An odd PVE build
Just realized I forgot sigils in the first build – put in sigils of air and fire as part of the fun of this build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVlsMhunYnTw8Jw+EHIFEvBBYB+ccje0raGKBA-TRCFABvs/ALqBcjyPAeCACcKAMUlCN0HMgSwEVVhQAyWAA-e
If he’s usually into melee combat but prefers range only because he dies too fast, I’d suggest a dagger/dagger build based on conditions and venomshare. With dire gear it gets really tanky. Looks something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoY6al8MhmnYRTwpJQ/EHtECv1xi+y3jqDcYBA-TxRAwAaUCC4BAQ5EAwc/hrK/Qq+TO9AECQxcA-e
Cast venoms near to your allies, hop in, cast caltrops, spamm death blossom until out of initiative, get out. Its melee, but its an easy to play melee build and quite tanky. And compared to other defensive thief builds it does very good damage. You get up to 30 stacks poison, 20 stacks vuln and torment and ~25 bleeds. The downside is that in harder dungeons like arah or fractals, a range weapon will still give you more survivability. But for your usual casual pve it should be fine.
For a pure range build you got the right idea. The rune however isnt that good, if you want an auto Oh-****-Button, rune of the vampirism is probably better. And I would replace shadow arts with critical strikes, because pistols and sb dont give enough stealth to justify that trait line.
I’m a relatively new thief, so I’m sure some others may be able to build off of this, but here is a variation off of a condition based venom based build I use to run around in open world PvE.
The build uses Dire gear and is based off of getting as many stacks of bleeding and poison on a target as possible.
Basically, since he’ll be running P/P and SB I’m assuming that he wants to stay at range. With this build he can pop both venom before a pull to gain some might, hit with P/P skill 2, Unload until he doesn’t have any more initiative, Steal to target, roll for initiative away, Unload till no more initiative, and stack bleeding with auto-attacks. Key is to pop venoms off of cool-down.
Now, you could go with the Infiltrator’s Signet instead of Roll for Initiative and just auto-attack until your initiative comes back to stack bleeding if you don’t want to use the steal/roll for initiative combo.
The survivability part of the build comes from a few places. Uncatchable in Trickery drops caltrops that cripple and bleed mobs and Last Refuge from Shadow Arts blinds foes and puts you in stealth. Both are good for getting away and out of sticky situations. Healing comes from Assassin’s Reward in the acrobatics line, Signet of Malice, and Sigil of Blood. It’s mostly will be passive healing (don’t use the signet, otherwise the majority of your healing goes away for 30 sec); however, if he’s getting low, say under 25%, he can get close to a mob (perferably a group) pop Dagger Storm and the signet’s passive will fill you up in most situations (plus you get reflects and stability).
There are alot of different variations you can go to off of this (I run D/D with a very similar setup and use skill 3 to stack bleeding for days) and I think will give him some flexibility to try out different things.
Just be warned, it isn’t the best for Fractals/Dungeons/WvW/sPvP for a variety of reasons. But if he’s just doing map completion, running events, hearts, personal story, ect. I found it to be a pretty nice damage/survivability build.
Thx much for the help. I definitely like the survivability of dire gear for him.
It looks like an ranged condi build is generally hard to pull off, but I was wondering about something like this.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAV6alsMh2mYdTw8JQ/EHyEFPHahbwvFjxHq3zpIAA-TxxGABAoE0gLCQPK/gT3gLq/E9+DC8EAIEgi5A-e
Maybe it wouldn’t work out great, but I could see him starting off with stealing and then dodging back (in stealth). Then he uses the pistol autoattack when he has no initiative, and the 4 and 2 skills on the bow when initiative is available.
Whenever he feels pressured, he uses one of the utility skills or his heal to go into stealth and get away. And the elite is there for whenever he wants to add a little burst.
It doesn’t do that much damage, and it might get boring even for really casual play. But it seems pretty survivable with all that stealth.
Thx for the help!
How casual is “very casual PVE content”? Because another very easy build is Pistolwhip with Invigorating Precision. It’s another melee build, I know I know, but range on thief just isnt that awesome.
The good thing about sword/pistol is that you can play it with berserkers armor and still have insane survivability thanks to heal on crit and a lot of evasion and blind, the bad thing is that as soon as you do world bosses or dungeons, it gets a lot harder.
If you do alot of world bosses or have 4 people around you, the sinister venom share build with 2x pistols looks like a good idea, as long as you buff other players with your venoms. You’re really overestimating the survivability you get from Shadows Rejuvenation.
And finally, if you dont do world bosses, but really want a range build, you should go for a power based pistol build. Get survivability from gear and damage from your skill tree. Last time I checked the Ankle Shoot Trait from Critical strikes also gave plus 150 Range when using pistols. By the way, playing two pistols and using steal is in my oppinion a bit awkward to play. I’d probably run something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAV6al0MhCnY3Tw8JQ/EH7E1OASg20PFbRN0frZ4HA-ThyDABS8AAcR9HUVC+z+jyvCOCAAY+7gDCQxXAgP0M8mOACBEaOA-e
The thing about your build is, yep, very hard to kill, but if not dying is your only goal, get nomads gear and a short bow. Or even better, dont leave the city and let him watch you play^^ I dont know your kid, but I would get bored really fast if I’d notice that I don’t do any damage at all. And maybe dying once in a while and feeling useless for 30 seconds is better than feeling useless all the time. But thats just my oppinion.
Eldenbri, two things I see with the build you proposed:
First, I’d be a little hesitant about using traps for your son’s build. They don’t work like ranger traps and require really good positioning to make work. Based on what I’m reading between the lines, you don’t want have offensive abilities that require him to be in melee range. You want your melee range abilities to be defensive so he can escape.
Second, I’d agree with Molch about using the Steal/Dodge out combo to start a fight. Primarily because you’ll be using up a damage mitigation ability for offensive purposes (namely dodge roll). So if he get’s in a pickle he won’t have enough energy to dodge roll out.
Here is the thing, since your son is playing with family and just out doing casual PvE (which I classify as map completion, zone events, guild challenges, jumping puzzles, and other open world content that isn’t a World Boss) you can run anything you want.
To be honest, I don’t really thing ranged condi is all that difficult to pull off unless you are pushing advanced PvE content (e.g. dungeons/fractals). It helped me wrap my head around some of the mechanics of the class when I first started.
Try out the venom based build with his main weapon set P/P with SB as his backup. He’ll have more control over targeting (SB auto-attack bounces to multiple targets) be able to stack a ton of damage right away, have a couple of outs if he gets in trouble, and will give you or his brother buffs as well.
There are 4 keys to this type of build: 1st, keep him at range from mobs; 2nd, if he gets caught in a group get him out of melee asap; 3rd, help him manage the venom CDs; and finally, he’ll need to learn how to manage initiative.
I think it’s a good setup for learning some key mechanics with a bit of a buffer zone and once he get’s those down knowing those skills will allow him to start trying some more advanced stuff.
Once he gets comfortable with the P/P and SB play style with (e.g., gets decent at kiting and CD management) you can then swap from Dire stats to a more power based build like Molch put up in his last post. Now, he’s going to loose survivability, but blast the heck out of mobs faster and since some of the key mechanics will be 2nd nature at that point overall he’ll actually be less squishy.
Once he get comfortable with that he can then work on learning the in’s and out’s of melee with a Pistolwhip build like Molch pointed out. Swap from SB as his second weapon set to S/P and then he can work on melee dealing with AoE melee mobs and getting use to thief melee combat.
Once he’s good there you can do a variety of things like progress into further weapon set combos (S/D, D/P, D/D) or try out straight power builds.
Thx very much for all the help!
I really don’t know the profession at all, so making builds just from trait descriptions has it’s issues.
I’ll chat through it with him this weekend and see what he likes.