as me. They evade and I move way faster than them without having to evade. Easily lining up the backstab.

I kinda like this build. Running valk gear + zerker jewelry/weapons.

I found fighting with a zerg against a zerg this build really shines. If you know what you are doing you can CnD off the first thing you see and just fly by everyone in stealth to the back lines. Pop a CnD off on something when needed. Once you get to the last guy, gank him. Fight the zerg from behind while everyone is engaged on targets in the front. I killed a bunch of people this way last night. It was super fun. Solo thief fighting the tail end of the enemy zerg popping in and out of stealth. Crazy fun imo.

Stealth stomping is not OP’d. Just hit auto attack or aoe on top of your downed friend.

It’s funny you complain about stealth stomping when other classes have much better ways of stomping players.

Also, stealth reviving is way more powerful than stealth stomping and I haven’t seen anyone complain about that one yet.

Depends who’s playing.

I played this guy on a mesmer and he would wait until I missed a CnD and I was exposed for a few seconds and then he would root me and burst me down. Not with his sword either he used some other different abilities and it killed me every time.

He played well against thieves and beat me 4 out of 5 fights.

Other mesmers I have no problems with. Don’t think I’ve ever found another mesmer I have a problem with. Even with MOA now, I just hit 5, then evade twice and the morf is over.

P/P is terrible. Why beat this dead horse?!

I started trying out SW in spvp. It only works when you are on the same plane as the enemy. Even the slightest elevation change will cause the player to not get pulled all the way to you.

It’s great ability but it needs tweaks for sure.

Thieves are exactly what you’re looking for “if played correctly class.”

Does the Incinerator have molten foot steps that give away your position even while stealthed?

Dancing Dagger is probably the most upsetting change to me for thief class. I haven’t been here since release tho.

However, there was no reason this needed to be nerfed 50%. Only unless you increased range to like 1200 and gave it longer/strong cripple effect.

This is skill is utterly useless in all aspects of the game now.

dank.3680:

You can also steal from an engineer for throw gunk which is an etheral field and can be treated the same as the mesmer fields.

Just some examples there are tons more.

Thanks, I’ll try the engineer one.

So, how do I know what is a combo field?

If I find this mysterious combo field and I hit the 2 or 3 for HS or DB, do I automatically do a finisher?

I’m pretty sure I’ve spammed HS or DB in some friendly AOE in all the hours I’ve played and I’ve never seen my thief do anything special.

If you want to experiment with your character you should go to structure pvp.

It’s the cross-swords icon at the top of your game. Near the World Vs. World icon.

Click on it and then click the “Heart of Mists” button.

You will port to area where you are level 80 and you can buy weapons from merchants for free and test them out in pvp or against dummy NPCs.

Ok, so I’ve been playing this game for a little while now. Not since release, but maybe a few months now.

I have done one “finisher” once. It was when I was level 15 and killing some random npc. I think it was the death blossom finisher.

Since then, AFAIK, I have never done a “finisher”.

What exactly are finishers and how do you execute them?

What is shadow strike? Guessing it’s not a D/D weapon skill…

I’ve fallen off the edge from and died a few times but not from DB.

It usually an evade the wrong way or dancing too close to the edge while fighting someone.

I don’t use DB near edges because I know it will make me fall of the edge. It’s not like HS :p

OP: This would be great if no ability cost more than 5 init, however if implemented, I have a feeling they would make abilities cost like 8 init. Problem with that, sometimes your in a fight and out of init and you want to use one of those abilities to gain back some init either from stealth, like a hide in shadows, or you want to pop dagger storm to reflect some projectiles as you kite away from the enemy for a minute.

This happens to me when I am auto-attacking something but it’s not 100% of the time.

I use “of the Wurm”

Just change flanking strike to a melee range shadowstep to behind the player and problem solved so that it hits everytime IMO.

Leave everything the same but change the mechanics to be a "behind the player shadowstep only able to be activated from melee range.

Sifu.6527:

Kinda like P/D thief where most of the damage is comming from spamming 1 and sneak attack that uses no init at all? When they want to stealth they use CnD but by the time they re-enage (3-4 sec later) they almost regen all the init they lost?

How about BS build where BS doesnt even cost init. The total init cost of this burst is 6.

The advantages of the Init system far exceed that of every other classes cool down mechanic in this game. But I’m a realistic guy and I know this system will not change b/c they do not want to rebuild the class from the ground up. However, don’t come here and tell me it’s a “bigger picture cool down” when some builds basically counter the “weakness” of this system.

Except if P/D or D/D misses or his CnD gets evaded twice, they are out of init and pretty useless. Wait? Doesn’t mean a thief needs to play well and time his CnD’s perfectly or he will be sitting duck? Yup it does!

With teh cooldown system you don’t need to play as well. You can literally just spam attacks and skills as they come available if you like. With a thief, you cannot do that unless you want to run out of init very quickly and die.

Both have their advantages and disavantages. IMO, neither is more powerful than the other. It all depends on the player behind the class.

It’s more useful in pvp/wvw than dungeons etc imo.

However, if you are running dungeons like AC or something, you can steal fear from almost all NPC down there. Fear is pretty powerful if used at the right moment.

Steal itself isn’t that great in dungeons, but the ability stolen from it can be very useful.

Laika.8795:

Raine Akrune.8416:

I like it the way it is. I don’t believe our sword or dagger main hand skills need tweaking.

Heartseeker does too need tweeking. Something has to be done about the distance, it is stupid, and thieves spamming it from afar to “close the gap” just look absolutely ridiculous.

I also think it should require a target to leap forward, like infiltrator’s strike does. If you hit IS with no target, you go nowhere and your shadow return mark appears where you stand. HS just leaps forward, and can be spammed to cover a large distance, and can be used effectively by a cowardly thief to run away.

I feel like thieves using HS to move around at will is cheesy. See it all too much, and although I’m not RPing at all, it really does break immersion when I have to stop and think about how dumb it looks, jumping 20 feet and thrusting your dagger at the air…

Do you propose we use a 4 init dancing dagger that tickles our enemies to close gaps? LOL

We would have no ability in dagger line to close gaps if you nerfed HS gap closing…

It can’t be spammed over and over, we eventually run out of init are left defenseless unless we steal from someone with certain traits.

Seriously? This will never happen.

Init system I think is working just fine.

What is a stolen bundle item lol

Unlike most games, you can switch your two crafting skills at any point in time.

You will not have to re-level your professions if you decide to switch back at a later time.

HS spam is probably the worst thing you can do on a thief.

Sure I hit the HS key once when I need to close a gap on someone (better than dancing dagger now since nerf). Then immediately I will hit CnD→BS. Maybe throw in a DB if I see them about to use some major hard hitting attack.

The only time I actually spam the HS button is when they are below 50% and I have a lot of init to kill them with it.

I just think thieves get a bad rep because some thieves spec for glass cannon and use haste+other abilities and end up spamming HS from 100% hp.

Thieves like me who use HS for what it’s intended for get called noobs when they rack kills in spvp. I had like 15 something kills most games because I keep running up on fights where people were less than 50% and I finished them off in a few HS’s.

I think people just don’t understand thief class. To them it’s hit haste and spam 2 I guess. This one guy was like l “let me show you how to spam 2!”. He was terrible.

Without fail, kids crying about spamming hs…

Neglecting 1-2 cnd+bs’s…

So I’m playing the other night and I happen to spam hs on people with less than 50% hp. Usually kills em fast. Creates a lot of qq.

Even if I land bs 2x on said person before I spam hs, all they qq about is hs spam lol.

What’s the deal? I honestly feel like this class just get picked on by noobs who don’t know when they’ve been out played.

Your problem surviving in dungeons is not your stats, it’s your weapon choices.

Other than the blind field, P/P pretty much useless in a dungeon imo.

Should use something with dagger offhand for CnD to avoid damage all together.

Venoms are terrible in this game. Not sure why we are beating this dead horse.

NightyNight.1823:

Any condition thief is stronger than BS burst any time of the day.BS burst is a bad build and its time more people realise this.You asked effectiveness.Whit condition thief you’re able to take even on multiple opponents at the same time and win.It might take longer of course but the results are better.As a BS thief you can only kill 1 at a time and only if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he countered your burst , you’re finished.Now BS is very succesful in WvW due to bad players but its realy not a good build.Now its all down to what you mean by effective.

Burst build is harder to play (assuming your not talking jinzu build/play style). You need to land CnD and then you need to BS them in the back not the front.

It’s harder to do that then hit CnD, back off, spam the 1 key with your pistol…

I can take on multiple opponents in wvw and in spvp with my BS build. I am not jinzu burst. I don’t blow all my abilities in less than a second to win.

I do need to land CnD pretty much every time for it to be effective tho, just as any stealth build requires really.

Thief is super squishy, but isn’t that why we have stealth and a bazillion shadowsteps?

Nerf thief more. He took a few seconds too long to die in this video.

D/D is probably the best weapon set we have.
P/P is garbage.

P/D or D/P is decent I’ve heard.

Standard is pretty much D/D + SB.

Thieves are not overpowered in spvp or wvw.

They were not overpowered before the two previous patch nerfs either…