Guild Wars 2

So I’m pretty new to daredevil and it seems like one of the classes that you need to have good awareness and learn your enemies better, which I didn’t do when I started playing the game because I started out as Reaper and everything felt faceroll with insane tankiness and that just spoiled me.

Now as a Daredevil, I’m hitting three times harder than my Reaper and always constantly pulling aggro and keeping, but it’s not a big deal until I’m in fractal group with no utility or healing. I end up blowing all my evades/initiative. In this case do I take invigorating strikes and sacrifice damage? Do I disengage, stealth and re engage? Any tips would be appreciated.

Also, maybe I’m not doing it right, do you guys use staff blind skill every now and then between rotations? I just rely on smokescreen and evades most of the time.

For the most part, in a DD/CS/DA builds in groups, you can use Channeled Vigor and be fine.

AI isn’t that smart; disengaging is often enough to get them to switch targets. If they stick to me, I usually switch to P/P and spam unload while kiting to keep damage up until they switch.

If you have a Revenant in your party or another class providing high group fury time, then yeah, take Invigorating Precision. The main reason for No Quarter is the 100% Fury uptime; the additional ferocity it adds is an additive bonus, so it’s the least impactful trait to drop.

If you run staff, use Dust Strike on stuff on non-bosses. Your auto attacks are strong enough to keep high damage up while relying on this skill to avoid damage. On bosses, you can rely heavily on your auto attacks as well and save Vaults as extra evades.

Most Daredevils I see who down more than me (and that’s usually only 1 or 2 a run if any) just spam Vault too much instead of using it more defensively or spam Weakening Strikes. Weakening Strikes is a DPS increase over the auto attacks, but not enough that you still can’t contribute with auto attacks while pooling your initiative to use defensively. A number of boss mechanics have high telegraphing and can be just avoided by using a Weakening Strikes to reposition to his backside.

Using both my endurance pool and initiative bar defensively with staff is where most of my survival is with a glass build. With that in mind, I prefer Unhindered Combatant over Bounding Dodger. It’s a much more responsive and fluid dodge and the swiftness uptime makes disengaging easier.

Beyond that, you can alter your build to take more survivability, but you basically trade off damage multipliers to gain that and since they stack multiplicatively post crit, it amounts to a large damage loss. I am more willing to do that in higher fractals, to some extent.

If you are going solo and going after big game like elites/champions/bosses, you can’t use a pure damage based build. There is no other people in the fight to use to exploit the AI and the health pool is too high to burst down before they kill you. There is no second place award for dying with the mob at 25% over 75%, so that’s why I run and advocate CS/Acro/DD.

Run that until you get better if you need to. It will net your group more value in damage if you are downing a lot with a glass build.

Thanks for the reply, MadRabbit. Always informative stuff. And yeah, I’ve been pretty much using weakening strikes only and save vault to disengage or engage in high level fractals. I’m gonna try p/p instead of SB just when I have no choice but to range. Right now I’m all slots ascended with marauders armor and rest zerker. Went with marauders just to get used to Daredevil and then will eventually switch.

razgard.9587:

Thanks for the reply, MadRabbit. Always informative stuff. And yeah, I’ve been pretty much using weakening strikes only and save vault to disengage or engage in high level fractals. I’m gonna try p/p instead of SB just when I have no choice but to range. Right now I’m all slots ascended with marauders armor and rest zerker. Went with marauders just to get used to Daredevil and then will eventually switch.

Nah. Marauders is awesome. It gives higher stat total than Zerkers and more precision. If you min max correctly, it’s better than a full set of Zerkers.

Like if you do Power and Ferocity food, Maintenance Oil , Assassin Weapons, Maruaders Armor, Marauders Amulet and the remaining trinkets as Zerkers, the difference between that and full ascended Berserkers is roughly like…

-100 power
+12% more crit
+4% more crit damage
+4000 HP

In a Critical Strike build, that puts you at 76% crit chance from food and gear, 5% from the 90%+ HP trait bonus and 20% from fury, maxing you out at 101%.

The power loss is marginal due to diminishing returns, so you get a trade off in your favor and 4k extra HP on top of that.

And only reason to run Shortbow with Staff is for the Blast Finisher for stealth stacking. Just keep it in your bag and use Vault for mobility. The damage off Unload in P/P isn’t as good as Staff, but it trivializes a lot of fights like Mai Trin due to the high bleed stacks she builds in melee range, being blind immune and the other condis she applies getting priority in condi removal.

You also need it for stuff like Tentacles in Jade Boss Fractal, Ice Elemental in Molten Furnance and when Molten Berserker moves into the shockwaves during phase 2 of Molten Boss. Other stuff like Mossman is easier for ranged, but not neccessary if you are good with the blinds and watching his telegraphs.

You dont said it directly, but I hope you are not anotherone of those implying marauder deals more damage than zerker? I admit it can work better for some people and the dps loss is certainly not enough for your party to even notice, but the benefit is only the health.

Anyways: Im using invigorating precision, most parties provide you with 100% fury uptime, and it works perfectly. With SoM the heals are about 500-700/attack/enemy. Even more if fully buffed. With quickness and protection/defensive potion you can facetank a 77 mossman.
Taking impact strike and fist flurry can be important to break the defiance bar quick, and make your fight a lot cleaner.
What ive also found helpful is to hit enemies from maximun melee range. Im not exactly sure why it works, but you take less damage that way. Maybe my team eats the damage of skills with limited targets.
Trash mobs should not be much of a problem unless you enter the levels where everyone gets eaten up, not only thieves.
For most bosses the tactics are encounter-specific. Basically you have to watch the animations, think about what you would do on your necro and then replace that word with ‘dodge’

Marauders is great for thieves because the defensive benefit far, far outweighs the difference in offense, which is very marginal. Thieves really benefit from that extra health, since their baseline is so low and they get the same returns on Vitality as other classes.

Didnt doubt that. But ive had discussions with people who said they had more damage with marauder…
Im fine running with zerker, but I can perfectly understand those who are not.

Asrat.2645:

Didnt doubt that. But ive had discussions with people who said they had more damage with marauder…
Im fine running with zerker, but I can perfectly understand those who are not.

No, I would say realistically they are on par, but only if you min max the crit chance with a mixture of Assassin’s and Zerkers and only if you run it with a CS build where you are getting bonus ferocity from your precision investment.

Using a mixture of Marauders, Assassins and Zerkers is objectively better, because it nets you 4000 extra HP, max crit chance and equal DPS in practice, not on paper. If you were to try and min max your crit chance with just Zerkers and Assassins, you end up with mostly Assassins due to the greater discrepancy between the amount of precision each item gives you.

Now, if you didn’t use Marauders to min max and just ran a full suit, you would get different results that are less desirable.

Zerkers is also a cheaper investment. That’s worth noting.

You have to be realistic here: You can maintain a 100% critchance with full zerker due to the fact, that a min-maxed party composition gives you a banner of discipline.
And sigil of accuracy, since in a perfect world you dont need that utility slot for anything else.
So again: The actual damage is almost the same, it should not matter at all, even for raids. And with imperfect boons marauder might even be better.
But In the end zerker deals higher damage (not saying its better, but if you want true maximization, you have to go with zerker)
The 4000 health are undoubtly helpful, but you can do without it.
I guess in the end its mostly a matter of personal taste, but somehow zerker feels…right on a thief.
In my mind thieves should still be the ultimate glass cannons.

Asrat.2645:

You have to be realistic here: You can maintain a 100% critchance with full zerker due to the fact, that a min-maxed party composition gives you a banner of discipline.
And sigil of accuracy, since in a perfect world you dont need that utility slot for anything else.
So again: The actual damage is almost the same, it should not matter at all, even for raids. And with imperfect boons marauder might even be better.
But In the end zerker deals higher damage (not saying its better, but if you want true maximization, you have to go with zerker)
The 4000 health are undoubtly helpful, but you can do without it.
I guess in the end its mostly a matter of personal taste, but somehow zerker feels…right on a thief.
In my mind thieves should still be the ultimate glass cannons.

Well, you lose a lot for sigil of accuracy. Thats an increase to a chance for a single multiplier where as sigil of force is a seperate multiplier that applies on top of all the other multipliers from the passive trait line or sigil of air which is an additional attack that acquires all the bonuses from your crit multiplier and passive multipiers.

But, yes, if you have a dedicated group that can consistently provide fury uptime and those additional party bonuses, then I would say you are correct.

But if you are pugging, I still advocate for gearing for 75% as your goal (5% from the minor trait, 20% from fury).

In a scenario where you have to provide fury for yourself, the Critical Strike trait line is like an engine that you have to keep feeding crits. To maintain 100% Fury uptime independent of any external help, you have to score a crit within a 2 second window that appears every 2 seconds.

With this in mind, losing crit chance below a 100% isn’t just a loss of a chance to score a crit, but a increase in a chance to lose an additional 20% crit chance in addition to what you already lose. That kind of penalty is difficult to theorycraft.

So, look, when you get to min maxing on this kind of level, you start to deal with margins and differences that require you to make judgement calls. Full berserkers vs the setup I have has pros and cons that shouldn’t be dismissed.

But from the perspective of maintaining consistently high DPS, regardless of external influence and help, I believe the setup I have achieves that while providing more survivability.

You need to weight that in terms of how you play and who you play with regularly, as that may not be valuable to you.

I do a lot of soloing of elite and greater bosses, so this setup has a lot of value to me.

sigil (facepalm) my bad. Signet of agility. ^^

Asrat.2645:

sigil (facepalm) my bad. Signet of agility. ^^

Oh okay. But keep in mind, that 75% I talk about shooting for from gear assumes you are taking signet of agility and maintenance oil as staple; that bonus is factored in as part of the 75%.

The TL;DR here is that I am not suggesting Marauders is the end all be all of gearing now, but if you used correctly, it can net certain valuable advantages.

I wouldnt say you need no quarter for fury uptime tho. You can have ~80% uptime with thrill of the crime and that one CS minor trait. one more source and you are good.
But if marauder can spare IP which I need on zerker, it might work better.

When I’m running pve with pugs for fractals or open world, I tend to go with invigorating strikes and full zerker (or half zerk, half marauder, the HP does help). Invigorating strikes pumps out so much healing on a glass cannon thief that I rarely have to rely on anyone else. It is somewhat of a dps loss over gaurenteed perma-fury+ferocity, but a dead thief does no dps, and nor does one who has to hide in a corner and wait for healing cooldowns to come back up (the free heals also keep up scholar buff better).

Fury is given out like candy, especially in a party – there’s really no reason to run marauders unless you have super defensive runes.

ETA: We still have valkyre which has got: Power, Ferocity, Vitality – what it’s lacking is critchance but with enough fury..

The problem with Marauder is that it has too much wasted stats allocated to Prec, when crit chance is so easy to get from somewhere else. If you want Vitality without sacrificing too much DPS, you’re better of with a Valkyrie than with a Marauder.

Actually I just realised:
Ascended berserker helmet: 63p, 45pr, 45f
Base power + 6.3%
Crit chance + 2.1%
Crit damage + 3%
Ascended marauder helmet: 54p, 30v, 54pc, 30f
Base power + 5.4%
Crit chance + 2.6%
Crit damage + 2%
Exotic berserker helmet: 60p, 43pr, 43f
Base power + 6%
Crit chance + 2.1%
Crit damage + 2,9%
(Taken from gw2skills.net)
(Let me know if I did a fatal error in the calculation, that happened before)

So theoretically marauder deals less damage than exotic zerker. Still dont say its effectively worse, but I have to reverse my statement that the damage loss wont be noticeable.

Asrat.2645:

So theoretically marauder deals less damage than exotic zerker. Still dont say its effectively worse, but I have to reverse my statement that the damage loss wont be noticeable.

Theoretically, marauder grants more staying power than zerker, so in a sense more DPS.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The problem with Marauder is that it has too much wasted stats allocated to Prec, when crit chance is so easy to get from somewhere else. If you want Vitality without sacrificing too much DPS, you’re better of with a Valkyrie than with a Marauder.

I agree. In a perfect world where you somehow acquired all Ascended Marauders weapons, armor and trinkets (don’t think that’s possible at the moment), you would exceed the 75% soft limit for a basic CS build.

However, if you min max using Valkyries, the con is that the stat total is less (168 total stats on a Marauder’s helm vs 153 total stats on a Valkyrie helm). You ultimately lose out on some value, though somewhat marginal.

The other issue is that a full set of Berzerkers with Assassin’s signet and Maintenance oil falls short of that soft limit by 7%, so trading out Valkyries penalizes your critical strike for more vitality.

So with all that in consideration, if you theorycraft a setup that supplements Valkyries for Berserkers to get the same HP increase that the setup of Assassin’s, Berserkers and Marauders, I advocate, you end up with the exact same average damage.

Like the numbers for a Fireball (I only have elementalist’s coefficents memorized) is 2099 with the Valkyries and my set is 2100. (I will explain the math for that if you want).

The difference, however, is the Valkyries set has 25% less critical strike, which implications when keeping up Fury by yourself using No Quarter, which is the whole reason I use my setup over Valkyries, because the basic theorycrafting calculations don’t take that into account.

Now, if you are in a group and have fury from external sources, none of this matters.

Asrat.2645:

I wouldnt say you need no quarter for fury uptime tho. You can have ~80% uptime with thrill of the crime and that one CS minor trait. one more source and you are good.
But if marauder can spare IP which I need on zerker, it might work better.

But keep in mind with this, you have to drop Deadly Arts to get Thrill of the Crime in Trickey, leading you to a CS/Trick/DD setup instead of CS/DA/DD.

This has implications in terms of your damage, because Trickery provides mostly utility traits and only one damage multiplier that’s dynamic to your initative amount. Deadly Arts provides two, both which are higher than the average damage bonus from the Trickery multiplier.

This is important, because they stack multiplicatively, so here is the math for the total multiplier used post critical in both setups under different conditions.

DA/CS/DD
1.81 (Full health, Target Above 50% after Bounding Dodger usage)
1.97 (Full health, Target Below 50% after Bounding Dodger usage)

Trick/CS/DD
1.76 (Full health, Target Above 50% after Bounding Dodger usage with half initiative (7))
1.60 (Full health, Target Below 50% after Bounding Dodger usage with half initiative (7))

You lose 5% average extra damage when attacking above 50% using Trick and 37% extra damage when attacking below 50% (CS dmg multiplier is lost and no damage multipler in DA to take it’s place)

Asrat.2645:

Actually I just realised:
Ascended berserker helmet: 63p, 45pr, 45f
Base power + 6.3%
Crit chance + 2.1%
Crit damage + 3%
Ascended marauder helmet: 54p, 30v, 54pc, 30f
Base power + 5.4%
Crit chance + 2.6%
Crit damage + 2%
Exotic berserker helmet: 60p, 43pr, 43f
Base power + 6%
Crit chance + 2.1%
Crit damage + 2,9%
(Taken from gw2skills.net)
(Let me know if I did a fatal error in the calculation, that happened before)

So theoretically marauder deals less damage than exotic zerker. Still dont say its effectively worse, but I have to reverse my statement that the damage loss wont be noticeable.

It’s not wrong. Bersekers does more on paper. Following my previous post, full zerkers nets you a 2450 damage fireball on average over my setup which is 2100.

But in the context of thief, the theorycrafting doesn’t factor in the chance to drop fury if self maintained due to less than max critical strike (Not an issue in groups).

It also doesn’t factor into practical DPS, because the additional vitality will net you longer sustained damage before you are forced to disengage due to HP loss, thus bringing them to be about equal.

Once again, I am not trying to contend that my setup does more on paper than Zerkers; it doesn’t. I’m saying that in practice, in a group, they both will even out. Going solo, mine is better, because you can’t exploit AI to shift agro to another mob and the vitality ties directly to how much damage you can keep up before you have to disengage and kite to cycle CDs.

Why I think Marauder’s is awesome is that it gives higher total stats that you can min max to get a substantial HP increase for a marginal damage loss. And if Anet keeps up the same design philosophy in HoT of realeasing overtuned mobs to “increase difficulty”, then that extra 4k means not getting one shotted.

I’m not following the statement of diminishing returns on power. It has effective exponential scaling with critical damage and stacked modifiers; quite the opposite of diminishing returns. Ferocity is the first stat to start experiencing DR if it makes sacrifices to power and toughness reaches certain thresholds.

The great debate over zerk/marauder is fairly context-sensitive and depends heavily on group composition and on a per-encounter basis. Fights with forced dodge roll tempo (think Subject Alpha in CoE) will always favor berserker getups, as the Marauder counterpart still dies if not making the DPS sacrifice of dodging, however ones which enable the player to take more sustained hits offset by a healer will favor marauder (and potentially a valkyrie/zerk mix even) to full berserker.

I’m not so sure these tipps are really helping the OP who is already using (half) marauders and has got problems to stay in fight.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m not following the statement of diminishing returns on power. It has effective exponential scaling with critical damage and stacked modifiers; quite the opposite of diminishing returns. Ferocity is the first stat to start experiencing DR if it makes sacrifices to power and toughness reaches certain thresholds.

The great debate over zerk/marauder is fairly context-sensitive and depends heavily on group composition and on a per-encounter basis. Fights with forced dodge roll tempo (think Subject Alpha in CoE) will always favor berserker getups, as the Marauder counterpart still dies if not making the DPS sacrifice of dodging, however ones which enable the player to take more sustained hits offset by a healer will favor marauder (and potentially a valkyrie/zerk mix even) to full berserker.

It’s a mistake and I will edit it out. I was really tired when I wrote that and it really doesn’t have anything to do with anything we are talking about. The DR issue only comes into play when making decisions on whether or not you take more power at the expense of post damage calculation increases, which isn’t a subject we have touched on at all.

Jana.6831:

I’m not so sure these tipps are really helping the OP who is already using (half) marauders and has got problems to stay in fight.

Thats not the point here. Show me any thread in the thief forums where people stayed on topic.^^

I think we can agree on marauder=zerker for most pug groups with an increasingly noticeable drop the more elitist your enviroment becomes.

Asrat.2645:

Jana.6831:

I’m not so sure these tipps are really helping the OP who is already using (half) marauders and has got problems to stay in fight.

Thats not the point here. Show me any thread in the thief forums where people stayed on topic.^^

I think we can agree on marauder=zerker for most pug groups with an increasingly noticeable drop the more elitist your enviroment becomes.

I find this a bit unfair actually as this discussion is interesting but in no way helping,

Jana.6831:

I’m not so sure these tipps are really helping the OP who is already using (half) marauders and has got problems to stay in fight.

On the contrary, I think the discussion have already answered the OP’s questions.

In this case do I take invigorating strikes and sacrifice damage?

The answer to this question is based on what item he has. Thus the discussion about zerker vs. marauder has answered this question. With his marauder gear, taking invigorating and sacrificing damage is feasible. However, the discussion also gave him another option so that he doesn’t need to sacrifice damage…but that is up to the OP if he’s willing to change up gears. The rest are just theorycrafting.

Do I disengage, stealth and re engage?

This question was also answered favoring that high Vitality will require less disengagement since it gives Thief more staying power. The rest, again, are just theorycrafting. I really doubt that the OP will go with Valkyrie for example since he already have ascended armor, but it is still an option he can take.

This topic just opened up a lot of other related topics on gear combinations, which in honesty, I really enjoy.

Yes, but – I’ve been thief for too long to really say how I survive. Disengage engage is nice but the best for that is still stealth – and I’m mostly a stealth thief (OP isn’t). So, is it that easy to say “engage disengage” if the OP says he can’t get rid of aggro? Which implies that he’s already trying to disengage but for some reason can’t.
In most cases exotic is just as good as ascended – at least to test it. in fact I had 2 exotic gears when I was a noob – soldier’s for wvw and valk for pve. At some point I was comfortable enough to swap to my PvE gear for everything.
I think you got my point – this discussion is really nice but if I were the OP it wouldn’t help me at all.

marauder’s + fruitcake and sigil of air instead of zerker’s + oil and sigil of accuracy

anyway no, marauder’s is mathematically provable to not be a damage increase; it is most certainly a damage decrease over using some combination of zerker’s and assassin’s. However, the damage decrease is indeed very small relative to the gain in health.

also marauder is notably better than valkyrie for health gain per dps lost

As for the topic question, Invigorating Precision is the best thing ever for staying alive. That plus escapist’s absolution gives you tons of staying power.

reikken.4961:

also marauder is notably better than valkyrie for health gain per dps lost

I doubt that.

If you go staff, or even S/D marauder makes probably more sense – but you trade in power, vitality and ferocity in comparison to zerker or valk or zerker/valk like my thief (pic).
Thing is that you never ever have to worry about crit chance in this meta – so if you have got problems with marauder you probably should replace some stuff with valk. I bet it’s no damage loss ;)

Jana.6831:

Yes, but – I’ve been thief for too long to really say how I survive. Disengage engage is nice but the best for that is still stealth – and I’m mostly a stealth thief (OP isn’t). So, is it that easy to say “engage disengage” if the OP says he can’t get rid of aggro? Which implies that he’s already trying to disengage but for some reason can’t.
In most cases exotic is just as good as ascended – at least to test it. in fact I had 2 exotic gears when I was a noob – soldier’s for wvw and valk for pve. At some point I was comfortable enough to swap to my PvE gear for everything.
I think you got my point – this discussion is really nice but if I were the OP it wouldn’t help me at all.

I think its a bit more situational than what general advice can really handle and has to be learned by experience. Yeah, I went off topic, but I felt I provided a good bit of general advice. The rest is more specific to what issues he is having.

Like, let’s consider disengaging. Outside of raids, typically agro is a combination of proximity, recent damage done, rng and scripted overrides (ex. mobs seems to prioritize players reviving other players over others). The internal workings of all this aren’t published to my knowledge, so it ends up being learned based on trial and error

If you disengage in a direction that pulls the mob away from your teammates instead of walking him thru your teammates in the other direction, you are lessening their damage and their proximity to the mob, thus making it more likely for the mob to follow you.

If you open up really heavy and jump ahead on the damage table, changing distance isn’t always enough to immediately shake aggro, because even after you disengage, your teammates still have to catch up on the table for the proximity element to take priority. (This is how it SEEMS to work. Just how much top damage influences agro hasn’t been confirmed)

The proximity issue on pure ranged mobs seems to be different than melee. You have to disengage fully out of their range and not just outside of melee range to get them to reliably switch.

Stealth doesn’t seem to immediately break agro; instead, it seems to temporarily remove you from the table, shifting the focus of the target to other players, allowing them to climb higher in the threat tables so the target doesn’t switch back to you when revealed. If you stealth within melee range and immediately break with a backstab, the mob can immediately revert back to fighting you.

Beyond that, I don’t know. Other common mistakes I see players make that aren’t specific to a certain boss

• Attempting to use blind to avoid a flurry based attack.
• Burning a dodge on boss mechanics with enough telegraphing to be avoided by just repositioning or a low initiative movement skill.
• Burning too many dodges to evade normal attacks instead of blinding them, leading them to not have enough energy to escape a heavier AoE mechanic.

Jana.6831:

reikken.4961:

also marauder is notably better than valkyrie for health gain per dps lost

I doubt that.

If you go staff, or even S/D marauder makes probably more sense – but you trade in power, vitality and ferocity in comparison to zerker or valk or zerker/valk like my thief (pic).
Thing is that you never ever have to worry about crit chance in this meta – so if you have got problems with marauder you probably should replace some stuff with valk. I bet it’s no damage loss ;)

Ok, caveat. As long as your crit chance isn’t exceeding 100%
then marauder’s is better dps than valk

Crit chance can indeed be easy to come by, and with a full suite of buffs (spotter, banner, fury) plus Signet of Agility and Keen Observer, full zerker’s can reach 100% by merely swapping the chest piece and helm to marauder’s.
And of course to minimize the chances of wasting crit chance, one would not use precision runes or consumables, opting for ferocity and power instead.

and as for your stat comparison, you seem to be underestimating the value of crit chance

reikken.4961:

Ok, caveat. As long as your crit chance isn’t exceeding 100%
then marauder’s is better dps than valk

So at first marauder is better vit and damage than valk, now it’s only better damage, as long as you don’t have more than 100% critchance. Well ok then.
You trade in 2 main damage stats with marauder: power and ferocity. Sure you get more critchance but: My mix thief has got already ~60 or 65% critchance with his sustain food – it would be higher had I food which increase the critchance. Plus I have higher vitality, higher power and higher ferocity – that was my point. Marauder isn’t as great as you guys make it out to be.

ETA: I get additional crit chance from CS – so your comparison is all nice and stuff but we’re talking about thief who doesn’t usually tank a point. And if I’m behind a boss, tanking, 95% of my hits (AA) do crit – so..

Jana.6831:

So at first marauder is better vit and damage than valk, now it’s only better damage, as long as you don’t have more than 100% critchance.

No, the only statement amendment is the not exceeding 100% crit chance.

Here, I’ll re-state it, fully comprehensive:

As long as you aren’t exceeding 100% crit chance, marauder’s is better than valkyrie’s for vitality gained per dps lost.

To clarify, swapping any one piece of gear from berserker’s to valkyrie’s will get you more vitality than swapping it to marauder’s and will also get you a larger dps loss. The dps loss is bigger than the vitality gain on valkyrie’s, relative to marauder’s. In other words, swapping less valkyrie’s vs swapping more marauder’s such that the vitality gain is the same, the dps loss is less with the marauder’s. Or if you make the dps loss the same, the marauder’s version will get you more vitality.

Yes, valkyrie’s grants you higher potential damage—bigger crits—but the average dps is lower.

Also, possibly relevant: Assuming the respective conditions are met equally often, flawless strike is a much better dps increase than side strike.

I don’t get your “vitality gained for dps lost” –
It’s basically simple – as a thief you can have full power and ferocity with some vitality. Since you usually have 100% fury uptime, you don’t really need to bother with crit chance. Even if it’s below 100, you likely won’t be able to survive a fight without disengaging and that’s when critchance becomes less important.
Also: It very much depends on your weapons and also traits whether or not you better run marauder or valk/zerker or even zerker.
That being said: Even for a “sustain” staff thief marauder isn’t the best choice if he still struggles to stay in fight.

reikken.4961:

Yes, valkyrie’s grants you higher potential damage—bigger crits—but the average dps is lower.

For some reason no one ever reads what I write – go back and read what I wrote in at least the last post.

Yes, but that trait doesn’t increase your critical chance which you said is boss!
Also I’m a D/D thief, I like my CnD’s to crit.

Anyway, since we’re now moving in circles (and probably did since at leat 10 posts) :
OP – you would only deal marginally less damage if you swap some of your gear for valk to get a bit more sustain.

Jana.6831:

I don’t get your “vitality gained for dps lost”

Perhaps this is a better way of explaining it:

If you’re in zerker’s and sub in valkyrie’s, for every 100 points of vitality you gain, you lose 100 precision.
If you sub in marauder’s instead, for every 100 points of vitality you gain, you lose 30 power and 50 ferocity and gain 30 precision.

The net differences:
130 precision (marauder’s) vs 30 power and 50 ferocity (valkyrie’s)
And the precision is better dps so long as it doesn’t put you significantly above 100% crit chance. (because any precision past 100% crit is wasted)

And no, I read your entire post every time.

ALSO, the crit chance gets you an additional bonus for trying to stay alive: A greater portion of your dps is coming from crits, so you get more healing from invigorating precision

As for the actual phrase, “vitality gained per dps lost”, it’s a ratio.
I’m saying that, for example, if marauder’s grants 300 vitality and 3% less dps and valkyrie’s grants 400 vitality and 6% less dps, then that’s 100 vit per 1% dps lost on marauder’s and 67 vit per 1% dps lost on valkyrie’s. (not actual numbers, just a rough estimate without any fact checking, to get the idea across)

Okay, didn’t expect the thread to blow up but good read over the discussion between Marauders vs Zerk. As for now I have no trouble surviving, I just use invigorating precision if I’m in a group with no healing. Can burst heal and do damage with p/p after I disengage and then jump into the fight. Taking advantage of smokescreen field stealth also helped.

I went mainly with full marauders armor thinking that since I was new to the class, the extra HP would be nice and then eventually switch to zerk when I’m used to it but I’m probably going to stick with it for now since the general consesus is the dmg gain is very minimal. I’d rather stay alive than be dead and lower DPS for myself and my team mates reviving me. Also, not bad in WvW and DS meta that has random AoE everywhere and leaves me with 3-4k health if I get hit.

razgard.9587:

Okay, didn’t expect the thread to blow up but good read over the discussion between Marauders vs Zerk.

Welcome to the thief forums. You can expect every thread to turn into something entirely different in days or even hours. Still better than the inactivity you observe in other class forums tho.

As for now I have no trouble surviving, I just use invigorating precision if I’m in a group with no healing. Can burst heal and do damage with p/p after I disengage and then jump into the fight. Taking advantage of smokescreen field stealth also helped.

I went mainly with full marauders armor thinking that since I was new to the class, the extra HP would be nice and then eventually switch to zerk when I’m used to it but I’m probably going to stick with it for now since the general consesus is the dmg gain is very minimal. I’d rather stay alive than be dead and lower DPS for myself and my team mates reviving me. Also, not bad in WvW and DS meta that has random AoE everywhere and leaves me with 3-4k health if I get hit.

Nice to see it works better for you now. You’ll be perfectly fine with marauders as long as you are not raiding (and even there you will be the only one who can tell you dealt 25k not 27k)

MadRabbit.3179:

If you disengage in a direction that pulls the mob away from your teammates instead of walking him thru your teammates in the other direction, you are lessening their damage and their proximity to the mob, thus making it more likely for the mob to follow you.

This ^ and everything he said in that post is true and valid.

In addition, a party member bringing a party-wide toughness buff (i.E Banner of Defense) will increase the aggro generated due to the fact that mobs are programmed to prioritize players with high toughness. So with the additional toughness plus the amount of damage you’re doing, it can pull aggro really fast and it will be harder to drop. There was a time when Warriors do a massive amount of DPS with GS while having the highest toughness — they were the ultimate tank because you can never pull aggro off of them. So yeah, toughness is bad for Thief in group scenario.

Reikken’s numbers are correct by the way. They are close to what I got doing the math on paper yesterday with mine probably being more inaccurate do to the rounding I did.

I think the main difference is that both him and I give higher value to a gear setup that favors higher crit chance, because of it’s synergy with Invigorating Precision and the implications it has with No Quarter in maintaining self Fury and the DPS consequences that provides that arent in basic theorycrafting calculations.

Jana and Astrad don’t value that as high, because they get enough crit chance from external sources in their group setup to make that a non issue.

Both are valid. Like I said, I advocate my gear setup, because I solo a lot and I pug a lot with pretty much any group composition where group fury isnt always available.

The 4k HP also has a lot more value in HoT open world, because of how overtuned the mobs are. If I am fighting a Champion Arrowhead and I mess up and eat his cone attack, I survive that with a few hundred HP in my Maruader’s setup. I die instantly in a full glass setup. Their cone attack takes some practice to be able to dodge successfully everytime; you will eat some hits while you are learning.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In addition, a party member bringing a party-wide toughness buff (i.E Banner of Defense) will increase the aggro generated due to the fact that mobs are programmed to prioritize players with high toughness. So with the additional toughness plus the amount of damage you’re doing, it can pull aggro really fast and it will be harder to drop. There was a time when Warriors do a massive amount of DPS with GS while having the highest toughness — they were the ultimate tank because you can never pull aggro off of them. So yeah, toughness is bad for Thief in group scenario.

Just curious. Has this been established being true now outside of raids?

I know this is how it is in raids, but it’s been debated a lot how much this is the case in open world and dungeons.

reikken.4961:

Jana.6831:

I don’t get your “vitality gained for dps lost”

Perhaps this is a better way of explaining it:

If you’re in zerker’s and sub in valkyrie’s, for every 100 points of vitality you gain, you lose 100 precision.
If you sub in marauder’s instead, for every 100 points of vitality you gain, you lose 30 power and 50 ferocity and gain 30 precision.

The net differences:
130 precision (marauder’s) vs 30 power and 50 ferocity (valkyrie’s)
And the precision is better dps so long as it doesn’t put you significantly above 100% crit chance. (because any precision past 100% crit is wasted)

And no, I read your entire post every time.

ALSO, the crit chance gets you an additional bonus for trying to stay alive: A greater portion of your dps is coming from crits, so you get more healing from invigorating precision

That doesn’t make any sense. The point of trying to get high crit chance so that your high power and high ferocity can apply a large amount of damage. Sacrificing Power and Ferocity in favor of Prec doesn’t make a whole lof sense in terms of DPS. Sure you crit a lot, but your damage is mediocre because yo sacrificed Power and Ferocity.

Asrat.2645:

Nice to see it works better for you now. You’ll be perfectly fine with marauders as long as you are not raiding (and even there you will be the only one who can tell you dealt 25k not 27k)

Yeah, in a raid I’d rather have my allied thieves and eles run some extra health anyway. You can up your base 11.6k hp to 15k for less than 5% dps loss. Failing to meet the dps check is due to failing the mechanics or people going down.

MadRabbit.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In addition, a party member bringing a party-wide toughness buff (i.E Banner of Defense) will increase the aggro generated due to the fact that mobs are programmed to prioritize players with high toughness. So with the additional toughness plus the amount of damage you’re doing, it can pull aggro really fast and it will be harder to drop. There was a time when Warriors do a massive amount of DPS with GS while having the highest toughness — they were the ultimate tank because you can never pull aggro off of them. So yeah, toughness is bad for Thief in group scenario.

Just curious. Has this been established being true now outside of raids?

I know this is how it is in raids, but it’s been debated a lot how much this is the case in open world and dungeons.

All I can say is that it’s very true in dungeons and fractal. It’s hard to say in open world since the mobs don’t really behave the same way as those in an instance. I find it really annoying at times when I get too much aggro only because our Guardian thinks that having Strength in Numbers is a good idea to have. And as soon as he switched out of it for Stalwart Defender…I can DPS without getting aggro.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That doesn’t make any sense. The point of trying to get high crit chance so that your high power and high ferocity can apply a large amount of damage. Sacrificing Power and Ferocity in favor of Prec doesn’t make a whole lof sense in terms of DPS. Sure you crit a lot, but your damage is mediocre because yo sacrificed Power and Ferocity.

First of all, did you even look at the amounts? The precision advantage is an extra 2/3 higher than the sum of the power and ferocity advantage. Secondly, you aren’t sacrificing all of your power and ferocity. You sacrifice a very small amount. You still have a lot of it. more than enough to be multiplied by the precision.

And more than that, at very high power and ferocity values (ie what you have when running full zerker), the most valuable stat for dps is actually precision, until you cap it. This is why you’ll frequently see on maximum dps build guides to take a few assassin’s trinkets to max out crit chance.

Also to top it all off, thief has a precision to ferocity conversion trait, so that 130 precision is actually 130 precision and 13 ferocity, making the difference 130 precision vs 30 power and 37 ferocity.

MadRabbit.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In addition, a party member bringing a party-wide toughness buff (i.E Banner of Defense) will increase the aggro generated due to the fact that mobs are programmed to prioritize players with high toughness. So with the additional toughness plus the amount of damage you’re doing, it can pull aggro really fast and it will be harder to drop. There was a time when Warriors do a massive amount of DPS with GS while having the highest toughness — they were the ultimate tank because you can never pull aggro off of them. So yeah, toughness is bad for Thief in group scenario.

Just curious. Has this been established being true now outside of raids?

I know this is how it is in raids, but it’s been debated a lot how much this is the case in open world and dungeons.

It’s quite true. I get way more aggro than the rest of the party when running my condi tank ele build.

I don’t see why a party wide toughness buff would have any adverse effect though. Sure your toughness goes up… but so does everyone else’s, so you still have the lowest.

Is purely based on toughness or have you all noticed any difference in agro from different base armor values?

It makes me question the merits of running my soldiers setup now in instances with my elementalist

MadRabbit.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In addition, a party member bringing a party-wide toughness buff (i.E Banner of Defense) will increase the aggro generated due to the fact that mobs are programmed to prioritize players with high toughness. So with the additional toughness plus the amount of damage you’re doing, it can pull aggro really fast and it will be harder to drop. There was a time when Warriors do a massive amount of DPS with GS while having the highest toughness — they were the ultimate tank because you can never pull aggro off of them. So yeah, toughness is bad for Thief in group scenario.

Just curious. Has this been established being true now outside of raids?

I know this is how it is in raids, but it’s been debated a lot how much this is the case in open world and dungeons.

I was actually going to make a comment on this when I saw your post earlier mentioning aggro mechanics, but figured it wouldn’t be brought up.

Yes, initial aggro is based on a combination of proximity, armor, and player-output damage as a means of splitting aggro. It’s why the taunt condition is frivolous (especially with break bars). I don’t recall a period where this wasn’t the case.

As reikken mentions, though, a party-wide banner will not do anything to favor giving the tanks aggro on the basis that it’s not a modifier but a static value. If anything, it would favor pushing aggro to the DPS based on how it’s weighted, since the bonus from a banner would increase the DPS’s armor disproportionately to that of the tankier players’ in the group, especially if it’s simply strict multiplication.

In simplified terms, consider players A and B:

A has 1 armor and 100 DPS
B has 100 armor and 1 DPS.

If aggro is measured by armor * DPS (assume weight 1 and cancel out identical proximity), then

A’s aggro = 1 * 100 = 100
B’s aggro = 100 * 1 = 100

I.E., they’re even, just commutative.

B, the tank, drops a banner providing +5 armor to both, skewing the math.

A’s aggro = (1 + 5) * 100 = 600
B’s aggro = (100 + 5) * 1 = 105

Obviously it’s not this extreme, but such defensive bonuses of static values will result in A taking more aggro than before, potentially causing the effect of a banner to be harmful to a party if it is necessary for aggro to be maintained by the tank.

DeceiverX.8361:

Yes, initial aggro is based on a combination of proximity, armor, and player-output damage as a means of splitting aggro. It’s why the taunt condition is frivolous (especially with break bars). I don’t recall a period where this wasn’t the case.

I ask and I leave it out, because the wiki for Aggro doesn’t include armor as part of the aggro calculation in the “Gaining and losing aggro” section.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

It addresses the armor issue with this statement

“Some players have suggested the following factors might influence certain enemies, but this is not confirmed by any official source (and seems to be based on assumptions from other MMOs that go against the principles stated by Guild Wars 2 developers):

1. Top damage dealers [citation needed]
2. Who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor [citation needed]"

I wasn’t sure if this was current or just misinformed due to a lack of citations in the article.