GW2 Thief Discussion

[Lane]

You can just use food if you need more, not sure if you really meant 100% but it would be 5% and I personally wouldn't drop the condition damage for duration.

Well, I meant 100% duration after runes and buffs and such.

1. not all classes have SR (Lane didn't specify if what prof she was playing)

What's SR? O_o I was on my mesmer and it was bad. I was still rocking the full PvE 'zerker shatter build. I tried switching up my utilities to things like Moa, Arcane Thievery, even tried the dazing Mantra, but nothing worked because I could get very few attacks to land. Like I said, my combat log was literally spammed with needing a target selected errors. Maybe it would've been possible to take the thief down, but not with my lack of PvP experience. I'm kind of ashamed to admit I died at least 3 times to this thief before finally giving up, I didn't want to continue to be farmed. x_x

Last night I went into WvW with my ranger and it was basically the same story, except this time 2 thieves were 'trolling' about 10 of us, I guess. Really sad. Given my experiences over the past week I'm left to conclude that there aren't that many "good" PvPers I'd need to worry about on a thief. :P I think I managed to screw up one of the thieves once with a trap, but again I had no experience PvPing with a ranger and despite trying to apply the knowledge I've learned since the mesmer incident I wasn't that much more successful.

The good news is I finally got 100% map completion on my mesmer and am sitting at 99% on ranger, yay. ;P

[Meledelion]

Shadow Refuge, it's a horrible tactic to pop your best stealth mechanic to outlast one silly skill since the other thief will still have SR putting them at the advantage.

[Lazuli]

I guess if you're bad sure, but I don't lose to thieves I don't need my shadow refuge lol I still have a bask venom waiting for them. Btw if you don't know to stand at the edge and dodge through your SR to avoid knockbacks and aoe spam... I dunno what to tell you.

@Bov I completely agree, people see a thief and aren't able to kill him because all he's doing is trolling and chain stealthing etc. they just scream "OP! STEALTH OP!!!! QQQQQQQQQQ WAHHHHHH"

@Mel Same with any other MMO... stealth makes kids cry, I love it. Pretty sure they fixed culling in WvW a while back, and like I said I've personally fought plenty of thieves the past week and haven't noticed any of them staying in stealth as you say. They show up immediately after attacking so no excuses kay Mel? Maybe you should take your culling setting in graphics off of "low" lol.

[Meledelion]

snip

Why do you recommend using SR when you "don't need it anyway lol", it's bad advice so don't give it. SR lasts 3s, dodge takes 0.75s which means you are being hit for 50% of the duration even if you have full energy please go educate yourself.

sigh, it's 1 attack that's <0.5s and judging from your recommendations I highly doubt you're capable of noticing that. There's video proof of this stuff still happening (in sPvP so it's not like culling has anything to do with it).

To expand on culling a bit: I didn't say culling I said lag, in 1v1 situations culling won't ever be a factor.

edit: decided to expand why you don't see it.

What you see is this: thief stealths => pops out of stealth > is attacking you.

What happens is this: thief stealths => attacks you > is attacking you > pops out of stealth > is attacking you.

You can't see it unless you have your combat log open and catch the .x sec of the attack.

[Lazuli]

Sorry, but that definitely does not happen in spvp. Let's see these videos.

SR to avoid a thieves guild is not bad advice, you're just uninformed an uneducated. It makes them lose their ace card and you can just run away come back and have your cds back up and he still has to wait a couple min. He can't even change his elite while TG is on cd, this is why most people run bask in spvp. It's way too easy to avoid and essentially becomes a wasted cooldown. No one is going to sit there and just let you pummel them with it up unless they're retarded.

Hence "only bad players use thieves guild"

If you can't even survive without SR then you suck bad and your team sucks. 90% of the time I only use it for revive or surprise buttfuck team stealth to take someone bunker down off a point.

I bet you run signet of malice with thieves guild and 2 venoms SR on a gc setup lmao you sure sound like a pro, I've probably played a billion times more tournaments than you kid.

[Meledelion]

SR to avoid a thieves guild is not bad advice, you're just uninformed an uneducated. It makes them lose their ace card and you can just run away come back and have your cds back up and he still has to wait a couple min.

He can't even change his elite while TG is on cd, this is why most people run bask in spvp. It's way too easy to avoid and essentially becomes a wasted cooldown. No one is going to sit there and just let you pummel them with it up unless they're retarded.

Hence "only bad players use thieves guild"

If you can't even survive without SR then you suck bad and your team sucks. 90% of the time I only use it for revive or surprise buttfuck team stealth to take someone bunker down off a point.

I bet you run signet of malice with thieves guild and 2 venoms SR on a gc setup lmao you sure sound like a pro, I've probably played a billion times more tournaments than you kid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbhdsF4oEI8 here's the vid so you actually grasp what is going on...

It is bad advice since you're open to free shots for 1.5s and only stealths for 12s in comparison to TG lasting 30sec. The funny thing is that after your SR if the TG thief catches up to you he'll be able to pop SR and keep dealing dmg to you thanks to his two thief friends while he sits in his SR. All of that is going from the idea that TG is popped before SR (which no sensible person will ever do), so yea if you don't know when to use the skills, I agree they suck.

And no that's not why they run basilisk in tPvP, they run basilisk because 1. TG doesn't add anything for the team aside from "damage" 2. TG dies from random aoe rendering it rather useless 3. BV helps for opbjective play while TG only helps for killing 4. The long CD

The funny thing is though, we're not talking abotu tPvP at all, we're talking about a 1v1 WvW encounter. They differ greatly.

I play s/d in tPvP like anyone with a brain does and in WvW it depends on what I feel like playing. If you have played a billion times more tournaments than me I'd be surprised since then you've played 946 000 000 000 games, which is quite a lot.

[Meledelion]

Depends on your goal, for roaming I doubt S/D needs a lot more tankiness and for zerging you just want PVT gear and a SB for lootbags!

[zito]

I disagree, thieves force bad players to use their brain and stealth is fine. I would be all for the removal of stealth and we turn into assassins from GW1 though.

You are assuming people complaining about stealth are bad players when even people from the 100% theif forever community beleive it's gimped and broken.

I also disagree that stealth is bugged, I've played WvW extensively the past few days and every time a thief comes out of stealth on me I see him immediately.

FYI when you see a theif come out of stealth he actually has been out of stealth for 1-2 seconds you just didn't see him before.

Only bad players use thieves guild

This is where I stop reading and realize talking to you would be pointless.

[Meledelion]

Is cleric the set with condi/healing? since that one was quite popular in the past with the signet as a heal skill and dagger storm

[Meledelion]

s/d ele has a lot of blast finisher too but the problem is that you need to be in the circle to get them off while thief can sort stand back and be safe.

Water fields are very strong though, both blast and leap finisher give great healing.

[Lazuli]

WvW heroes and don't even know what the fuck they're talking about. /sigh

And yes thief has best finishers for healing, healing rain + cluster or heartseeker is massive heals, ranger field heal works equally as well.

[Meledelion]

WvW heroes and don't even know what the fuck they're talking about. /sigh

Talk like this makes me laugh. You're probably a r23 "pro" yourself who doesn't even know how the mechanics behind a bug work and then has to resort to petty insults to "prove" some sort of point.

[Lazuli]

You're trying to prove I'm wrong when I'm right.

rank means nothing but I'm r32 and have entered maybe 3 hot joins. I'll slam you right now using no utilities bro. D/D vs D/D best out of 5? If I win all 5 I get to fuck your mom, deal?

Let's leave peoples mothers out of this. Infracted. -Edge

[rhandric]

Oh look, we have an internet tough guy wanting to enter into an internet pissing contest

[Meledelion]

I like him, he's r32 thinks 1v1 is the epitome of skill, plays a bad build and talks about fucking my mom.

I'm probably a bad person for this but watching people make a fool of themselves makes me happy

[Lazuli]

Alright if you win you get to fuck my mom.

[Lane]

Alright, what about this build? Seems to be semi-popular.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=...9;9;9;9;4V6s5w

(Ignore the utilities since those change based on situation.)

I don't know WTF to do for runes though, regardless of build. Some people say Nightmare (not happening, not running TA for runes), some people say Undead, some people say 2 Krait/2 Centaur/2 Afflicted (I don't see how that helps with Torment though). Except for Sigils of Energy no one seems to agree on any other weapon upgrade and I still don't know what to put in the underwater weapons, not that I suppose it really matters but it's going to bug me. :P

Anyway, getting the gist of P/D is harder than I thought. Annoying thieves in WvW make it look so easy. ;_;

[Meledelion]

Torment isn't that important TBH, the build relies on getting loads of bleeds up and hiding while your enemy dies.

You lose most of the usefulness from undead runes since you use carrion (since you don't have "real" condi removal) instead of rabid so I'd personally go with the 2/2/2 setup.

You'll want one with energy for sure, the other one can be corruption(you need atleast one weapon with corruption tbh) and the last one would be agony for me.

It's the opposite TBH lane, P/D is very easy and due to that there's many ways of building (you can't really go wrong) so you can customize it to your own liking. The only thing you can't get around is 30points in shadow arts and 15(some say 20) in trickery.
Comparing this to this you see that the first build relies more on C&D for stealth so you go for more initiative regeneration, additionally you get more HP and should play (very) defensive where you basically hide in stealth a lot. While stealthed you should dodge quite a bit to drop caltrops everywhere which keeps bleeds up in between your stealth attack bursts, basically you turn a defensive ability (dodging) into an offensive one. You also have to run Spider Venom since you don't have any other source of poison (and you want to keep it up as much as possible since it's very strong). I would change the heal skill to hide in the shadows though so that you get more condition removal and can run toughness gear (I prefer toughness over vitality), I'd personally also change the signet to Blinding Power.

The second build trades Spider Venom for another utility but gives up 10 traits (which in return give 10% condition duration). It also sacrifices initiative regeneration for more of a control build, instead of relying on stealth to watch them bleed you use stuns/control/range (normally people run this with basilisk venom instead of TG). Steal becomes a key skill and takes up a lot of traits, but you also gain 100 condition damage. I'd change this build a bit by changing Long Reach for thrill of the crime and swap out TG for BV, I'd probably also use Giver's weapons instead of Carrion since you have a lot of condition damage anyway and I'd use 4 mad king runes +2 centaur/krait/afflicted.
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It really depends on what you find fun/comfortable. I prefer stealth over range so I'd go with the first build, this seems to be the least popular of the two given options though.

[Lane]

You'll want one with energy for sure, the other one can be corruption(you need atleast one weapon with corruption tbh) and the last one would be agony for me.

What I've seen suggested is dual P/D with an energy rune on each set so that every 9 secs you get 50% of your energy back on swap. I've debated whether or not to put a corruption rune on a P/D set or put it on SB, since 10 minutes of running with a zerg I'd have 25 stacks. So, that leaves potentially 2 weapons free for sigils. One person suggested paralyzing +15% stun duration for the daze on steal ability and, yeah, I've seen agony mentioned a lot.

It's the opposite TBH lane, P/D is very easy and due to that there's many ways of building (you can't really go wrong) so you can customize it to your own liking.

People seem to use Shadow Strike as much as they can in addition to everything else, and since that jumps you away from the target (too far for CnD) it throws me off every time, especially if I opened with a steal and don't have it available as a gap closer. Plus, I haven't gotten hardly any 1v1 experience, it's always at least 1v3 or 4 and I'm just not adept enough to handle that yet, I get all panicky. x_x

Also, it looks like I timed out on the intothemists page, that's not the build I meant to link, I'd updated it since then and I guess it didn't take. Now I can't get the site to load at all. -_-

It really depends on what you find fun/comfortable. I prefer stealth over range so I'd go with the first build, this seems to be the least popular of the two given options though.

I'll be trying both. It's just that the 10/0/30/0/30 one seems to be all the rage now so I started with that while everyone's discussing it, which may have been a mistake if I can't get into some kind of groove with it.

Sadly, the only people who ever come after me are other thieves and they are the last class I want to fight. Not only due to being a novice, but they're just too damned annoying. I can't be arsed to spend 5+ minutes trying to land a hit on someone let alone kill them. It's also why I figured they're the best WvW class. :P

[Lane]

Back to thief. :P Would you still suggest 2x Afflicted/Krait/Centaur for the runes or are any of the new ones worth looking at, like Perplexity or Torment?

I figured I'd try Lazuli's suggested build now (after reverting back from a 'zerker build for the gauntlet).

Also, I could still use some advice on sigils. Mostly wondering if having a second set of p/d is a good idea with Sigils of Energy on the pistols and then I'm not sure what to put on the daggers.