This is something I’ve been theorycrafting lately. It uses the idea of low health, but high toughness and healing power for sustain (With toughness increasing the value of your heals). And uses condi’s to apply pressure. The build at the moment is…
Weapons: p/d & sb
Trinket: Settler’s ( +1200 Toughness, +900 Healing Power, +900 Condition Damage)
Runes/Sigils: Krait Runes, Corruption/Agony for p/d, & Venom/Agony for sb
Traits: DA/SA/Trick (2/3/1, 3/2/2, 1/2/2 – respectively)
Utility Skills: Signet of Malice, Caltrops/Blinding Powder/SR, Dagger Storm
Build Constructor: [Link]
Notable facts:
- You have 11.6k total hp. SR heals for 2.6k (Not including the 383 heal/second of Shadow Rejuvenation) and Mug heals for 2.5k. That means both of these skills heal for slightly less than 25% of your total hp.
- Shadow’s Rejuvenation heals 9.9% of your total hp every 3 seconds while in stealth. You also gain one initiative and clear one condition every 3 seconds from these traits.
- Caltrops proc Signet of Malice when applied and caltrops pulse every second. If two enemies stand in your caltrops for 3 seconds you will heal 9% of your total hp (You are traited to drop caltrops that last for 3 seconds on dodge).
- Choking Gas (sb 4) also procs Signet of Malice for each of its four pulses and the initial hit. Making it possible to heal 7.6% of your total hp per target per cast of Choking Gas (sb 4 only costs 4 initiative).
- You have 2200 toughness, this makes your 11.6k hp equivalent to 25.5k hp against physical damage. Except it’s much easier to heal 11.6k than it is to heal 25.5k (It’s also much easier to burn through with conditions. But more on that later).
Playstyle
Playstyle focuses around providing on point disruption. Drop caltrops and poison fields on or near points to punish fighting on points. Prioritize sustain over damage, using stealth for healing/condi clear. Try to not activate your signet unless you get below 30% and try to save steal for when you’re around 75%. Use p/d for 1v1 or 2v1 situations, but at the same time consider using sb if you feel the poison would help you more. You will want to be near the center of the fight as much as possible to optimize SoM’s healing and act as somewhat of a damage sink for your team. Also try not to waste all your initiative on sb 5 getting to the fight, as you are very useless without initiative compared to a d/p or s/d thief. Dagger Storm should be used as an on-demand whirl finisher, preferably in your own poison fields. Dagger Storm puts you at risk when casting it, so don’t be afraid to cancel it if you are low or in a bad spot. Especially if whatever field you were whirling in has died.
Problems
This build is very immobile and has very little chase potential. It is also very weak against stuns/knockdowns/snares whenever steal or blinding powder are on cooldown. Having very little actual hp also makes it very susceptible to conditions, and this build features no on-demand condi clear other than Shadow’s Embrace and Trickster. This build also lacks objective control such as securing neutral monsters or taking down base doors. Lastly it struggles against meta builds like d/d ele or cele necro in 1v1 situations (Not so much in group situations).
Variations
- Drop Krait Runes for Runes of the Undead, and drop Sigils of Agony for Sigils of Bursting/Corruption/Frailty. Provides more damage per tick and sustain at the cost of fewer ticks. Recommended against comps with a lot of condi clear, which are quite prevalent in the current meta (Note that keeping Sigils of Agony will not add any additional bleed ticks).
(edited by Midi.8359)