Guild Wars 2

So I am finally sitting down and farming for ascended gear. I want to have the most enjoyable thief performance possible. And it needs to be a bit balanced for WvWvW and PVE like dungeons, fractals, raids, and general event running in maps. Now I am thinking about the following:

- Full berserkers jewelry + Back item;
- Full bersekers weapons (D/D for PVE, D/P for WvWvW)
- Full Sentinel Armor

Which would make my mistakes forgiveable due to a bit more survivability than just full on zerk. But with the zerk stuff around it I hope to at least be close to good DPS as well.

What do you guys think? I am not using a staff since I don’t think that is fun gameplay. Daredevil really doesn’t do it for me.

Marauder armor?

Doesn’t really give any toughness though… Isn’t that kinda important?

I run with Marauder, scrapper runes, and -10% dmg reduction food, it’s pretty dumb.

Dumb in what way?

You really shouldn’t include any Toughness for PVE. The PVE mobs will focus on you if you have the highest armor. It may force you to play the tank role.

OHHH! Right! Thank you so much Dagger. I had completely forgotten about that!

Making sentinel armor is something that would expect you to regret. When you are looking to build a more durable thief, the primary concern is what trade-offs you can make where you lose the minimum amount of damage for the maximum amount of durability; as a secondary concern, where can you add durability that is easy to walk back later (that is, what is going to be easiest to swap out when you no longer need it).

The answer to the first question is Marauder gear. Marauder gives you a pretty big chunk of survivability at minimal cost to DPS. The first thing you should do to balance out your durability is to make Marauder armor and weapons, and to use the Marauder amulet if you have it.

If that isn’t enough for you, the best next step is to use Soldier (or Valkyrie) rings and accessories. Both of these stat sets are going to be superior to Sentinel for you; basically, power is the most important damage stat for you, you want as much of it as possible, and the difference between Sentinel and Soldier is trading off some power for more vitality at a 1:1 ratio. Not good unless you’re going full tank. Plus, there’s the concern Dagger mentioned, that toughness will pull aggro (particularly in dungeons and raids) which is probably not what you are looking for.

On the balance, this gear load-out will have slightly more EHP than the one you proposed (a bit over 1% more health) but also deal 8% more damage, and will keep toughness at the base so you do not pull aggro:

Marauder Weapons
Marauder Armor
Marauder Amulet
Valkyrie Rings + Accessories
Berserker Backpack

Wow… Thanks Ensign for the amazingly detailed post. I will do that instead.

Ensign.2189:

Marauder Weapons
Marauder Armor
Marauder Amulet
Valkyrie Rings + Accessories
Berserker Backpack

The problem with Marauder is that it gives way too much precision and mediocre power and ferocity. These gears will give you 50% crit chance, 2280 power, 202% crit damage, and 15800 HP. A 30%-40% crit change would suffice.

Examples;
Simply dropping that crit chance to 40%, you can have 2317 power, 206% crit damage, and 16365 HP.

If you drop the crit chance to 30%, you can have 2351 power, 210% crit damage, and 16985 HP.

You can then take consumables to increase your precision based on your vitality.

I took marauder armor and weapons, zerker trinkets, then started mixing in cavalier gear until I found a balance I liked, as you’re basically swapping excess precision for toughness then. See the S/P build in my sig for the gear I’m currently using for WvW.

That said, yeah for PvE I swap all the cavalier gear out for berserker, the toughness can mess with your group’s tank.