Guild Wars 2

I’m currently running a S/D D/P stealth build that I’m growing a little tired of so I started looking into the Acrobatics and Trickery lines to see how well they stand up without having stealth to fall back on. S/P combines some of my favorite aspects of the weaponsets that I’m currently running while fitting nicely with the no-stealth theme.

I haven’t finalized any gear choices yet so I would really appreciate any input on the subject. The target values that I’ve been building around for each build are a minimum of 50% crit chance with Signet of Agility and 15k HP/18k Effective HP. I like to create builds with 1vX in mind and 18K EHP seemed to be the point where I struck a nice balance between survivability and effective power. That being said, most of the survivability in these builds should come from blinds, shadowsteps, dodging, evades, and well timed interrupts instead of sheer stats.

BUILDS
Keep in mind that the 180 precision bonus from Signet of Agility was added manually

• 10/30/0/0/30
  Smart initiative management combined with First Strikes and Lead Attacks could provide a potential 25% damage boost that goes up to 45% on targets below 50% HP. Signet Use helps keep initiative up along with Kleptomaniac while providing a 24s cooldown stunbreak and condition clear/endurance regen through Infiltrator’s Signet and Signet of Agility. Sleight of Hand gives more control through dazing along with relatively frequent boons, boon ripping, and small heals via Mug. I’m also thinking about running Centaur runes with this in order to stick to targets better. I’d rather not blow a lot of initiative on back to back IS since 2 of the 3 damage bonuses are initiative dependent.

• 10/30/0/30/0
  Good HP and high effective power. Changing to PTV armor instead of zerker still allows you to keep a respectable EP while boosting your EHP to over 23k. The combined damage bonuses of Fluid Strikes and First Strikes should be way easier to maintain considering how much dodging would go on with this build. Throw in Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew for more dodgebeasting. Quick Pockets and Quick Recovery provide good initiative regeneration, but I’m considering swapping Quick Pockets for Assassin’s Reward. This build also has way kitten on support than the 30 Trickery build and can’t do anything about enemy boons.

• 0/30/0/25/15
  Similar to the above build with more boon support. Higher initiative pool and Kleptomaniac would let me be a bit more aggressive with blinds/interrupts/etc while keeping all the damage boosts, but obviously not as good at control as the 30 Trickery build.

Notes and Other Ideas

• One of my biggest concerns about going the no-stealth route was how susceptible I would be to condition burst, but between Shadowstep, IS/Shadow Return and Signet of Agility I think I should be fine, but if someone could provide a different viewpoint then that would be great.
• Sigil of Generosity/Purity- I’m thinking about swapping out Sigil of Fire on the SB for one of these. That way I could swap to SB to deal with condition pressure instead of using Shadowstep or repeated IS/SR. Has anyone tried these?
• Roll for Initiative – Replacing Infiltrator’s Signet with this would be great for keeping initiative up while still providing a stunbreak and an evade, but it comes at a price of a cooldown that’s 250% higher than the signet with Signet Use. Also, this may be overkill as far as initiative regen goes, but any feedback on the idea would be appreciated.
• HP on Crit food- even with the internal cooldown I think this could be pretty beneficial to the builds. Anyone still running these?

So what do you guys think?

I’ve played around with this a bit too…tried one similar to your second one, but with clerics gear instead of pvt. On mine, I run clerics armor and zerker trinkets, gives a good amount of survivability and crit chance/damage.

Two recommendations:
Pain response (acrobatics – – is actually very respectable now, especially if you have some points in healing, its nearly 50% uptime on regen when you need it (that is when taking damage) and free condition clears every 30 seconds. I believe it`ll keep you up better than assassins reward.

for the second build, putting that extra 10 into trickery instead of deadly arts can give you thrill of the crime. Reduces steal cooldowns and gives you fury about half the time. If you take furious retaliation, you will have solid amounts of fury coming in. This has the added benefit of giving you solid swiftness uptime without wasting dodges.

bobross.5034:

I’ve played around with this a bit too…tried one similar to your second one, but with clerics gear instead of pvt. On mine, I run clerics armor and zerker trinkets, gives a good amount of survivability and crit chance/damage.

Two recommendations:
Pain response (acrobatics – – is actually very respectable now, especially if you have some points in healing, its nearly 50% uptime on regen when you need it (that is when taking damage) and free condition clears every 30 seconds. I believe it`ll keep you up better than assassins reward.

for the second build, putting that extra 10 into trickery instead of deadly arts can give you thrill of the crime. Reduces steal cooldowns and gives you fury about half the time. If you take furious retaliation, you will have solid amounts of fury coming in. This has the added benefit of giving you solid swiftness uptime without wasting dodges.

Thanks for the response. I forgot that Pain Response was dropped to 30s. I’ll definitely have to take that into account.

Putting 10 points in Trickery on the second build will drop my Steal cooldown to roughly 32 seconds, and since I don’t have to worry about using it as an interrupt I could use it more freely. Waiting for Furious Retaliation to kick in along with Executioner then stealing with Thrill of the Crime for heavy pressure and finishing.

If I drop Practiced Tolerance for Furious Retaliation (or Side Strikes for more constant crits) I would need to swap some gear around to get back at or above 18k EHP, but overall the build should still hit pretty hard.

Here are some thoughts you may or may not want to use. These are not recommendations over what you already use (just something to keep you up at night)

Signets of Power with Signet of Malice – You are already using Signet Use so Signet of Malice will have a 12 sec cd. Add the 25pts in acrobatics and that 5 might will last for 12.5 sec. That’s a 7.75% increase in damage with a near 100% uptime (94.3% uptime counting cast time). And if you can afford to use Signet of Malice on CD you get 2 initiative every 13.25 sec.

Trade offs
- you lose about 7.00% EHP (Practiced Tolerance) for 7.75% EP (Signets of Power)
- you lose Withdraw (instant cast) for Signet of Malice (significant cast time)

I actually kicked that idea around while thinking about building might stacks over the course of a fight with Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew food along with Power of Inertia. Having a heal on such a short cd would be great but I don’t know if it would be worth losing the instant cast and evade from Withdraw and opening myself up to interrupts, especially Headshot. Thanks for the suggestions though.

The main problem with sword/pistol builds is it is very susceptible to retaliation. Because of this, I would suggest a sigil of nullification on one of your weapons to hopefully clear retal before it gets you into a bad spot. Your other option would be to run sword/dagger off hand for the boon steal on LS. However doing this almost necessitates 30 in accro for initiative management. For the other sigil, paralyzation is great to keep them stunned for the whole pistol whip, and if you’re running sword/dagger in swap, then the stun on out of stealth attack lasts longer. Just a couple of points. Very interesting ideas though.

After a quick test in the mists it seems that PW stun benefits that much from Sigil of Paralyzation like Tactical Strike does. The stun only seems to cover 2 PW hits with and without the sigil and there’s no other +stun duration runes or food. I could try running Sigil of Impact for the +10% damage to stunned targets, but I need to run some tests in order to determine if the damage boost carries through the whole PW. Even if it does carry through I assume Sigil of Fire will still be better for straight damage, but I could possibly run both.

Originally I was just going to not burst while retaliation was up or try to rip it with Bountiful Theft before bursting. Sigil of Nullification is a good idea though, especially for the Acrobatics builds. I’d rather not run S/D on swap only because I’ve been playing it since December or January and would prefer something new for a while.

For S/P I would run 0/30/0/15/25.

I dropped the final 5 points from Trickery for a few reasons:
- Ranged daze on steal is good, but you have interrupts already from pistolwhip/headshot
- The 20% reduced steal cd only cuts out an extra 5 seconds or so. It’s not THAT much when it’s on such a low cd already
- The increased dodge is far more valuable
- You get to keep the minor trait +15% damage from full ini

You should run:
- Withdraw + vigor on heal as your only acobatics trait
- Shadowstep
- Signet of Agility for the crit, extra dodge and cleanse
In the final slot, run Refuge or Infiltrator’s Signet, though many other things would work. Signet of Shadows would be staple I guess if you don’t have Centaur runes (I would for perma swiftness on your 15 sec heal.)

Your survivability in S/P is going to come from dodges, inf strike+return, pistolwhip evade and the odd black powder. I personally wouldn’t run S/P without 15 in acrobatics for the extra dodge because ini can’t be spammed forever without running out.

Your condi clear is shadowstep, inf return and signet of agility.

You have a few playstyles available. Each comes in handy depending on your enemy.
- Inf strike in, spam auto, inf return and repeat. This is a low ini way to get maximum damage from your +15% in trickery while staying mobile and clear of condis
- Pistolwhip spam. It’s surprisingly sustainable depending on how many times you generate ini from your crits. Not good in AoE though, best vs melee opponents
- Spam autoattack for weakness and cripple. Best for chasing wounded targets.
Of course the ideal playstyle is a mix of all three. If a warrior is in your face, drop a blackpowder or hit PW. Pistolwhip + steal to jump on the runner. Headshot spam the lone thief snooping around in your Garrison to stop him from stealthing while your buddies pound on him.

I’ve done this build in spvp a bit with success. It’s quite versatile. I imagine it would translate to small scale pvp in wvw very well, though keep your SB handy for ZvsZ. The best thing about S/P is that no one is ready for pistolwhip anymore since no one runs it. This warrior kept trying to open on me again and again, wondering why he kept getting stunned and taking damage while not being able to hit me, looool.

Interesting suggestions. The main reason that I was deadset on going full Trickery was the ability the interrupt stability rezzes/stomps (and Shelter, apparently) in one go. I should be able to do most of that with your build though with a quick headshot or PW after stealing. I run Feline Grace with my current build and it would be great to keep that along with the boons and boon ripping from Trickery.

Sarrow.2785:

You have a few playstyles available. Each comes in handy depending on your enemy.
- Inf strike in, spam auto, inf return and repeat. This is a low ini way to get maximum damage from your +15% in trickery while staying mobile and clear of condis
- Pistolwhip spam. It’s surprisingly sustainable depending on how many times you generate ini from your crits. Not good in AoE though, best vs melee opponents
- Spam autoattack for weakness and cripple. Best for chasing wounded targets.

My current S/D playstyle is already pretty auto attack and IS heavy so I agree with you on those points, but I’m not sure about the PW spam. It seems like most people would just evade out of it. Are you spamming after they’ve blown their dodges or is the spam mainly for the evade?

Many will dodge out of it. Yeah, its very slow and most of the time you won’t get the full duration off, just like 100 blades. You would be suprised though how many players will just walk backwards slowly after having their ability interrupted by the initial stun, walking through the full duration. Vs good players that wont work, true, but you can always steal during the PW channel to continue the full duration. Infiltrators signet also works. You may also use devourers venom or haste, but only if youre dead keen on it.

Have a try and weigh up the need anyway. I found PW worked best defensively when a melee class tried to open night up on me.

@Crawford.4135

Since you keep mentioning toughness and healing, perhaps there was an error stating your build is 0/25/0/30/15 ? You made it sounds like you have the 30 points in SA.

i run 0/30/0/25/15, signet of malice + hp on crit food, my crit is 70%; 110% crit dmg and 3.1k attack, normally i run with infiltrators signet and signet of agility and a 3rd option of either haste, assassins signet, roll for initiative, or w.e i feel like using for that 3rd utility. Dagger storm with signet of malice and hp on crit food is amazing in a medium sized group.

QQing.3089:

@Crawford.4135

Since you keep mentioning toughness and healing, perhaps there was an error stating your build is 0/25/0/30/15 ? You made it sounds like you have the 30 points in SA.

Yes, correct. I was typing all of that on an ipad and at work. 30 in SA (correcting above post).

Thanks for pointing that out

I have been running s/p since launch and have never looked back – and ArenaNet hasn’t either because they forgot about the 1% build those of us like.

At some point I will have a video released of my wvw footage, but the work on the video is taking months to do.

Sword/Pistol is amazing

S/P is one of the most amazing setups (when ArenaNet isn’t nerfing it!!!!!!) while most hate it. It is not any easy build to run with and takes a ton of practice to learn. Dagger/X thieves come up to me and they’re unable to effectively take me down, but a lot of my traiting skills help with that. As I have said on these forums many times: s/p is not a stealth build, per se, as it relies heavily on the teleportation and using your stealth heals as a last resort/tactic.

30 in toughness trait is a must for S/P. When you do use a stealth you benefit from extra healing while in stealth from the Restoration trait, and that my friend is extremely helpful (especially when you stand in Shadow Refuge for 12sec)

One of the best builds is one I came up with a long time ago and still use lays down a perfect survival and damage setup.

The problem with players is they want fast burst damage with zero survivability and get away by ‘sneaking’ off. That’s the game designers fault for allowing that to happen. If you want high-burst you should give up the ability to get away. If you want high survivability you should give up the damage output. Tanks should not go around out DPSing everyone else, and high DPS should not go around surviving everyone. Game designers fail to catch this, and the game lives on with the issue.

I build around both DPS and Survival and I continually laugh off the glass-cannon thieves and DPS warriors and am very effective at surviving until they give up or taking them down.

My build: (correction made)
0/25/30/0/15

This build gives you the Crit, the toughness with healing and the extra initiative for Pistol Whip usage (Pistol Whip costs 5 Int to use each time . . . yet HeartSeeker cost way less?)

I have 3.1K Attack, 36% crit, 70%’ish crit damage and 2.7K armor/toughness. I find my Traits are where I start from and gear is how I balance out my stats. What’s nice about this setup is I can step right into a 30+ Fractals without changing my traits/armor (sometimes I may change out to boost myself up to higher healing and toughness, but overall it is very powerful). I res enough Dagger thieves to know, trust me on this one

I am not interested in killing someone in 2 hits, nor am I interested in someone killing me in 2 hits – I balance my stats and traits out and I enjoy this setup.

I had two d/d thieves try to take me down the other night and it took them a very long time before they downed me and someone else showed up to even the odds. They were in and out of stealth a lot, but Black Powder placed them in a defensive mode rather quickly. I got unDowned and we killed them both.

When Thieves were running around in WvW as S/P setups when the game came out, I flippin’ hated fighting them. It was one of the most annoying builds to fight, but I was that same build. The only sad part is ArenaNet does NOT want S/P utilizing stealth – that much is apparent due to their lack of goodies for S/P players while Dagger/Pistol and Dagger/Dagger Thieves get (Black Powder HeartSeeker and Cloak and Dagger) more stealth.

ArenaNet doesn’t care about the S/P (1% build) players and never will. Their continued nerfs to our teleporting will continue to hit again and again, yet they refuse to give us anything like Dagger Thieves get. (or at least nerf the Dagger stealthing abilities?) I have toughed it out for far too long and until a new game grabs my attention — this will be my final ArenaNet game purchase once that day comes. I have honestly never seen a game developer ignore its players this bad

ArenaNet could have compromised with us on the Infiltrators Strike for the S/P lovers, but ignored every single post from an S/P Players. I would have been happy with 1800 Shadow Return range, but 1200 on a weapon setup that clearly says ’you’re not stealth worthy enough’? The devs must all be Dagger thieves

Continued Below (stupid forums)

Continued:

But then I remind myself: I am the 1% build Thief in the game, and ArenaNet’s lack of care for those that play it continue to suffer it out as they care about what’s popular within their game: D/D and D/P, which is why they get all the love from the devs. Sure PW got some timing reduced from the Stun to Flurry, but that was null compared to how a Dagger Thief operates within this game.

S/P: what will they nerf on us next . . .

Healing

Again don’t forget that all of the trait points you drop into the traits boosts your healing abilities. There’s nothing like Malice + Dagger Storm into an entire Zerg and teleporting out and /laugh. (yeah, ArenaNet will eventually nerf Dagger Storm, too, so be prepared. Heck, they’ll just nerf S/P thieves again here soon and by then I will have found a new game more than likely – they hate us S/P Thieves)

Anyway, just have fun and find where you are weak and improve in those areas. I am no perfect thief, but I am no easy target for the other classes out there even WHEN I DO NOT USE STEALTH! Ha! (btw, stealth isn’t the problem Thieves, Daggers are. Ask D/D Elementals!)

Why no extra Dodge?

Why is right! Your survival is teleportation over and over when you want to control the fight. S/P is a control build as you control when you want. You go in and out of the fight and remain the controller. Dodge is very important, don’t get me wrong. But you need to move differently with a S/P setup. I’ll have a video soon explaining more.

But hey, I beat the ArenaNet developers by figuring out how S/P should work, because they couldn’t.

I have said too much, I don’t want us being nerfed more. ArenaNet hates my guts already and would rather seem me face down in a ditch outside Las Vegas near an onion field on the side of a lonely dark road . . . I’m not kidding either

Crawford, what traits do you use with your build? I’d like to try it out.
Offensive and Defensive.

Thanks!

Thanks for the writeup Crawford. I’m looking forward to your video.

I decided to ignore the Shadow Arts tree in my builds since I wasn’t going to use stealth, but I took your build gave me some ideas about fitting SA traits into no-stealth (or in this case, minimal stealth) setups.

• Master of Deception to cut Shadowstep down to 40 seconds. If you run Blinding Powder to keep access to Tactical Strike then that would also be cut down to 32 seconds, but I think the interrupts from Headshot and PW stun should be enough.

• Slowed Pulse (10 seconds of regeneration) was recently changed so that it activates after 2 stacks of bleed, and I believe the ICD is still 30 seconds. Considering that every profession but Guardians can apply bleeds this could be worth exploring for the stealthless/minimal stealth solo roamer.

• Hidden Thief combined with Shadow’s Embrace to act as another cleanse, but since it only provides 2 second of stealth it would only clear one condition. I’m assuming that Meld in Shadows would bump that up to 3 seconds which means that you could potentially clear 2 conditions, but I’ll have to check to make sure. With the 15 in Trickery this would be available every 30.4 seconds.

Running Hide in Shadows with the standard Shadow’s Rejuvenation+Shadow’s Embrace combo would probably be better than all of those though, but that breaks the theme a little more than I would like and opens you up to interrupts.

Dear S/P Brothers: please stop posting S/P builds, let them play daggers! I feel so exposed.. :9

Finally took S/P out for a spin today with Sarrow’s build and I’m really enjoying it so far. It took me a while to get the hang of it and I still have a long way to go but there’s definitely a lot of potential here. PW is still pretty solid after the nerf, but retaliation is turning out to be a far bigger problem than I had anticipated.

Surviving and fighting with the no-stealth setup is more difficult than stealth builds by a good margin, but that was to be expected. It’s also way more fun though, so I think I’ll be sticking with this setup for a while.