Guild Wars 2

Hello my sneaky friends!

I’m trying to optimise the gear for my D/D D/P roaming thief and due to lack of resources (gold, I have plenty of badges of honor) I want to try and get it right first time.

What I’ve observed is that many excellent thieves opt for for a number of Valk pieces for survivability even in slots where you could have Cavalier. It’s generally acknowledged that for most classes toughness is superior to vitality for survivability so I found this rather confusing. Is it because the regeneration while in stealth is a function of your total health pool and as such vitality is a better option for stealth-based thieves?

My other question is: how many ‘balanced’ items like Cab/Valk are optimal and at what point does it become preferable to use the remaining item slots for Zerker to increase CnD, HS, auto attack crit chance?

Thankyou in advance.

Propably a useless part of my answer for you but it has to be said:

Well to be honest: You will have to start at one point and with time adapt to what you think is missing. That is what I did. e.g. I started out with runes of divinity but felt dps was missing. So I changed to Scholar and am happy now.
If you have the patience I would suggest that you get your leatherworking to 400. That way you can craft your exotic armor quite cheap, and fast. So you can craft whatever you feel is missing (Keep in mind that some stats can not be crafted e.g. soldier’s etc.).
Also a big help is http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/ which tells you quite accurate what will come out if you change anything.

But in general there is no point in saying take 3 valk pieces and the rest caval as this is pure playstyle and preference. And on top of that you say you play d/d d/p roamer but we do not know your traitpoints and traits…

Maybe something usable (speaking numbers):

I have quite an unique build compared to others which fits my style but I always try to have around 15k hp and put the rest in Power and Precision. So I use Valk/Soldier until I reach my 15k hp and use berserk for the rest… This works for me!

I prefer vitality over toughness on thieves because unlike most classes, we don’t endure damage. We avoid damage. Toughness reduces the direct damage while vitality is actually a better counter against conditions. Since your goal is to avoid damage, having a bigger health pool is your counter against the conditions that are placed on you.

At least this is why I run valkyrie (with some beserker pieces)

Have a look for a post by wish about designing a better D/D, and another referring to D/P. Quite interesting and might help you find an answer.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/first

I’ve actually just posted my own builds to the “Building a better D/D Thief” thread that happen to be more focused on Tougness/Health Regen than Vitality. Like you, I see the connection and potential for high toughness builds on thieves specced for health regen. Check it out.

Cavalier is bad. You should only look at gear with Power as the main stat or you will always be giving up damage compared to what you could be using. And theres no P/t/crit d gear, so youre stuck with combinations of soldiers or valk with berserkers only. If you want max damage and some amount of survivability and your backstab does 75% of your damage (only possible if you do no attacks other than CnD and BS and run hidden killer) Youll want to wear all berserker gear, then mix in valkyrie anywhere until youre happy with your survivability. If you do attacks besides BS and CnD, youll want to put soldiers gear in stat maximizing slots until youre happy with survivability, and maybe 1-2 pieces of valk, then use all berserkers.

If you want math or specifics you’ll have to read my thread linked 2 posts up, but it’ll take awhile.

Thanks for your replies. I took a look at that threads and it makes some interesting reading.

I mentioned in my first post that I don’t have very much gold to play with (I only have 1-2 hours a day to play and I try to spend it all in WvW) so a lot of the builds mentioned are out ofreach for me.

Even a full valk set can be eexpensive (20g+) and divinity runes are definitely out of the question. Using one of those calculators I found that full Zerk (with one or two valk trinkets) and Beryl orbs provides a similar stat distribution. Is that in any way sub-optimal though?

As for my build, I follow yishis’ videos (he’s the reason I made a thief) and usually play something fairly similar.

Thanks

You can get 5 soldier’s pieces for Karma, and all (ruby) orbs in place of runes. that leaves you with 1 armour piece to buy, or craft. Trinkets have to be bought or crafted (don’t bother levelling a crafting skill unless you collect most mats your self)

Are you L80 and have access to the Orr karma merchants?

I’ll take a look later today and see what I can come up with using either inexpensive or karma gear.

That would be fantastic thank you. I want to get as close to those stat distributions on that thread as I can with the resources I have. I’ve got about 16g and 500 WvW badges to work with so my first instinct would be zerker armor with beryl orbs and cab/valk trinkets but haven’t seen anyone using that which makes me think its not ideal.

Ok, I’m back, here is what I came up with for you to consider.

The Thrifty Thief

Notes:

1. Stats-wise, this build is surprisingly close to my Exotic armor build. You give up a some precision, but gain a little Vitality and Power.

2. Uses Berserker armor and weapons which can be purchased from the Trading Post for gold, or from the Armor Master (not Armor Trader) in Sanctum of Rall borderlands. The Armor Master is near the Laurel Merchant, and the berserker armor is located in 5th tab down…make sure you buy the “rawhide” stuff and not “Chainmail” or “Apprentice” as those are the heavy and light armor versions which Thieves can’t use.

3. All Cavalier trinkets which can be bought using Karma in Straits of Devastation (Orr). Details here.

4. 7x Exquisite Ruby jewels and 5x Exquisite Beryl jewels (armor and trinket sockets). Should run you ~50 silver each.

5. Sigils: Sup. Sigil of Bloodlust is probably out of your price range, but Sup. Sigil of Perception will still give you a nice boost to your damage (increases precision rather than power) for 1/4 of the price. I’ve placed it on your offhand dagger, but that is up to you. When you’ve got money to throw around you can buy yourself a 4th dagger so that when you have the full 25 stacks you can switch out for another sigil and maximize your benefit. Moving on, Sup Sigils of Air are only ~36 silver each and offer the highest single target on-crit damage available…awesome. Sup. Sigil of Force is 1.6g, but is about the same price as the alternative (Sup. Sigil of Accuracy). You could possibly switch to an “on weapon switch” sigil of your choosing, but I think the 1.6g is reasonable for an immediate 5% DPS boost.

6. Consumables: Mango Pie food is only ~33 copper each…among the cheaper L80 food available. Works very well in a (relatively) high toughness build. Hardened sharpening stones (L60) are 10+ times cheaper than Superiors (L80). Still very good though if money is tight (I use them myself most of the time).

Enjoy!

EDIT Keep in mind that this build favors Toughness more than Vitality which is somewhat different than what Wish does with his builds. Personally, I think Toughness is a better deal once you have a certain amount of Vitality…so long as you have a steady source of healing, which this build does.

shadowraith.9124:

That would be fantastic thank you. I want to get as close to those stat distributions on that thread as I can with the resources I have.

This is my official Exotic starter set
It uses all exotic gear with the correct exotics in place and corrected precision with cheap Oils and orbs.

Soldiers armor (except pants I believe) can be obtained with karma from merchants in the Orr temples if theyre cleared. Exotic soldiers back/rings can be obtained specifically from the temple of Grenth merchant. For pants/berserker armor/gold to buy divinity runes, start doing COF P1 and HOTW P1 everyday. Just run each one once, shouldnt take more than 30-45 minutes using GW2LFG.com to find a group. In 2-3 weeks you’ll have enough gold/tokens/etc to finish the good sets of the thread. I dont view that as really asking to much of someone. 30-45 min a day for 2-3 weeks is nothing. You’ll spend longer than that doing dailies to get ascended gear.

Just remember to use Dragonrolls instead of ghosts/pies as theyre vastly cheaper, but still give the same 66% life steal on crit and 70 precision.

That’s extremely helpful, thank you both of you.