Guild Wars 2

I like trying new and innovative builds. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they are efficient, but most importantly, its fun!

I saw someone the other night talking about stacking three different 2 sets from armor runes, all of them boosting the duration of Might, and got to thinking that maybe such a build for the thief would be cool.

How about a deadly arts/shadow arts/acrobatics build? Might x2 whenever you apply venoms, might whenever you stealth, and might whenever you dodge. Critical strikes also has some strong might buffing, but those only last 5 seconds so im not sure it would be efficient to use signets over venoms at this point.

Since this build would use acrobatics, all of these might stacks would already last 20-30% longer, and when you add in 3 +20% set bonuses, you could stack your might pretty high, possibly maintaining a stack of 25 with the right rotation.

It may not be efficient damage wise compared to other builds, but it seemed like a cool idea.

So what are your thoughts on this? Has anyone tried something similar?

For this type of thing you almost have to go the condition path, wouldn’t you?

I know with just the might on dodge and on stealth you can get about 7-9 might stacks during fights if you trait vigor on steal (you can also trait to get might on steal as well).

Would sacrificing runes and some other traits for this be worth the extra might? Seems like some testing is in order, always glad to hear about alternate builds

Perhaps something nutty like a 0/20/20/20/10 with bersekers am, SB/SB with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Battle on both and never stop swapping lol. Then rune for toughtness/vital/might duration, make up for lack of power with massive might.

1. Get a good amount of points into the Acrobatics tree.
2. Eat Orrian Truffle And Meat Stew
3. Take a 2-rune set bonus of 20 % might duration. Hoelbrak for power, Pirate for MF.
You can now sustain 8-10 stacks of might just via dodging, which should also give you near permaswiftness and drop caltrops every time if you’re doing it right.
4. Get a Superior Sigil of Strength and stack precision to make it proc often.
->Now you can sustain 12+ stacks of might, again, just by dodging and hitting things.

This is where I stop, personally. I can easily run around with 10~ might stacks (thats 350 power, 350 condition damage) without sacrificing any utility slots to support it or really worrying much about the upkeep of it. Overall, people ignore the effectiveness of Acrobatics offensively, especially if you leverage might-on-dodge. My 20 points in acrobatics give me almost as much consistent power as 20 points in Deadly Arts in addition to a whole host of other benefits.

If you want, you can certainly go down the signet path at this point and get 5 stacks of might on signet use, which will allow you to max out your 25 stacks as a thief for a burst period. It is a powerful combination, but you’re majorly basing your combat effectiveness at that point on it. You can also, as you noted, go full +might duration runes and make might incredibly effective, but, again, that is putting a lot of eggs in one basket.

Paranoid has an interesting setup going with the sigils of battle, but I’m inclined to believe sigils of strength are more effective if you have good critical chance.

Tulisin.6945:

I’m inclined to believe sigils of strength are more effective if you have good critical chance.

Spose it’s a personal preference. Battle gives 3 stacks at 20s duration, guaranteed every… 9 secs?

Strength gives a 30% chance to get 1 stack for 10secs on crits with likely a 45-50ish crit chance%. Potential to get more but also potential to get a lot less.

You a gambling man?

You know, I’ve never run this build, but talking about it makes me want to try it. A task for this afternoon.

If you were to use 3 different +20% might bonuses, and 20% from acrobatics, is that additive? Would each might last 80% longer?

If so, I think 3 stacks for 36 seconds every 9 seconds would be the better route, but that seems too good to be true, so Im guessing those bonuses are multiplicative.

Assuming you were using two venom utilities, and traited for 20$ faster recharge, you could also get 2 stacks of might that last 36 seconds every 20 seconds or so, even more if you use basalisk venom.

I think now i want to try a venom share build that stacks might lol. 25/0/30/15/0!

So after some brief testing, I can keep 25 stacks up with the above build just between venoms and swapping weapons. Dodge might and stealthing might are just icing on the cake.

I am using condition damage for this build, with carrion gear. pistol/dagger with shortbow off.

Its pretty fun so far, the only crappy part is you rely on swapping weapons for might, and if you need to AE or stay our of melee, pistol/dagger kind of sucks.

Maybe now Ill try non condition damage with a sword/dagger or dagger/dagger.

Or perhaps ill try stacking precision with sigil of strength and see if i can maintain a 25 stack as easily.

i run i build that does have an emphasis on might stacking. 0/30/25/15/0 and 6 strenght runes but its a BS build to so when im getting a good rotation going i will have about 10-12 stacks of might adding a very large about of damage to my BS.

i might not hit as hard as a true glass cannon BS build but i don’t die when someone snezzes on me ether

Put sigil of battle on the dagger and shortbow of S/D + SB. Then Sigil of air on the sword.

The proc of air scales on power, so that would wreck face :o

Sigil of strength did not work very well even with 50% crit, could barely maintain a 5 stack with it. Battle when switching on cooldown could maintain at least 10, but then again, its not always an option to weapon swap in combat. I guess you could just change weapon setups per fight, but im too lazy for that lol.

In conclusion I think ill tweak my venomshare build to stack might up to about 15-18 with venoms, weapon swapping, dodging, and stealthing. Was fun!

This a pure theory build, but I’m going to try this out a bit later. The idea is to take advantage of might and passive damage increase potentials. Gear would be weapon appropriate. Traits are:
10 mug III or venomous strength IV
0
25 Shadow’s Embrace IV, Hidden theif VIII
20 Might on Dodge II, Either heal with initiative X or initiative gain IX
25 Caltrops on Dodge III, Boons on steal VII

We now get +1% damage from each initiative, +10% if endurance is not full, dodging leaves caltrops and gives might, stealing gives might, stealthing gives might. On top, stealing will give stealth and both damage and poison the enemy.

Yeah, not crit component but should give good damage to both physical and condition with decent survivability, depending on gear and utilities.

Any thoughts?

Check this out..

http://beatsandlevels.blogspot.com/2012/10/gaming-gw-dd-heavy-ambush-thief.html

I’m currently using 0/0/30/30/10 with all the might-related traits in those trees that are available and my sword has a superior strength sigil for 30% chance of might on crit (which sits at about 50% chance right now). I have been able to maintain 10-15 stacks of might in extended battles without any effort in consciously obtaining it.

Yeah I’ve done a hybrid build with 25 in Shadow Arts and Might on Dodge from acro. Much better survivability and the might stacking makes up for the lack of Power. Works fine.

I was doing this sort of hybrid build when I was running Dancing Dagger builds.