Guild Wars 2

so i like the way steal can be so well focused around boons, but i dislike how so few builds really feel good about going that route.

at the moment the only one i imagine that can take it easily is unicorn builds.

so i wanted to create something that wasnt that! and still used trickery 30 points.

Sword/dagger, 30 in shadow arts, 30 in trickery, 10 in deadly arts.

essentially youll be evading, boon stripping, boon granting, and dazing. anyone have any opinions on ideas in this direction?

atm im running mesmer runes, sigil of nullification and purity.

stealth heal, shadow refuge, shadowstep, signet of shadows.

yeah….itll be mediocre bc of ur direct dmg. unfortunately ANET hasnt done whakittens said yet “increasing base dmg of thief and increasing its mobility” yet they have nerfed both. they want to increase our base dmg bc of this problem u just stated….. bc thief direct dmg is so directly related to trait point allocation. i know ur prolly waiting for some good player to make a build for you “what it sounds like” but the fact is 99.9% of all theoretical builds have been tested and is why you havent heard of them….bc they suck.

if you put all zerk gear on with zerk accs and zerk runes and zerk jewels and zerk weapons AND you have 30 30 0 0 10 for highest max dmg traits in game (my personal build for highest possible backstab) then lets say you deal X damage per hit on average.

now lets keep all the same armor weapons etc all zerk zerk zerk etc etc and lets trade the points to 0 0 10 30 30 and now we are doing only 45-50% of what X was on our original build above.

so 50% of our dmg is literally coming from traits….. i have done hypothesis tested and proven for this by taking 2 videos showing each and averaging 10 coyote kills per build and averaged them out to hits per kill per build and dmg per hit per build. its literally double from the difference in traits.

what does this mean? this means as a thief we cannot afford to go more than 10 here and there in the defensive/condition lines unless we want a HUGE cut in overal dmg. unfortunately they put steal/stun stuff in condi line which is kinda useless as nobody in condi needs stuns….. direct dmg likes/needs stuns so we can do more direct dmg. but who is going to sacrifice 50% dmg for an extra 1-2 sec stun and 7 seconds off steal recharge and maybe a few free boons? do you think that will add up to the 50% dmg you lost? NO. but you will get 3k extra hp or so roughly but again no matter how you are armroed that HP will only help you last a lil…not put down your enemy. you have lil chance of beating a heal ranger/guardian/ele with this build and a necro would own it too most likely but hey….might be good in a asupport group? idk prolly not.

hope this helps.

PS sword/dagger is ONLY good for high direct dmg

hence why 0 0 30 30 10 builds are more like p/d condi builds or MAYBE a d/d condi evade build.

p/d is only good for direct dmg now bc of poison nerf

d/d is the only build that can kinda play both although the condi build for it sux bc its owned by any AOE player and non direct condi appliers.