Guild Wars 2

New GM trait in deadly arts.
5% extra damage for every venom applied on your character. Applies to allies

Your Requirements:
- I am 17
-Use a headset and use Ts3
-Able to have a passport
-Live in NA
-Always ready and looking to have fun and still be hardcore
-Totally able to “lighten up the mood”
-Strong communication skills and useful knowledge of rotations
-Able to be contacted outside of game. (Have to know team for quite a bit of time before hand, #strangerdanger ;P)
-As of 9:09pm MST October 11th am ranked 664th NA
-Pretty much a pacifist about badmouthing (totally ironic considering its a pvp game)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About Me:
Ive pretty much been into games since I was 3 years old and was playing blues clues on my GBA. I love the classics and beleive the most important part of playing video games is having fun. I’m always adapting and am pretty open to any strategy. My ingame name is “Lockndog” but call me Yodog

Please /15chars

-P/P also can do more dps than d/d or d/p at ranger and has alot more disengage thanks to blinding powder and swapping into p/p then back into d/d and either leaping into or blasting black powder.
-Can use shadowrefuge offensivley by utilizing darkcombo field with sneak attack(WTF 5x lifesteal + unload = GG)

I’ll most more tips later when i get home, but needless to say this build is SO underated but has tons of potenial. Enjoy

So before the Q.Q and before walls get punched let me explain.

Let me tell my story, so i log on patch day pumped as heck for feature patch 2, thinking that this was gonna be as good as the last one. Thief received alot of nerfs. More specfically, s/d was GG.
Innocent and blind to the truth I played and played trying to figure out if it was viable, i was wrong.
Fast forward a few days, I began to experiment, i was in deep though if it was still viable to even BE a thief. I considered rerolling ele or ranger because it didnt seem like the class had any hope. I was playing around in a duel server when a thief with double quip was making everybody his kitten. In aw i immediatley swapped to spectator mode to discover this “magical” build.
Needless to say, p/p was the main course of his set, he was a gunslinger with this INSANE burst and great utility, in and out and constantly keeping his oppenent guessing.
(His Build)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa4Yl0Mp0pdPx8J8PNxLhw1PvXn+t2LCMA-TpBFwACOBAIOIA02fYxRAoaZAAPAAA

I experimented riguroulsy, trying to figure out what was needed to make this even more viable, I ended up with two builds. An anti decap thief which does as much damage as the other build but is less usefull in teamfights. Then there is the slayer build used for being an all purpose burster, able to focus the most dangerous targets in the fight and bring them to their knees.

(Anti Decap)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqaVl0Mp0pdPx8J8PNxLhw1PvXn+t2LCMA-TJBFwACOBA12foaZAAPAAA

(Team Slayer)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa4Yl0Mp0pdPx8J8PNRLhw1Qvfveu2PCcA-TZBFwACOBA12fYxBBoaZAAPBAA

Why P/P now?
- P/P has enough burst to trigger the immbolize at 50% Hp which now triggers EVERY 20 SECONDS
-P/P has ranged burst comparable to the new longbow ranger but with more utility and escape
-P/P can engage from stealth and lockdown key targets in team fights and keep constamt pressure from range which longbow ranger cant do.
-P/P with richochet can cause aoe interupts, deny stomps, blind, keep squishies dead for good.

Ok so im not 80 yet but I went ahead and started an Ele.
Let me say that d/d is quite possiy one if the most fun thing I’ve played in a ver long time. It feels fluid and fun which I love
Thanks to you guys I’m in love with this game again!

Ok so as someone who has logged 1k hours on thief i’m very attached to the class. However with the recent update i feel like its been spat out of the mouth of terribad classes and put in a pretty kittening bad situation.

That beings said:
Is ele worth it? It seems extremly fun with all of its burst and acsees to both CC, dps, heals, and survivability. I play mostly wvw and spvp, but i know ele can be deadly in dungeons so its covered easily across all gamemodes.

IF it is worth it, what are some troubles i might have with converting? And why it would be worth my time to play it even with the troubles i might have.

IF it isnt worth it, state why and what you would do in my situation, because I want to have fun again :L

Much Love,
~Yodog and the thief community(we are all homeless Q.Q)

Woah woah woah never thought I’d ever bee on this forum like ever. But the recent ready ups have me considering ranger. I’m a full ascended zerker thief with 1k hours logged on it.
I have all the zerk armor I just need the character.

So the real question is it worth it? Will zerker ranger be viable in this next balance update?
I have the gear so why not.
But I want to know if it’s worth my time to get another class to 80.

Also if yes. Tell me why :P

We have a ready up livestream coming our way, the real question is, are they going to fix us, break us, or tweak us. Hoping for fix lol

Just tossing some ideas that would be cool.

Main hand torch:
This is really intresting and I think a cool concept. Think like lara croft adventurer style torch. It could have some really cool aspects. Especially mixing with offhand pistol.

Rifle:
Not much to say but that shadow sniper assasin is epic. Physical damage based.

Longbow:
Maybe a faster version of rifle, lower damage but faster at and more condi based.

Off Hand Sword: besides that feeling like Kirito from SOA would be cool :P. I think it would cool to it have a more party riposte style gameplay. (S/S #3 should be sword drive)

Staff: maybe like a quarter staff or something. Not like a shadow Mage or anything but a physical 2 handed melee weapon sounds epic for thieves and is totally necessary. Have it more low damage but CC based like hammer for warrior (except not stupid OP broken).

Main hand axe:
It could have a really cool fast paced gameplay with a “grapple hook” style where it could attach you to people and they couldn’t leave the leash until it expired
Melee based with slow high damageing attacks perhaps?

I don’t know on any of the stealth attacks for these weapons but I do think that these are probably a good list of candidates for new weapons for thieves.
Feel free to come up with what the skills would be for these though

Yes please.
/15chars

WOAH WHAT. Thats probably what everyone is thinking right now “Why would you ever suggest a casting weapon for a physical adventure type profession?”

Now hear me out when you think of assasins and ninja’s what do you think of? Nunchucks, shurikins, and staffs. Imagine roaming through wvwvw and leaping from the shadows and beating up your opponent with a staff.
I’m not sure about skills but it could be an awesome weapon, but I know other weapons will take priority such as dual swords and torch.

P.S. No greatswords pls

Hi guys! I’d like to make a post about an issue that has sprung up for many of us.
Roaming is DEAD or if not dead, barely living. This is a massive issue as many if the best fights in this game for me have been me solo looking for kills and taking camps solo.

So how do you fix this problem?
Well roaming content needs to have a couple of key things.

-A worthwhile reward for killing people

-Intresting and evolving fights that revolve around small but important objectives

-A cool and unique non-linear terrain to roam in

-MONEY MONEY MONEY

So we have our checklist, let’s come up with some ideas now.

-Let’s start with the map. I don’t know about anyone else, but a giant city with climb able roofs and cool jumps and towers sounds amazing to roam in. Maybe have courtyards for wide open fighting and alleys for cool ganks and CQB fighting. If you needed a theme think “giant broken down ascalonian city”

Now we have our stage, now for roaming gameplay we must ask ourselves a question, how do we make roaming worth it? if your like me, when you step into wvw you don’t except to make a profit, that should not be the case here as when you roam you should feel like you are going to bounty hunt and get cash.

In my dream scenario for every kill you or your party earns you would get a bounty, every kill say adds 1 silver to your bounty. When you achieve a higher bounty you’d begin to receive more money for killing players yourself. Eventually you can exchange parts of your bounty for rewards like champ bags and other cool stuff. But the more bounty you gain the worse it is for you because then you may say get 15 kills in a row making you always visible on the map as a “high threat”. But you can turn in kills for loot.

There would also be small altars or things like in borderlands that give you stat boosts for a short time that people would want to control. This map would have a edge of the mists system to ensure constant flow of players.

Also you could go in as more than one person to clarify in groups of 1-5 and would server as a free-for-all style of roaming. These are some of my ideas post yours down below on how to improve thanks!

Despite the lack of defensive abilities on p/p.
The set honestly doesn’t do any damage for the initiative it costs to spam 3 over and over again.

3 options:

-make the 3 skill be worth spamming by making it hit harder. Or adding conditions.
(On crit confusion) (On crit bleed) (On crit bleed)(On crit burn.) If it doesn’t crit inflicts vulnerability or weakness

-Lower initiative cost.

-make it have awesome defensive tools

-Evade but a root?

-Dazes every other bullet? And bleeds every other

Add your own ideas!

Haha jk, now that I have your attention we can actually discuss this like human beings.
Not five year olds (all players) yelling at their parents (anet) to fix their toy.(GW2)

Well ladies and gents. Today is your lucky day, today we are going to do something so vile and wrong that your mind will bend at the thought.

I would like my fellow trippy tricksters and slippery stealers to discuss how excactly do you counter said “devilish deceiver”? (thieves)

Thieves please discuss anti-thief tactics and how said classes can deal with them. The goal here is to create a FRIENDLY environment to discuss how there are indeed counters to thieves you just have to learn to play.

Starter topics: (other people should cover cuz I’m way too lazy)
Evades
Steal
Boon theft
Blinds
Stealth
Initiative
Shadowsteps

Example:
Shadow refuge: pulses stealth and heals.
Counters: knocking a thief out with a knockback or launch will reveal anyone inside.

Basi Venom: stuns 1.5 secs
Counter: when you see it on a thief anticipate the steal or infiltrators strike or some form if shadowstep

There has been a lot of discussion about how death blossom is useless and yet is also amazing for condi stacks.

Before we look at improvements let’s examine what each skill offers

-Auto attack:
Endurance gain, poison, and fast hard hitting melee attacks make this slot perfect.

-heart seeker, an awesome skill but has no use for a condi setup besides having chase potential.
CHANGE! Heart seeker now inflicts weaken on foes above 50% health
(This is because for condi we want the setup to be able to have some sort of way to have an active defensive against players who use high burst builds when most condi weapon sets have this.)

-Deathblossom:
CHANGE: evade frames improved to 3/4 second and scales better with power in addition to applying bleeds.
(People who run full glass will now benefit from death blossom and people who still run condi will love this set, Aswell as having good hybrid synergy)

-Dancing dagger
Right now this skill is very very very limiting, it cost too much for having low damage and a pretty bad cripple
CHANGE: Costs 2 ini, (remove cripple and up physical damage by 20%) This skill now gives a stack of “death watch” every time they are hit with a dagger. At 3 stacks the icon changes allowing you to use shadows allure.

Shadows Allure: you pull yourself to the target affected by 3stacks of deathwatch and inflict them with immomblize(1/4 sec) and a stack of confusion for every stack of deathwatch on them.a

CnD: keep the same cuz this skill is awesome

Backstab: keep the same except now it had a condi side,
CHANGE: Stab the foe from the back with high damage with fire drake venom on your dagger tip.(burns 2 seconds) (Now backstab can have a use as a hybrid and a condi and physical skill.

This is by no means the best changes that could be made but they are just some ideas. Pleas post your ideas below

The meta is how we define a common role or build the everybody and their mom runs right? Interesting thing about it however is that how silly of a concept it is.

Imagine a world where every thief still played the game but couldn’t communicate. That means no sharing builds, no armor, no nothing, everybody went off what they figured out. There would be no meta, it would be a bunch of thieves playing in the way the have designed.

TL:DR
Ignore the meta and play in the way you think is coolest.

Thief:
We are really good at shutting boon based classes thanks to steal boon skills.
We can be high stealth based or have high evade.

Thieves get screwed so hard by condi overload my poor stealth can only cleanse so much lol

We also get owned by lots and lots of Hard CC because our stun breaks are on a fairly high CD

Also most classes but Mesmer and Ranger can counter thief

Ok so basically we all hear the standard screams of

TEIFOPANETPLSNERFCUZICANTSEETHEMIDONYKNOWHOWTOAIMMYAOESANETHELPPLS (This is Ofc the national anthem of noobs everywhere.)
EDIT: I want this on a t-shirt

Regardless metas and cries of frustrations aside, the core of this discussion is buid craft and creating a new thief build that gives us a goal of specific roles. We are going to focus on creating three builds. Please submit your unbiased builds by overall posting what you think what build that would fulfill each category the best.

RAW POWER BRUH BUILD
(This build is glassy dpsofc. Condi’s stick to you like a crack addict to a cartel.)

ALLURPOINTSBELONG2US
(Spvp or overall I don’t die and do moderate damage. Condi removal is like Jennifer Lopez, fine ;-) )

KBAI
(Hyper sustain roaming build made for “pulling out” when the going gets rough and going in when it’s the right time. Can remove condi’s like candy from
a baby. Has Solid Dps)

Have fun creating builds

S/S : Rush Of Resilience. 7 initiative
Dash towards your foe with tremendous speed reflecting projectiles and dealing massive damage to crippled foes along the way. With 4k attack it would have an attack damage of around 4k. It can hit as many foes as it hits along the way.

D/S : Strategic Blows. 5 initiative.
Weaken your foe with a strike to the arm and slice your foe with a blow to the knees causing a 1 second knockdown. Transfers 3 conditions to your opponent. Attack does not have and block or evade attached.

P/S: Point Blank. 6 initiative. Stab your foe in the back stunning them. Shoot bullets into
The edge of your sword causing sparks that inflict burning.

Sword 4: Sword Juggle. 6 initiative.
Throw your sword and shadowstep to your foe To retrieve it.
If you retrieve the blade it chains into “Furyous Return.” Gaining fury and the initiative you just spent from sword juggle and causing your next juggle to deal double damage. Double damage buff lasts 5 seconds and if activated again can stack if the attack is successful yet again. Durations are refreshed is successful.

Sword 5: Execution: All initiative remaining.
Deals increased damage the more initiative you have. Super obvious cast.

My point with most if these changes is to make thief with offhanda high risk reward play that in the right situations is capable of insane dps.

How :0?
/15chars

So I was looking at rune sets and centaur runes with withdrawl allows for near perma swiftness. Also if you have 15 Into acrobatics you have perma swiftness. The runes also apply to allies so you basically give more support to everyone! It’s a pretty cool set I think you all should give a shot! It also adds a good amount of power. I guess you could say they are the new travelers runes if not better.

Saved for moar ideas

So a lot of the acrobatics line has potential and quite honestly could be on par with shadow arts if it had done quality reform. If it is to be in line with what the trait line entitles, it should give bonuses to dodging and being revealed and or making out if stealth sustainable. I’m going to give a few examples of new traits and old ones I’d want to revamp.
Please add your own ideas as well

Assasins Equalibrium: whenever you are revealed you have stability (revealed would pulse stability for 1 second every second)

Fleet of Foot: cure a condition every time you evade. Applies to all conditions not just weakness and cripple. (No ICD)

Assasins Retreat: Gain 50% movement speed when you are revealed

Quick Pockets: weapon swap is reduced to 6 seconds. Swapping weapons restores 3 initiative.

Master Trapper: Traps are throwable and cool downs are reduced by 20%.

Hard to Catch: Shadowstep BACKWARDS (600) and break stun if hit by CC. Will not activate if you have stability.

Assassins Reward: revealed pulse heals you. (Base 300 hp/s) (.5) scales with healing power extremely well

And for all you P/P lovers out there: this would be a grandmaster:

Tactical Assault: evading does not cancel channeled abilities
(Think evading while using unload)

So I’ve been a theif for about 6 monthes. I love this class to death. I love the hats it gets when we have to work so hard for results. Anyhow, I LIVED for those awesome backstab and dissapearing into stealth and watching my enemy run. With the recent patch, theives have lost dagger as a viable option as a main hand it seems. It just doesn’t do damage anymore. So my question for you all, is it worth it to roll say an Ele or engi and try to move on or wait it out and play terribad condi build meta?

If you have a sustainable d/d build let me know cuz I want to relive my 9k backstabs with good sustain.
/end rant

This trait would be in the grandmaster tree for acrobatics.
Blinding Wrath
Every time you blind an enemy you gain a stack of might for 10 seconds.
No ICD

Hey Ele community! I’m a thief and was wondering if it is worth it to roll Ele? I like the thought of flying into my enemies and blowing things up with fire grabs and moving around as fast as.. Well… Lighting. So here are my questions, is d/d ele viable? Is power Ele still strong? Can Ele be a good roll for wvw roaming? Is the class as cool as it sounds?
Thanks!
-yodog

Yo whattup Mesmer community. I’m a thief that enjoyed the heck out of thief before patch. Now I’m having a hard time having fun on thief. Do my question from me too you is it worth it to roll Mesmer? I want to do a shatter or power build? Is it in a good place and viable after patch? Are dual swords as cool as they sound and look?
Thanks!

Saved For Future Use

Saved For Future Use

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls
Today were going to discuss thief in a way that is educated and respectful. So please keep the Q.Q and rage to a minimum.

I understand the hot topic it seems is that because a class has absurd acsess to stealth that it makes them invincible, this is true but at the same time false. The extremely high stealth uptime build usually involve a dagger or sword main hand (all do). You say how there is no counter play to backstab, when I ASSURE YOU there is. Let’s go down the list for a moment.
THIEVES HAVE LOW TO NO STABILITY ACSESS
Which means if you have a fearline, warding line, or anything that knocks you down you will make them unable to backstab you in stealth until that line disapates or they will blow a stun break in order to reach you, either shadowstep, roll for initiative or infiltraitors signet. Which is a win for you every time a thief blows a utility is a small victory. Because despite common beleif, theives do not have unlimited amounts of shadowsteps. Another good counter play is using ambients or animals in wvw as a way to block the stab. In spvp the best way to counter thief hanks is by trying to take unpredictable motions, theives are a lot less likely to gank you in areas with not a lot if room to maneuver. If you simply position yourself in such a way where you are less of a threat, they will seek a better target. Also in spvp and wvw, the best tip I can give is first of all is Follow these 3 steps theives don’t want you to know

1. For the love of God we hate stun breaks.
Seriously, if you have good stun breaks basi venom will suck a lot less. Theives have one stun, 3 dazes, lots of immobilize, 1 pull, and one knockdown. Theives get good SOFT CC but not a lot of hard CC. If you run maybe 1 or two stun breaks for that basi venom which by the way you can see if a thief has it on them you can avoid it using anti-stealth methods.
2. We hate AOE so utilize our Kitten me Here" circle.
Shadow Refuge is absurd awesome and strong, but it has a weakness, if you get knocked out if it you are revealed, it also means that we are confined to a circle for you to blast away in with all of your conditions and meteors and anything that hits hard. If you get us low enough we will reset the fight and that counts as a victory for you.
Or if you don’t it means we are about to move in after healing up a tad in order to probably backstab or basi backstab you. In which case get your active damage medigation ready and the second you see a block or an evaded on your screen, you know EXCACTLY where the thief is. He is behind you. Or if he doesn’t attack you for awhile and you go out of combat, look for a white circle on the ground. It means that he has shadow stepped away and you can predict where he will reappear as soon as that circle reappears you know where he is.

3. Learn to predict and know our utilities and traites. Just go on the wiki and take a cruise around. Look at the SA trait line and what else we have. I assure you your class has a way to best theives, just get creative

I hope I helped everyone learn a little more why thieves why yes are annoying but we aren’t invincible and are indeed killable. We can be outdone if you are smart. And perma stealth build are low dps especially now that this patch has destroyed most backstab builds.

Anyways. Happy Thief Hunting!
(Or being hunted)
;)

P.S. I might have made a few mistakes but whatever you get the idea.

panicbutton.1053:

I’m still a little confused about why a few people think Revealed Training is a good trait. It’s something like a 8% damage boost, right? That literally a small 8% damage boost for a few seconds. That surely can’t be enough to call it a godsend for anything — if anything it makes our damage a little closer to what it was pre-patch?

I’m not attacking it, I just don’t see the promise in a 8% boost.

Well, it adds +200 power to sets that spend minimal time in stealth, +8% damage for sword is coupled well with the fact you can CnD then daze and auto attack, giving the high dps auto attack a pretty good boost. Not to mention the third auto attack of sword does cripple and lasts pretty long when you have +30% condi duration and you also get +300 power from the trait line too

Btw is condi thief now a lot more viable? :o

This trait i thought was extremely sub par, it’s actually extremely strong. Pair it with the fact that s/d gets a free auto attack chain every time you sword hilt bash, also pistol gets 4 shots of +200 power with the sneak attack. I’m definitely going to be looking into more sword builds. Any rune and armor recommendations?

P.s.: good bye d/d Q.Q

Dee Jay.2460:

Stacking Power is always going to be more effective than stacking Ferocity.

if you were a valkyrie thief you’d benefit though.

the 6 point on Superior Runes of the Wurm now converts 7% of vitality into ferocity :0

So I was chilling on my thief and was playing around with build ideas in my head right? I was looking at traits, runes, armor and all that then it hit me. Theives were meant to be full on hybrids. The d/d set has one of the most awesome bleed stacks in the game, an amazing high dps cloak skill, and a pro stealth mechanism. The same applied with p/d. It has a high damage ratio skill with conditons. This becomes more apparent when you look at traits, the trait “flanking strikes” is a power based boost in a condi line. The “runes of the theif” which add precision and condi damage with another 5% behind damage boost. If we could have high dps on both sides maybe by stacking might with noble runes and withdrawal. It could be a thing of new meta(maybe).
In theory, a hybrid theif could work, full celestial, decent crit with good condi. I’m just theory crafting so I might be full of it, but I’d like to see what you guys think!

@RyuDragnier I was talking about damaging conditions such as burning and bleeding, I understand disabled and cripples exist in other games, just usually not in a DPS prevalent way.

I never called ranger OP lol. I’m saying if it got buffed to be on par with warrior.
Edit: I see a flaw in my wording, I think every class should be buffed to equal levels off awesome (i.e. Let’s make every class as OP as warrior therefore no class is OP)

@xFireize it’s easier to envision buffs then nerfs. The equal buffing might be a challenge but it would be pretty cool when it worked.

Also, the only reason there is power creep is because there is condi damage in this game. Most games don’t have condi damage, and right now condi damage is the new meta for pvp.
But anyway, this isn’t a condi rage thread

Well I mean we can buff things like armor and whatnot too. It doesn’t necessarily mean we just can buff damage

So I came back a few months after taking a one year break. This game has changed drastically. The most important change I feel, is that everyone has received nerfs that are stupid hard. These nerfs have been extremely detrimental to the game and I feel there is an alternate route to be taken. Why instead of nerfing peoples classes. Why don’t we keep buffing, but buff classes to an equal level. Say for an example, if one specific class like ranger in this next patch was buffed to where warrior is right now. Instead of nerfing the class, we simply buff every other class to the point where they MATCH the OPness of warrior and ranger. And so the cycle continues. People will take these buffs ALOT more positively then any nerf would be taken, because they’ll be happy that there class will be buffed. I believe that with this route, people would be more excited to play because they will always feel like they are getting stronger. Also it opens the gate for ante to add new skills to balance by buffing.
Maybe this idea has some issues, but I think the general reception would be strong.