GW2 Thief Discussion

[DrakeWurrum]

I might end up playing around with a heavy stealth build at release. O_o

I wonder how effective it will be relying heavily on stealth as my primary form of self-defense. I don't even have any of the most useful stealth traits, such as condition removal or healing while stealthed...

[Valeron]

That doesn't seem very stealthy.

[DrakeWurrum]

That doesn't seem very stealthy.

It's not stealthy from the perspective of "Hey look, traits that boost stealth" but it's stealthy from the sense of "lol my Backstab crits will be deadly"
The synergy of those two 25-point minors seems really amazing for a good opening Backstab, and if you have good initiative management, you can keep them hitting pretty hard.

[Larynx]

I might end up playing around with a heavy stealth build at release. O_o

I wonder how effective it will be relying heavily on stealth as my primary form of self-defense. I don't even have any of the most useful stealth traits, such as condition removal or healing while stealthed...

I focused on a stealth build for PvP. It works really well honestly. It's incredibly defensive, and has decent burst with daggers and backstab.

By the way, in BWE3 they added a 3 second CD for stealth. You can't chain it any longer.

[DrakeWurrum]

By the way, in BWE3 they added a 3 second CD for stealth. You can't chain it any longer.

That was around back in BWE1, I thought.

[Larynx]

That was around back in BWE1, I thought.

Guess I didn't notice.

[Deleted]

Still thinking I'm going to go poison-heavy. Rather like it. Don't like traps much at all.

[Valeron]

I used a lot of shadowsteps on my assassin in GW1 to get in and out of the combat. I'm going to try to mimic that playstyle for my thief.

[Durzlla]

It's not stealthy from the perspective of "Hey look, traits that boost stealth" but it's stealthy from the sense of "lol my Backstab crits will be deadly"
The synergy of those two 25-point minors seems really amazing for a good opening Backstab, and if you have good initiative management, you can keep them hitting pretty hard.

It's so not a stealth build.... a stealth build is what i was using whenever i played my thief lol, i went with a sort of ranger that uses stealth instead of a pet sort of thing though...

[Feardotwin]

I am fascinated with the Thief profession. BW3 I pushed into it. As a Sylvari. The name of choice Wolfsbane...

Poisonous plant and Thief just work together.

It's so fun that I may never get tired of it.



Thieves Guild
Skill: 10 Cooldown per Seconds: 180
Call in your fellow thieves for combat support.



Basilisk Venom
Skill: 10 Cooldown per Seconds: 45
Venom. Your next attack turns your foe to stone.
Stone Duration:1 seconds
Venom Duration:45 seconds

Was pure exhilarating, duel daggers was my choice.

In my mind I have made my choice on profession. Just race is now the issue.

I could go on and on about the other talents of mass heal AoE vanish and the AoE blind Vanish. How I tricked people to take points alone as 3-4 of us sat and waited as he came, we ganked him under 3 seconds... It was epic. Pure epic.

[DrakeWurrum]

It's so not a stealth build....

And why would you say it's not a stealth build? It doesn't need to have traits boosting stealth to be a stealth build. The entire point of it is to make maximum use of high-initiative Backstabs, with a hopefully high chance of critting, combined with the extra damage from that one signet. Just because it's generic enough to not use Backstab in a situation where you can't, doesn't mean it's not a stealth build. There's a reason I went Sword/Pistol for the secondary "defensive" set, and picked the heal that stealths you (which, with those traits, will give me 6 initiative each time I use it).

You can't really get both of those 25-point minors for the sake of Backstab and get a lot of stealth-based traits.

[Durzlla]

And why would you say it's not a stealth build? It doesn't need to have traits boosting stealth to be a stealth build. The entire point of it is to make maximum use of high-initiative Backstabs, with a hopefully high chance of critting, combined with the extra damage from that one signet. Just because it's generic enough to not use Backstab in a situation where you can't, doesn't mean it's not a stealth build. There's a reason I went Sword/Pistol for the secondary "defensive" set, and picked the heal that stealths you (which, with those traits, will give me 6 initiative each time I use it).

You can't really get both of those 25-point minors for the sake of Backstab and get a lot of stealth-based traits.

.... you have 2 stealths... that's like me saying my rangers build is a stealth build because i have hide in plain site and have easy access to blinding tuft (can drop that down to like 30 sec CD) but it's ok, because i built around surprise burst damage it makes it a stealth build!!

And either way, you also referred to that as a heavy stealth build, which it's not, if anything that build uses stealth for a bare minimum, a true stealth build would be in and out of stealth CONSTANTLY not to just regen initiative and then burst again...

[DrakeWurrum]

.... you have 2 stealths...

Don't need more. Cooldown between stealths anyways. This build fully intends to jump in and out of stealth constantly, with how much initiative regen it already has. They won't last long if done right.

[Feardotwin]

Don't need more. Cooldown between stealths anyways. This build fully intends to jump in and out of stealth constantly, with how much initiative regen it already has. They won't last long if done right.

As I stated on strategy for ganking and defensive recovery.

If timed right, you can make the vanish last longer by applying one directly after another. I have done it. And I saw NO CD for it in BW3.

You take massive advantages with the strategy. As can be for so many uses, zone control, misinformation for safety of enemies. Etc.

[DrakeWurrum]

As I stated on strategy for ganking and defensive recovery.

If timed right, you can make the vanish last longer by applying one directly after another. I have done it. And I saw NO CD for it in BW3.

You take massive advantages with the strategy. As can be for so many uses, zone control, misinformation for safety of enemies. Etc.

Pretty sure using another skill would reveal you from stealth the moment you use it. There was definitely a "Revealed" effect placed on your character after performing any action that breaks stealth. ANet specifically made sure, before BWE1 even, to add this to the game, because of a video that demonstrated perma-stealth.

As from the wiki:

When Stealth is broken or ends, the user gains a Revealed effect which prevents him/her from re-entering Stealth for a few seconds, regardless of the skill used.

[Glytch]

it seems that init has a natural regen rate of 1 init every 1.67 seconds

guess ill try to find a place to put this...

[Cryblood]

From what I saw during BWE3 and Videos afterwards... Venomous Aura Builds seem too be the best for team based PvP, as it and Steal Traits that give Boons seem too be the only traits that really benefit a team, which is what you want in team fights.

[Larynx]

From what I saw during BWE3 and Videos afterwards... Venomous Aura Builds seem too be the best for team based PvP, as it and Steal Traits that give Boons seem too be the only traits that really benefit a team, which is what you want in team fights.

Yup. At the moment, condition/support thieves are really the only viable builds. Hopefully they'll change this.

[Grable]

BWE3 was actually my first beta where I looked at builds

Anyway, I came up with this build.

I love the backstabbing gameplay of Thief, so I tried to focus my build on traits that boost you when you are in stealth and just get the max possible damage out in the first few hits. Basically a stealth/backstab burst build. Some of the traits also focus on Assassin Signet (+150% damage on next hit).


Thoughts about the build?

Also, I seemed to fail at using Assassin signet on my backstab last beta, don't know what I was doing wrong. It seemed to put me on autoattack when I used it which sometimes made me miss backstab. When exactly am I supposed to use the signet with a backstabber thief?

Also a question about Heartseeker. Sometimes it does one jump, sometimes it does two (or even three jumps). Does that depend on the health of my enemy as the tooltip says or does it depend on something else?

[Larynx]

1) Try disabling autocast for your number one. That what I did on my thief.
2) If you mash the button, it'll go off more than once. Each Heartseeker = 1 leap. So for each leap, you're using the ability again. This is because of the ability queue.