Guild Wars 2

A while a go. I created a thief build. which utilizes double pistols and a staff combined with a very high mobility and agility, in the form of lots of evades/dodges which in turn give it a decent survivability. However the 2 main issues were lack of dps and condi removal.

I’ve taken those two suggestions to heart. And increased the survivability while maintaining it’s dps and even outright increased it.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAW6al0MhKnY5Tw7Jw/EL+EmXToKEF2CAvmz0cAcBGBB-TFiFABgrbgGlfwrSAO7PAwTAUCai6OPb+LhLCApAiYMA-w

I’ve chosen the staff over dagger for he following reasons.

>It’s overal dps and pressure is atleast equal and overall cheeper in terms of initative.
:Heartseaker does a similar amount of damage to weakening charge provided your enemy is below 25 percent health. Weakening charge gives weakness which makes blows glancing and affects endurance regenration

:Autoattack staff=>Auto attack dagger in terms of dps.. The DPS burst of the dagger is Reliant on stealth mode sure which makes it more powerfull. But with staff u can atleast cleave through your foes as well.

:Vault Heals with an damage of 2 k plus and is can even be used as another ouright evade.

Cheaper acces to blinds. with dust strike compared to black powder.

Yes u can argue that with black powder u can use a bit more of stealth. But honestly with these amounts of evades And arguebly less draining use of melee dps and pressure. U don’t need that extra 2 seconds stealth.

I’ve chosen double pistol instead of shortbow., sword or dagger, cause it to me is the most viable way of dealing ranged damage. Now that there are DH traps, wells and tons of other attacks whith the current powercreap. U don’t want to be soley dependent on melee with such a squishy class.

Thanx to your decent amount of initiative due to the Trickery tratiline. U can actually make use of the double pistols without having to worry about running out of iniative to quickly. U can even spam head shout 3 to 4 times to get that extra impact disruption working. And if you run out of iniative. U have 3 endurance bars plus 2 sigils of energy plus your withdraw on a 14 sec cd to keep the distance.

Immobilize,cripple, chilled. they will never be an issue to you anymore as a thief. thanx to unhindered combatant and withdraw. Also the unhindered combatant gives u access to perma swiftness making it viable to roam the new larger wvw maps. as well.

U have only access to one stunbreak unfortunately. So it will require a bit of skill to deal with heavy cc. However even that stunbreak is not entirely useless as infriltrator’s signet gives you a nice 5 stacks of might and is on a 24 sec cd. I found this more suitable then the 15 to 12 sec stunbreak which is bandit’s defence. sure it gives u acces to another cc. But honestly with your double pistols, steal, and stealth mode autoattack on staff. I think your are better of having the 5 stacks of might on you.

U have a very tiny bit of condi removal. With your withdraw really. I could have used escapist absolution. But I feel that you are better off maximizing dps as much as possible and relying on your rune of the vampirism for the sustain. With these evades. U only have to worry about heavy condition pressure.. But thanx to your agility u can Always reset the fight. Not many people in my experience that could actually keep up with me in wvw atleast if I decided to run away.

I wanna hear your toughts.

Question, what game mode is this for? WvW roaming? WvW gank squad? PvE? Because it even with a few marauders, that’s not a lot of HP, especially in WvW.

For WvW roaming, you have severe lack of condition cleanse. If you meet a condition reaper for example, you are pretty much dead IMO, unless you run away.

You also only have one stunbreak. Which teleports you into the enemy. Not the greatest idea.

Going along with your build, I’ll recommend Invigorating Precision instead of No Quater, because I foresee that you’ll die a lot if you don’t have decent enough sustain.

I can see this build working, for sure. You just need 2-3 other thieves, also running PP, and hoping you are up against a lone target. =)

But then again, anything goes in WvW roaming.

EazyPanda.6419:

Question, what game mode is this for? WvW roaming? WvW gank squad? PvE? Because it even with a few marauders, that’s not a lot of HP, especially in WvW.

For WvW roaming, you have severe lack of condition cleanse. If you meet a condition reaper for example, you are pretty much dead IMO, unless you run away.

You also only have one stunbreak. Which teleports you into the enemy. Not the greatest idea.

Going along with your build, I’ll recommend Invigorating Precision instead of No Quater, because I foresee that you’ll die a lot if you don’t have decent enough sustain.

I can see this build working, for sure. You just need 2-3 other thieves, also running PP, and hoping you are up against a lone target. =)

But then again, anything goes in WvW roaming.

WvW roaming. I’ve decided that the sustain issue is not as important as it seems. While on paper. I do realize why. it may seem a bit frightingly low. But your agility will change your perception. Most of it’s sustain comes from dodging. I’ve realised that trading blows now is simply not an option anymore. U will hit like a wet noodle relative to other classes just for a bit of extra sustain which is mediocore at best. You invest in sustain, your dps becomes mediocore. While other classes can have decent sustain and high dps. Better focus on pressuring your enemies with a 5 to 7 k unload on average. And dodge kittenloads of attacks. no way an reaper is going to tag you. while you do teleport to your enemy with your stunbreak. Chances are within that small time frame. You’d have your withdraw ready. ‘’Your sustain comes from basically not getting hit and blinds and stealth’‘. Which is now not that much of an unreachable goal with your mobility. the sustain is simply not up to level at the moment. It’s going to take some time getting used bieng so dependent on your mobility for your sustain admittelly. But I think more experienced thiefs then I or better said every other thief including yourself prolly who suffer at the moment with how thief is now, would be well accustomed to running with little to no sustain.

>I guess u could change the stunbreak for bandit’s defence.

>And go for invigorating precision for a bit more sustain.

thanx for the suggestions.

Hmm, maybe grab escapist absolution instead of pulmonary impact? You’ll have pretty decent condi cleanse that way. But you’ll be giving up decent damage from headshot i guess.
And if you have sustain with Invig Prec, taking flawless strikes may benefit your damage as well.

I’ll personally go with shadow step for stun breaking, but then again, I never really use Bandit’s defence. I migh have to try that out one day.

I’ll agree, it looks like a strong kiting build. Going melee which this build is a bit risky though, but i guess not many people will be expecting a staff user when they are fighting a PP thief.

Good luck and have fun with the build. It definitely looks like it’ll work, and be extremely annoying.

EazyPanda.6419:

Hmm, maybe grab escapist absolution instead of pulmonary impact? You’ll have pretty decent condi cleanse that way. But you’ll be giving up decent damage from headshot i guess.
And if you have sustain with Invig Prec, taking flawless strikes may benefit your damage as well.

I’ll personally go with shadow step for stun breaking, but then again, I never really use Bandit’s defence. I migh have to try that out one day.

I’ll agree, it looks like a strong kiting build. Going melee which this build is a bit risky though, but i guess not many people will be expecting a staff user when they are fighting a PP thief.

Good luck and have fun with the build. It definitely looks like it’ll work, and be extremely annoying.

>Flawless strike you say and use that and then use invogorating precision? That’s actually a pretty good idea. I’d still retain my dps. provided I stay ranged:)

>Yeah going melee with this build is indeed very risky. I agree. I Always open up with staff skill 4. Then hit a few times. And immeadatly get my kitten out of here.

>Yeah I don’t use shadowstep cause my fingers aren’t fast enough lol:). But I’d definately say that is a good idea for a stunbreaker. I wager better thieves or more experienced ones could easily make it work. even with the longer CD I guess.

Good that you are relaying your thoughts to me. I appreciate it.:)

Drop Trickster for Bountiful Theft. You have ONE trick. Quite pointless really. Otherwise, the build is quite good. Though, if you have all that stealth, just get hide in shadows.

- If you’re going to use Staff you have to pick Staff mastery rather than Impacting Disruption. The DPS gain from Staff mastery supercedes the DPS you’ll get from ID especially when you don’t really have any interrupt skills other than Steal. It also adds endurance for each point of initiative spent giving you more survivability when attacking. This way you don’t have to take Bountiful Theft.

- If you want to keep ID, I would suggest replacing BV with Impact Strike as your Elite. For the same cool down time, IS is 100 times better since it has 2 ways to interrupt your target: Impact Strike dazes and Uppercut launches. When timed correctly, you’ll get to proc ID twice. However if you build around this, Staff would not be the right weapon choice since S/P would fit right in for an ID build.

IMO, too many skills and traits not complementing eachother.

thunderfall.8095:

Drop Trickster for Bountiful Theft. You have ONE trick. Quite pointless really. Otherwise, the build is quite good. Though, if you have all that stealth, just get hide in shadows.

Withdraw with Trickster has been enough for me, helps to have Shadowstep in your pocket though, otherwise I might take another trick. I do often go with only one Trick and it’s not much of a stretch, you’re getting one or two conditions or you’re getting all conditions it seems like.