Guild Wars 2

I need advice on one of the fundamental tasks for a WvW roamer: flipping camps solo. I know it requires S/P, spam Blinding Powder, SB to pull the aggro, and withdraw heals back into a wall, but I’m obviously missing something if I’m not flipping the camp. I can get rid of a decent majority of the camp’s occupants before I go down.

1. Each camp has a different place to stand, but where are the spots?

2. How can you draw the ranged guards close enough to your position, in order to blind them as well?

3. Knockdowns and stuns seem to be more consistent than my stun breakers. I usually want to take the dolyaks out first, but I’ve seen other thieves take them and the camp.

4. What traits can be used?

5. I immediately avoid camps that are upgraded, if I’m solo. but is it possible to flip those as well?

Any advice given will be greatly appreciated.

P/D and SHortbow with caltrops works wonders. Its the easiest way to solo a camp and towers. Use caltrops, smoke screen, Shadow refuge and daggers storm.

start by using hide in shadows, run into the camp, lay down caltrops and Smoke screen then dagger storm in smoke screen to get blinding bolts. Then shadow refuge, lay down choking gas and then caltrops again when it has recharged. Then just use P/D to pick off the champion. Works for towers as well

No specific thief advice since I dont play it, but if you are struggling you can always pull the 2 ranged defenders out from the others as long as you are fighting at range too.

Just draw agro and then move out of they mods “zone”. The melee ones will leave and the ranged ones will stay because they can still hit you, so you can then just SB spam them and then take on the other 2 after.

Not as fast as stacking them all behind the nearest building and AoEing them all at once, but easier to do if you’re struggling.

Well, first off, you don’t need to be S/P to solo a camp. S/P is probably the easiest for a normal camp without Hyleks or Dredge but you can also run S/D, DD, D/P, P/D or even just Shortbow (which I actually use most of the time).

What I’ll usually do (with shortbow) is pull the Vets to a part of the camp that Line of Sites them to cluster them up, drop poison field (SB 4 Choking Gas) evade into the field and clusterbomb for aoe weakness then Daggerstorm. Once Daggerstorm ends I’ll drop Choking Gas again and Clusterbomb spam while evading around. Once I’m out of evades about the only thing left is the Supervisor who is usually below half health at this point. I’ll swap to S/D (since I run S/D and SB) and finish her off.

I run 0/6/2/6/0 so having the extra evades from Acro helps with taking camps this way but you can also use the same Line of Sight method to cluster the camp Vets up and drop black power into pistol whip (as long as there isnt more than 5 mobs). Using shortbow like I do takes longer to capture the camp but its a lot more fun than just standing there pistolwhipping in black powder.

One other note, using daggerstorm when taking a camp is nice because it reflects the ranged guards attacks and blinds them mitigating a lot of their damage for the duration of the daggerstorm.

Cufufalating.8479:

No specific thief advice since I dont play it, but if you are struggling you can always pull the 2 ranged defenders out from the others as long as you are fighting at range too.

Just draw agro and then move out of they mods “zone”. The melee ones will leave and the ranged ones will stay because they can still hit you, so you can then just SB spam them and then take on the other 2 after.

Not as fast as stacking them all behind the nearest building and AoEing them all at once, but easier to do if you’re struggling.

That is what I used to do, but I have to flip the camp quickly if I want to be effective. too much time on one camp means less time scouting and roaming. It might also attract other roamers to my position, and I’d have to fight them and the camp.

lol, u don’t need s/p to solo camps… ive done it on every weapon set thief has available. the key to capping em is u start off by mugging the first scout and immediately hitting em wit ur burst for ur weapon set… as soon as u do that then u immediately hit dagger storm and that will be enuff to kill first scout and put the other down to a couple of auto attacks, so kill the second scout next… then I take out the guard followed by the quartermaster and claimer… eazy peezy

I solo camps fairly easily with D/D. Just kill the scouts first (the blinds) and you’re set. Also keep an eye out for stuns and immob from the guards, and the knockdown from the supervisor. I do recommend running blind on stealth (which you should be doing anyways). Other than that, you can agro some of them by themselves, but you don’t need to. And as far as upgraded camps go they’re tricky. The problem I have is that by the time I almost take the camp some people will come to defend it as it takes quite a while. I personally agro the wizard(s) first and take them out, followed by the scouts or Zealots depending. You just have to be super aware of what’s going on. The upgraded guards hurt like crazy. it does take practice though, so don’t give up if you’re not successful!

I run 2/0/0/6/6 S/D for WvW, works just fine and is reasonably quick.

Make sure you kill the scouts first, the poison/blind can really mess you up. I normally use shortbow to poison and group everything then daggerstorm, the scouts will be weak by that point so target one then detonate cluster bombs on them whilst kiting the melee guards close to the scouts. That ensures you’re still hitting through blind whilst weakening the others, the bleed stacks and poison will do more than you think. Once the scouts are dead swap to S/D to kill the guard and claimer.

It’s probably not optimal since I’m kiting the mobs through AoE instead of stacking them, but I’ve had 50+ secs left on daggerstorm cooldown after killing the claimer before so it is pretty quick. I do have problems with upgraded camps solo, but it’s not hard to find another person to help you generally.

Try using withdraw, hard to catch and roll for ini if you’re struggling with CC from the guards, I’ve killed warriors in their own un-upgraded camps with shortbow before by just kiting in circles ^^

I hope that helps somewhat ^^

While S/P is great for flipping camps, I still prefer to use my usual S/D to do the job since sometimes I have to fight enemies too and I just hate S/P for any pvp.

S/P is fast but even with dagger storm & S/D I can kill mobs before the swords appear. Make sure you kill scouts first, the rest is easy.

If the camp is upgraded, I switch to S/P and SoM (same for towers). I target the npcs that pull first then scouts. You have to be really quick killing npcs cos they seem to spawn pretty fast in upgraded camps. For dredge/hyleks I use S/P again, hylek camps are easier to flip than dredge as dredge are immune to blinds. If you run into troubles in a camp with hyleks, use dagger storm, they half kill themselves with the projectile reflect.

Upgraded camps/with mercenaries are not easy to flip and it takes a lot longer to kill npcs so often enemies will get there to defend it. It’s generally better to team up with someone for these.

I like to use 5/6/x/x/x with S/P, imo its the fastest set to flip them.
Line of sight them on a spot so they will all stack on you, there are lots of spots for every camp, so it shouldnt be hard to find one.

My rotation normally goes #5-#3-#5-Daggerstorm-#5-#3-#3-……
You can use Smokescreen for the blinds as well, gives you more Pistol Whip spam but takes up 1 utility.

What I do on my D/D build is go for the scouts first, basically spam CnD backstab combo until they die, then go for guards, then supervisor. If you get low heal up with HiS, but you’ll be CnD’ing most of the time. for the scout blind field, you just have to stand right outside it. Also don’t be afraid to refuge if you need to.

I mostly jump in like batman, drop a blackpowder next to the scouts and daggerstorm, interrupt their heals and BS/Heartseeker them, once the scouts are taken out the rest is more or less a joke. Can be done with any weaponset really, but pistol offhand offers the blindfield and an interrupt to their heals.

Withdraw I find to be the most useful heal when flipping, you might get immobilized or perma crippled so withdraw is a nice way to remove them and stay mobile.
Smokescreen and Shadow Refuge are helpful too.

I’m just doing it on shortbow with dagger storm, poison fields and cluster bomb… It takes me about 10-15 seconds to clear out all but supervisor, and then i swap to s/d(or s/p depending on which I fancy for the moment) to finish him off.
Needless to say I’m full berserker, otherwise such times wouldn’t be possible. ALSO remember to utilize combo’s, if you do dagger storm on top of shadow refuge or poison field it becomes much stronger for instance.
In fact it’s so strong, that utilizing Radiation Field(Asura Racial, one of the few useful ones I’ve got to say) together with Dagger Storm clears me a camp fully. All what remains is a supervisor, and he’s dying shortly after that ^^.

If condition specced: P/D with caltrops, smoke screen and dagger storm = win.

I’m by no means an elitist nor do I believe myself to be better than X person. Though, I play a standard full zerker DPS build either with D/D or S/D. Both of which are extremely easy to solo with.

If you’re D/D it’s just a case of burning your targets down 1 by 1, making sure to stealth often to lose cripple/heal up.
If you’re X/P then ofcourse lure your melee mobs over to ranged and Black Powder on them.
S/D again, just burn targets down and stealth for heals/condi loss. S/D is great for interrupting mob heals, not to mention the dodges.

I also tend to switch to Dagger Storm and run into the middle of the group. Does a good amount of damage and in most case will make your ranged mobs use their heal at low health if not killing them completely. From there it’s just a case of burning them down quickly and getting the easy melee mobs.

I definitely wouldn’t create a build to purposely capture camps and hinder your performance in roaming.

Here is a video my friend made of a thief soloing a supply camp. He is by no means an amazing thief, but if you want to quickly solo a supply camp, here is a rough idea how to go about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4p3qi3_Dgk

I’ve found that with condi-Thief, I can clear an unupgraded camp pretty fast if I switch out the mainhand pistol for a dagger and also use Signet of Malice and Caltrops. I then stack them up behind a building, drop Caltrops, maybe a few Death Blossoms and then Dagger Storm. After that, Death Blossom again. Oh, and throw in some evades (with the Caltrops-on-Dodge trait) too. This usually kills everything pretty fast, although sometimes you might get a bit unlucky due to blinds and stuff.

Zach.3264:

I definitely wouldn’t create a build to purposely capture camps and hinder your performance in roaming.

Well, for both condi and power it’s usually a matter of changing just a couple of utilities, and a weapon, so you can switch back to roaming setup while the cap-bar fills up.

D/P can be used to focus fire each guard down. Once you backstab you immediately dodge roll and throw down BP. Kill the scouts first to avoid blinds and cripples and the BP will easily mitigate the other guard’s melee attacks.

You’re doing it wrong as I’ve mentioned. There are 6 targets in a clean camp(7-8 if dolyaks), and using single-target abilities or even cleaves is probably hindering you more than helping.
Most optimal things to do is to spam AOE’s of course. Shortbow #2 while kiting around is very effective, Radiation Field with Dagger Storm is also very effective. Pistol Whip is pretty decent if only little targets remain, however.