Guild Wars 2

So I’ve recently gone back to DPS, and due to the nerfs to D/P I decided that D/D was the optimal choice. Due to the initiative buffs coming December 10th I opted to NOT trait 15 into Trickery, and rather stuck with the default 12 initiative since it relies primarily on backstabs and CnD, and when managing your initiative properly makes for an already powerful setup.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmSO3eS6E/5Ey2jdqC5JuHFlT1UaFoJA-jkCBYfERjkFQUIAUBKjJPFRjtMsIasqkYKXAaXLq2cuIa1SBYuyI-w

Currently I have 4 daggers that I like to swap out, those being Leeching which I swap my Bloodlust out for after I have 25 stacks and my Night dagger which boosts my damage above Force by an extra 5% at night time. On top of the traditional options maintained by the build that most D/D setups have, I’ve gone ahead and chosen Life Steal food to reinforce the fact that this build does have healing power, mostly from the 30 points in Shadow Arts. I’ve also chosen Mug for this reason. I initially also debated runes of Vampirism, but ultimately decided on Traveler for the speed, which only maintained a minimal DPS drop (~3 damage per autoattack) over Scholar runes.

D/D is a lot of fun. I have a few points of discussion:

- No vigor? I have a hard time not running 10 in Acrobatics to pick up Vigor on heal (combine with Withdraw and you have a lot of dodges), or going 20 into Trickery to pick up Vigor on Steal

- In SA, without picking up the Initiative on Stealth skill, are you able to maintain 10% damage buff from First Strikes (keeping initiative at 7+). This is a spot where the upcoming base init regen buff may really help

- I am a big fan of Furious Retaliation, especially in WvW. After the initial backstab, Fury is a pretty great way to finish them off

- Ever consider taking the 10 points in Deadly Arts and moving them to Trickery to pick up Fury/ Might/ Swiftness on steal? It makes your initial approach pretty deadly.

D/D is one of the few builds that is generally buffed by the upcoming patch. The biggest change in either direction for this build is probably the base initiative regen buff. I bet we see more people running it.

Oghier.7419:

D/D is a lot of fun. I have a few points of discussion:

- No vigor? I have a hard time not running 10 in Acrobatics to pick up Vigor on heal (combine with Withdraw and you have a lot of dodges), or going 20 into Trickery to pick up Vigor on Steal

- In SA, without picking up the Initiative on Stealth skill, are you able to maintain 10% damage buff from First Strikes (keeping initiative at 7+). This is a spot where the upcoming base init regen buff may really help

- I am a big fan of Furious Retaliation, especially in WvW. After the initial backstab, Fury is a pretty great way to finish them off

- Ever consider taking the 10 points in Deadly Arts and moving them to Trickery to pick up Fury/ Might/ Swiftness on steal? It makes your initial approach pretty deadly.

D/D is one of the few builds that is generally buffed by the upcoming patch. The biggest change in either direction for this build is probably the base initiative regen buff. I bet we see more people running it.

I’ve actually been seeing many more thieves running condition builds now with December 10th looming over. I’d like to stay away from the initiative on stealth skill as it’s getting nerfed with the upcoming balance patch. other than that, though, the build is quite powerful. I’ll play around with different trait combinations, but for the most part this is the base build, and you can tweak it to your liking.

10-30-30!! Whoot!!! Been running this since launch on my theif, never changed. I mess around with which traits I use depending on who I roan with. But enjoy either way, lots of diversity with this build.

Chewy.9263:

10-30-30!! Whoot!!! Been running this since launch on my theif, never changed. I mess around with which traits I use depending on who I roan with. But enjoy either way, lots of diversity with this build.

Hence why I’ve deemed it Infinity! :D

Ive played D/D since november guys, and a tip is that do not invest 10 points into deadlyarts without using health stack guard killer buff, before that use 10 into acrobatics for falldamage The trick to D/D is to play defansive untill you get an opportunity then you nuke, go back in stealth and repeat basicly.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I’d like to stay away from the initiative on stealth skill as it’s getting nerfed with the upcoming balance patch

It’s only getting nerfed for gaining stealth while already in stealth. If you are using CnD to stealth it’s unaffected. You are still going to want it if you are playing D/D properly.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmSO3eS6E/5Ey2jdqCJKuHGVS1UdFwKA-jUCBYfERjEBgUBDRL9pIaslhFRjVXDT5SIS7K1mzFRrWKABVGB-w

-What I’m running currently and liking it. Basically you trade 6% chance to crit for 3k+ health. In my book that’s a win especially if you take hidden killer (which if you are running a back-stab d/d build why would you not?). That and the food is way way cheaper.

-Not many people run fleet shadow, but you run at 50% so you can actually catch up to people running swiftness (33%) and get the back-stab in. I find it hard to live without, almost every fight there is a case where I wouldn’t have been able to get into position fast enough without it.

-I’ve seen a lot of math against Valk armor (going for a mix of soldier) but the “effective health” calculation doesn’t take into account conditions which toughness does nothing for. In the end I just can’t deal with the loss of that %crit damage and having a higher health pool seems to even out with the condition heavy meta.

Most of this is just preference, but I’m liking it so far.

Use 2 init on stealth…. it’s big for d/d. You might have enough init to throw in the occasional DB then

Because DB looks freakin awesome! Except on charrs :-D

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

This isn’t anything new or interesting. :/ It’s the same old 30 Crit 30 Shadow arts with either 10 DA or Acro.. It’s like the only really good thing we have left and it’s been around forever.

I’m guessing this is a WvW build or…?

Awe.8049:

I’m guessing this is a WvW build or…?

It’s universal pretty much.

Could I run this to go around discovering the map? Would I get in trouble in the high level areas?

Awe.8049:

Could I run this to go around discovering the map? Would I get in trouble in the high level areas?

You can run it for anything. 30 Crit/ 30 SA/ 10 Anything is pretty flexible. You can switch up weapon sets and traits on the fly to have a spec appropriate for anything (with the possible exception of sPvP, which I don’t know much about).

Awe.8049:

I’m guessing this is a WvW build or…?

Yes, this appears to be a WvW build. You’d be better off going more offensive for PvE, and forget about anything like this working in sPvP. Any points in Shadow Arts is a no-no for sPvP.

Oghier.7419:

Awe.8049:

Could I run this to go around discovering the map? Would I get in trouble in the high level areas?

You can run it for anything. 30 Crit/ 30 SA/ 10 Anything is pretty flexible. You can switch up weapon sets and traits on the fly to have a spec appropriate for anything (with the possible exception of sPvP, which I don’t know much about).

I’ve been toying with this concept. If only I had a reliable way to quickly change traits, owning 2 daggers, 2 pistols a sword and a shortbow (all zojja ascended), with this gear you can literally retrait, swap a few utilities and use an entirely different weapon set and be completely viable with almost any of them (p/d of course being the only exception).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPHdy5E/5Ey2jeqCJKuHGVS1UdFiKA-jUDBYfDZE/DigAksIQUBJL9pIas1TFRjVbDT5CQFbR12cp2qDwiWRTKA2UGB-w

This is what I’m using from rly long time. Awesome build, you just can’t die with it when playing properly.

Add Guard Killer and 25power stacks

It’s nice to see thieves have found their guts to make the life of other classes difficult I agree with all the above builds.
Wurm runes are great and instead of Traveler which are very expensive try Superior Runes of Speed which are great too.
Power of a thief must be close to 2200 to cause significant pressure to other classes in order to press their panic buttons quickly.
I prefer Daggerstorm over BV for the reflection- AoE damage and cripple and Hidden Killer(every crit counts) mostly but it depends on the situations.
Well done fellow thieves ,well done.!!!

Kadin.2356:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmSO3eS6E/5Ey2jdqCJKuHGVS1UdFwKA-jUCBYfERjEBgUBDRL9pIaslhFRjVXDT5SIS7K1mzFRrWKABVGB-w

AFAIK, Sigil of Accuracy and Sigil of Force do not stack.

Tenofas.6098:

Kadin.2356:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmSO3eS6E/5Ey2jdqCJKuHGVS1UdFwKA-jUCBYfERjEBgUBDRL9pIaslhFRjVXDT5SIS7K1mzFRrWKABVGB-w

AFAIK, Sigil of Accuracy and Sigil of Force do not stack.

iirc, you cannot have two of the same type of sigil on one weapon set, and can’t have two on-swap/on-crit sigils in your build period, as they all share the same cooldowns.

Tenofas.6098:

Kadin.2356:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmSO3eS6E/5Ey2jdqCJKuHGVS1UdFwKA-jUCBYfERjEBgUBDRL9pIaslhFRjVXDT5SIS7K1mzFRrWKABVGB-w

AFAIK, Sigil of Accuracy and Sigil of Force do not stack.

Static bonuses stack with themselves when used on dual-wielded weapons, except for Superior Sigil of Force (only +5% bonus to damage) and Superior Sigil of Accuracy (only +5% bonus to crit chance).

Meaning they do stack just not 2x force or 2x accuracy. There are lots of posts confirming that.

wish.1027:

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

The “effective health” calculation you keep pointing at over and over does not take into account condition damage that completely bypasses toughness. Show me a formulae that accurately accounts for the condition heavy meta and I’ll start believing it more.

The “effective damage” calculation is also skewed due to the hidden killer trait.

As far as celestial goes, yea there’s no reason at all to load that but I think that Valk gear is getting a bad rap due to bad math.

wtf wats going on here

Kadin.3086:

wtf wats going on here

Unoriginality.

/15char

huh what who me

Go valkyrie/zerker it will give you higher damage than wish’s stupid solider zerker combo, due to he takes precison in account for the damage and most D/D thieves run hidden killer which means he takes unnescary tougness and precison instead of vitality and damage, the backstabs is what matters really effective damage is not your damage when you run things like fury/hidden killer and so. Wish is just an annoying thieorycrafter which just thinks theory its the ingame practise that matters. D/D thieves do not run so much precison

but optimaly you go full zerker with zerker/valk trinkets and use applied foritute then you get high hp and high critchance and keeps your damage at peak. But if you cant afford applied fortidute go valkyrie armor with beryl orbs or travler/divnity/wurm runes. and full zerker trinkets. but when you get applied fortidute you can go full zerker with zerker/valk trinkets.

Toughness is not what matters in a roaming spec epecially on thief as we already have around 2300 armor and 16 k hp of a typical roaming thief. you’ve ever heard the thumb rule of having the two first numbers in your hp and your armor like 20000 hp and 2000 armor 16 k hp and 1600 armor and such. and direct damage aint really an isssue when you roam its more the necro which chain fears/condi. so ignore what wish says and go for the optimal becuse he basicly get precison and toughness on the cost of critical damage, so if you have 10 % less critical damage you’l actually do 10 % less damage due to hidden killer. provding you free guarneteerd crit.

Kadin.2356:

wish.1027:

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

The “effective health” calculation you keep pointing at over and over does not take into account condition damage that completely bypasses toughness.

Who cares about EHP? Sure, Soldiers gives you more EHP, and you only lose like 200 HP compared to Valk, but thats not the point.

Soldiers gives more damage compared to Valk because you get to use more berserkers gear and precision is more valuable than critical hit damage. Thats why you use it.

Big Tower.5423:

ignore what wish says …. if you have 10 % less critical damage you’l actually do 10 % less damage due to hidden killer. provding you free guarneteerd crit.

Ignore me? How about we ignore the person who doesnt even understand the basic concept of “+10% critical hit damage does not give you +10% damage when you land a critical hit.”

All critical hit damage does is multiply your base damage by a percent. It’s +10% base damage when you land a critical hit, not +10% damage when you land a critical hit.

If your base damage is 100, and you have 100 critical hit damage, then your critical hit would be 250 damage.

Because critical hits adds 50% base damage naturally, so it would look like this:

BaseDamage * (BaseCriticalHitDamage + AddedCriticalHitDamage) = DamageWhenYouLandACrit

100 * (1.5 + 1) = 250

If you add 10% Critical hit damage to that….

100 * (1.5 + 1 + 0.1) = 260

You get 260.

260/250=1.04

By dividing we can see the percentage increase between the two numbers. And now we can clearly see this is only a 4% damage increase. It’s adding 10% of the base damage (100) not 10% of the critical hit damage (250) this is why adding 10% critical hit damage is not a 10% damage increase, ever. It’s simple math. Its easy to understand. I’ve typed it at you 15 times now. Please try to understand it and quit spreading misinformation.

wish.1027:

Kadin.2356:

wish.1027:

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

The “effective health” calculation you keep pointing at over and over does not take into account condition damage that completely bypasses toughness.

Who cares about EHP? Sure, Soldiers gives you more EHP, and you only lose like 200 HP compared to Valk, but thats not the point.

Soldiers gives more damage compared to Valk because you get to use more berserkers gear and precision is more valuable than critical hit damage. Thats why you use it.

Big Tower.5423:

ignore what wish says …. if you have 10 % less critical damage you’l actually do 10 % less damage due to hidden killer. provding you free guarneteerd crit.

Ignore me? How about we ignore the person who doesnt even understand the basic concept of “+10% critical hit damage does not give you +10% damage when you land a critical hit.”

All critical hit damage does is multiply your base damage by a percent. It’s +10% base damage when you land a critical hit, not +10% damage when you land a critical hit.

If your base damage is 100, and you have 100 critical hit damage, then your critical hit would be 250 damage.

Because critical hits adds 50% base damage naturally, so it would look like this:

BaseDamage * (BaseCriticalHitDamage + AddedCriticalHitDamage) = DamageWhenYouLandACrit

100 * (1.5 + 1) = 250

If you add 10% Critical hit damage to that….

100 * (1.5 + 1 + 0.1) = 260

You get 260.

260/250=1.04

By dividing we can see the percentage increase between the two numbers. And now we can clearly see this is only a 4% damage increase. It’s adding 10% of the base damage (100) not 10% of the critical hit damage (250) this is why adding 10% critical hit damage is not a 10% damage increase, ever. It’s simple math. Its easy to understand. I’ve typed it at you 15 times now. Please try to understand it and quit spreading misinformation.

^this.

Forget about Big Tower, its been ages since he keep saying things without any prove lol…
Hes either rally bad on math as wish just showed again… or just to proud to admit hes wrong from the beginning

Walker.3056:

wish.1027:

Kadin.2356:

wish.1027:

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

The “effective health” calculation you keep pointing at over and over does not take into account condition damage that completely bypasses toughness.

Who cares about EHP? Sure, Soldiers gives you more EHP, and you only lose like 200 HP compared to Valk, but thats not the point.

Soldiers gives more damage compared to Valk because you get to use more berserkers gear and precision is more valuable than critical hit damage. Thats why you use it.

Big Tower.5423:

ignore what wish says …. if you have 10 % less critical damage you’l actually do 10 % less damage due to hidden killer. provding you free guarneteerd crit.

Ignore me? How about we ignore the person who doesnt even understand the basic concept of “+10% critical hit damage does not give you +10% damage when you land a critical hit.”

All critical hit damage does is multiply your base damage by a percent. It’s +10% base damage when you land a critical hit, not +10% damage when you land a critical hit.

If your base damage is 100, and you have 100 critical hit damage, then your critical hit would be 250 damage.

Because critical hits adds 50% base damage naturally, so it would look like this:

BaseDamage * (BaseCriticalHitDamage + AddedCriticalHitDamage) = DamageWhenYouLandACrit

100 * (1.5 + 1) = 250

If you add 10% Critical hit damage to that….

100 * (1.5 + 1 + 0.1) = 260

You get 260.

260/250=1.04

By dividing we can see the percentage increase between the two numbers. And now we can clearly see this is only a 4% damage increase. It’s adding 10% of the base damage (100) not 10% of the critical hit damage (250) this is why adding 10% critical hit damage is not a 10% damage increase, ever. It’s simple math. Its easy to understand. I’ve typed it at you 15 times now. Please try to understand it and quit spreading misinformation.

^this.

Forget about Big Tower, its been ages since he keep saying things without any prove lol…
Hes either rally bad on math as wish just showed again… or just to proud to admit hes wrong from the beginning

So wait, is Soldiers better than Valk? O.o

I’ve always used crit to proc Sigils, nothing more. I’m beginning to rethink it’s usefulness.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Walker.3056:

wish.1027:

Kadin.2356:

wish.1027:

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

The “effective health” calculation you keep pointing at over and over does not take into account condition damage that completely bypasses toughness.

Who cares about EHP? Sure, Soldiers gives you more EHP, and you only lose like 200 HP compared to Valk, but thats not the point.

Soldiers gives more damage compared to Valk because you get to use more berserkers gear and precision is more valuable than critical hit damage. Thats why you use it.

Big Tower.5423:

ignore what wish says …. if you have 10 % less critical damage you’l actually do 10 % less damage due to hidden killer. provding you free guarneteerd crit.

Ignore me? How about we ignore the person who doesnt even understand the basic concept of “+10% critical hit damage does not give you +10% damage when you land a critical hit.”

All critical hit damage does is multiply your base damage by a percent. It’s +10% base damage when you land a critical hit, not +10% damage when you land a critical hit.

If your base damage is 100, and you have 100 critical hit damage, then your critical hit would be 250 damage.

Because critical hits adds 50% base damage naturally, so it would look like this:

BaseDamage * (BaseCriticalHitDamage + AddedCriticalHitDamage) = DamageWhenYouLandACrit

100 * (1.5 + 1) = 250

If you add 10% Critical hit damage to that….

100 * (1.5 + 1 + 0.1) = 260

You get 260.

260/250=1.04

By dividing we can see the percentage increase between the two numbers. And now we can clearly see this is only a 4% damage increase. It’s adding 10% of the base damage (100) not 10% of the critical hit damage (250) this is why adding 10% critical hit damage is not a 10% damage increase, ever. It’s simple math. Its easy to understand. I’ve typed it at you 15 times now. Please try to understand it and quit spreading misinformation.

^this.

Forget about Big Tower, its been ages since he keep saying things without any prove lol…
Hes either rally bad on math as wish just showed again… or just to proud to admit hes wrong from the beginning

So wait, is Soldiers better than Valk? O.o

serach for the thread “building a better D/D thief” and you will understand what we are talking about

Viking Jorun.5413:

So wait, is Soldiers better than Valk? O.o

For most people, yes, but it depends on your attack patterns. If you run Hidden Killer, and your “From Stealth” attacks are less than like 52%~ of your total damage, Soldiers wins. If you run anything other than Hidden Killer, Soldiers always wins. If you pretty much always do AA chain and CnD with your BS’s, or sometimes land BS’s from the front, or use mug, or ever use HS, Soldiers wins for you, but you have to put the Soldiers gear in the right slots.

wish.1027:

Kadin.2356:

wish.1027:

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

The “effective health” calculation you keep pointing at over and over does not take into account condition damage that completely bypasses toughness.

Who cares about EHP? Sure, Soldiers gives you more EHP, and you only lose like 200 HP compared to Valk, but thats not the point.

Soldiers gives more damage compared to Valk because you get to use more berserkers gear and precision is more valuable than critical hit damage. Thats why you use it.

You can still mix and match Beserk gear with Valk to pick up that added damage, and retain the crit damage %, which does play a larger role in the damage calculation than I think you give it credit for because of hidden killer. It makes EVERY back-stab harder. I’m not agreeing with Bigtower he clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but as far as beserk mixed with valk/soldier I think you are breaking even if not doing better with valk due to what I stated above.

To me it just makes more sense to me to mix valk with beserk if you are using hidden killer. If you are using executioner then soldier (with adjusted jewelry) is a better way to go (as you would want a higher base crit chance).

Kadin.2356:

wish.1027:

Kadin.2356:

wish.1027:

lulz, Valkyrie and Celestial

The “effective health” calculation you keep pointing at over and over does not take into account condition damage that completely bypasses toughness.

Who cares about EHP? Sure, Soldiers gives you more EHP, and you only lose like 200 HP compared to Valk, but thats not the point.

Soldiers gives more damage compared to Valk because you get to use more berserkers gear and precision is more valuable than critical hit damage. Thats why you use it.

You can still mix and match Beserk gear with Valk to pick up that added damage, and retain the crit damage %, which does play a larger role in the damage calculation than I think you give it credit for because of hidden killer.

Yes, you can do that, but If you use less Valkyrie gear to match the DPS of the Soldiers set, you can use less Soldiers to match/slightly exceed the EHP of the new Valk set and retain higher DPS.

Kadin.2356:

It makes EVERY back-stab harder. I’m not agreeing with Bigtower he clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but as far as beserk mixed with valk/soldier I think you are breaking even if not doing better with valk due to what I stated above.

It depends on your attack patterns, but for most people, Soldiers will win. AA chain and CnD basically equals BS from behind in DPS provided you skip a hit or something in the AA chain. Throw in a HS or Mug or do the full AA chain and BS is sub 50% of your total DPS in a fight. 50% damage from your “From Stealth” attacks is pretty much the break even point for the Valk vs Soldiers setups, but it favors Soldiers slightly, and most people will naturally fall on the Soldiers side to begin with, and the Soldiers setup has higher EHP… and you can see why Soldiers wins.

Kadin.2356:

To me it just makes more sense to me to mix valk with beserk if you are using hidden killer. If you are using executioner then soldier is probably a better way to go (as you would want a higher base crit chance).

Thats because youre overvaluing Critical Hit Damage. It’s really confusing when you dont do 2 pages of math yourself, and learn all the formulas, and at first I thought the same way you do too, so dont feel bad. But that way only comes out ahead if you BS then run away and do absolutely nothing a lot.

If you just look at the modifiers….

Cloak & Dagger: 1.624
Autoattack chain: 2.249
Heartseeker: 1 (>50%)/1.502 (25%-50%)/2.005 (<25%) – 0.75s – 1.33 (>50%)/2 (25%-50%)/2.67(<25%)

Stealthed – Backstab (back): 2.405

You can see what I mean when I say BS is generally not 50% of a persons total Damage Output. Since most people do more than BS > Run around like a chicken with no head > CnD > BS > run around….

EDIT:::
Anyway, Black Friday shoopin tiemz nao
AFK for a week or two. (`?´)