Guild Wars 2

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckc9VoLF0ooLF0ofx0p0zcaqMa

15/30/0/25/0
Deadly Arts for weakness on poison
Crit for damage
Acrobatics because dodges keep you alive better than stealth.

For weapons, I generally switch between P/P, S/P and Shortbow due to high hit volume that synergizes well with Omnomberry/Mixed Berry Pies and Signet of Malice.

Utilities/Heal skill are very situational, but Shadow Refuge is pretty universal and Signet of Malice/Agility are common choices as well.
Other options: Shadowstep (stunbreak/mobility), Smoke Screen, Ambush, Roll for Initiative.
Both Withdraw and Hide in Shadows also work for heals if you need cond removal or another dodge.

Been using valk gear + zerker jewelry/weapons, zerker jewels. Haven’t played this past lvl 10 fractals (not very dedicated to PvE progression in general) but it works very well up to there and in EM dungeons.

Pure glass cannon is unnecessary; there really is no point in not having at least some valk gear + defensive traits – it makes a huge difference due to the multitude of OHKO combos/abilities that it lets you survive, such as kill shot.

Against a good player, it is extremely hard to land the backstab after steal-cnd/shadowstep-cnd. Against an average player who is distracted by an ongoing fight, you’ll often easily get off a backstab – not always, though.

Average fight length vs pub: 5s. VS skilled player 1v1: 30s+.

So the question is, is it reasonable to expect your average semi squishy player to have to dodge/avoid the backstab in order to survive?

- not sure how broken the newly buffed 50% MS in stealth trait is, haven’t had time to test it much.
Also ignoring quickness because it makes ANYTHING broken.

I don’t care about thieves/eles/warriors perhaps being stronger than intended (particularly eles, kitten so broken.)

What I do care about is the fact that there have been no fixes for the broken rendering that has existed since launch 4 months ago and still continues to make WvW unplayable.

Mesmer portal? HF vs invisible enemies. Group stealth? HF, they won’t render until your group is dead. Run into big enemy zerg? HAH, you wish you could see them.

GW2 has a lot of potential, it is a pity that this engine bug ruins so much.

Until it is fixed I’ve found other games to fill my time with.

dreztina.4820:

If you want to roam at maximum potential, roll a thief or a d/d ele. None of the other classes come close to total (solo) roaming potential just because of the sheer mobility and potential to choose your fights.

If you don’t care about being as good as possible, then just play whatever looks fun to you.

definitely agree with thief/ele, IMO warrior can also work.

Foss.4830:

Honestly since i started running a hammer build on my warrior I pretty much just laugh at thieves as I stun lock then to death.

Want to duel? I haven’t had any issues beating hammer warriors

Hurts pretty bad if the warr connects with anything though :P

Aberrant.6749:

When isn’t rendering an issue in wvw lol? Oh those oh so hard NPC’s… can’t deal with them with slightly longer reveal… /sarcasm

In my experience, culling really isn’t an issue except in busy areas – ie if you’re one of the 5 people on that half of a borderlands, there really is no problem. There may be caching issues complicating it as well, but I have had plenty of duels in empty areas where people can instantly react to me leaving stealth.

Galrond.5972:

In a duel both players know that the other one is there, it will be a 1on1 and they won’t run away.

It removes most of the problems players have with thiefs. If I know that there is an enemy I can prepare myself and stare at the screen until I see the slightest hint and smash the buttons.

Also I will get my deserved kill since he can’t just stealth and run away to prepare his next all-in attack.

Stealthed movement speed/mobility should be reduced to 50% of normal speed and not increased. Honestly, how silent can you be if you are running like an idi.ot?

High mobility while clearly visible? Fine, but heavy restrictions while stealthed.

Stealth does not increase movement speed without a trait, and I agree that buffing that trait to 50% movespeed from 33% was ridiculous even though it is in a trait line that isn’t utilized as much in PvP.

I have to disagree with how dueling changes the situation. You can get ganked by really any glass cannon; if you don’t see them coming and don’t react in the window you have (for backstab thieves its the sizeable window between 5>F1 and backstabbing) you just die. Same goes for a 100b warrior downing you instantly in a bulls charge, or oneshotting at 1500 range with rifle, or an ele using various fire grab or churning earth combos.

In an optimal situation, the Thief can land cnd>steal without the target having much time to react – but if the backstab is avoided, even another gc will easily survive, and you really should be able to dodge it. If you can’t, I suggest playing a Thief or dueling one and figuring out how to avoid eating the full combo for free.

Aberrant.6749:

Anet balances for top end players, not mid-low.

Thief and Warrior are FOOS classes. They can be build for one thing. Learn to counter their one thing they are built for and it’s GG.

Rendering is an issue right now though… I agree… and should be dealt with right now in some way. It’s been months and nothing has been done to counter it while they fix it. That’s redicilous.

Increase the reveal time until it’s dealt with… then you can lower it back down once it is. Easy to do, and the impact of the problem is decreased.

Saying don’t nerf thief until rendering is fixed is rubbish. You balance the game that you have now based on what’s happening now… not for how it’ll be in several months when this rendering is finally fixed.

Going at it like this implies that rendering is an issue across the board, in all situations. It isn’t.

Morningstar.6208:

I challenge all these players crying about the theif to a duel. You will create a thief and I will create any class you want me to beside engineer and we will duel in mists. Even thief excels in single target burst and lacks in other sides I will show you how other classes are still good at 1vs1 versus thieves.

I’m a bit rusty but would be willing to practice Thief matchups thief main, though.

edit: calling it now, when Thieves get killed off by nerfs people will realize how absurd a decent Ele is.

I really think most of the issue is just culling being broken. Good players already have very little issue avoiding backstabs even if you connect with steal+cnd.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Stiv.1820:

irishhaf.1692:

So what exactly is a Ranger supposed to do when caught in the open by a thief… besides /die
I have concussion shot and then… no burst dmg to follow up… closest to burst I get is if I manage to get entagle off, drop a fire trap and then use bonfire… thats if the entangle hit him and locked him in his spot.
Im not screaming for a nerf just curiouos what I might have missed to make fighting a thief a possible win versus imediate death.

I’ve made this suggestion many times so I’m with you on this. Rangers need an ability to put their pet away for a significant buff. The entire reason Rangers have no chance vs a Thief is their pet mechanics.

Or they could give us a trait that lets us see thieves in stealth, or a skill that negates and locks stealth from being used within 1000 feet of us for 10 seconds. It’d cause a bit of a balancing affect on them.

This is an absurd suggestion. Rangers are broken, and not only against Thieves. A “fix” like this would simply make them mandatory as a thief counter, and otherwise very weak like now.. Worse, trying to fix those actual issues would make them broken OP with a Thief/Mesmer hard counter ability.

Pretty sure mesmer focus 4 is the only pull skill that ignores LOS. Easy to dodge though since it is so predictable.

It still won’t pull people over the lip on a wall or anything like that, fun skill on cliffs though Been able to yank someone off a cliff high enough that they get instakilled by fall dmg.

Arenanet attempted to fix walljumping a while back but ended up just breaking jumping altogether. Although that was hastily reverted, I’m sure they’re putting work into finding a solution.

teg.1340:

you’re referring to the superb 30/30/30/30/30 build, right?

Obviously you couldn’t have 3 weapon sets, and I guess Warriors are so absurdly tanky they can just go 10/30/0/0/30 and skip useful traits like condition removal on warhorn.

Still, Shake it Off gives you easy condition removal as well as the requisite stunbreak (or do warriors not need one to survive? Haven’t played them a lot, personally found the class quite boring)

SniffyCube.6107:

I don’t say this often but honestly learn to play.

1st. He has to build up all the way to use that KS
2nd Even hasted the war has to take a knee and cast that for 3 good seconds (dodgeroll)
3rd Once casted he must build up to this again or if you’re smart enough to roll – wait a few seconds so he can try to do it again

Warrior bursts do a lot sure but can easily be dodged (HB eviscerate KS) and warriors have sort of a lack of escape spells.

Edit: why is a thief complaining about burst damage?

1 – Warriors have a signet to instantly gain 3 bars of adrenaline, not to mention the various adrenaline regenerating traits.
2 – it’s 1.75s cast time… And I’d have to assume it is affected by Quickness.
3 – Successfully dodging it does very little since the warrior doesn’t lose adrenaline after failing his ability.

I disagree that perma swiftness, extremely powerful dashes on sword/greatsword, easy condition removal, and highest base defensive stats in the game aren’t good for surviving

Please put some effort into at least coming up with accurate numbers next time

Raincrow.1840:

Problem isn’t really with Warriors or any other class, or any certain over powered ability… the problem is that people go down too fast in this game period.

I disagree, the ends of the bunker/glasscannon spectrum are just a lot further apart than in most games. Critdamage stack is absurd and so is stacking pure defense on something like ele/guardian.

Kill Shot hits like a truck though for sure, the only one I’ve gotten hit by on a fully geared character was 10.8k damage out of the blue; no vuln and warrior had only 3 stacks of might. Medium exotics + 300 toughness.

e: and really, at least half of the classes can push extreme burst with a dedicated build. Thief/Warrior/Ele/Mesmer, Engineer probably as well but nobody plays them.

- lifesteal food (omnomberry/mixed berry pie) combined with rapidly hitting attacks like unload/pistol whip is OP.
- signet of agility for endurance refill is also amazing.

Thieves really have no business being in melee range of many bosses without ridiculously tanky gear or tankiness provided by party members like a Guardian.
Does P/P theoretically deal less damage? Probably, but sometimes trying to use melee would mean you spend more time dodging, downed, or waiting to reengage than actually hitting your target.

Sticking with the same weapon setup or same set of utilities/traits for everything is just lazy play, though, and applies to more than just P/P.

While I do find it amusing that people try to explain any price fluctuations with Anet actions, if you look at the core/t5 fine/ecto markets you will see prices have dropped this weekend due to extremely large supply consistent with massive numbers of people running Fractals and other dungeons.

1 – might removed from enemy (all stacks) and you gain 1 stack. Duration preserved (10s.)
2 – both boons stolen, same deal as above.

pistol/dagger is a fun thief build, virtually impossible to kill while still dealing solid condition damage.

Its a very kite oriented build revolving around using CnD to stealth (+ heal/remove condition/blind) and then hit them with pistol stealth opener.

You can work venom share/trickery group buffs into the build as well.

I’d like some clarification on one point – is it possible to immob the ele during mist/vapor, or just before it is used? I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Sithaco.4673:

This is the problem, people don’t seem to realize that the thief isn’t the only class capable of high end glass cannon burst damage.

I know warriors have their bulls charge + frenzy + 100b combo as well as some rifle burst build I saw a while back (someone said it was a bug or something, not sure though)

And now this.

The killshot damage was partially caused by a bug, but nonetheless, we’re still seeing people being one-shotted by it after they fixed it.

against a glass cannon it is a guaranteed instakill if landed – 10-11k seems to be typical damage (no might/vuln stacking) vs exotic medium armor + 300 toughness from traits.

evilapprentice.6379:

Honestly, switch to Shbow and whittle them down.
When they switch to rifle, steal and use Whirlwind axe (be careful for Rifle butt, or whatever their melee KB is). Only switch to D/D when they’re in Burst range.

I forget, does the warrior steal have proj reflect now? Didn’t think of that.

scootshoot.6583:

BG pretty much has free reign as it looks like SOR is focused on 2nd place, haha.

deja vu

its ok though, all is fair in WvW and whoever is 3rd/has outmanned usually ends up getting 2v1ed unfortunately. SoR on EB last night is a good example (didn’t even have anz/speld and a kitten blue dot was pushing durios/umber.)

I feel like the thief just ends up outgunned on all aspects (unless using thieves guild), not quite sure how you would win. Almost as hopeless a matchup as* S/D ele.
Whirlwind – 5k dmg
Volley – 2.5k per tick (10k)
rifle f1 – 11k, near oneshot (with valk/zerk gear + toughness traits or it would be an ohko)
100b – instant kill with frenzy/charge

backstab – 5k dmg (vs those warriors)

I guess it might be doable with smoke screen to survive rifle damage + dodging every whirlwind? Maybe pick up dagger storm for the proj reflect/stability?

ASP.8093:

Is this the first time they’ve started splitting skills into PvE/PvP like this?

No, it happened previously with the guardian skill “Save Yourselves” (5s duration in PVP, 10s or w/e in PVE.)

WvW = PVE.

-
Thanks for the tac strike/leeching change info!

Arthrone.7964:

Ok just came back from battlefield and i dare to ask one question :
If CnD dmg reduction was aimed at bckstb build burst why i still get hit for 16k in steal+CnD+bs combo? (1400 toughness)
I am just pissed off because viability of s/d build is now completely ruined . Whats the point? All they had to do is to apply dmg reduction to mug50%, bs10% and CnD10%

cnd was only nerfed in spvp/tpvp, not wvw or pve.

AshleySegovia.3948:

Hi guys, I’d like to collect some data from you all in regards to this issue.

Could you please provide the make and model of the mouse that you’re using?

Additionally, is this issue isolated to the one mouse?

If you’re using a wireless mouse, does this issue occur when using a wired mouse?

If you haven’t already, as it will be difficult to look into this issue one on one with every player within the post, I would highly recommend creating a support ticket with our Technical Support team so that we can better assist you while we continue to look into this issue.

mouse – coolermaster storm spawn (wired)
- same issue on old wireless mouse

Tested on 125/250/1000 refresh rate.

This issue (right click mouse turning being dropped) primarily occurs in very crowded areas like WvW and Cursed Shore farm spots.

Godskull/precursors.

say 800g made from godskulls (lowish estimate)
= 13 precursors @ 60g
= 13*400g at current prices
= 4400g after fees.

And yes, people did make that much on forging precursors from godskulls.

That is $1500 on black market or an ungodly amount of gems.

as far as i know, the bug with this is that the trait for +12% damage at full adrenaline is reapplied for every pierce – so on 3rd hit it would be 36% or 40.5% bonus damage (not
sure if additive or multiplicative.) Either way, a lot more than intended.

He has 18372 HP before buffs, Thief has 10805 base + stealth skills which make up for that massive survivability gap.

IMHO backstab is fine, mug+cnd instant spike is too high.

world drop 78 exotics, you can mostly get it from map completion and mystic forge

Ulquiorra.6903:

NightShade.5283:

Ulquiorra.6903:

hmm trying this build x.x i keep running into glass cannon thieves that insta gib me with basalisk venom then just burst my face off…

u should have enough survability, even when they burst u with full combo, or at last trigger Last Refuge to preven u dying, after that u can easily reset the fight while they waiting 45 sec for their CD

i only have around 19k hp and i get downed before the venom is even finished.

dodge the mug or bring a stunbreaker (shadow step) for free win vs them.

Seriously, P/D cond can 1v2 2 glass cannon backstab thieves if you play it well.

I don’t think its any more broken than Mesmers portalling people into keeps, rendering bombing, or time warping/porting golems!

Because having 50 people auto attack down your gate (who needs rams when you have 50 people) while outmanned is boring for everyone involved.

Zerg fights themselves are just a battle of who abuses rendering/stacking/portals more, or a 30min ARAM where people spam 1200 range abilities and nothing interesting happens – unless one side has more numbers, in which case they win by default, no skill required.

edit: also stupidly low fps for anyone that doesn’t have a $5000 setup, due to GW2’s poor cpu optimizations.

I assume you’re talking about P/D cond thief? Its a pretty strong build, probably won’t be killed off by anet any time soon either.

One weakness is stuff that prevents the C&Ds from going off, like aegis/blind. This will deduct the 6initiative even though the ability whiffs.
Another is aoe CC while stealthed(like most thieves) and I think shocking aura would also shut down sneak attacks after proccing on the 1st hit of 5.

Note that this build is extremely resistant to conditions and will generally be a hard fight for you no matter what.

sigils: 1x air, 1x 5%dmg or 5%crit
All sigils share the same CD.

runes: scholar or ruby orbs.

What is wrong with those items being listed for more on the TP?

The “kill me” part of the green arrow has amazing bait potential – you can be surprisingly tanky at 50+, particularly as necro/warrior, and a hilarious amount of people don’t expect it and end up suiciding into your team.

steal interrupting casting would kill a lot of uses for it, such as steal stomping and precasting caltrops. It would also be inconsistent with other teleport skills (such as blink/lightning flash) currently in game.

Breaking cool mechanics like these is stupid. Also, Mug is broken OP.

On an unrelated note, I got hit for an 18,532 kill shot on my necro earlier.

coreajk.9218:

no photoshop, and there is no way to get there.
just have a try it. stupid hackers ruin everything in wvw

Its very likely he could just jump up there
edit: dunno why forums keep messing up my posts…

Possibly walljumping. At least its not a mesmer!

Zsymon.8457:

I think thieves need to stop comparing themselves with warriors though.. generally hundred blades will do barely 10K damage, even though it takes almost four seconds to complete, roots the warrior and gives you ages to react. A large amount of skills can be used to stop hundred blades, such as any stun breaker, a simple dodge, a daze, a knockback, a knockdown, a stun, etc..

Where as backstab, it just goes bam from stealth and it’s finished.. doing the same damage instantly, with no warning to allow for dodging or any kind of reaction. That’s hardly comparable in any way. Hundred blades is not a pvp skill, only afk people will eat a full hundred blades, it is only used for pve, dungeons, leveling and for destroying structures in wvw.

That said, I don’t think thief needs a damage downgrade, they should kill squishies very fast, but having toughness should completely prevent getting instagibbed.. so I think that improving toughness will solve all spike damage problems from all professions, without having to nerf pvp professions such as thief and mesmer.

Getting hit with bulls charge/other cc from a warrior without a breaker = instant death from 100b+frenzy. As a glass cannon you’re generally downed before the skill even does all the ticks of damage.

Thieves have high survivability if you think of it as successfully running away from a fight, low survivability if you mean sticking around in a fight.

crewthief.8649:

Hang on a second…so you’re saying they’re being nerfed because Anet is bad at balancing? Interesting theory. The best part is all these Thief players calling other players ‘bad’, LOL. I have noticed one common sentiment out of 90% of the PvP population in GW2, that i’ve run into (not Thief players mind you, obviously, lol), they feel the Thief is overpowered. ALL those people are incorrect and/or bad players??? really?

So what happened to Pistol Whip was good game balance?

I don’t think anyone is claiming how Thief is currently (buggy/broken rendering etc) is perfectly balanced. But its pretty kitten funny how many warriors/guardians complain about glass cannon backstab thieves when they’re the rock to that build’s scissors.

Also, people like to bring up “18k backstabs”. Is that even possible after signet nerf? It is kinda silly to complain about balance using numbers from pre-nerf abilities.

Glass cannon Thief currently is an extremely pubstomp build which suffers hugely vs skilled players, AKA the forums will be deluged with complaints until the build is completely obliterated.

Thief yak slapping already happens… You have to fan out and scan a wide area to find/take out the thieves before they get anywhere near the dolyaks or they’ll just suicide instagib them. It is a stupidly effective tactic as-is since yaks are so squishy.

Guarding a camp vs a few thieves is extremely easy unless they go really tanky builds, in which case you have all day to respond.
If you regularly lose camps to small groups of anything you’re messing up badly.

I have yet to see people coordinating 5+ dagger storms to aoe spike a zerg, I’m sure that would be pretty effective.

I really think the only broken part of the backstab build is Mug. Not sure why people don’t pay attention to it more.

Would be a pity for Anet to ignore the broken stuff and break fun builds because of it (see Pistol Whip/Quickness)

Breaking backstab stealth builds/steal being instant would suck – backstab is fun, steal can be used skillfully to counter stuff like thief downed teleport.

The real problem is Mug. A 10pt trait critting for 6k+ (almost 1/3 of the full combo’s damage) is ridiculous.

I’ve found P/D to be much more reliable than backstab, which is mostly good for ganking poorly played glass cannons/underleveled people in WvW. P/P and ol’ S/P work just as well for that.

edit: off topic

just poison everyone, hide, and watch them slowly die (unless there is a warrior, you have to stomp him asap to avoid him rezzing the rest)

Xanex.1397:

Also you can buy the commander title with gems = more $$ for ANet. Thats the only logical reason as to why the title is bought with gold.

No, it isn’t. Gold is basically the only resource currently in game that can be pooled as a guild (influence is virtually worthless for large guilds the way it is currently implemented)

Daecollo.9578:

-% repair cost per orb is huge, if you don’t understand how good that is….well.. lol.

No, it is not. Saving 50 copper per orb per death is worthless.

yertle.5837:

Switching orbs to something as useless as that would mean nobody serious would ever contest, defend, or focus on getting orbs.

Accumulated upgrades/demoralization are far bigger factors in lockout matches remaining that way.

Don’t really care about the badges tbh, got the legendary gift pretty easily and now I just have badges stacking up for no particular reason (650 total right now, never done JP).

Switching orbs to something as useless as that would mean nobody serious would ever contest, defend, or focus on getting orbs.

@iiMulch people just complain because they play super squishy builds and get oneshot by super squishy thieves.

They don’t complain about mesmers because people don’t play them as gankers much.