20 replies to this topic

[Zelse]

I wrote this up during BWE3 for my guild and thought I would drop it here for some review, critique, what have you.


In my opinion, Arenanet NAILED the feel for this profession. Each trait line offers plenty of useful tools for the aspiring Thief's arsenal, weapon skills feel powerful and are quite fun to use, and visually, the Thief has some very cool effects.


I've played many different specs during the beta, and this is my favorite. I've put it together after many hours of structured solo queue PvP, and it works very well to that end. With a few adjustments, I believe it should serve well in most scenarios.



Without further ado, my personal build: The Dirty Duelist

Spoiler

This guide assumes you are familiar with the importance of zone control and already know the value of proper positioning.





Weapon Skills

Main weapon set: Sword/Dagger

This is your bread and butter as far as both damage, control, and mitigation are concerned.


  Stealth Skill:  Tactical Strike


   This is an okay skill. To me, it seems less useful than raw backstab damage from D/D.It does, from the front or back, provide much needed damage mitigation, and does seemingly little damage. A choice skill if going toe to toe with a tough melee opponent.


1: Slice - Slash - Crippling Strike


   Your spammable skill, this chain costs no initiative and has no cooldown. Crippling Strike is very important for this build, and when flanking, the chain crits for decent damage. I like to use one full chain between the other weapon skills both to apply the cripple, and to allow for some initiative regen.


2: Infiltrator's Strike - Shadow Return

   An excellent ability. This is your main gap closer. Paying close attention to where you attack FROM is very important as Shadow Return can reward you with excellent positioning or punish you by warping you into the enemy team. It can also be useful in confusing and frustrating a melee opponent. (Like those delicious melee Mesmers and Elementalists)


  3: Flanking Strike


  This move is why I love the sword MH Thief. You whirl around your target and stab them twice. This is the key to keep flanking a melee opponent. As they move to strike, activate this and watch them hit only air, while their HP drops.


  4: Dancing Dagger

Great for catching fleeing opponents, it's easy to forget that this ability bounces and cripples multiple targets. Reccomend synergizing with Infiltrator's Strike or a speed boost to stick to your mark. Seems to do okay damage as well.

5: Cloak and Dagger

I use this mostly to switch targets midfight while keeping one opponent worried about where I am. This can help keep the pressure on the enemy team. Also situationally (due to its initiative cost) used for escape.



Healing Skill


Hide in Shadows

This healing skill seems to work best for this build. Since it's melee focused, the stealth allows you to either escape or renew your attack from a different angle.

   Utility Skills

Scorpion Wire

This skill is useful for catching runners, and synergizes well with Shadow Return to disorient your opponent and frequently grant you an easy Flanking Strike. It is AMAZING for weakening an enemy teams zone control, as you can pull them right into your team and collapse on them. I've also used it to pull enemies away from teammates in danger.

Signet of Shadows

Adding to our already overwhelming mobility, it grants fantastic speed, and the active combines well with Infiltrator's Strike and Flanking Strike.

Blinding Powder

Blinding powder gives us the last thing we need: a reliable quick stealth. It also includes a blind and stealths nearby allies so paying attention to where you use it is very important. It is very useful as both an escape tool, a high-pressure target switch tool which, unlike Cloak and Dagger, costs no initiative.


Elite Skill

Thieves Guild

This one may cause some controversy, but from my experience, as of BWE3, the AI is much better, and I'm sure it will continue to improve. Not only do you get one melee, and one ranged mobile turret, essentially, but they also add to your numbers and increase your teams zone pressure.

They do enough damage that they are aggravating at best, and downright dangerous if left alone while attacking a squishy. Combined with stealth they can be an excellent escape tool as well. It's also more subtle than Dagger Storm and doesn't directly make you a bigger target.


Alternative Skills

Some other skills I have found useful/fun while playing this build.

  Withdraw

Replaces Hide in Shadows


An okay skill for this build. Can be a good panic button if you get frontloaded with CC or start to get focused due to the short cooldown. Combining this with Infiltrator's Strike can help you maintain a strong positioning on Shadow Return, and by proxy help maintain good zone control.



Signet of Agility

Replaces Signet of Shadows

The passive precision helps us crit more often and the active endurance refill is good in many situations.



Shadow Refuge

Replaces Blinding Powder

I would probably take this over Blinding Powder for tournaments or any kind of team-based PvP where there is a lot of communication going on. The pulsing stealth and small heal synergize great with other healing skills and can help grant your group a second wind.



Shadow Trap

Replaces Scorpion Wire

Situationally useful to harass enemy reinforcements between CP's, and to help guard them, although at times it can get you killed or be a nuisance if you are warped away from an area that happens to need you.



Dagger Storm

Replaces Thieves Guild

An excellent skill, this is a combo finisher, so with a flame wall, etc, it can get very dangerous. The constant cripples are annoying, the damage can be decent, and the animation is obvious, though, so expect to become a target of opportunity when using this.


Runes and Sigils

Superior Sigil of Frailty

I use these because of our crit-based nature, successive crits will do yet more damage.

Rune of the Thief

I chose these over Rune of the Eagle because I believe a position based 10% flat increase in damage based on positioning is a bit more reliable than only receiving 13% damage roughly a third of the time.




Strategy


The main role I attempt to fufill in PvP is distraction, confusion, and key target elimination.



Using the fantastic movement this build provides, I like to race to the nearest point and begin taking it. Prioritizing my teams zone at any given time, I either 1v1, or skirt the edges of team-fights, harassing with my Shortbow to wait for a favorable time to swap weapons and enter the melee.

I make sure to watch for conditions and use Shadow Return when appropriate, keeping in mind that I'm not returning into an unfavorable position. This build is heavily reliant on dodging constantly both to mitigate damage, but to increase our own both through flanking and the Might boon, so I'm constantly trying to dodge toward the enemies flank for all of the increased crit chance.

If they are attacking me directly (which happens quite often, considering all the crits that can really add up, plus the annoying cripples), it can be beneficial to stand still for a moment and allow them to attack you head-on to bait them into a Flanking Strike, plus your 1 chain.

1v1 I try and save my ultimate for either an emergency (NOT when they use their ult, that is when I back off a bit and let it time out), or immediately after they use their heal skill to maximize pressure. In a teamfight I like to use Thieves Guild early so I can have it ready again for the next fight.

We have many ways to stop a runner in this build (Dancing Dagger, Swiftness on dodge, Infiltrator's Strike, Scorpion Wire, Signet of Shadows), so if they run you should have no problem handling that.

If I get focused, outnumbered, in danger, I will utilize whatever means of stealth necesary, combined with my (most likely) superior movement abilities, to get away and renew the attack from a different angle.




Conclusion

I believe to be a very good and strong class that when played correctly can be a tremendous force to be reckoned with. I hope that this guide can serve as an aid to those of you who are interested, either as a stand-alone build, or a foundation for further tweaking. To those of you who made it this far, thank you for your time, and any feedback is appreciated.

Happy Hunting!


Edit: I would like to add that I am by no means an expert or professional, nor am I claiming that this is a completely optimized build. /flameretardantsuit

Edited by Zelse, 28 July 2012 - 11:52 PM.

[IDarko]

Did you not experience loads of misses with Flanking Strike? Or is the key to strike when the enemy is about to hit you?

[Zelse]

IDarko, on 28 July 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

Did you not experience loads of misses with Flanking Strike? Or is the key to strike when the enemy is about to hit you?

I find it works best when you can face them head on and read them. A good example is if they're running from you and realize they will not be able to get away, and so they turn to fight, or whenever they just manage to face directly at you, recovering from all of your/their rolling around. I think lag has a small amount to do with it as well, as it is VERY position based (using too early/late?).

Also it seems if you don't manually target them, you just fly off in a weird direction and it doesn't hit anything, whereas with other abilities, you can just walk up and mash them.

[Theefpitfall]

Cool stuff for hot-join playing around, could you vouch for this spec at 1st/2nd place tourney's?

[Tenderly]

Would love to see a video of you doing this.

What about the runes/amulet/jewel/sigil? That's almost as important as weapons/traits

[IDarko]

Ok, i was just wondering because i can't imagine that this works against people who never try to face you. Competent PvP'ers will always move.

[Sebyos]

Wait what a guide that's more of a build showoff than a guide then a build without runes sigils or traits ? C'mon seriously...

[CrunkJuice2]

Theefpitfall, on 28 July 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

Cool stuff for hot-join playing around, could you vouch for this spec at 1st/2nd place tourney's?

i dont think people are gonna go sword/dagger for tournys since flanking strike is messed up

[Zelse]

Theefpitfall, on 28 July 2012 - 05:42 PM, said:

Cool stuff for hot-join playing around, could you vouch for this spec at 1st/2nd place tourney's?

I didn't mess with tournaments since PvP kept going down and I had to work all weekend. I didn't want to get too serious about it yet.

Tenderly, on 28 July 2012 - 07:52 PM, said:

Would love to see a video of you doing this.


What about the runes/amulet/jewel/sigil? That's almost as important as weapons/traits

I wish I did some recording, but since we're unsure how optimized it is, and my gaming pc is almost 4 years old, I didn't want to deal with the possible lag. I also didn't anticipate releasing this on the Guru. I thought about keeping it to the guild website. If demand is high enough I'll try and get some after launch or during a stress test if the lag isn't too bad.


As for runes and sigils, for runes I used Thief for the final bonus, but Eagle may be better. Sigils were both Frailty(Vulnerability on crit), which was awesome. Can't believe I forgot those. I'll fix it with an explanation of why I chose them.

IDarko, on 28 July 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Ok, i was just wondering because i can't imagine that this works against people who never try to face you. Competent PvP'ers will always move.

A good point, but you have to be facing a thief to hit him. >

Edited by Zelse, 28 July 2012 - 11:53 PM.

[Fayne]

I tried sword+dagger in BWE3 and found that Flanking Strike was far more reliable if you paired it with Cloak and Dagger.  Once stealthed I would hit that daze with Tactical Strike and then Flanking Strike seldom missed.

Pair it with infusion of Shadow in Shadow Arts to save on the initiative.

Edited by Fayne, 29 July 2012 - 07:21 AM.

[Zelse]

Fayne, on 29 July 2012 - 07:11 AM, said:

I tried sword+dagger in BWE3 and found that Flanking Strike was far more reliable if you paired it with Cloak and Dagger.  Once stealthed I would hit that daze with Tactical Strike and then Flanking Strike seldom missed.

Pair it with infusion of Shadow in Shadow Arts to save on the initiative.

Cool idea, but then what traits would you remove to get that far in Shadow Arts?

[Fayne]

Zelse, on 30 July 2012 - 06:18 PM, said:

Cool idea, but then what traits would you remove to get that far in Shadow Arts?

It isn't "far" into Shadow Arts. It's just 10 points.

[Anelyn]

Am not sure is worth to spend so much initiative just to land your DW skill. Personally I'd much rather to have a reliable way to use my DW skill when I need it to and count on it doing what is meant to do instead of setting up for it. (I understand the need to do that with pistol whip but that is a channeled self root skill and the damage potential is much higher than FS).

[Engel Jorgenson]

I've post a mini guide in the build section yesterday morning. Post #1092, I'm glad to see i'm not to one who love S/D. It's all about positional gameplay. You can avoid almost every attack with Flanking Strike as it's now fixed.  It's now a move to your target's back and then you hit him twice then it won't miss.

Edited by Engel Jorgenson, 04 August 2012 - 01:36 PM.

[Fade_Guin]

I've wanted to do a S/D weapon set since BWE2, but the misses were infuriating. I didn't test this setup out on this week's stress test, but I have high hopes for it come release day.

A word of warning though Engel, unless you actually tested it this last stress test and saw for yourself that the second attack hits all/most of the time now, I wouldn't get your expectations though the roof, in case it is still ho hum

That being said, I really do hope the missing issue is solved, as I really like the idea of S/D.

[Engel Jorgenson]

Fade_Guin, on 04 August 2012 - 02:19 PM, said:

I've wanted to do a S/D weapon set since BWE2, but the misses were infuriating. I didn't test this setup out on this week's stress test, but I have high hopes for it come release day.

A word of warning though Engel, unless you actually tested it this last stress test and saw for yourself that the second attack hits all/most of the time now, I wouldn't get your expectations though the roof, in case it is still ho hum

That being said, I really do hope the missing issue is solved, as I really like the idea of S/D.

I tested in the last beta and it never missed for me. It's now a quick move at your target's back followed by two hits.

[Fade_Guin]

Engel Jorgenson, on 04 August 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

I tested in the last beta and it never missed for me. It's now a quick move at your target's back followed by two hits.

It's kind of too bad that it's divided into two separate hits. Combining those two into one would make for some really nice numbers. Going by the tool tips on gwskills.net, combining the two would give you the same damage as back stab.

As it stands, the second hit alone will do the same damage (again going by tool tips) as a less-than 66% heart seeker, meaning it only costs 1 more initiative over heart seeker plus you get the evade and the initial hit as a bonus.

Edited by Fade_Guin, 04 August 2012 - 02:35 PM.

[Faded913]

personally im really really frustrated with some of the thief abilities that just miss and cost you valuable initiative. Unlike other classes thats ive played, our abilities are depended on our initiative pool and when you miss big ones like c&d, heartseeker, flanking strike, youre kinda screwed unless u traited into high ini regen and extra ini. I just watched a video of some guy missing 3 heartseekers in a row as recently as bwe3 for no apparent reason, ie, no boons, conditions, invulnerability, etc.

[Engel Jorgenson]

HS misses often (I experienced it myself and I gave up D/D instantly) but it has been reported.

[Anelyn]

HS misses were fixed up to my knowledge (in last stress test i did not experience it, of course except when my target dodged at same time I was doing the HS animation but that is to be expected).

[Engel Jorgenson]

It was missing a LOT during the last stress test (in PvE), so I don't know why. Maybe something new about expertise, maybe something else.