Guild Wars 2

I’ve been running Daredevil since I was able to get the last points needed post map-complete to unlock it all. It was great fun to whip a staff around and whomp things with crazy leaps and stuff. The utility wasn’t perfect, but it was there and it suited me.

… and then I got bored of it.

No easy access to stealth, good damage but poor speed, and overall it just didn’t feel like Thief so much as I was playing Warrior Lite. Or maybe a weird kind of Ranger that wanted to go Two-Weapon Fighting but rolled poorly on their initial assets and could only afford a quarterstaff (… wait, wrong game).

So I swapped out Daredevil and its delicious healing skill for Deadly Arts — and oh my kitten am I having far more fun than I’ve had since HoT went live!

I’m still playing some silly heal-crit-blob (Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes, and Acrobatics) to get by on my pathetic 12k HP average, and yet it’s going great. Awesome damage, Backstabs left and right, Heartseeker brings back the good feels, and I honestly enjoy playing Thief again.

Heck, yesterday I decided to roam around in the (quite underpopulated) Silverwastes after having some good fun romping in Orr to play poorly as I relearned daggers. Had the Legendary Bloodstone-Crazed Devourer spawn literally on top of me, and after calling in reinforcements, enjoyed one of the most fun fights I’ve had in months. Big thank you to everyone who came to assist! You guys were awesome.

That’s really the point of this post. To say that I’ve decided I don’t really need nor want Daredevil, and that Core Thief is good enough for me.

(For those curious, I play strictly PvE and the infrequent fractal, though you can find me in the Heart of the Mists experimenting with builds on occasion. My current setup is here: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZIQRAoY6KlsMxOnghTg/JOoJq9DMcVYvvCimQHATYEA-TxSAABG8AAU4gAYlyvdU/RCzf4oH4FNDzqEEgjAwFnAAk2fAA-e)

I play a core p/d thief as well and find it very successful in pve and wvw and a lot of fun. I am actually thinking of a power build core build. The one I liked best on paper was all but identical to yours but used Staff. Unfortunately you can not use staff in core.

So I swapped out Daredevil and its delicious healing skill for Deadly Arts

There’s your problem, you should have swapped out Acro for deadly arts. There’s a reason most builds are built on Trickery, DA, and DD. Although I’ve been having fun with a Trickery, Acro, DD Sword/Dagger build. :P

poor speed? daredevil is much faster than core thief
try using unhindered combatant instead of bound

also you don’t need to use a staff on daredevil

fluffdragon.1523:

Heck, yesterday I decided to roam around in the (quite underpopulated) Silverwastes

im like reading and reading and then he says i decided to roam and i was like and now i wonder how that worked out, and then.

silverwaste. the kitten? in pve u can even play with just dagger main hand and nothing off hand cus everything works in there lol.

This thread quickly escalated into the freakish love-child of Trahearne.jpg and the didn’t read lol meme.

babazhook.6805:

I play a core p/d thief as well and find it very successful in pve and wvw and a lot of fun. I am actually thinking of a power build core build. The one I liked best on paper was all but identical to yours but used Staff. Unfortunately you can not use staff in core.

Glad to hear it! Hopefully you manage to come up with something, though I found that between the effects of Executioner and Exposed Weakness combined with Dagger’s faster auto-attack sequence, general damage came out to be almost identical.

I’d honestly been keeping acrobatics around to synergize with the various on-dodge and on-evade features of Daredevil, until I found I wasn’t making much use of the latter. I’ve held onto it for the extra Vigor, condition removal, and mild healing from Assassin’s Reward, which I’ve found plays nicely with Invigorating Precision. Still miss the old version of the trait-line, though. Those were good times.