Guild Wars 2

Sword Duelist – The Build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmaOHdS8E+5Ex2jdqTeqVgmdPuq8jPA;T0AA1CnowxgjAHLOOck4ssYYx5j3ITCA

The build itself is about balance without sacrificing too much of any one thing and it works really well. I’ll break it down starting with the build.

Standard: 10/30/0/30/0

Traits:

Deadly Arts:

III – Mug: Steal provides an invaluable gap closer as well a number of beneficial abilities. With the build being heavy on power and precision Mug is going to give you a solid chunk of damage when you steal.

Crit Strikes:

III – Side Strike: A ‘standard’ glass cannon build would be anywhere between 52% and 57% crit, unmodified but in getting those stats you have to forgo with some survivability and utility. This build brings you half way there with a 30(35%) chance to crit and another 7% from Side Strike brings you up to 42% from the back or side. The underlying goal be to artificially inflate our precision/crit without giving up too much else.

X – Critical Haste: The build forgos with the standard dagger/dagger and instead utilizes the AOE cleaving and ‘big hits’ of the sword. That said, when quickness procs with a sword and you get a few solid crits, things go down. While testing my damage on the dummies, ‘basic’ crits from the #1 sword ability range from 1.5-2.5k with the third hit landing for around 3.5.

XI – Executioner: This is key to this build. You will be using your #1 sword ability a lot, in fact its probably the most used ability shy of #2. Why? Math.

You’re 25th point in Crit Strikes increases your damage by 10% when init over 6.
You’re 25th point in acrobat increases your damage again by 10% when endurance is not full (Duh..)
You’re 30th point in Crit Strikes increases damage by 20% when below 50%

That’s a combined increase of 70% damage if all you do is roll around and mash your #1…

Acrobatics:

II – Power of Inertia: You’re an acrobat. You roll a lot. Rolling gives might AND swiftness. Might = power. Power = damage. Damage is good. Roll.

VII – Fleet of Foot: This build, like any melee build, relies on the ability to close the gap and get to your target to actually hit them. Any condition (freezing, immobilize, crippled) will prevent that. This allows you to feed off your acrobatics and negate a cripple and get back in your opponents face.

VIII – Pain Response: I can’t even begin to say how many times this trait has saved my behind. Simply put, in a game where nearly everyone lays out conditions thick as mud, this will help you push through it and stay in the fight. A thief that can run away to go heal is fine but contributes nothing, one that can survive and fight back is far more ideal and again, balance. We want to hit hard, we also don’t want to be a wet paper napkin.

Weapons:

As mentioned earlier the build ditches the traditional D/D and instead utilizes S/D for a number of reasons detailed below. The beauty in Sword comes from it’s 3 base abilities that I think have gone overlooked.

Sword #1 – It cleaves in front of you hitting all targets. The 3rd hit cripples and weakens and from stealth you get a 2s daze and blind which sets you up for a number of openers.

Sword #2 – A free medium-damage shadowstep and condition purge that causes immobilize AND breaks stun… Um, how awesome is that?

Sword #3 – The least impressive of the abilities but there are a things you should know. One, its a very difficult ability to land in a firefight. Keep that in mind. Two, the first strike is unblockable and the second strike hits for upwards of 1k damage (3k crits). And three, the first hit removes a boon off your target. Good for annoying regen hunters and boon friendly guards.

Dagger #4 – Dancing dagger: A multi-target ranged cripple that bounces, causes cripple, and hits surprisingly hard. Use this anytime you’re in the frey with more than one target around just be sure to try and time it so you start your throw animation as they are almost done with an evade roll. Also use it to keep fleeing targets from..well, fleeing.

Dagger #5 – Cloak and Dagger: A hard hitting ability that causes weakness on your target and stealth. I want to use this more but I find it difficult to land though it does set you up nicely for other abilities.

Utility Spells

Utility 1 – Signet of Shadows: One downfall of this build is that sword is relatively slow, comparitively speaking, to dagger. This can make landing your hits trickier and a fast opponent will be just outside range. I run with this signet to help narrow the gap and allow me to cover more ground on a map as a roamer. You can, alternatively, run with shadow refuge or blinding powder if you prefer to ‘get the drop’ on your opponent over speed.

Utility 2 – Shadowstep: A bread and butter thief ability that I find surprisingly underused. First, the range on it is massive. Second, its a breakstun for when you get bull charged by a 1000b warrior, etc. Third, you can easily use it to get away or throw off your opponent by ‘recalling’ to your original location. Anyone running pvp should have at least one break stun and between the freebie you get with your #2 and this, you’re infinitely slippery to deal with.

Utility 3 – Haste: If you’ve read this far you know sword hits hard. Very hard. When your Quickness procs you’ll see first hand what I am talking about. Now add in a on-use 4s of Quickness and pair this with a solid opener and you can cleave someone (or a group…) down fast. Try to burn it after you’ve expended all your endurance. I personally like to open as such:

1) Cloak and Dagger or Powder into stealth
2) Get targets back
3) Simultaneously hit Haste and 1
4) Sword daze will occur, burn through your 1-1-1 combo.
5) At end of combo, daze wears off, hit 2
6) If 2 lands, they are now immobilized
7) CnD back to stealth
8) 1 from stealth again for another daze
9) Target should be dead rinse/repeat

Ultimate- Dagger Storm: I prefer to use dagger storm over TG because the thieves attack too slow and are killed off easily. I reserve DS for mesmers to negate their clones and phantasms and when I see a ‘herd’ forming. Personal preference really.

Gear

Amulets

Soldier’s amulet is used for the power, vitality, and toughness. Three, in my eyes, essential stats for PVP. I swap out the soliders jewel for a berserkers for the additional 5% crit damage. If you use the entire berserkers amulet you gain some additional crit, but the survivability goes way down. With this spec you are surprisingly durable with ~20k HP, 1.5k toughness and around 3k armor.

Runes

Full runes of the eagle to, again, artificially inflate our precision without having to change out the amulet while gaining more plus crit damage in the process. Add another 5% damage to your +70% damage earlier for targets under 50% health from rune 6 and you’ll be hitting reliably hard. I tried runes of the pack and divinity and found eagle to be the best bang for the buck. The buffs you get with pack don’t interest me as much and you do get more crit damage/health/toughness with divinity but at the sake of precision and damage. You could use either with similar results.

Sigils

Sword – Sigil of Fire: Why? Fire, when tested, hits for around 1k but is an AOE meaning while you’re duking it out on a node, you’re hitting everyone. This is particularly useful for mesmer clones and cloaked thieves. Air does around 1.3-1.5k but only hits one target. Your call but with ~35%(42%) to crit, this will be going off pretty frequently and the aoe damage adds up.

Dagger – Sigil of Accuracy: Another means by which to artificially inflate our crit damage. You can, alternatively, try running Bloodlust but my problem with that is its gone on down. Most games you will be downed at least once and your buff is effectively cancelled and requires you to kill more people to raise it again. If you’re ninja with the shadowsteps and short bow, run bloodlust, otherwise stick to the guaranteed crit from Accuracy.

Short-Bow – Sigil of Fire: Same as above. Burn baby burn.

Playstyle

This build affords you with the damage/crit to be a threat, the mobility to get around fast, the vit/toughness to compete, and the utility to survive a number of situations. It’s cannon, without the glass, with a cup-holder. Yea I said it.

You do have…

Two shadowsteps, 2-3 stealths, 2 condition purges, 2 break stuns, auto condition removal, cripple/weak removal, a large health pool, moderate toughness, aoe cleave, immobilize, aoe on proc, boon removal, and ~40% chance to crit.

By trading in…

Higher crit, higher power, better single target damage, minor +crit damage

You do NOT have…

Any condition damage, limited stealth (compared to a pure shadow arts build) and only one heal.

Hope you guys find this useful, I’ll post a video with gameplay this weekend when I have more time and my basement isn’t flooding.

Cheers-

- Aldrich [HATE] – Dragonbrand

Sigil of Bloodlust – get a second dagger, and put this on it. Swap back when you have your full stacks.

EDIT: Apologies, fixed the link.

Have you tried Signet of Malice? You’ll get great synergy out of your AE procs and sword swings.

Having run something similar to this I also consider it something of a travesty to go high-Acrobatics without 10 points in Trickery for uncatchable. Uncatchable is one of the most amazing 10-point traits the thief has, with Acrobatics (and hopefully Signet of Malice), the synergy is amazing.

Also, since you’re getting swiftness on dodge and have good gap closers, Signet of Shadows is more a convenience feature than a necessity. S/D also has tons of cripple potential. I get why you picked it, but it isn’t really playing to your strengths. When possible, I’d drop it before combat in favor of something that’ll turn the tide of the fight like Signet of Agility.

Tulisin – Thanks for the feedback! Personally, I wouldnt run Uncatchable on a power/crit build as you’re not really capitalizing on the damage potential from the bleeds that you would get if you were running a condition spec like LDB or pistol/dagger. Similarly, because the damage/output is smaller, your ability to synergize with that heal is less.

I absolutely don’t dispute the power of malice on an LDB/caltrops bleed build but I wouldnt run it on this spec for the reasons above.

I do agree with you on Signet of Shadows and have been experimenting with rotating that out for Shadow Refuge or BP among others.

Thanks!

Similarly, because the damage/output is smaller, your ability to synergize with that heal is less.

SoM is based off of hit volume, not damage/output. Even if Caltrops had no bleed they’d still be excellent for control (tons of cripple) and healing via Signet of Malice. You also get bleed synergy via Might. If you’re running might stacks and not utilizing any damage-based conditions, you’re only using 35 out of the 70 stat points granted per might stack. I don’t run any condition gear but with >5 might stacks and the small amount of condition damage I pull from a divinity set you can pull more than enough damage to make bleeds worthwhile, especially since they’re “free” with dodge. They also act as a buffer against removing your more vital cripple/weakness conditions.

Uncatchable just offers too much synergy to not take it with acrobatics. No other profession has the level of damage, healing, and battlefield control available through dodge that thieves do.

nice build ! very tanky with decent sustained dmg. i recommend not using SoS if you trait acro as the dodge/swiftness combo should be enough of a speed boost, just my opinion

i run s/d but go 30 into shadow arts rather than acro, totally love the build

I agree with bomber on SoS. In small distances swiftness on dodge is fine and you can create blinds multiple ways, I tend to stick with my Smoke Screen even though it’s supposed to be my situational slot. In long distances, I sometimes switch to SoS, in W3 for instance, when I know it’s going to be a long lonely run or I’ll grab someones longer duration swiftness and maintain staggering my own.

I run something similar to you, i originally ran with 30 Shadow over 30 Acro, still not sure which i like more, but in my build I run a dif rune then you as well as different sigils. I also splash 10 into shadow arts for Infusion as i rely more on Cloak and Dagger for a near perma daze. Its a pretty kitten efficient build tho not gonna lie. Wish #3 removed more then one boon tho…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlUmiO3ey5E+JFx2jdqTeyVwo+C6ZcV5D;TsAA1CnokyIlQKrUOpkStCZMykAA