Guild Wars 2

The new runes in action.

Video guide (example clips begin at 12:45):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFzKDepokBE

Quick build link:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqYVlsMpvptNxsJsPRRSRw9SQintz60XJA-TFyCABAcKAAUfQ47Pg8DAwT1fSUJYWK/o4IAQKgFVWB-w

So you gain all benefits from Shadow Arts traits each time you use a trap and gain super speed for 3 seconds?

Seems quite good

Narkodx.1472:

So you gain all benefits from Shadow Arts traits each time you use a trap and gain super speed for 3 seconds?

Seems quite good

It is! running these runes on my p/d and its the most fun I had with this set in a while. Runes are even worth it only running 2 trap + stun break (the cooldowns are short enough), although I usually run 3.

Is this build good in pve too?

Have you tried this rune with P/P? It’s a constant rapid shots every where. lol

Have you tried it with D/D? It seems like the stealth from that and needle trap and trip wire would synergize well.

Maugetarr.6823:

Have you tried it with D/D? It seems like the stealth from that and needle trap and trip wire would synergize well.

The problem with that is, Trapper Rune is Condition damage base that only works well with Pistol main hand due to stealth attack. You can stack a lot of bleed with this rune.

With P/P, you can unload while waiting for the trap’s cooldown.

I think Trapper Rune is bugged, when I use trap skill during combat, I should get 3 sec stealth, but stealth dissapear for less then a second so I can’t even use stealth attack, when I use trap skill out of combat, I get 3 sec stealth as I should.

Sherlock.1607:

I think Trapper Rune is bugged, when I use trap skill during combat, I should get 3 sec stealth, but stealth dissapear for less then a second so I can’t even use stealth attack, when I use trap skill out of combat, I get 3 sec stealth as I should.

Are you getting the Revealed status?

If so, then that could mean that your Ricochet-ing bullet bounces when you try to go in stealth.

If not, then maybe it’s a rare bug since I never experienced it myself.

yeah I am getting revelaed status, you are right, its because the ricochet, well, the build needs some more tweaking I suppose.

Sherlock.1607:

yeah I am getting revelaed status, you are right, its because the ricochet, well, the build needs some more tweaking I suppose.

yea make sure you toggle auto attack off, you need to stop autoattacking for like a half second before laying to trap, otherwise, you’ll stealth mid attack animation and break stealth almost instantly. I actually think this is intended, would be cheap if you could get a stealthed auto off and then sneak attack.

However, i think there is a bug (not sure if intended) that someone pointed out and I noticed myself later in practice: If they hit the trap as soon as you lay it, the trap proccing will break stealth

Odd, in every instance I place a trap directly under somebody I get Stealth. It procs 1/4-1/2s after the trap is planted, so I always seem to get the intended effect. At one point in the video I actually mention this tactic as being one of the best ways to play offensively with the traps.

There’s also a little quirk I have noticed – if you plant and then immediately perform an action like a stomp, the effect won’t proc. You have to allow the tiny delay to receive the effects. Dodging is okay, though.

I tried this the other night, was quite fun! A different approach on the thief.
And people don’t really expect you having traps in your kitten nal.

One of the fights I had with this build, I was against 4 thieves. Although I didn’t manage to kill anyone of them, I held my ground pretty good for a while thanks to the stealth procc on traps, and dat superspeed! 100% speedboost is really nice.

Will try more later on tonight :-)

This build is making p/d fun to play. Who would have thought traps?…. hah… thank you for sharing your build. We needed something new.

I swore that I’d never EVER touch p/d. But holy crap this actually looks so much fun…

AlCojester.4316:

I swore that I’d never EVER touch p/d. But holy crap this actually looks so much fun…

It is! Traps and the stealth procs are now a main focal point in my gameplay when I play PD. Really happy anet implemented these awesome runes, hope to see more game-changing runes released in the future as well.

I run something close to this build but I have a conundrum.
Is this setup better?

Or is a 0/0/6/2/6 better with sigils of doom and confusion on steal? I’m torn so I wanted to get y’all’s thoughts.

Snakebyte.2804:

I run something close to this build but I have a conundrum.
Is this setup better?

Or is a 0/0/6/2/6 better with sigils of doom and confusion on steal? I’m torn so I wanted to get y’all’s thoughts.

It’s up to you! This is very close to the framework of my setup anyway, only with more damaging condition pressure and compensating the loss of Serpent’s Touch with Doom. I assume you use double P/D to take advantage of that, but I would rather have Shortbow available for mobility should I need it, and Choking Gas is nice as well. It’s all down to personal preference and what you want to get out of the build at any time.

I like 00626 a lot, but I can’t give up Serpent’s Touch – it’s just too useful for Warriors that I encounter very often. However, some people won’t want it so much, which is fine. You get the general idea of what this kind of build is, fine tune how you please.

Anyone else having a bugged torment? Im sitting at 1900 condi damage with 70% uration and my ticks for torment is about 200-300 per tick not moving on anyone for 8 1/2 seconds. I could have sworn it should be ticking a little higher. Nevermind math was wrong.

BWHAHAAHH such a troll build I love it! I have gotten so many invites to party and so much qqing! I bet in no time we will be called the next PU build lol…

I use a similar build,but with rampager set

even tho I know dire is superior,I find rampager set funnier to play

good condition damage, about 40% crit chance with proc on crit sigils and acceptable direct damage

not as good as dire,but it gives a sort of challenge being a bit harder to handle with

Yup, I’m definitely changing to this build for my old thief. Time to dust him off.

i went with power p/p set and traps as i was playing around it before patch and now with the stealth abilities the p/p set much needed is nice too
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqaVlsMpvplNxuJsPRBPBtdCmdA4qEeGlm01PA-TVCEABFqEMKlHcv/ABPAADOBASpErD9BAcEAcR9HSBMwEA-w
also the 10 might stack buffing your condi dmg so the aa also does nice condi pressure

Thanks for sharing, this seems a fun build to play with p/d, I might actually give it a try.

But, at the same time, with this thread/build you made me realize (once more, and probably for the last time – i.e.: I’m giving up any hope) that anet doesn’t have a clue how to develop a game at its core.

This is because you came up with a fun build to play only because we now have a new set of runes. And it’s like trying to save a building from collapsing propping it up instead of working from the basement.

IMO developing/balancing a class should be done in this way:

1) Give a set of skills usable by the class, all viable regardless of other things.
2) Give a set of traits usable by the class, in synergy with the skills at point 1, regardless of other things.
3) Give runes/sigils that can work with 1 and 2, but not changing the overall scope of the build.

In this case, we have a lazy design instead: the 3 is the only reason why we choose 1 and 2 – runes/sigils should be the cherry OR the strawberry on top of the cake (cake = skills+traits), they should only give a different flavor to the cake but they shouldn’t force the chef to change all the cake. But here we have the runes as the cake, and skills/traits only as the cherry on top.

Thanks again for sharing the build however.

messiah.1908:

i went with power p/p set and traps as i was playing around it before patch and now with the stealth abilities the p/p set much needed is nice too
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqaVlsMpvplNxuJsPRBPBtdCmdA4qEeGlm01PA-TVCEABFqEMKlHcv/ABPAADOBASpErD9BAcEAcR9HSBMwEA-w
also the 10 might stack buffing your condi dmg so the aa also does nice condi pressure

I tried this in sPvP (with berserker amulet and scholar runes), and it went so-so. Obviously the whole crux of the build isn’t there (trapper runes), but I just wanted to see what I could do with the traps and such. Shadow trap can actually do some nice things since it’s basically a personal (and invisible) portal.

With the trapper runes, you get access to stealth using the traps, which can really benefit p/p with its complete lack of mobility, evasion, and stealth abilities. It’s just too bad p/p is the crappiest weapon set in the game.

One of the nice things about ambush trap is that it doesn’t damage the enemy, so it won’t reveal you if you drop it on someone while in stealth, or if you put it out, stealthed, and then someone ran into it.

The main sort of problem I had is that you don’t really have to much options with p/p after you, say, CC them with the tripwire. I mean, anything with offhand dagger could land an easy CnD, p/d could also get some shadow strikes in, d/p would just go into stealth while they’re CC’ed or use shadow shot to close in on them, s/p could use it to combo into pistol whip or infiltrator’s strike for extra CC and damage setups, &c. But with p/p you can’t really do much but sit there and continue to spam unload, which you’ll be doing anyways.

The other main problem is there’s no real stun breakers. Shadow trap is not the most convenient thing for that purpose, although it can be pretty powerful. Even still, if a necro just decides to chain fear you, there’s not much you can do about it, particularly if no one actually stepped on the shadow trap. I suppose it should be easier to manage with the trapper runes since you’d have the stealth access.

The traits are also a bit restrictive. Obviously the 2 in acro is needed, and the 4 in trickery is too useful to pass up. Taking 6 in SA would be nice, but that would miss out on a lot of the damage that you can get from CS. Plus there’s no trait points left for DA… I would kind of like to take the corrosive traps trait just to have both the trap related traits (even though corrosive traps isn’t very good), but there’s just no room.

It think a p/d condi version would still be better overall though. If p/p stopped sucking so bad, this build could actually work out a lot better though.

I’ll probably try and set a similar build up for WvW instead of my current p/p build (also crap, but any p/p is generally crap), and see what happens.

i get what you saying but after i saw the sniper ranger groups in wvw i think the p/p set is bit more valueable which act like the ranger LB (not the range but better burst)
so same act different profession

So at first glance I thought shadow trap and needle trap would be the most useful in my p/d build for these runes…. Turns out I prefer tripwire and ambukittenripwire: 3 second knockdown is massive, and so is the additional pressure from the thief from ambush, mainly because of the scorpion wire they throw. The scorpion wire almost always lands because the enemy is trying to focus on me. Running with tripwire, ambush and needle trap with traited cooldown for 3 free stealths every 32 seconds.

Just rolled a Thief for a challenging gameplay. Kudos to the one who made this, just take extra caution as you might know, 90% of the playerbase go QQ over a good Thief.

as far as OP’s build: I think you should really find a way to get 6 in trickery. Bewildering ambush is so kitten good, especially verses thieves, which is the the most common class I fight on my roaming adventures (well now probably rangers.) It’s straight awesome verses any class (except necro) in terms of damage, and a free cover condi for kitten your doing anyway (stealing)..

as counter-intuitive as it sounds, im running P/D trapper runes and NO shadow arts. Going 2/0/0/6/6. Only reason I’m not going 0/0/2/6/6 is to hit the 7 second pistol 1 bleed break-point. I run vigorous recovery, master trapper, and then the only guy on GW2 running assassins equilibrium. In the heat of battle, the 2 second stability during channeled sneak attack is surprisingly adequate to justify a GM. (beats the shlt out of shadows rejuvenation for P/d). With dire gear, endurance generation, and 15 second evading healskill- the only thing I’m worried about killing me is a pull, knockdown, etc.

30 full seconds in stealth during battle with shadows rejuvination will heal you for about ~10,000 damage. One blocked pull/knockdown can help you easily avoid that sort of damage. P/D’s most vulnerable point in any battle is during their channeled sneaker attack, which is right when the trait kicks in.

Can the enemy see your traps??

barrek.1826:

Can the enemy see your traps??

No, although there is an animation for you placing them, so if they see you place one they can have a sense of where it is and can possibly play around it.

i like it a lot, but this is the kind of build that will only be viable as long as its new. If this build ever sees the light of meta, people will very fast learn to watch for the place traps animations and simply outplay you bcs you have no real utilities

well you can always stand right into them XD not to mention the free stealth

i tried it but i am still thinking that venom share with ambush is stronger as you share your condi dmg

Prince.7198:

i like it a lot, but this is the kind of build that will only be viable as long as its new. If this build ever sees the light of meta, people will very fast learn to watch for the place traps animations and simply outplay you bcs you have no real utilities

A note on this:

If they dodge ambush or shadow trap, I believe it still triggers the effect. So in essence, you could use those ones to bait out the dodge and then try to goad them into the tripwire or needle trap. They’re all relatively low cooldown anyhow, so if you place them early enough, you can probably set them down again very quickly even if they’re dodged.