Jugglemonkey.8741

Thief is dead. Long live thief.

Doesn't surprise me. I play S/P bound in WvW sometimes still as I like the feel of the set and I've been playing it since HoT, but I'm probably one of only a handful of thieves that still play it.

It was much better before the nerf as now it's hard to burst with it at all, but I'd not class it as a burst skill even when it did 10k comfortably. The reason is that you have to lead people into it because of the windup, it's clunky as a burst skill in the same way hundred blades is on warrior. It is better used as a counter move to a predicted attack using the evade to hit the opponent when they're vulnerable imo. I also don't much like using quickness with S/P tho, I prefer air and draining sigils for chip damage and reliable evades, so my opinion is based on that too. Tbh I don't really know yet, I've only just unlocked it ready to test (been playing a lot of starfield and elden ring lately). The other guy's description of how he would change infiltrator's return just reminded me of that tho, so it was worth the mention. You could probably use it to set up a steal>larcenous strike combo, but there's easier ways to get the 10% damage. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic_of_Isgarren would be worth a look in that situation, it practically sets itself up.

Tbh I'd argue that a thief is bad player's counter, and most longbow rangers are bad players. The ones that do know how to play can absolutely flatten a thief in seconds, but they are rare.

The problem is that you'll never use infiltrator's strike or return in PvE unless you're trying to spam healing on specter, which already takes you away from a DPS build. With dancing dagger being situational/low single target damage and tactical strike not doing enough damage to justify cloak and dagger (unless you're trying to break a breakbar, but again, that's not DPS) the only logical places to put extra damage without turning S/D into a D/D clone are the flanking strike chain or the auto attacks. All of these attacks have great functionality in PvP/WvW but that just doesn't translate to PvE because most of the time you don't need stealth, ports, bouncing projectiles, boon rip or unblockable attacks against a champ in PvE, and when you do need those things there's better ways to get them on the class without sacrificing DPS by bringing S/D. By the way, there's a relic that adds a projectile when you shadowstep. You might enjoy it: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic_of_Peitha

I don't have a problem with pistol 5 being nerfed. I'm just waiting for what you'd give thief in return, because nerfing a core part of a meta build with no recompense just because you dislike the mechanic is beyond unreasonable. Talk about what you want thief to become, instead of what you want to cut from it, and you might get a more favourable reaction.

Serves me right for writing posts on my phone I guess. kitten you autocorrect xD Edit: so why did the forum filter not catch this, but it doesn't let you shorten deadly arts like we do shadow arts (SA)? At any rate, it's nice to see someone actually reads what I post 😂

I'd rather have a total redesign at this point. Put the dodge elements of daredevil into acro (where they should have been to begin with) and make daredevil into something unique. It falls behind because it was always core thief 2.0, and it's now more obvious than ever how bad the initial design was.

You might have had a point if the deadeye elite still removed revealed. But given it doesn't, and also given soulbeast has easy access to unblockable which counters the DE sitting behind sniper's cover, it's much more of a turkey shoot now than it used to be. Is deadeye dead in WvW? No, not entirely. But it's a lot less safe than it used to be, and honestly I'm not convinced that's a bad thing overall.

It's passable in WvW, not played it in PvP in forever tho. The bigger issue is that most sword builds are disproportionately affected by the relationship between acro and daredevil: when acro is good, sword is good, and acro hasn't been good for literal years now because the original Devs designed daredevil badly with mechanics acro already had to start with, then nerfed acro to the floor to avoid letting us make dodge monsters. Then they introduced mirage and vindicator, seemingly not learning the lesson. Then add to that the fact that boon rip has largely become irrelevant because of the sheer amount of BOONS being output and S/D has lost one of its main niches too. I've been playing core sword dagger with dagger pistol offhand with crit strikes, trickery and shadow arts in WvW lately. That feels good, using sword to engage and kite and dagger pistol to hard focus or disengage, but the fact that sword feels better on that than on acro just says a lot about acro. Edit: rereading this I realised I went off on one a bit lol. Part of the reason I did this because sword damage is limited by it's manoeuvrability, evasiveness and utility in PvP settings, and historically most sword builds were played with acro, so it's a big part of understanding where we are now. You can't load more damage onto the autos as we had that in HoT and people complained about it, and the only other logical place to put more damage is on the 3 chain, but given that's unblockable that creates other issues if it hits too hard in competitive modes. I'd love sword to be in a better place too. But honestly you're better thinking of it as a Swiss army knife than an assassin's blade, and that kind of mindset just doesn't translate to PvE well even if you split and buff the coefficients to insane levels because the utility it provides is generally just not needed in PvE. If the encounters were designed differently then maybe you'd see more use out of it. Edit: bloody phone autocorrect 😂

You sound like me. I used to run a one shot deadeye build to defend a camp with a portal set to a ballista on a ledge overlooking the fight.

Relic of the unseen invasion is available in PvE, you can get it through the final chest of the WvW reward track added by the last expac. It's a bit of an obscure way to get it, but it's there. Regarding the cooldown, if you use rifle and use shadow meld, then alternate between dodge and either the D/P 5>2 stealth combo or the sniper's cover stealth combo, you have enough stealth to permanently maintain superspeed. It's a bit more clunky than one button push but again, it's there.

Just glad my waffling helps someone haha xD It's really easy to forget basic tactics when a cheese strat gives easy wins, when deadeye was OP you could cheese just about anything and I think that is what drove a lot of the "deadeye dead spec" comments when things got changed. Better to think of deadeye as more of a skirmisher than an assassin or sniper IMO, the value is in how hard it is to nail down while it wears you down, not in the single big hits, so S/D offhand compliments that style very nicely. If you want more of an assassin feel in WvW you can try running one of my fav deadeye builds, power P/D with rifle, binding shadow, shadowstep and infiltrator's signet, using the kneel rifle 4 stealth combo to maintain stealth and mobility while you wait for an opening to burst. Something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PayAQpjlNwgYbsMmJW2OuvLA-DWRYihfOqnTJTFVrChaFB9KRF5ZhAEwfLVpsBA-w It's double projectile so some classes like ele will shut you down if you don't play carefully, but forcing cooldowns with kneel 2 and death's judgement before timing the knockdown of binding shadow with a dagger 5>signet port followed by shadow strike and repeater spam hits like an absolute truck if it's not countered, and will build malice ready to weapon swap & shadowstep mid dodge to reposition and stealth ready for a max malice death's judgement (or just to quickly shadowstep to the enemy and stealth stomp if the repeater spam got them). If you pay attention to what skills the opponent uses you can pretty much delete someone, it's very all or nothing tho so you have to be careful haha. Older clip (old SA so I used the stealth on mark to engage) but this gives you the general idea of how the build works. First fight is power, second fight is my old cele deadeye, was trying to explain the difference in build to a friend at the time.

Soulbeast is one of the reasons i think power deadeye is best played with S/D on the off set to rifle, you can then use terrain and LoS to force the ranger to swap to their melee set and being hit with sic em isn't totally debilitating like it is for D/P. You want to force them into using bow when you are on sword and greatsword when you are on rifle, so you control the spacing of the fight. I usually run blinding powder, shadowstep and infiltrator signet on most builds so i can use signet and sword 2 to close the gap immediately, most soulbeast players panic if you can get in their face and start cc'ing them with sword sneak attacks, and if they go for the sic'em one wolf pack nonsense you can port back out of range of the bow with sword 2 return and shadowstep. If they're good and you don't react/they hit you from narnia when you're fighting something else then you're dead tho, it's just one of those matchups.

Spot the necro main ^

Interesting that you don't provide a reference to where that "word on the gaming market" quote comes from. It's almost like it's an opinion presented as fact. That's true, it could be a five spec, two relic build lol

Ah, the fabled 4 specialisation build. I wondered when that would come back into fashion.

I made a full diviner set for deadeye P/P, 100% boon duration feels pretty nice for that set and it lets me swap to a quickness spam build for groups with minimal faffing about. Other than that, celestial deadeye or specter is pretty strong, assuming you mean open world in a "what won't die or be hard to play" sorta way.

It wouldn't be so bad if you have to generate like 50 stacks of might for 5 mabon, get the boost, then keep it as long as you stay over 5 stacks of mabon while also stacking mabon up to a max of 10 maybe (if that's what you mean by remove the cooldown). Would actually function while not being too harsh on phased downtime then.

It's all good, tbh it always amazes me the speed that the wiki gets updated full stop. Just couldn't resist the humour ^^

Technically it was nerfed, zephyrite runes used to give you perma superspeed before the patch. Also, Hi Vas! xD Yes. The relic doesn't exist in WvW. Totally. Mmmmmhm. Yup. Correct.

Learning to play thief basically feels like this: On a more constructive note: learning what skills counter what things is a big part of thief sustain. So for instance, using sniper's cover on rifle (kneeling rifle 4) is really important against enemies with both ranged and melee attacks (think the hylek HP in verdant brink) as it lets you block the ranged attacks at a distance using initiative and saves your endurance for the melee attacks. If that pull attack on the mushroom king HP you mentioned is a projectile, the smoke field should block it. Juking melee attacks with movement skills works in a similar way: depending on the range of the AoE Shadow strike (P/D 3) should avoid that belly flop attack if you use it just after he leaps so he flops in place instead of tracking you. Death's retreat can be used in a similar way. In general, the learning curve is steep but more used to the thief kit you are, and the better you know the encounter, the better you'll do. As for builds, your deadeye build probably doesn't need trickery if you're not using it for boon rip (even then, having S/D offhand might be a better choice). If the aim of the game is solo'ing harder HP's, I'd try taking shadow arts (mid, mid, mid) instead. You'll get some more sustain through life steal and sneak attacks which can greatly help over the course of a fight. Edit: I just saw your deadeye build is rifle and P/P. Most people tend to focus on one over the other, as both sets tend to focus on different encounter types and need different traits in order to shine. You could pretty easily set up each build on a separate build template and swap to whichever one is more appropriate for the situation. Rifle tends to build for taking on big single targets, so focussing on rifle I'd personally take P/D offhand (spamming 3 still gives you the pew pew feel) with crit strikes (bot mid top) shadow arts (mid bot mid) and deadeye (top top top). Those crit strikes traits give you the best damage with rifle, the shadow arts gives you sustain through sneak attacks and an AoE blind when you stealth, and the shadow arts grandmaster gives you some initiative back which means between that and M7 you should never run out of initiative. The P/D doesn't need much initiative, and can be more useful if the enemy is a very aggressive melee type. This build also works on celestial gear if you replace crit strikes with deadly arts (bot mid top), but then it's more focussed on using P/D with rifle as a supportive set. P/P tends to be built to take on large groups of trash mobs, focussing on the quickness from bqobk (deadeye mid grandmaster choice). Focussing on P/P I'd take only P/P (so one pistol in the main hand of one set, and the other in the offhand of the other set, this way on swap sigils/effects work but you stay on P/P) with crit strikes (bot bot bot), trickery (mid or bot, top top) and deadeye (mid mid mid). This build gives pistols pierce, and makes enemies blow up and spam AoE blind when they die, so you get frequent marks for more quickness and extra stats. You'd want to attack the weakest enemy in a group each mark while positioning yourself so it's at the back of the pack so your bullets pierce multiple enemies, letting the piercing bullets and the AoE weaken the group as a whole. You have the advantage of being able to use thieve's guild (elite) on this spec, as payback (deadeye middle choice) reduces the cooldowns of your skills per kill so you'll often find that you can keep your thieves out indefinitely as long as you keep killing. This build used to work really, really well with vampirism runes (gain 10% of your health on a kill) so if the relic gives you that effect when it comes out then definitely take it, and consider using energy and stamina sigils for maximum dodges.

I wanted the mirage relic to work since the 6s duration on torment stack before duration boosts/tormenting runes looks nice, but it's kinda bad also. I think they've largely stuck to effects that are fairly weak and not too game changing for the initial release, hence no trapper, durability, aristocracy relics etc. The ones I find myself using a lot are speed and antitoxin because they're useful on almost any build, although antitoxin I'm not 100% sure is working like the runes used to (feels like you might be affected by the icd).

This.

The question you should be asking is how much salt you can generate if you kill the guy while moa'd. I've done this, the ensuing whispers were hilarious. Edit: Something to remember, you can still dodge and your 5 skill while moa'd is also a dodge. If you are a daredevil, you still get three dodges too. If you're only facing the mesmer, you can easily dodge his shatter combo and carry on as you were if you don't panic spam evades.