Guild Wars 2

I started playing GW2 a month or two ago, and since I’ve been at lvl80 I’ve been working really hard to find the perfect build for me. I’ve spent so much time talking to other thieves and getting to know how they play, this is what I’ve found so.

-The 2 strongest weapons are staff and main hand dagger, and its not even a little difference.
-Using initiative for doing damage will usually result in a DPS loss because of activation/cast times. So only use a skill when it will result in a DPS boost, like heart seeker; or it meets a situational requirement. Like a shadow shot to get into melee range, or basilisk venom and headshot to ridiculously quickly destroy break bars.
-The elite specialization will only be superior to trickery while you are actually weilding a staff, not at any other point. As such bounding dodger only situationly boosts DPS, it should not be used actively but it should be ‘set and forget,’ in other words, rotating it does not boost damage.
-Stolen items are mostly useless, some are good to use, but most are only if that exact situation calls for it, which is almost never, and often actually never.

In terms of traits, you should always have crit strikes and deadly arts.
Sundering Strikes > Practiced Tolerance (unless you already have too much vulnerability from elsewhere)
Invigorating Precision > No Quarter (you don’t do damage while you are dead)
Executioner > Improvisation or Potent Poison
Thrill of the Crime >/= Haste (you should be spamming steal, even out of combat)

On both builds I use haste because it provides the best DPS boost of all of the utility skills, its also a stun break and condition cleansing ability.
The best runes to use are Scholar or Thief runes, unless you have another idea, I tried all of the free runes. Any rune without a +% is mostly inferior.
Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Air provide the best DPS, Sigil of Force and Sigil of Bloodlust coming in as good replacements for Sigil of Strength though. Yes I know you are about to say it, for burst Force is better, however this is built with endgame PvE in mind.

I have a lot of things I think about the profession, but this is only here to show you what I’m getting and to see what you guys can do and if there’s anything I can improve on.

Here are the builds:
D/P:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EH0ElOAmwIwHGpRZsfgEoCB-TpBEABAcEAI4EAYwhAIhHAAT7PYeZAA
Staff:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EL0EmWAYCFB2eAJgK0cFsDOCB-TpBEABMt/ABXAADOEAmXGAgjAQCPAAA

Oh and here’s a video of the DPS test. I completely forgot to put in a HoT (heal over time) test, but I’m sure you’ll be fine without it. My understanding is that JaxnX does not violate the ToS because it only reads my screen not the game, if that’s not right, tell me right away please.

https://youtu.be/ObQlJR6Jsjs

I just checked the old cloak and dagger backstab rotation with sigil of force and got 5.5k dps on that golem, not even using heartseeker. Thats a lot more than you have here. Why do you think using initiative will result in a dps loss?

I’m slightly confused. Is this supposed to be for PvP or PvE?
I’d automatically assume PvP when it’s a D/P build, but since you brought up destroying breakbars…
And DPS is not in any way helpful in PvP. Enemies are not going to stand around letting you DPS them.
Thus I’m going to assume PvE. I can’t read. Whoops.

Here are my 2 cents if it’s for PvE.

-The 2 strongest weapons are staff and main hand dagger, and its not even a little difference.
In general, D/P is not a high DPS set. For DPS, D/D is a better choice compared to D/P, but staff has the highest DPS. CnD> Backstab > 1 auto chain + 1 ds > CnD… deals much higher dps compared to simply auto-attacking.

by the way, the weapon with the highest Auto-attack DPS is the sword, followed by the staff, then only the dagger. Which means the dagger has the lowest melee auto-attack DPS

-Using initiative for doing damage will usually result in a DPS loss because of activation/cast times. So only use a skill when it will result in a DPS boost, like heart seeker; or it meets a situational requirement. Like a shadow shot to get into melee range, or basilisk venom and headshot to ridiculously quickly destroy break bars.
considering all skills are either used for boosting damage or used in different situations…. that is kind of a redundant observation. =P

-The elite specialization will only be superior to trickery while you are actually weilding a staff, not at any other point. As such bounding dodger only situationly boosts DPS, it should not be used actively but it should be ‘set and forget,’ in other words, rotating it does not boost damage.
*Whoever told you that obviously did not play DPS daredevil much. Bound’s 10% damage increase and the damage from bound itself is a much larger damage increas then from Lead attacks alone. All you need is good initiative management.

-Stolen items are mostly useless, some are good to use, but most are only if that exact situation calls for it, which is almost never, and often actually never.
whoever told you that did not play thief in PvP. The main reason why people use Improvisation in PvP is for the extra stolen skills.
True, many stolen skills in PvE are lackluster, but some are pretty useful. You many get free stealth, knockbacks, or dazes.

In terms of traits, you should always have crit strikes and deadly arts.
Sundering Strikes > Practiced Tolerance (unless you already have too much vulnerability from elsewhere)
generally practiced tolerance is the way to go. in a solo situation, you won’t stack THAT much vuln, and in a party, vuln is almost always at 25 stacks
Invigorating Precision > No Quarter (you don’t do damage while you are dead)
Hence the joy of playing thief, never getting hit
Executioner > Improvisation or Potent Poison
improv is mostly only used in PvP, and poison is only used in venomsahre builds
Thrill of the Crime >/= Haste (you should be spamming steal, even out of combat)
if only for the swiftness, i guess. But daredevil’s dash dodge will give even more swiftness in the open world

On both builds I use haste because it provides the best DPS boost of all of the utility skills, its also a stun break and condition cleansing ability.
Haste is not a very useful skill especially in a raid group. In a raid, you will have chronomancers giving out quickness, and in general fractals and dungeons it lacks utility. If you need DPS, palm strike may be a good filler skill. In PvE, you won’t need to worry about conditions or stuns very much.

The best runes to use are Scholar or Thief runes, unless you have another idea, I tried all of the free runes. Any rune without a +% is mostly inferior.
yes for scholar, nay for thief rune. Thief runes lack power or ferocity, which causes less damage. Strength runes are also a decent choice, but Scholar (<90% hp) or Ruby Orbs (overall) are the highest DPS upgrades.
Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Air provide the best DPS, Sigil of Force and Sigil of Bloodlust coming in as good replacements for Sigil of Strength though. Yes I know you are about to say it, for burst Force is better, however this is built with endgame PvE in mind.
Sigil of strength is largely redundant in group PvE because might flows like water in a group situation. One PS warrior is going to supply the whole party with 25 stacks of might in the first place. Thus, sigil force is better then sigil of might.

If you are worrying about DPS, then I’ll assume you are in a raid group.

Basilisk venom pales in comparison in to all other elites in PvE, unless you run venomshare builds. Impact strike has a daze and a launch, and deals damage on top of that.

Traits:
For critical strikes, if you are going for max dps, take flawless strikes, practices tolerance and No Quarter instead.

For Daredevil with a staff, take staff master. It gives you a 10% damage boost s well as near unlimited dodges.

4k dps is. unfortunately, fairly low, even in a solo situation. In a party situation, a thief is expected to output 20k+ dps even without quickness. I’ll use that program you used to try out my DPS to give you some idea on what kind of numbers you are suppose to hit. =)

Hope you found something useful from this post. Keep it up! There’s so little of us thieves nowadays. =(

Is it sustained? If I get a stealth steal I will pull a backstab where ever I can. But I wont freak out if I cant. Do you have a link to the build you are using, I tried that combo before and I could get some absurd backstabs, but the damage per second didn’t go over something like 3.8k.

I can put DPS up a lot by switching in Berserkers gear, and finding some way to stack the off hand bloodlust power. But in practice I think having extra health and so not to put so much risk on losing bloodlust makes all of the difference.

You just cant sustain abilities with initiative, as a resource the management options are horribly designed. Because we start at full initiative it is a requirement for you to open with an ability for max damage over time. Because every second your initiative remains full you loose 1 initiative point. So bound and steal isn’t a good option for PvE openers on weapon skill based builds.
Then if we aren’t at 15 initiative we lose 15% damage, but that’s more of a trivial point.

Lets say my auto attacks sustainably do 4.5k dps, if I use an ability that takes 3/4 of a second to get off and does a total of 3k in damage then it means I lose 0.25k in DPS. I do use abilities, the rule of thumb for me is that I only use them when I need to, or when the damage will exceed my current expected DPS.

EazyPanda.6419:

I’m slightly confused. Is this supposed to be for PvP or PvE?
I’d automatically assume PvP when it’s a D/P build, but since you brought up destroying breakbars…
And DPS is not in any way helpful in PvP. Enemies are not going to stand around letting you DPS them.
Thus I’m going to assume PvE. I can’t read. Whoops.

Here are my 2 cents if it’s for PvE.

-The 2 strongest weapons are staff and main hand dagger, and its not even a little difference.
In general, D/P is not a high DPS set. For DPS, D/D is a better choice compared to D/P, but staff has the highest DPS. CnD> Backstab > 1 auto chain + 1 ds > CnD… deals much higher dps compared to simply auto-attacking.

by the way, the weapon with the highest Auto-attack DPS is the sword, followed by the staff, then only the dagger. Which means the dagger has the lowest melee auto-attack DPS

-Using initiative for doing damage will usually result in a DPS loss because of activation/cast times. So only use a skill when it will result in a DPS boost, like heart seeker; or it meets a situational requirement. Like a shadow shot to get into melee range, or basilisk venom and headshot to ridiculously quickly destroy break bars.
considering all skills are either used for boosting damage or used in different situations…. that is kind of a redundant observation. =P

-The elite specialization will only be superior to trickery while you are actually weilding a staff, not at any other point. As such bounding dodger only situationly boosts DPS, it should not be used actively but it should be ‘set and forget,’ in other words, rotating it does not boost damage.
*Whoever told you that obviously did not play DPS daredevil much. Bound’s 10% damage increase and the damage from bound itself is a much larger damage increas then from Lead attacks alone. All you need is good initiative management.

-Stolen items are mostly useless, some are good to use, but most are only if that exact situation calls for it, which is almost never, and often actually never.
whoever told you that did not play thief in PvP. The main reason why people use Improvisation in PvP is for the extra stolen skills.
True, many stolen skills in PvE are lackluster, but some are pretty useful. You many get free stealth, knockbacks, or dazes.

In terms of traits, you should always have crit strikes and deadly arts.
Sundering Strikes > Practiced Tolerance (unless you already have too much vulnerability from elsewhere)
generally practiced tolerance is the way to go. in a solo situation, you won’t stack THAT much vuln, and in a party, vuln is almost always at 25 stacks
Invigorating Precision > No Quarter (you don’t do damage while you are dead)
Hence the joy of playing thief, never getting hit
Executioner > Improvisation or Potent Poison
improv is mostly only used in PvP, and poison is only used in venomsahre builds
Thrill of the Crime >/= Haste (you should be spamming steal, even out of combat)
if only for the swiftness, i guess. But daredevil’s dash dodge will give even more swiftness in the open world

On both builds I use haste because it provides the best DPS boost of all of the utility skills, its also a stun break and condition cleansing ability.
Haste is not a very useful skill especially in a raid group. In a raid, you will have chronomancers giving out quickness, and in general fractals and dungeons it lacks utility. If you need DPS, palm strike may be a good filler skill. In PvE, you won’t need to worry about conditions or stuns very much.

The best runes to use are Scholar or Thief runes, unless you have another idea, I tried all of the free runes. Any rune without a +% is mostly inferior.
yes for scholar, nay for thief rune. Thief runes lack power or ferocity, which causes less damage. Strength runes are also a decent choice, but Scholar (<90% hp) or Ruby Orbs (overall) are the highest DPS upgrades.
Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Air provide the best DPS, Sigil of Force and Sigil of Bloodlust coming in as good replacements for Sigil of Strength though. Yes I know you are about to say it, for burst Force is better, however this is built with endgame PvE in mind.
Sigil of strength is largely redundant in group PvE because might flows like water in a group situation. One PS warrior is going to supply the whole party with 25 stacks of might in the first place. Thus, sigil force is better then sigil of might.

If you are worrying about DPS, then I’ll assume you are in a raid group.

Basilisk venom pales in comparison in to all other elites in PvE, unless you run venomshare builds. Impact strike has a daze and a launch, and deals damage on top of that.

Traits:
For critical strikes, if you are going for max dps, take flawless strikes, practices tolerance and No Quarter instead.

For Daredevil with a staff, take staff master. It gives you a 10% damage boost s well as near unlimited dodges.

4k dps is. unfortunately, fairly low, even in a solo situation. In a party situation, a thief is expected to output 20k+ dps even without quickness. I’ll use that program you used to try out my DPS to give you some idea on what kind of numbers you are suppose to hit. =)

Hope you found something useful from this post. Keep it up! There’s so little of us thieves nowadays. =(

That would be awesome

I found No Quater did help with DPS, but if I’m running scholar runes then 250 ferocity doesn’t really come in too handy, it does pop up by a couple hundred when I run them though.

20K!!! I’m going to see if I can get a full berserker build something close to that :/

I would prefer Thieves guild for just raw damage, but basilisk venom is one of the best ways to take care of a break bar, using that on headshot is often enough to take it from full to nil, that makes a huge difference!

If you use staff master, what do you do for the condi cleanse, or do you just slot one when you need it?

I used the zerk amulet, not the mauradeur amulet. I read pve, so I assumed zerk.

But yes, this was over 1m40s, no bloodlust ofc.

EDIT: For numbers, we’re talking about the pvp golem. You won’t get 20k dps on that thing. But in a good group 20k is easily possible. Ele does 30k, tho…

hmm I’d really like to see that build and give it a go, do you have a link to it by any chance?
I usually try to aim for 1mil damage before I make a verdict on something, the best I’ve gotten so far is 5.4k on a berzerker staff build.

@EasyPanda.5419
I’m getting 5.4k with this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EL0EmWAYCFBmrgbwR42DIBsnA-TJBFwAI3foaZAAXAgCPAAA

Now when you say 20k? do you mean a 20k vault, because I can get that to 13k now. And I guess most people wouldn’t be talking about DPS as in actual damage per second but just some skill they use a lot.

Zlater.6789:

EazyPanda.6419:

I’m slightly confused. Is this supposed to be for PvP or PvE?
I’d automatically assume PvP when it’s a D/P build, but since you brought up destroying breakbars…
And DPS is not in any way helpful in PvP. Enemies are not going to stand around letting you DPS them.
Thus I’m going to assume PvE. I can’t read. Whoops.

Here are my 2 cents if it’s for PvE.

-The 2 strongest weapons are staff and main hand dagger, and its not even a little difference.
In general, D/P is not a high DPS set. For DPS, D/D is a better choice compared to D/P, but staff has the highest DPS. CnD> Backstab > 1 auto chain + 1 ds > CnD… deals much higher dps compared to simply auto-attacking.

by the way, the weapon with the highest Auto-attack DPS is the sword, followed by the staff, then only the dagger. Which means the dagger has the lowest melee auto-attack DPS

-Using initiative for doing damage will usually result in a DPS loss because of activation/cast times. So only use a skill when it will result in a DPS boost, like heart seeker; or it meets a situational requirement. Like a shadow shot to get into melee range, or basilisk venom and headshot to ridiculously quickly destroy break bars.
considering all skills are either used for boosting damage or used in different situations…. that is kind of a redundant observation. =P

-The elite specialization will only be superior to trickery while you are actually weilding a staff, not at any other point. As such bounding dodger only situationly boosts DPS, it should not be used actively but it should be ‘set and forget,’ in other words, rotating it does not boost damage.
*Whoever told you that obviously did not play DPS daredevil much. Bound’s 10% damage increase and the damage from bound itself is a much larger damage increas then from Lead attacks alone. All you need is good initiative management.

-Stolen items are mostly useless, some are good to use, but most are only if that exact situation calls for it, which is almost never, and often actually never.
whoever told you that did not play thief in PvP. The main reason why people use Improvisation in PvP is for the extra stolen skills.
True, many stolen skills in PvE are lackluster, but some are pretty useful. You many get free stealth, knockbacks, or dazes.

In terms of traits, you should always have crit strikes and deadly arts.
Sundering Strikes > Practiced Tolerance (unless you already have too much vulnerability from elsewhere)
generally practiced tolerance is the way to go. in a solo situation, you won’t stack THAT much vuln, and in a party, vuln is almost always at 25 stacks
Invigorating Precision > No Quarter (you don’t do damage while you are dead)
Hence the joy of playing thief, never getting hit
Executioner > Improvisation or Potent Poison
improv is mostly only used in PvP, and poison is only used in venomsahre builds
Thrill of the Crime >/= Haste (you should be spamming steal, even out of combat)
if only for the swiftness, i guess. But daredevil’s dash dodge will give even more swiftness in the open world

On both builds I use haste because it provides the best DPS boost of all of the utility skills, its also a stun break and condition cleansing ability.
Haste is not a very useful skill especially in a raid group. In a raid, you will have chronomancers giving out quickness, and in general fractals and dungeons it lacks utility. If you need DPS, palm strike may be a good filler skill. In PvE, you won’t need to worry about conditions or stuns very much.

The best runes to use are Scholar or Thief runes, unless you have another idea, I tried all of the free runes. Any rune without a +% is mostly inferior.
yes for scholar, nay for thief rune. Thief runes lack power or ferocity, which causes less damage. Strength runes are also a decent choice, but Scholar (<90% hp) or Ruby Orbs (overall) are the highest DPS upgrades.
Sigil of Strength and Sigil of Air provide the best DPS, Sigil of Force and Sigil of Bloodlust coming in as good replacements for Sigil of Strength though. Yes I know you are about to say it, for burst Force is better, however this is built with endgame PvE in mind.
Sigil of strength is largely redundant in group PvE because might flows like water in a group situation. One PS warrior is going to supply the whole party with 25 stacks of might in the first place. Thus, sigil force is better then sigil of might.

If you are worrying about DPS, then I’ll assume you are in a raid group.

Basilisk venom pales in comparison in to all other elites in PvE, unless you run venomshare builds. Impact strike has a daze and a launch, and deals damage on top of that.

Traits:
For critical strikes, if you are going for max dps, take flawless strikes, practices tolerance and No Quarter instead.

For Daredevil with a staff, take staff master. It gives you a 10% damage boost s well as near unlimited dodges.

4k dps is. unfortunately, fairly low, even in a solo situation. In a party situation, a thief is expected to output 20k+ dps even without quickness. I’ll use that program you used to try out my DPS to give you some idea on what kind of numbers you are suppose to hit. =)

Hope you found something useful from this post. Keep it up! There’s so little of us thieves nowadays. =(

That would be awesome

I found No Quater did help with DPS, but if I’m running scholar runes then 250 ferocity doesn’t really come in too handy, it does pop up by a couple hundred when I run them though.
No Quater gives ectra ferocity, which = more damage. But if your group lacks a decent healer, you might want to run Invigorating prec instead.

20K!!! I’m going to see if I can get a full berserker build something close to that :/
in Raids, Berzerker gear is standard for power builds .)

I would prefer Thieves guild for just raw damage, but basilisk venom is one of the best ways to take care of a break bar, using that on headshot is often enough to take it from full to nil, that makes a huge difference! but you’ll be losing out on DPS, and Impact Strike and Palm strike gives more CC then a single basilisk venom (it’s a sifferent story in a venomshare build tho)

If you use staff master, what do you do for the condi cleanse, or do you just slot one when you need it?
generally in raids, you don’t need condi clense. Signet of Agility’s single condi clense is enough, as you need none =), and if you have a druid in your party, conditions simply won;t work on the whole party =)

Molch.2078:

I used the zerk amulet, not the mauradeur amulet. I read pve, so I assumed zerk.

But yes, this was over 1m40s, no bloodlust ofc.

EDIT: For numbers, we’re talking about the pvp golem. You won’t get 20k dps on that thing. But in a good group 20k is easily possible. Ele does 30k, tho…

20k dps is the minimum you can get, without quickness it’s possible to get 25k+ Dps. With quickness, 30k+ is theoretically achievable. And we don’t need to count on all our meteors hitting the boss.

here’s a quick DPS run i did on my thief. Take into account that my DPS is around the 6.8k range before the clowns showed up =P.
FOr D/D I’m sitting around the 5k range, with bound>CnD> AA x1.5 chain.

This is without any buffs, no might, vuln are stacked purely by my staff auto-attack.
(I’ve taken more screenshots, before i realized gw2 screenshots won’t show the DPS meter, then i got lazy. Orz)
And take into account this is with 600ms ping, stutterey gameplay because I’m using wifi with a cheap router, and is far away from my router. (I normally play in LAN, but i’m too lazy to move my laptop)

Zlater.6789:

hmm I’d really like to see that build and give it a go, do you have a link to it by any chance?
I usually try to aim for 1mil damage before I make a verdict on something, the best I’ve gotten so far is 5.4k on a berzerker staff build.

@EasyPanda.5419
I’m getting 5.4k with this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EL0EmWAYCFBmrgbwR42DIBsnA-TJBFwAI3foaZAAXAgCPAAA

Now when you say 20k? do you mean a 20k vault, because I can get that to 13k now. And I guess most people wouldn’t be talking about DPS as in actual damage per second but just some skill they use a lot.

Here ya go, full DPS with next to 0 sustain. You need to rely on your healer, which is fine becasue if you are pure dps, you will always be near the boss = near the tank = near the healer. If not, just swap for Invigorating precision (all the sustain you need).
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVn8lCNOhVmCGOBkmiFaCTLAMhiAzVwN4IcLPNc2TA-TpRBwALOCAAeAAROEAPuAAkLDcd/BA

And when when i say 20, i mean 20k per second over an extended periods of time, taking into account cooldowns and initiative regeneration. I’ve hit 30+k vaults in raids before, but weakening charge is the best DPS skill we have. 30k damage for 3 initiative is every good damage per initiative.

Zlater.6789:

20K!!! I’m going to see if I can get a full berserker build something close to that :/

You’ll only hit 20k with a full suite of buffs from other party members
and for some reason, no one ever seems to talk about dps potential in any other situation, so this topic has been of interest to me so far

but 4k solo dps is indeed pretty low

reikken.4961:

Zlater.6789:

20K!!! I’m going to see if I can get a full berserker build something close to that :/

You’ll only hit 20k with a full suite of buffs from other party members
and for some reason, no one ever seems to talk about dps potential in any other situation, so this topic has been of interest to me so far

but 4k solo dps is indeed pretty low

haha nobody ever mentions anything to do with this :/
So I guess its best to start a convo this way :P

Easy Panda I don’t know what you did to get 7k, it took me a while with that exact build, but I got an almost perfect rotation for a few mins, however the most it ever sat at was 6k, then it settled to around 5.6k

Zlater.6789:

reikken.4961:

Zlater.6789:

20K!!! I’m going to see if I can get a full berserker build something close to that :/

You’ll only hit 20k with a full suite of buffs from other party members
and for some reason, no one ever seems to talk about dps potential in any other situation, so this topic has been of interest to me so far

but 4k solo dps is indeed pretty low

haha nobody ever mentions anything to do with this :/
So I guess its best to start a convo this way :P

Easy Panda I don’t know what you did to get 7k, it took me a while with that exact build, but I got an almost perfect rotation for a few mins, however the most it ever sat at was 6k, then it settled to around 5.6k

Here’s the rotation i use. You’ll have to change it up a bit for certain situations but it goes like this.

Use Steal and Fist Flury off cooldown whenever possible (don’t use Palm strike, just the 1st part of the skill). They are pretty much free burst damage.

The rotation is Bound dodge> Weakening Charge x2> one auto-attack chain until right before the end of punishing strikes (the staff spinning)> Bound… repeat.
Your bound multiplier will run out during your auto-attack, keep an eye on it. With Staff master and Signet of Agility, you will never run out of dodges for this rotation, so feel free to use bound to keep up that 10% dmg. Your Initiative should not run out either.

With this chain, you will never have dps downtime (unless you are dead, i guess).

wow thats really hard to keep up. I get to 7k maybe every once every minute or so, then it just drops back to 5.6k before momentarily popping up. I can never seem to hit 7k again after about 5mins or so, it actually does stick to about 5.6-5.8k, and pretty well refuse to budge. Maybe I just have to get more used to using this rotation.

That dps meter is strange. I got to 13.5k solo dps with cloak and dagger. Yay me, I guess?

Molch.2078:

That dps meter is strange. I got to 13.5k solo dps with cloak and dagger. Yay me, I guess?

Considering Cloak and Dagger> Backstab is burst damage, so it probably did do 13.5k damage in one second.
But to get 13.5k solo DPS with that, you’ll need to be able to spam CnD > backstab every single second. Unfortunately, reveal and initiative costs disallow us from doing so. =(

EazyPanda.6419:

Molch.2078:

That dps meter is strange. I got to 13.5k solo dps with cloak and dagger. Yay me, I guess?

Considering Cloak and Dagger> Backstab is burst damage, so it probably did do 13.5k damage in one second.
But to get 13.5k solo DPS with that, you’ll need to be able to spam CnD > backstab every single second. Unfortunately, reveal and initiative costs disallow us from doing so. =(

Nono, don’t worry, I am not that stupid. It was over roughly 2 minutes.

Molch.2078:

EazyPanda.6419:

Molch.2078:

That dps meter is strange. I got to 13.5k solo dps with cloak and dagger. Yay me, I guess?

Considering Cloak and Dagger> Backstab is burst damage, so it probably did do 13.5k damage in one second.
But to get 13.5k solo DPS with that, you’ll need to be able to spam CnD > backstab every single second. Unfortunately, reveal and initiative costs disallow us from doing so. =(

Nono, don’t worry, I am not that stupid. It was over roughly 2 minutes.

Then… Yay you I guess.

The thing is: Can we trust this dpsmeter as a tool, then? May I ask what options you use?

Molch.2078:

The thing is: Can we trust this dpsmeter as a tool, then? May I ask what options you use?

I’m not too sure, It’s my first time using it as well. But it seems to work decently enough… Anet won’t include a DPS meter anytime soon, so I’ll take what I can get. =)

Zlater.6789:

hmm I’d really like to see that build and give it a go, do you have a link to it by any chance?
I usually try to aim for 1mil damage before I make a verdict on something, the best I’ve gotten so far is 5.4k on a berzerker staff build.

@EasyPanda.5419
I’m getting 5.4k with this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVl8MhGnYxTwwJw/EL0EmWAYCFBmrgbwR42DIBsnA-TJBFwAI3foaZAAXAgCPAAA

Now when you say 20k? do you mean a 20k vault, because I can get that to 13k now. And I guess most people wouldn’t be talking about DPS as in actual damage per second but just some skill they use a lot.

In pve 20k vaults are really easy to get. In vale guardian my max vault damage has hit for 43k without using no quarter. And in average you get 30k vaults in that fight.

When they said 20k probably they were talking about dps. I haven’t tried to measure the dps but I think in group play is higher than 20k. For reference weakening strike hits from 9k to 12k per hit in vale guardian.

Molch.2078:

That dps meter is strange. I got to 13.5k solo dps with cloak and dagger. Yay me, I guess?

wut, how?
pls explain

or, what were you fighting?

I don’t know what you people are on about testing dps on golems and whatnot, but this all looks very amateurish to me.

My advice to the OP is to look into theorycrafting other people have already invested time in, and did it properly. Your build is pretty bad for someone who’s interested in doing top damage and I highly doubt you spent that much time talking to experienced thieves like you mentioned.

Next time do some research, for now refer to:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Berserker_Staff

It’s not perfect but its more than good enough to start.

pff, copypasting other people’s builds isn’t fun
more importantly, I don’t see the problem with testing dps. it’s a good way to compare builds

reikken.4961:

Molch.2078:

That dps meter is strange. I got to 13.5k solo dps with cloak and dagger. Yay me, I guess?

wut, how?
pls explain

or, what were you fighting?

It’s a bug with the dps tool. Even the updated version has it’s quirks…

Tonikor.5637:

I don’t know what you people are on about testing dps on golems and whatnot, but this all looks very amateurish to me.

My advice to the OP is to look into theorycrafting other people have already invested time in, and did it properly. Your build is pretty bad for someone who’s interested in doing top damage and I highly doubt you spent that much time talking to experienced thieves like you mentioned.

Next time do some research, for now refer to:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Berserker_Staff

It’s not perfect but its more than good enough to start.

Obviously it’s amateurish, but it’s better to have some numbers on your own before you blindly look up DnT. The more peole do theory crafting, the less mistakes we do.

Tonikor.5637:

I don’t know what you people are on about testing dps on golems and whatnot, but this all looks very amateurish to me.

My advice to the OP is to look into theorycrafting other people have already invested time in, and did it properly. Your build is pretty bad for someone who’s interested in doing top damage and I highly doubt you spent that much time talking to experienced thieves like you mentioned.

Next time do some research, for now refer to:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Berserker_Staff

It’s not perfect but its more than good enough to start.

What builds do you personally use and what DPS do you do while you are in them?
Do you find that you can do it sustainability and please answer truthfully, how often do you find yourself dieing in a boss fight?

Testing on a golem or test dummy is very well understood to be the only viable option in any game for comparing DPS numbers and finding ways to improve builds. This is because they do not fight back and you can be sure that the damage you are doing is all in an extremely controlled environment. You can argue that it is better to do it live, but that will never consistently provide numbers as accurate as what you can get on a dummy, besides when you are live you are all messing up your personal DPS due to different armor values, occasional defensive game-play and shared buffs, so its best to immediately take all of your research and throw it in the trash, unless you care to spend days back-calculating various buffs and debuffs.

The reason I’m using mostly auto attacks is because I hadn’t found a rotation that actually provides extra DPS on a staff, as I very much appreciate now that there is one that does exist. Then frankly the only other weapon you could use for single target DPS is a dagger. In that case the only skill rotation I found, apart from keeping buffs on cooldown; will actually increase DPS… is a heart seeker spam; under 50% preferably at 25% depending on the overall health of target. The reason I chose to display D/P was because I found that intentionally using backstab actually decreased my DPS a little bit. Therefore I settled that D/P was better because of the gap closer and stun provided by the pistol help to keep time on target up thereby increasing my overall DPS, in practice.

I’m not here to argue with you though, I’m just elaborating on my decisions. So far I have seen very little to prove DPS numbers on a thief, I hoped that by simply asking I might have some guidance on this, and I’m glad I had some.

As stated before, for DPS, D/D is much better compared to D/P. If you position yourself correctly, you will not need shadow shot for gap closing, as we have Steal.
The reason is the easy access to backstab. To backstab with D/D, simply press 5 followed by 1.
For D/D, it’s actually a DPS loss to use Heartseeker spam at 50%. With D/D, Heartseeker is only used <25%. Just goes to show how much DPS D/D outputs.

For sustainable D/D rotation, do bound> cloak and dagger> backstab (on the back) > one autoattack chain+ one double strike> repeat.

D/P’s strength is it’s easy access to stealth and chasebility with shadow shot, and an interrupt as well. All these makes DP a better PvP set, but not a better PvE set, especially for Dps.

@EasyPanda.6419

I’m trying to get a D/D build to work, but I think it only works depending on the group. I’m still losing at best about 0-150 DPS vs just auto attacks when I am specced in favor of either and using your rotation, however the burst in the first couple of minutes almost has me fooled… I think must be doing something wrong.

Lol I didn’t even realize that you made comments in the quotes.

So this is what I found specifically. For single target DPS dagger out performs sword with auto attacks by 5.75%. However sword is the weapon of choice for aoe(ish) DPS.

When I say initiative shouldnt be used for dealing damage usually, I mean that if a skill like umm lets say I hit the target with uh body shot, this skill takes 1/2 a second to cast and deals 1250 damage, lets say there was not animation time at all, if my DPS was 2k, it would be a DPS increase, but if it were 4k right at that point with auto-attacks, it would be a significant DPS loss. This is what I mean, not to mention the 4% drop from lead attacks. So its only beneficial to use a skill for DPS when it deals increased damage for 1 theoretical second vs your current DPS.

Lol I completely agree with you when it comes to stolen skills. I mean why does everything have to drop ‘tooth stab’ -.-

I still do most encounters with invigorating precision, Unless I’m grouped with someone who can keep me through the crazy aoe’s and condi’s that some content has, I find that this skill makes all of the difference! Will drop it in raids though and where I don’t need the extra heals, cause 250 free ferocity is… 250 free ferocity, who doesn’t want that? xD

If you have DD isn’t it understood that you drop trickery because you don’t make good use of Lead Attacks and Quickness. Which are the only main things from this trait line that actually boost DPS in Raids?
On quickness, what is the general up-time that you find Mesmers can output, considering you have 1.1 mesmers on your team xD?
Because with Trickster I find that 1 6 second Quickness application is a 6.25% DPS boost, as long as you keep DPS up during the entire period, not including the extra fury. I guess you would obviously change trait choices depending on group composition, and I imagine Quickness being a hassle if you have a rotation.

With auto attacks you actually DO stack that much vulnerability with sundering strikes, but your right when it comes to group content, but then I guess that depends on who you run with aswell.
Thief vs Scholar Runes were about 6.25% difference with a dagger and with presumed 100% up-time on both. I honestly just put thief in there as a second choice because it’s much better than Pack or Eagle runes that also seem to be very popular for PvE… I don’t know why though?

With break bars I checked here https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar
by this basilisk venom should do 300 damage to a break bar, coupled with 2 headshots, which gets rounded up to 1 second, it should do 500 breakbar damage vs Impact Strike which does 200 breakbar damage, because launch is only for 0 seconds. Then if we throw in a third headshot its 600 damage which is enough to reduce the breakbar to 0 in most content scaled up to a 5 man group and is equal to 30% of the breakbar on the vale guardian. A friend of mine pointed this out to me

I hope it helped to elaborate on what I put in my earlier post.

hi,

i ran a number of tests in heart of the mists using a dps meter. some results (stealing used on cooldown, scholar runes, air/force sigils, meta build without daredevil

dagger aa only (as op suggested): 5100 dps
d/d (cnd+backstab, 1 full aa chain, 1+2 of second aa chain, heartseeker below 25% hp, as dnt suggested in their guides) :6000 dps
s/p (pistolwhip on full initiative): 5500 dps

for comparison some daredevil results: i might not have used optimal rotations here since bound requires some practice

d/d (cnd+backstab, 1 AA chain, 1 dodge): 6500 dps
staff (2 aa chain, dodge , vault): 7500 dps.
weakening charge is not reliably hitting 3 times, at least for me, it would have lower dps.

so staff daredevil is strongest but also has more potential for missplay then d/d or s/p

Staff has been known to out-DPS D/D for some time on the basis that the amount of static damage modifiers when building for staff in Daredevil is better than the entirety of DA and CS combined above 50% boss health.

D/D will out-DPS D/P due to the initiative savings for stealth access and brief vuln on CnD. D/P will out-burst D/D because Shadow Shot’s damage coefficient is higher than CnD’s with the recent changes to CnD.

DeceiverX.8361:

D/P will out-burst D/D because Shadow Shot’s damage coefficient is higher than CnD’s with the recent changes to CnD.

wait, how does this work? Shadow Shot gives more damage than CnD, yes, but it doesn’t have a similar role. it doesn’t grant access to backstab. Do you just stealth by other means and backstab and then spam shadow shot till you’re out of initiative? was CnD viable to spam for damage while revealed?

also

In GW2, the game and the story are locked behind leveling.

This wasn’t the case on release. dunno why they changed it. so lame

The subject of burst damage assumes stealth due to the nature of MH dagger/backstab. Shadow Shot can be fired from stealth, and during the trajectory of the bullet, the animation for backstab can be performed. Upon the impact of Shadow Shot, the thief will be teleported to the target mid-backstab animation, causing the backstab to land despite being revealed “prior” to the skill landing with the successful Shadow Shot. When considered as “pre-backstab” enablers, be it entering stealth, closing the gap, etc., Shadow Shot out-shines CnD by both its burst damage and the time between skill uses, as the damage portions of Shadow Shot and Backstab will occur within minute fractions of a second of each other to the degree of border-line parallelsm whereas a CnD → Backstab is sequential and CnD has a longer cast time and aftercast.

DeceiverX.8361:

Shadow Shot can be fired from stealth, and during the trajectory of the bullet, the animation for backstab can be performed. Upon the impact of Shadow Shot, the thief will be teleported to the target mid-backstab animation, causing the backstab to land despite being revealed “prior” to the skill landing with the successful Shadow Shot.

oh wow
I’ll have to try this…

So I tried it, but it prevents shadow shot from doing damage

It still should.

I’m cancelling shadow shot’s stab with backstab, and since the damage is on the stab of shadow shot rather than the shot, it does no damage. and if I try to wait until after the stab, then it’s obviously too late to backstab

Odd. I know I have done it before and have seen it done o.o

That kinda sucks, are you still getting the revealed buff on the backstab though?

Lol it’s so stupid that our meta is built around exposing ourselves vs using invisibility for its intended purpose.

Haha they should make revealed stack in duration or make invisibility useful for more than just the revealed buff or breaking aggro. Literally one of the weirdest game mechanics I’ve seen yet.