Theif thread?

Enok said:
I'm just getting started on my thief, after stalling out at 65 with Mesmer (the recent LoS changes are giving me a headache with all the "obstructed" I'm seeing).

I'm seeing a lot of PvP mentioned here, any recommendations on general leveling?
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As far as PVE goes here is what i have been doing
in all starting towns collect all the waypoints,points of interests and vista's
do all starting areas lv1-15
and participate in any events that happen near you.

in wayfarer foot hills (Norn area lv1-15) there is an event chain starting at Krennak's Homestead waypoint.
it contains 6 events in a row and the boss at the end (Champion Svanir Shaman) has a chest that has given me tons of greens
1.Protect supplies from the grawl
2.protect scholar while he investigates the grawl
3.destroy the dragon totem
4.defeat elite svanir foes that spawn
5.destroy portals (3 of them)
6. kill champ svanir shaman

there is also a 3 chain event near Lostvyrm waypoint
1.hunt the veteran frost wurm
2.collect the eggs in the frostwurm cave
3.defend the lodge door from the frostwurms

at lv11 i usually run these 9 events till my character is lv25-ish and i level fairly quick.
then i move into the next area (Snowden Drifts)

sometimes i have to kill Moa's for 2 minutes or so until the event chain starts up
but im patient

im not an expert by any means but hope this helps some
 
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Thanks, Waynos. Some good tips there. I always level new toons by capping the six cities first. Although this time I'm wondering if the XP has been nerfed. Used to be I got to about 8 1/2 doing it fresh out of the tutorial. I've done everything but LA, and I only just dinged 5.

Mostly, I was wondering what people found successful for weapons on their thieves while leveling, and where they traited first before getting to that level 40-60 area where you can truly start doing the builds everyone lists.
 
I know they nerfed the monetary reward for 100%ing a town (1c) but I think they kept the exp the same. However, I could be wrong. I just am positive about the 1c change.
 
http://www.cgalliance.org/forums/showthread.php?46732-Theif-thread&p=467017#post467017

This shows the build I used while leveling outside of Orr. The traits as I leveled were different since this was my first character, but I tended to put most of them into enhancing SB damage since I knew that SB grossly out-damaged P/P when fighting multiple enemies. Still when leveling before 60, I just pick something that sounds nice regardless of whether it is actually the best or not. Then again, I never did PvP, WvW, or Dungeons before getting to level 80 so it didn't matter awhole lot since the noob zerg was constantly around during that time. There is no safety in numbers now though - or at least not as much.
 
Ah, okay, thanks, Koeril. I read the top of that post and saw PvP and didn't notice you were talking about PvE outside Orr.

It's an interesting choice, on other characters I've made. Faster killing speed melee, or safer ranged kiting?
 
Either works fine ... depends on your preference. However, if you go melee (D/X) be careful of using death blossom on any sort of structure. You'll go flying off sometimes even with preparation. All it takes it a slight shift in position of the mob.
 
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Made a new build for farming Orr with crits ... want to see if it is more effective since SB is key for Orr farming. When farming, the key is to do 10% of the damage done to an enemy. If you are in a group, this is very easy, but sometimes you don't have the luxury. The idea behind the build is to make it as low upkeep as possible (use signets) and then to enhance SB damage. D/D is there for heartseekers, but to be honest, I rarely use it even as is. I'll have to test out a low health heartseeker crit vs clusterbomb crit to see if it is worth even using because in my current build, it isn't. They have the same initiative cost.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAV4YlUmaOHcy4E+JFx2jeuTd6fgsaFoZ/hrC

Hopefully this will be a crit heavy build which means that clusterbomb crits which cause quickness will allow me to fire faster and get more tags (and thus more loot). Fury (20% crit chance) comes when a mob hits 50% health so it'll be up as much as possible and I'll also get fury after stealing.

The points spent in deadly arts are to supplement damage by stealing (which I do already anyways) and the points spent in acrobatics/trickery are for moving faster between events. Often times you only have a minute between events and swiftness is hard to come by for thieves, thus the swiftness on dodge and the ability to get dodge back faster.

After some comparison ... especially since this is a build to make money easier, it doesn't really seem that I need to invest much more into upgrading armor. Going from masterwork to exotic would increase power/precision, but at a measly 6 each with MF at the same 3%. Doesn't make much sense to spend 10g for that pitiful of an upgrade. Maybe if there was an MF upgrade, I would do it. The upgrade process for jewelry is going to be the same too, not really much allure in upgrading them to exotic when I already have the same MF and just 7 less power/precision.

Thoughts? Input?
 
Played around with deathblossom d/d. Unfortunately, your AoE is on the dual skill, so it feels like it would be a better bet a little later when I have enough traits to keep my initiative up for spamming death blossom. So I've shelved that for the time being. Also tried playing with pistol mainhand, but the #1 attack feels so weak that it frustrates me whenever I'm not able to use unload. Maybe traits will help it later.

So, for my teen levels, I've fallen to Sword mainhand, which seems to dish out a significant amount of damage on its #1 attack alone, and hits a pretty wide swath for some good AoE. Still can't decide between pistol and sword for the offhand though. Cloak and Dagger is nice for the extra stealth, and dancing dagger is great for AoE cripple (though that would be better for kiting with a ranged weapon.... why AoE cripple while meleeing when most PvE mobs aren't going to run away?). On the other hand, I'm learning to use pistol #4 daze at the right time, and the #5 blind is very helpful.

Shortbow feels funky to me. Poison field with blast finisher is nice, but so far I'm finding it hard to kite and use the bow well. Thinking about going pistol/dagger for my other set, as that will give some nice kiting ability, at the cost of AoE damage.

Anyway, loving the thief a lot more than when I tried it at launch. Three months practice with staying mobile has probably helped.
 
Even if you build to stack init regen, you'll never be able to keep up db spam. It's hefty 5 init cost makes sure of that - same with unload (5 init). I tried a signet/pistol whip build which tried to keep the init up and that did semi-ok ... with steal giving back 3 init and signets giving back 2 init plus the natural regen bumped up by 3 every 10 sec, but pistol whips only cost 3 init and have a longer animation. This also greatly impacted survivability. Guess what I'm saying is that you'll likely never be able to spam it, maybe get 3 off per typical opener, but then you are out of init for heartseekers to finish.

Sword main hand does have a nice aoe effect and I've been watching Floyd lately while we farm Orr together semi-frequently. He does well with it - I think he is running pistol in offhand for pistol whips. The only reason I would suggest dagger offhand while leveling is for stealth, but I would use pistol for the whips and then keep the heal for stealth.

Glad you are enjoying it! So far every other class I've tried that I thought I would like has become someone for crafting. I take them out sometimes because I want to have more 80's on hand for jumping puzzles and so forth, but the thief class is my one true adoration as far as classes go.

In referencing to the build post I made ... tried it and didn't like it. Went back to my pistol/dagger with shortbow WvW build for farming. I like the multi-purpose function it serves of being able to farm, WvW, or dungeons without having to change.
 
Koeril said:
Even if you build to stack init regen, you'll never be able to keep up db spam. It's hefty 5 init cost makes sure of that - same with unload (5 init). I tried a signet/pistol whip build which tried to keep the init up and that did semi-ok ... with steal giving back 3 init and signets giving back 2 init plus the natural regen bumped up by 3 every 10 sec, but pistol whips only cost 3 init and have a longer animation. This also greatly impacted survivability. Guess what I'm saying is that you'll likely never be able to spam it, maybe get 3 off per typical opener, but then you are out of init for heartseekers to finish.

Sword main hand does have a nice aoe effect and I've been watching Floyd lately while we farm Orr together semi-frequently. He does well with it - I think he is running pistol in offhand for pistol whips. The only reason I would suggest dagger offhand while leveling is for stealth, but I would use pistol for the whips and then keep the heal for stealth.

Glad you are enjoying it! So far every other class I've tried that I thought I would like has become someone for crafting. I take them out sometimes because I want to have more 80's on hand for jumping puzzles and so forth, but the thief class is my one true adoration as far as classes go.

In referencing to the build post I made ... tried it and didn't like it. Went back to my pistol/dagger with shortbow WvW build for farming. I like the multi-purpose function it serves of being able to farm, WvW, or dungeons without having to change.
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i just got my thief to Lv30
currently running dagger/dagger and testing out a shortbow as an off hand.
the shortbow has a leapback type of skill which seems to help when i carelessly jump into a bigger mob that i should have lol
and an AOE that spreads when you detonate it (i think skill #2)
 
Gotcha, Koeril. Minion, a Guru member, has a build built around DB spam for the AoE and heavy evasion uptime. According to his post. Off the top of my head, I think he's traited for extra init (for 15 total) and init return on steal, so the rotation he lists is three DB, followed by steal, stolen skill, then I think another DB followed by heartseeker. Still seems like you'd run out of init before heartseeker there. Deatblossoms tendency to throw you off ledges is still a problem.

I'm running sword/pistol at the moment. Heal stealth as you said. Pistol whip is a nice interrupt coupled with a flurry of strikes for decent damage, and sword #1 is some nice AoE damage without init cost. Powder shot is useful for AoE blind, and head shot is another handy interrupt if I see a mob doing one of their windups to a big damage skill.

I only just recently started running across the need for some condition removal, and am using Shadow Return specifically for it (as opposed to just a distance creator). Had a cave of spiders that kept hitting me with poison, and it was pretty sweet to be able to jump back an clear the poison.

Still not excited about shortbow when I'm not in a group DE. I think I might try pistol/dagger for the other set when I upgrade gear at 20. It'd be nice to have access to cloak and dagger and dancing dagger when I get into situations that need some kiting. Only problem is that there's no good AoE damage in that setup.

The only place I seem to have trouble is when there are several range mobs spread out too much for me to hit. I don't seem to have a good way to deal with ranged damage coming at me from multiple sources. Just hit them hard and try to use evades, I guess.
 
While a powerful mechanic ... I am of the crowd that believes doing this is abusing the stealth mechanic where you can cause a stealth to happen after the heartseeker. Instead of being "shadow field, heartseeker, leap into stealth" I think the mechanic should rather be processed "shadow field, leap into stealth, heartseeker" which would end up with the Thief out of stealth. Personally, I don't think this type of play is fair and attacks should always break stealth.
 
eventhough i am liking the thief class;
i think your right attacking should break stealth.

staying stealth and walking up to someone half dead in WvW is already a questionable advantage.
perma stealth would be unfair/overpowered.

staying stealth on PVE is great for running to maps,reviving people in a mob without being downed yourself

anyways back to the point i was making by posting that build;
I found that while looking for a better way to stay alive while getting my WvW kills for the month lol

my build worked good last night but i did leap into mobs and AOE's a few times by mistake and get downed.
 
If you are going to use heartseeker, it may be best to turn off auto-targeting. This will yield two results. First, you will attack with more precision and also you can then use an untargeted heartseeker as a means to escape. Heartseeker is actually more efficient at escaping than the infiltrator's arrow on SB. The only thing is that heartseeker is in a straight line whereas infiltrator's arrow is able in some cases to give vertical travel. You'll also never jump in random directions when the game auto-targets something for you. It's really annoying when you forgot that you targeted mob X that is sitting now behind you.

Quick untarget is done by clicking on the screen on anything that isn't a targettable object. Took me awhile to figure that one out.
 
I'm hoping they address the right click target issue soon. It was getting to the point with my Mesmer that I was constantly switching targets, which seems like it should be pretty high priority to fix since right mouse button turning is a staple of MMORPG gameplay.

Which is a little off topic, but kinda related to the auto-targeting issue.

Sorta. :D
 
That explains a lot of the issue I was having recently. I had no idea that right click also targeted. Thanks!
 
No problem! I barely noticed it at low levels, but there was a certain point where I started getting random target switches all the time on my Mesmer. I mentioned something on the official forums, and found a long thread detailing the issue.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like ArenaNet has paid a lot of attention to it, which seems bizarre to me. I'm not sure how they envision us using the controlls. Surely they don't favor keyboard turning? Watching the actual developers participate in PvP matches before launch, they were definitely mouse turners, so I'm not sure how the problem slipped past them.

On another note, I've switched to Pistol/Dagger for my ranged option, and enjoying it a lot more than shortbow. No AoE damage option, unfortunately, but dancing dagger is great for spamming cripple on up to several targets for kiting, and spamming the #2 vulnerability is useful for veteran/champion fights.

I'm finding Thief more susceptible to telegraph issues than other classes. I fought a veteran worm with that rock throw attack they have in one zone, and was able to figure out the telegraph after a couple of times, so I could use my interrupts and dodges to avoid being 2-shotted.

Later, one zone away I fought a champion worm with the same attack, and it seemed like the telegraph was a lot faster, and the cooldown on his ability a lot shorter. Made it almost impossible to anticipate the attack, and the thief dependence on active defense meant I had a lot more trouble than on a high armored class or even on my Mesmer where clones do end up taking aggro.
 
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Played around with traits and runes/sigils this morning and this is what im running in PVE and doing fairly well;
NOTE: i am not level 80 so i lack trait points and bonuses will get higher as i level up

Lv47 Human Thief
Weapon sets: Dagger/Dagger (both with Major sigil of Accuracy) Shortbow (Honed Shortbow of Accuracy)

Armor: 4 Major Runes of Divinity,2 Minor Runes of Divinity
Accessories: Peridot Gold of Honing (for Amulet,Earrings and Rings)

Traits:
Deadly Arts: 20 (IV),(VIII)
Critical Strikes: 17 (III)

Power: 927
Precision: 588
Toughness: 418
Vitality: 418

Attack: 1,330
Critical Chance: 26%
Armor: 797
Health: 4,725

Slots 6-0:
Hide In Shadows (stealth as i heal)
Spider venom (inflict poison on next 5 attacks)
Shadow Refuge (stealth/escape when things get rough)
Signet of Shadows (continous 25% speed buff)

it has taken some goofing around to get better results
but don't skimp on runes and sigils..they help alot lol
 
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