Thank you all for the kind words and the feedback!
What I had envisioned when I started playing was be that, if I became good enough at learning when to dodge, interrupt, etc., I could solo more difficult and/or long PvE fights that are normally able to be soloed by warriors/necros/etc. Is this true, or am I ultimately fated to be a glass cannon with limited defensive measures?
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I plan to do mostly PVE because of the extension so do you have any advice to improve survivability.
And do you think it’s better to get some defensive stats or go zerk and work on dodging and using skill with blind.
In regards to survivability and solo-ing: If you guys have trouble staying alive on Berserker’s, I’d suggest taking a look at IP (Grandmaster in CS). It gives a solid sustain, and combined with SoM and food that heals on crit (Omnomberry Pie for example) you will be able to survive most encounter without a problem. (for perspective: IP+SoM heals you more than Retaliation dmg) If you have trouble with timing evades you could also try out S/P, #3 is an excellent trash clearing ability. It used to be the go to set for such cases before HoT came out.
I’d argue that Thief is an excellent solo profession, DrD especially. Most PvE content is solo-able by us, you just have to practise enough.
Seems nice but I’m surprised my Fervent Malice build (which was more theory crafting alternative roles for a thief) made it in while my actual build (P/D conditions) which has admittedly changed since I last updated my build videos, did not.
I made it to platinum last pvp season running P/D so I think I’m justified in calling it viable. Offhand shortbow on a condi build applies cleave etc.
The build section which deviate from the meta was purposefully made to feature odd builds. I liked your Fervent Malice and played around with it a lot after you made the initial post. You can see the alterations and the reasoning behind them on that original post.
The Handbook does not contain all the viable builds, I believe your P/D is wokring, I also played many different builds over the last year. It’s merely a highlight of how far you can go from the meta and still make a build that works.
For the second weapon, on both the staff build and the dagger/dagger build, can you use whatever you want?
D/- + -/D stands for equipping one dagger in one weapon set, and another in the other. So if you look at your equipment tab, you’ll see one weapon in each set. Because the two weapons are in dif hands, the game will use a D/D set, and when you swap, it will stay D/D. (Its like you have 4 daggers, but due to this feature in the game, you only need two daggers for it). It is made like this so you benefit from the on-swap effects. (Here: Initiative on weapon swap)
The staff build has an open slot on the second weapon set, ideally you would never swap to it in raids. (Note that some ppl use D/P in case they need an emergency cc to break a boss, but under normal circumstances you dont need that)
