Help with gear
My recommendation at 80…. use direct damage. Consider the following scenario: you are doing a dungeon with a ranger who stacks bleeds, or a warrior who stacks bleeds, etc. once the 25 bleed limit is reached, your dps is hamstrung. Just go max direct damage and you will never be blunted.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYUQNAoYVlUmKP3eS4E95Ey2jdqC5J/DkVPDsyqA;TwAg0CnoQygkAJLSOkkItKYYxmjJFA
Weaponset: Dagger Dagger and Shortbow
Utilities:
Shadow refuge – a must for group pve
Signet of agility
Caltrops – this i switch out depending on the situation. Sometimes I grab scorpion wire for pulling, sometimes i grab Blinding Powder, also roll for initiative if i feel initiative starved.
Traits: This is not glass cannon because I spec into acrobatics for mobility and vitality and I grab 5% of precision is converted to toughness.
Acrobatics: Both selected traits can be swapped for vigorous recovery and assassins reward. If you take assassins reward for the healing and pass on quick recovery (2 initiative every 10 seconds), than you may want to take roll for iniative as your first utility slot.
Trickery and Critical Strikes: I would not change these traits.
Armor:
6 Armor Pieces of: Berserker’s Emblazoned (coat, pants, helm, etc) of the Berserker, OR dungeon gear of the same stats. Stats: Power, precision, critical damage.
Weapon Pieces: Berserker’s Pearl (carver, handcannon, needler) OR dungeon gear of the same stats
Accessories: I have 2 “Ruby Orichalcum (amulet, ring, earring) of the Berserker” and 3 "Beryl Orichalcum (amulet, earring, ring) of the Valkyrie. If i did it over, I would buy more Valkyrie items. The stats are Power, Vitality, and Crit Damage. Since our crit rating is already so high, I dont feel I need more precision, so vitality here is better.
With the precision to vitality trait, you can get close to 17k HP (with divinity runes). My build is very close to yours, except I put points into acrobatics instead of deadly arts. More survivability, HP, and it allows you to get your power from the berserker gear.
Rotation:
On Veterans, Bosses, or where direct damage is needed (ALWAYS rotate to stand behind the mob):
Cloak and Dagger, Back Stab, 1 auto attack sequence (4 hits) and repeat. When initiative is getting low, use steal, use item stolen, continue the rotation. If initiative goes to 0, just auto attack. The key for keeping this going indefinitely is the auto attack sequence, as crits will regenerate your iniative and auto attack does huge damage. When the mob is under 33% health, use all initiative for heart seeker.
My usual damage is C/D (3-5k), backstab (3-6k), and heart seekers land for 3-5k. I personally feel this DPS rotation is the highest in the game and is sustainable.
On Groups
Shortbow spamming poison gas, cluster bomb (from melee range)
I’m on the same page as Nefarious here. For PvE you want to stack a decent amount of survivability. Not excessive because you will still die a lot no matter what, but enough to survive some of the bigger hitters. You should aim for at least 16.000 HP for most explorable modes.
Since a lot of Encounters require extensive dodging I find it hard to pass on the Acrobatics tree. There’s just too much useful stuff in there, up until 20 at least.
My current build is 15/30/0/25/0 because I like to keep Weakness up on all my targets. Lotus Poison ensures that every mob you fight will have the Weakness Condition, reducing most of it’s hits by 50%. That’s huge in any content although it doesn’t apply to spells.
As for gear, I’d recommend having one part of your gear-set be damage focused, while the other is focused on a balanced approach.
For example, you may go all out Berserker with your Accessories but then you should balance this out with a more rounded choice of set-pieces.
The wiki and gw2db.com are a good place to explore your different gear options.
Nef also makes a fair point about Bleed builds. The 25 Bleed limit really inhibits Bleed builds in PvE. One Necromancer is enough to consume a lion share of those Bleed stacks. And then it becomes a contest. This will probably change eventually, but until then Burst > Bleeds in PvE.
hmm thanks for the help, I’ll look into it but another question will that build also work well in PvP/WvWvW? and nef your link aren’t working
(edited by Genju.2150)
Yes, my current build works well in WvW. Enough burst to hunt people with Backstab as long as you don’t expect 5 digit-crits while having enough HP and Dodges to not die to enemy Siege weapons every few seconds.
I change my traits around obviously before going into WvW, but the spec works.