Guild Wars 2

ANNNNNNDDDD I finally had some time to review my build and work some things around (see the post below for the previous build which I shelved in favor of this one), based on the feedback of several people in this forum. Thanks guys! New Build is this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsa6alcmaOHcy4E95ExODfKU/Dft7xVtKXB

Things I found:

— Trait VII on DA, what in the blue hell is the purpose of this, I’m not sure, it certainly didn’t do what I thought it did. It’s gone.
— Since I’m getting rid of VII there is no point in keeping anything in DA at all, so I took that out and reinvested that in 25 of CS and 15 into trickery. 5 more pts in CS but not maxing out CS because as good as executioner is, by only going 5 more in CS I save 15 trait points which I can invest in Trickery.
— 15 points into trickery = I get both kleptomaniac (nice perk isn’t a linchpin to this build) and preparedness, which gives me more initiative, which helps out quite a bit because unload and pistol whip eats initiative faster than a depressed hormonal individual will devour chocolate ice cream.
(Note, depressed hormonal men tend to binge on ice cream just as much as women when life makes us frown. I deserve a cookie for being considerate in my inane simile).

I am in the process of acquiring the needed gear to test this build out, currently I’m running full carrion gear so it might take about 20 more COF runs before I can fully run this build. However when testing it in the mist I did more than a fair bit of sustained damage while moving around constantly dodging.

— On the constantly dodging part, it DOES matter when to pop which signet, opening with assasin’s signet is a great idea, popping signet of agility when endurance is gone is also a good idea, and in between popping Signet of Malice (to get ur vigor) is a great idea. I don’t like losing my speed buff when popping signet of shadows I try to pop that last, if at all.

If someone already has the gear to run this build or sees any inherent flaws, please feel free to rip this build apart!

Forgot to add my old build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsa6alcmaOHcy4E95EymCfSo0UQTNY3jrSrqKA

Also I was wondering, since I just recently started to wvw and I still have no idea wth I’m doing, how viable this build would be in a wvw setting. Since I’m not using SB I’m consciously giving up a bit of my mobility in terms of teleporting all over the place, so immediately that’s one weakness (granted the 2 skill on sword does provide some mobility in combat).

Second weakness is condition removal, I have literally two (signet of agility and shadow return on infiltrator strike). I think this is sufficient in PvE but I don’t know about WvW. I can technically address both the mobility and condition removal by throwing in shadow return but that messes with my all signet build theme so…

Withdraw. SoM is playing a big role so far in my build due to short cooldown and stacking my might and initiative, but withdraw is another evade. Both will give me vigor, but withdraw will also remove conditions that stops me from moving. I’m really indecisive about this… ideas anyone?

UPDATE:

I geared myself up with all masterwork equiptment to just see how this build feels and all I have to say is… mwahahahahaha…. MWAHAHAHHAHAHAAH!!!!

— Infiltrator strike to Pistol Whip, I can literally PW x5 before running out of initiative, but I wont because I will pop assasin’s signet in the middle of the animation of the 5th PW, this allows me to do two more PW, and 2 more for popping Signet of shadows, and more for popping signet of agility and… ok let’s just say I can spam PW an absurd!!! number of times. Single target (or multiple targets as long as they are facing me) melee mobs die fastttttt, while I evade like a boss on animation taking minimal hits in b/t animations.

— Signet of Malice: Popping this in addition to getting might on evade and quickness on evade gives me near (but not quite) perma quickness and some stack of might while replenishing my initiative.

— Side benefit of SoM (or, potentially, withdraw): Since Im traited to give me vigor on evade that I have so many dodges that I find myself dodging all over the map just because I can (and basically gives me perma quickness). I can theoritically substitute Infiltrator’s signet for Signet of Shadows since the 25% movement speed seems redundant, it will give me 1 initiative/10 secs for passive and give me some extra mobility on active (+ initiative and might and all that fun stuff). <<Alternate idea but it’d kill the general theme: Replace SoS with Shadow step for stun breaks and conditions>>.

— Side benefit of dodging when you really don’t have to in combat: Might stacking, and dropping caltrops which does negligible damage but cripples foes = circle kiting becomes that much easier on melee mobs.

Glaring holes in this build:
— Stun breaks = none. Or maybe 1 if I replace thief’s guild with dagger storm, which is hardly enough. Nooooo clue how I’m supposed to fix this while staying true to the signet theme. I REALLY don’t want to use shadow return if I can get away with it.

— No “Panic Button”: The ultimate thief panic button of shadow refuge is not incorporated in this build. Dagger storm would give a temporary and brief solace I imagine… but outside of the several extra dodges this build doesn’t have the OH SNAP!!! Button.

— Healing: I have near constant heal for the mild to moderate damage, generally my health seems to always stay topped off because of all my dodges and SoM’s passive/active ability. But when I take a really heavy hit, have my health at 10% or below and SoM on cool down, it gets a little tricky. Not a major flaw in the design but defn a concern.

Infiltrators signet is a stunbreak.

Oh really?! It doesn’t say so in the tool tips.. I need to test this! If that’s the case that really helps out my build quite a bit thanks Maugetarr!

Yes, inf. signet is a stunbreaker, but you have to use it wisely. It will SS you to your target, thus putting you right in front of 100blades or some other devastating ability, you have to have end to dodge out real quick, or quick targetting to get something afar to step to.

Also, unless you gear for more condition damage, +5% damage would probably net better results if you circle strafe/daze/party with someone else taking some heat. though caltrops are a great relatively free cripple. just giving you another view.(edit: was talking about trops on dodge, vs. the 5% from side/back).

also, DS isn’t a stunbreaker, just stability, and unless you cancel DS, you’re in that animation, generally as long as the buff. It is probably the best projectile reflection.

Worse to worse, you can drop a signet for SS and that gives you mobility/condition cleanse(3).

also: props on masterworking it – it’s only a little less effective than exotic and hella cheaper (though you’ll certainly notice the difference in power once you make the switch). I love it for just getting a feel – between that and spvp, I can flesh out builds and test all I’d like, with only slight reduction in true power.

Also, in wvw, I’ve never been a fan of roaming with s/p, though that’s because I don’t like stationary evades (great evade in the circle of death!), and even stealstep/mugging to complete the full chain of PW, it just is as easy to counter as br/frenzy/100b.

SB is mainly your escape/zerg/tower defense/siege tool. If you aren’t worried about those (running from losing battles – still possible, but difficult with your limited access to stealth). Don’t forget you don’t need a target to prep shadow return with the sword as well…

Sorry I ramble a great deal.

SoM vs Withdraw

I think I mentioned I am not as large of a fan of SoM, but it is obviously well incorporated in this build. that with the heal on crit food, pairs nicely. You would have to weigh out the loss of might stacks/ini gain vs. the clutch immobile removal. Withdraw and SoM can heal the same number of times in 30s, though SoM will provide more overall healing I would think, even with popped downtimes. You can’t underestimate the power of consumables in wvw, there is 40% end regen food (+5s might on dodge, stacks with trait), the aforementioned heal on crit food (66% chance with an ICD I think, nifty visual too!), and some nice just straight up stat boosts.

Think I have rambled enough, good luck!

Also, Shadow Return is an absolutely wonderful stun breaker. It’s really quite lovely; you should be using IS and SR quite often anyways, which means that you get a get-out-of-trouble-free card which removes a condition and breaks stun, which is always a good thing.

Outside of that, I like the changes you made to your build. The Trickery traits and CS 25 are both far superior to what you’ll get in DA. I think this looks pretty good. You could also try things like removing 5 from CS so you get the Trick Master trait, of which there are definitely a few good ones.

The only thing I have to ask is why you chose Acro III over Assassin’s Reward. I get that vigor is really helpful (note: another way to get vigor is with Trickery VII, while also ripping off a few boons from an enemy. It doesn’t give you as much vigor, I believe, as you will have from the 12-sec CD on SoM, but it does grant the vigor to your allies as well, and gives all of you some really sick boon rips. It also gives you the option to take Assassin’s Reward), but I’m not sure it’s quite as helpful as being able to heal yourself with the initiative that you’re going to be using a lot of in this build anyways. If there’s any reason I would oppose CS 25 (outside of being able to put the 5 in trickery instead), it would be that you always have to have 6 init or more in your bar. While that’s nice and all, it becomes a pain to have to manage dodges and attacks while still being able to keep up 6 init at all times. Like Acro XII, I just find it really limiting. With my thief, I want to be flexible, and be able to focus on as few things as possible. That way, I can bring out the maximum efficiency that I can handle.

So, tl;dr: Assassin’s Reward has a lot of benefits over Acro III.
If you want to get vigor, you can always put 5 from CS into Trick to get BT. That way, you’re able to maintain maximum efficiency by not having to look at your init bar all the time, making sure you have 6+ init.

Apart from that, having run signet builds in the past myself, this looks really good. Great work, hope you can update us with how the build works out on the field.

we hear both sides of the coin on assassin’s reward (I prefer the perma-vigor – usually with bountiful theft as well :P). lol, I never liked it myself possibly even in the high ini usage scenarios, but I imagine he will try it out and make his own feel of it. I am glad some people like it though.

Going masterwork gear to test this build, it’s hard to fully anticipate the max potential of this build. I have no idea if I should be killing things faster than I am… I’m killing stuff now but sloooooowly…. and since im working with masterwork gear I’m not getting the top end jewels/rubies either so here’s what I’m working with (frankly my condi build with exotic carrion gear + ascended amulet had more power than I have now, no joke…)
Power: 1895, attk 2742, 39% crit, 75% more crit damage, 16695 health and 1846 armor. I’m hoping with full exotic gear and jewels I will see a 10-15% increase across the board, I really want my power well over 2k, crit over 50% and crit damage to be as high as possible. BUT! It does give me an idea of what I have on hand at least on the strength of this build alone…

’Sin’s Reward vs Vigor on heal vs Quick Recovery vs Might on Dodge
It’s hard to leave one out of the above 4, all of them sync with this build. It’s hard to test the effects of assasin’s reward, in theory since I burn so much initiative I should be getting a hefty return on health. 2 problems with this, although I am VALIANTLY!!!! attempting to further test this:

How much heal does AR do? I tried to look that up:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Reward
If I understood that right i think it’s saying 69+(0.035)(healing power) per point spent. My current choice of gear has 0 heal, so thats 69 life per initiatve spent, I guess? In It’s very rare that I use any autoattacks at any point due to my initiative regen, but this brings me to problem number 2

How often does AR heals trigger? Selver was mentioning something about AR only working on base initiative, which I took it to mean only on the 15 initiative I started out with. So does that mean all the initiative regen I have with activating signets and QR doesn’t count even if I am burning them? That seems to run counter to what it says in the tool tips and gw2 wiki but they are defn wrong often. In the heat of the battle it’s hard to figure this out since I’m so busy dodging and spamming one skill or another…

As an experiment I spammed unload for 30 seconds triggering as many signets as I could to get my regen, I got off exactly 10 unloads (although I highly doubt I will be able to just stand there casting these skills unharassed, so in reality more like 8 unloads/30 secs). Unload costs 5 initiative each, so 50 initiative burned, if AR works the way I think it works that should amount to 50*69 = 3450 health, not counting the health regen I got when I had to trigger SoM. Which isn’t amazing but not a bad perk considering that I’ll be spamming unloads or PW’s anyway. If Selver is right though I’d be getting less than that back.

Anyway all that was a roundabout way of me saying that based on math but not a lot of testing to back it up, since acro traits allow me to dodge a lot I might as well dodge right? And since I’m going to dodge might as well get something out of it (hence, the might). Eventually I’ll run out of dodge so a way to extend the purpose of the ddoge would be the vigor on heal, which happens to be my shortest cooldown signet (If there was no animation I’d seriously leave that on auto trigger). You can never have enough initiative and even this build runs out of initiative at some pt, hence the QR. This was my reasoning for leaving AR out.

Note: I’ve been getting into situations against mixed ranged and melee mobs with AoE’s where I still take a ton of damage. I generally survive but several times I died. With my current gear I can’t tell if this means I NEED the extra healing from AR or if I had my proper gear I’d kill the mobs before they could burst me down. In other words, I still need to tweak this build this is far from a finished product!

Uncatchable vs Flanking strikes:
I generally just meet the mobs head on lol I didn’t necessarily see a point to try to get behind them since I’m trying to do damage to them every second I see them as opposed to bursting them down on a few hits, if that makes sense. Only time that I can get behind or to the side of a target is when Im against a really slow target and manage to circle kite to his side or behind, where I can get a couple of shots in before he faces me again. The caltrops though are a free cripple basically since I’m dodging all the time anyway, the damage is just a side perk.

Goodlord I write a lot… ok I’ll be more succinct!

1. Shadow step/shadow return, I hate to say it but more and more I’m getting the feeling that one of my signets need to go and be replaced by this skill. I’m tired of freaking out when some mob stack some burning + bleeding on me and my shadow return on IS will cure only ONE of those… (although yea I love IS —> PW —> BP —> SR —> swap to P/P —> unload and kite from range!)

2. In support of 1, rarely do I have to hit all my signets before mobs die in a real time fight unless I’m against a champ vet or a boss, and against them I’m too busy dodging and kiting to hit all my signets before SoM is off of cooldown.

3. Steal is on a LONNNNNNG cooldown and as nice as bountiful theft is, vigor on steal from bountiful theft is on a 36 sec cooldown if I go 20 into trickery giving me 15 secs of vigor. Trigger SoM gives me 8 secs of vigor and vigor on heal is on a 12 second cool down, but as you said Arganthium, no ally benefits. This is a selfish selfish SELFISH thief build lol (I can’t help it, the kitten signets and skills have no support skills built in!)

3. Honestly I ignore the 10% more damage when initiative is over 6 trait, its too much trouble to keep track of. More often than not the initiative bar stays over 6 if I’m pistol whipping, drops faster if I am unloading. My thinking in the 5 extra in CS was just to improve my critical damage and percentage honestly, but now that you pointed it out I’ll test how dropping 5 into trickery and taking BT works. Because, why not?

lol, I skimmed the thread, and I saw “also:” or some variant about 4 times from me, and a few times from others.

What I meant about AR heal was:

Use heartseeker(3ini). Assuming the wiki has it right on the heal coefficient(with 0 healing):
3 ini translates to 207 heal. I know it’s right about it landing the heal after the animation of the skill. That was part of my problem with it, the delayed pop on it, I want it going on as I am using the skill.

So yeah, 10 unloads is ~3450ish heal. Not bad overtime, just felt too clunky for me to lean toward it. I suck at clarifying. What I was originally trying to get across about the amount spent/used whatever was that it goes off the base ini cost of the skill (heartseeker 3, PW 5, etc), NOT what it seems like it costs due to regen/ini returns from crit/signets etc (a cnd is 6 ini – some builds get 2 back because it stealths them – was just trying to say it would heal for 6 worth not 4).

Also keep in mind, if you interrupt a skill (that you are using, to clarify) before it goes off the ini doesn’t come off the bar (only effective for ones with more than a .25 cast time really).

Ahh ok, yea there is a slightly delayed onset for AR heals to kick in after I played around with it a bit. It does help keeping your health topped off though I tried switching it with QR and vigorous recovery. It’s a legit option depending on the situation.

Other things that I found while testing:

1. Signet build works fine if I get rid of infiltrator strike and sub in shadow step, still have near constant initiative regen.
2. S/P is ok at dealing with melee mobs, slightly more annoying to deal with ranged mobs, and a real pain in the kitten to deal with mixed mobs of melee and ranged esp if ranged mobs have AoEs (PW’s evade does nada when there is a bright red circle right under your feet spewing lava). This leads me to…
3. Testing out a utility SB for mob control. I’m not sure what the “damage dealer” for a burst build for SB is, but I’ll find out! I’m totally going to spam the 5 skill for absolutely no reason

Stay tuned!

poison combo + cluster unreleased is aoe weakness, useful for the ranged packs.

also, switch a utility to the smokescreen. should give you enough time to deal with the melee mobs. It’s also a blind pulse like pistol5.

point blank is the best option for dps on shortbow. spamming cluster (unless the field under them is more valuable! then it’s just spam so it doesn’t split into 3!)

Setting IS as a getaway before you engage is nice(no target) – can casually stroll up to them and get the ini back in that time.