Guild Wars 2

Theory crafting:

Has anybody tried this? Wanted to see if a hybrid glass thief is possible in this patch as celestials is not as effective as before. Would a hybrid of direct damage and condition damage work? A mixture of maybe sinister’s, rampager’s and zerk’s equipment we can add CA to a core spec for ferocity and D/D P/D as weapon sets. I’ll probably work on this after I get the funds to transfer servers.

I doubt it would be as effective
But give us some feedback after you tried it out

I think hybrid thief is definitely viable in WvW, but I don’t think glass is necessarily the best way. I know it’s not what you asked for, but I came up with 3 builds myself:

• Glass Hybrid
• Celestial
• Flexible

I haven’t tested any of them, of course, but I think they would all probably work. They all include Fire/Air sigils and Pack runes because they’re staples for power burst. The condi food is necessary for that component of the spec to work. I also opted for P/D + D/P because it gives you a bit more utility and access to a condi while using D/P (Headshot would apply torment on interrupt). There’s really just no reason to run offhand dagger twice. If you need to CnD, just use the P/D set.

With that said, I don’t particularly like the glass build. Yeah, you have 100% crit chance because of permafury, but the crit damage is low, and it’s honestly just too squishy to risk not instagibbing the enemy, which you would be better off doing in a zerker set anyway. You could try mixing sinister with zerker, but I don’t think it’d get much better.

The celestial set seems to be the best option to me. You have a looooot of sustain with the traits and stats the way they are. The only problem I really see is that it doesn’t break the much needed 2k power threshold without full stacks. It’s the best of the three though, imo. If you’re already running celestial, but you’re not satisfied with it, I would definitely give Pack runes, condi food, and Fire/Air sigils a go. They will give you a lot of burst you wouldn’t otherwise be able to attain.

I made the last build for the sake of having some versatility. The stats aren’t ideal, but the gear gives you the flexibility to go full zerk just by swapping the trinkets. It’s the build I would run because I wouldn’t want to make/convert/buy a new set of armor just to go from hybrid to power, but that’s just my preference I guess. Plus P/D power specs are soooo fun to play.

Anyway, I know you weren’t asking for builds, but this post just got my mind going.

I like the builds I saw but do you think we can swap out pack runes for ferocity runes such as ogres or scholars? to compensate for the lack of crit damage? so say scholars + rampagers for armors and weapons and zerks trinks. I’ll try them all out after we get the xfers done in a week.

You could definitely try it. :P I think those options might actually be better in the Rampager build just because you have permafury from No Quarter already.

IMO the partial dmg from the raw dps and the condi isn’t as good as just going 1 or the other. Sure it might be more reliable since you have less weaknesses since you have both condi and raw dmg at ur disposal, but I’m not feeling it.

I like using Carrion instead of dire for my weapons and armor (dire still for the trinkets since there is no ascended Carrion). I don’t feel like I miss the toughness that much and it’s nice having some extra power to increase p/d #3 and shortbow #1 and 2 damage.

Here’s my thought (unfortunately not possible in sPvP and I don’t WVW much so I haven’t tested it):

D/D, sinister gear, food that gives might on crit

Run skelk and spider venom, play like a normal backstab build. You’ll deal less damage, but with the vuln, torment and poison, they should drop easily after a burst. Instead of trying to stick to them after a failed 100-0 and risk dying, you can run/hide while they die from dots.

So basically, 100-30 direct damage and 30-0 condi. I’d probably run CS, SA and trick. You could venomshare if you’re roaming with a mate, or just go for the sustain to help survival. Could also take DA instead of SA. Improv is great on the off chance it recharges venoms.

I’ve always been a fan of Hybrid builds. They are interesting, in both WoW and GW2 Hybrid gear gives you “More” Stats. Meaning if you add up the total stat bonus to any and all Stats from Hybrid Gear, and Specialized gear, you’ll notice that you have more Stats on Hybrid overall.

Now the downside is that none of your stats will be as high as the specialized Stats can be from specialized builds. I’m working on a Celestial set for my Necro because he has a good mix for abilities that do direct damage and condition damage, along with having a signet build that grants lots of might.

Unfortunately as a Thief, you don’t get many options for abilities that do good condition AND direct damage. Your signets don’t do good Conditions while providing might, and your venoms suffer by losing utilities.

I really want to experiment with a Celestial Thief build, but I haven’t seen too good of synergy between direct damage and conditions.

Valvador.4291:

I’ve always been a fan of Hybrid builds. They are interesting, in both WoW and GW2 Hybrid gear gives you “More” Stats. Meaning if you add up the total stat bonus to any and all Stats from Hybrid Gear, and Specialized gear, you’ll notice that you have more Stats on Hybrid overall.

Now the downside is that none of your stats will be as high as the specialized Stats can be from specialized builds. I’m working on a Celestial set for my Necro because he has a good mix for abilities that do direct damage and condition damage, along with having a signet build that grants lots of might.

Unfortunately as a Thief, you don’t get many options for abilities that do good condition AND direct damage. Your signets don’t do good Conditions while providing might, and your venoms suffer by losing utilities.

I really want to experiment with a Celestial Thief build, but I haven’t seen too good of synergy between direct damage and conditions.

Yeah, I don’t think thief has enough survivability to make use of the defensive traits on cele gear and no easy, consistent might access to make up for the lower damage stats. That’s why I recommend sinister. D/D has bleed and poison as well as high direct damage, so adding venoms could make for a potentially good hybrid build.

Signets has decent might access, no?

Valvador.4291:

Signets has decent might access, no?

They do, and technically so do traps with deadly trapper, but running entirely traps or signets just for the might feels like a waste. Other classes have better ways of maintaining it. Shadow trap could be a good option and you could still take other utils like shadow step then. Unfortunately deadly trapper is bugged and doesn’t work on shadow trap.